Happy Hour or Sour Hour?

by F Yeah! Creative | April 8, 2020 | Thoughts & Musings

Sadly, it feels like “sour hour” right now for Mexico’s famous Corona Beer.

Unfortunately, the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been a huge buzzkill (Don’t you just love a pun!?) for the Corona Beer brand lately. This has not only likely skewed any marketing analytics and keyword search triggers the brand had in place, but it has also skewed a percentage of the general population’s perception of the beer as well.

Although online searches for “corona beer virus” had been on the rise but since declined, portions of the population still believe the virus is somehow related to, or stems from the consumption of Corona beer.  Here’s where I interject and enthusiastically say “What the actual f*ck, people!?”

According to this CNN article, Two released surveys show that the Corona’s brand is indeed suffering from negative buzz.

5W Public Relations said that 38% of Americans wouldn’t buy Corona “under any circumstances” because of the outbreak, and another 14% said they wouldn’t order a Corona in public. The survey encompasses polling from 737 beer drinkers in the United States.

In another survey conducted by YouGov, the firm found consumers’ intent to purchase Corona fell to its lowest level in two years. The survey also showed that Corona’s buzz score, a metric that that measures favorability, has dropped significantly since the beginning of the year.

This CBSNews article cites that  38% of American beer drinkers said in late February that they would not buy Corona “under any circumstances” at the moment — but among regular Corona drinkers, only 4% said the same.

Yet 14% of the Corona drinkers admitted they would not order the brand in a public place, according to the survey. 16% of beer drinkers surveyed were confused at the time about whether Corona beer is related to the virus.

As bewildered as these survey results make me about the state of the general level of common sense of folks, my heart goes out to the marketing team at Corona, because they’re going to have a tough road ahead for quite some time, trying to miraculously remove the now negative stigma attached to their brand in the minds of said folks.  The only silver lining is that hopefully those customers weren’t their true target market anyways.

Also, all of this comes at a very unfortunate time for Corona as it is preparing the $40 million dollar launch of their branded hard seltzers.  Hopefully, they won’t fizzle out. (Terrible, yup, I know.) These new hard seltzers are likely geared to a different market anyways, one who, hopefully, for Corona’s sake has differing views than the beer market.

I can only hope that your brand never has to undergo the type of ‘brand sabotage’ that Corona is currently undergoing.  But hey, who knows, maybe they’ll turn this challenging time into a time of renewal and a refreshening of their brand. I mean, it would totally be ok with me if they made a new Christmas commercial…just sayin.

Let’s all raise a lime-garnished ice cold beer in support of Corona’s future success that awaits for them on the other side of this Coronavirus insanity!

Cheers!