Corona Beer Tests Negative for Coronavirus

The coronavirus continues to wreak havoc across the world, spreading to over 70 countries, disrupting world markets, and causing a lot of pain and suffering. I’m not a medical professional, so I can only weigh in on this crisis from my perspective as a branding expert.

In that vein, a recent study published by PR agency 5WPR and picked up by several major news outlets (CNN and The New York Post among them) reported that 38% of Americans “would not buy Corona beer under any circumstances now” because of the name association.

Maybe you heard this stat, and nodded along. It makes sense, right? They share a name so stupid people must not be able to tell them apart. I almost believed this myself. Thank goodness at least one reporter thought to question the source of this information and do their best to correct the record.

Yascha Mounk of The Atlantic responded to the widely-shared study with an article titled “What the Dubious Corona Poll Reveals” that debunks the conclusions 5WPR makes. It’s worth a read. 5WPR presents information out of context, and draws conclusions based on a biased premise so that we all believe the absolute worst about our fellow humans.. It’s almost like - gasp - they were trying to achieve the most sensational result, to get more clicks!

Scummy PR agency aside, Corona (owned by Constellation Brands) is in the middle of a brand crisis that they didn’t create. Every brand faces a crisis at some point in its life, and Corona’s is in full swing. So far they’ve done a pretty good job weathering the storm. The CEO has responded to the ongoing health crisis with empathy, and refuted the 5WPR report with hard numbers: a 5% increase in sales of Corona.

So, what have we learned? Well, for the millionth time since 2016 we’ve been taught not to trust polls.

Polling as a practice deserves skepticism. There are so many variables that useful results are extremely hard to come by. Who were the respondents in 5WPR’s poll? How familiar were they with the ongoing global outbreak? Were the questions phrased in a way that showed bias for one response? Misuse of statistics is so widespread a concept that it has its own wikipedia page.

Here at Sol Marketing, we do a lot of market research, and we hold ourselves to very high standards. Forcing a conclusion by manipulating data is unethical and can have potentially massive reverberations. In this case, Constellation Brands was able to stave off a major disaster thanks to good reporting and an effective CEO response.

Here’s hoping they name the next virus 5WPR.