Editor's note: revised June 19, 2026. Originally published October 22, 2020.
"What helps people helps business." The Leo Burnett quote was the operating frame for marketers planning out of the pandemic in late 2020. Five years on, the survey data behind the piece is worth a retrospective read — most of the behavioral shifts held, and the demographic patterns predicted where the durable category growth would land.
The 2020 baseline
A Morning Consult survey conducted in 2020 tracked which pandemic-era activities consumers said they were doing more of. The headline numbers, in order:
Cooking at home: +56%
Time with household members: +49%
Video chatting friends and family: +49%
Time on social media: +45%
At-home workouts, gardening, yard work: +29%
Online shopping for non-necessities: +26%
Ordering groceries online: +25%
Food delivery: +23%
Learning a new skill: +20%
Decorating, new hobbies: +18%
Online classes: +15%
Ordering medication online: +13%
What held up
By 2026, the durable shifts are clear. Online grocery, food delivery, and meal-kit ordering never reverted — the convenience layer became default for urban and suburban households. At-home workouts consolidated into a sustained category (Peloton, Tonal, Apple Fitness, hybrid gym models). Online medication ordering accelerated into the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company moment and the broader telehealth-pharmacy stack.
The activities that reverted partially: cooking at home moderated as restaurants reopened, though the category retained roughly half the pandemic-era lift. Time with household members normalized.
The activity that compounded beyond the original signal: social media time. The 2020 +45% reading understated where the category would land. TikTok's ascent and the creator-economy expansion pushed total time-on-platform well past 2020 levels by 2024.
Where the demographic signal pointed
Morning Consult's segmentation in 2020 surfaced higher-income women and urban consumers as the leading edge of nearly every increase — cooking, social media, at-home fitness, online ordering for non-necessities, online grocery. Higher education levels correlated with new-skill acquisition. Generational ranking showed Gen Z at +44% online activity, millennials at +35%, Gen X at +32%, boomers at +24%.
That demographic map predicted where the durable category growth landed. The 2020-to-2026 winners in wellness, premium grocery, telehealth, and creator commerce skewed toward exactly the cohort the survey identified — higher-income, higher-education, urban-leaning, female-led purchasing decisions, with Gen Z and millennial behavioral leadership.
The communications takeaway
The brands that built sustained position out of 2020 did two things. First, they treated the behavioral shifts as permanent and built communications around the new behaviors — not around the pandemic that produced them. Second, they refused to abandon broader audiences in pursuit of the higher-income cohort. Leo Burnett's framing held: the brands that helped people helped business, and the brands that read the moment as a luxury-only opportunity missed the larger category formation underneath.
For communicators today, the 2020 data set is a useful retrospective check. The categories marketing and consumer brand teams flagged five years ago as accelerating — convenience, at-home wellness, digital discovery — became the dominant share-takers of the following half-decade. Reading the next behavioral shift correctly is the discipline.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
