Coronavirus outbreak having 'viral' effect on some major brands

As fear about the coronavirus spreads along with the contagion itself, the top news story in the world has pulled in some major brands — for better and worse.

There's been a run on hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and bleach, which has helped propel the shares of Clorox, up $3.33 on Thursday to $175.85 on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost almost 970 points.

A shortage of hand sanitizers such as Purell − some plastic bottles of which were being sold on Amazon.com by some third-party sellers for hundreds of dollars − has led some people to homebrew their own antibacterial formulas.

"The run on ingredients such as aloe vera and rubbing alcohol comes as public health experts recommend that Americans use do-it-yourself methods to make up for nationwide shortages of antibacterial products," cbsnews.com reported.

There also has been a run on rubbing alcohol.

"We order it (rubbing alcohol) and it sells out — everyone is just attacking it," a worker at a Manhattan Duane Reade drugstore told the website. "We have nothing antibacterial left."

Speaking of alcohol, a popular US vodka maker, Tito's, in Austin, Texas, had to respond on Wednesday to stories that some people were using its 80-proof spirit as a hand sanitizer ingredient.

"Per the CDC, hand sanitizer needs to contain at least 60% alcohol. Tito's Handmade Vodka is 40% alcohol, and therefore does not meet the current recommendation of the CDC," the company tweeted.

The virus earlier had drawn in another prominent name in the imbibing world.

Corona, the Mexican beer that tells drinkers to "find your beach", unfortunately shares a name with the dreaded virus. Corona is Spanish for crown.

A phone survey of 737 beer drinkers by a New York City public relations firm "found" that 38 percent of Americans wouldn't drink la cerveza mas fina (the most fine beer) because of COVID-19 (the cumbersome name that the World Health Organization came up with for the disease).

A handful of major media outlets picked up the survey and ran with it.

But the Poynter Institute's Politifact website and The Atlantic determined the poll was misleading and not representative, and specific poll questions were not released.

Yascha Mounk, in a Feb 28 piece for The Atlantic titled, "What the Dubious Corona Poll Reveals", eventually did get access to the poll's questions, which he said made clear "that the survey was a fishing expedition designed to elicit viral stats".

Of those who did regularly drink Corona, only 4 percent said they would stop drinking the pale lager, Mounk wrote.

Constellation Brands, a Fortune 500 company based in Victor, New York, and the owner of the Corona label, was compelled to issue a statement on Feb 28.

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this terrible virus and we hope efforts to more fully contain it gain traction soon," said Bill Newlands, president and CEO at the company. "It's extremely unfortunate that recent misinformation about the impact of this virus on our business has been circulating in traditional and social media without further investigation or validation.

"These claims simply do not reflect our business performance and consumer sentiment, which includes feedback from our distributor and retailer partners across the country," the statement said.

Further invalidating the poll was a report that sales of Corona Extra remained strong, up 5 percent in the US in the four-week period ended Feb 16.

Advertising legend Harvey Gabor has had some experience with brand phenomena.

He created the classic TV commercial theme "I'd like to Buy the World a Coke". Gabor also remembers the colossal flop in 1985 that was New Coke, a result of Coca-Cola temporarily changing the formula of the world's most famous soft drink. Three months later, after much consumer outrage, the original formula was brought back and renamed Coke Classic, and sales bounced back.

As for how a brand can cope with massive negative publicity: "You sit still and wait for the storm to pass," he told northjersey.com.

"I would do nothing," he said. "It's early in the game. Richard Nixon had a great line. The memory of the average American is one week. Just sit tight."

The author is a journalist and columnist at China Daily USA in New York.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com