As the coronavirus spreads from country to country things are starting to get a little weird out there. Stocks are crashing. Entire cities are on lockdown. Whole countries are shuttering schools for weeks. Hell, they might even move the Olympics. Oh, and people have stopped buying Corona beer. Seriously, there are Americans out there who are afraid of buying a beer from Mexico because of a virus from China. Corona the beer has nothing to do with corona the virus. It’s hard to believe that has to be said.
Overall, Constellation (Corona’s parent company) saw an eight percent stock slump just on Thursday, which equates to tens, if not hundreds of millions lost for the company. Polls conducted by 5W Public Relations and YouGov offer a glimpse into American’s perceptions of the beer since the outbreak and it’s, well, dumb too. According to the poll by 5W Public Relations, 38 percent of beer-drinking Americans surveyed “wouldn’t buy Corona ‘under any circumstances’ because of the outbreak,” as reported by CNN Business. The YouGov poll showed that consumer “confidence” around Corona beer was the lowest it’s been in two years due to the virus, which was also reported over at CNN Business.
The whole issue was exasperated on February 25th when Corona dropped a five-second commercial for their new hard seltzer with a beach and the slogan “Come Ashore Soon.” People did what they’re wont to do on Twitter and called for the ad to be banned and the brand to be punished. We’re not posting any of their tweets here because most of them are, well, dumb. And just for clarification, Corona has been using its beach-centric campaign ads for over 30 years — as the company’s leadership pointed out. They’ve had ads that start with volcanoes erupting and creating islands to drink Corona on. This isn’t out of the norm and has zero to do with a virus.
https://twitter.com/coronaextrausa/status/1232092472710320128?s=20
Moreover, here are the brass tacks. The “coronavirus” is thusly named because it’s part of the “coronaviridae” family for RNA viruses. That strain was named so because the virus cells look like solar coronas under a microscope. The coronavirus has absolutely nothing to do with Corona beer besides two words being the same. Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from creating a slew of racists memes of (not-shockingly) POC drinking Corona beer with distasteful slogans attached that refer to them spreading the coronavirus — again, we are not linking to that here because, and say it with us, they’re dumb. This also plays into the second part of the 5W Public Relations survey wherein 14 percent of American beer drinkers they spoke to “said they wouldn’t order a Corona in public” due to the outbreak. Which, huh?
Okay, one more time, Corona the beer has nothing to do with corona the virus. Come on, people.
(Via CNN Business)
