How Corona’s Marketers Dealt with the Shared Namesake ‘Corona’

Marketers know that brand equity is an incredibly valuable asset, but when faced with a pandemic that shares your namesake, how much does brand equity protect your brand from a souring consumer sentiment? It turns out for Corona beer, quite a bit.

Our article analysis does pick up a slight negative media sentiment throughout the article. Unsurprising as our entity word cloud is dominated by a large negatively coloured ‘Corona.’ The word itself has a strong negative sentiment, but the brand Corona has an almost teflon protection to that sentiment. Its ad campaign slogans are positively coloured in the entity word cloud, hinting that consumers weren’t deterred by the shared name. 

However, that’s not to say there wasn’t a risk of negative sentiment affecting the brand. Something Corona’s marketing executives were keenly aware of and is further reflected in the strong presence of risk-based language throughout the piece. That risk was assessed by Corona’s marketers by bolstering their customer sentiment monitoring but disproven overtime as purchase intent remained the same.

While Corona’s brand emerged unscathed, the article also reveals the growing importance of customer and media sentiment monitoring. It’s helping to drive marketing choices. For example: at the beginning of lockdown Corona mostly remained silent on the marketing front to avoid potential backlash, and once it was proven the brand could withstand the naming coincidence it tailored its campaigns to the current situation.

Read the full article analysis here.

Photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash