Corona is a beer with a brand problem! The usage situation and heritage are still distinctive, but pushed aside by the association with the virus, see figure 8.
Associations after the disease.
Figure 8
The interesting thing is that the brand personality and primary brand elements have now become distinctive and have grown in strength respectively. So it seems that the essence of the brand has remained intact, but is being overshadowed by the ‘borrowed’ brand problem. We see something here that we have not seen before in the branding literature. That a secondary source (COVID-19) without any fit, is being attached to a brand and is causing a brand problem.
Groupo Modelo, the owner of the Corona brand, felt compelled to respond due to the ongoing media attention. A completely understandable reaction. But were they right? We assumed that it was unwise to respond, because then you are creating a link between two entities that have no logical connection. As long as there is no link, there is no association transfer . Corona did, see the message below, which we translated into Dutch. And we investigated what effect that had.
“It is particularly unfortunate that recent taiwan telegram data misinformation about the impact of the coronavirus on our business is circulating in both traditional and social media without people investigating or checking further… We have not seen any impact [from the coronavirus, ed.] on our people or our factories and our business continues to perform very well.”
Bill Newlands – CEO Corona Extra
We presented this message to 250 respondents before presenting them with the logo, and compared this to 250 other respondents who were only shown the logo before we asked for associations.
It turned out that communication from Corona about COVID-19 had no significant effect on the most important brand KPIs, so we can say that the communication had no negative consequences. But if we look at the pattern, the brand even seems to recover a little through the communication, see figure 9.
The influence of communication in a graph.
