Greetings from South America
It’s March 1, 2020
People’s fear mechanisms are being triggered every day in ways we haven’t seen in a decade. It’s all about the virus with a name. Everytime you give something a name it becomes easier to be afraid of it. No one cares if they have a virus but if you have a Coronavirus (or had one years ago) well… that’s different.
The name doesn’t mean that the virus is a big deal or a little deal. It seems unlikely that anyone actually knows how relevant the virus is statistically. I certainly don’t know. But I suspect it’s not as bad as far as human life impact as MRSA for example. MRSA is a deadly challenge with a name you can’t really pronounce that kills 1/7 of those who acquire it and more people have MRSA in the U.S. than have Coronavirus worldwide. Almost no one has heard of MRSA and it has a proven track record that is deadly.
Today I skip the medical side of the coronavirus and instead look at the impact of the virus as far as fear, reactance and how it is experienced from the point of view of how it is influencing behavior. And then I want to show you how to take the marketing aspects of coronavirus and bring it to a small scale of how you talk to people in business and every day life to get past their fears.
Start off with some simple but impressive impacts because of influence on another market that has nothing to do with viruses. How can a virus impact sales of products that aren’t impacted by viruses!?
Check this out…
Beer.
Gary Moon sent over a new survey and marketing info about the impact of the coronavirus….
1/3 of Americans would not buy Corona beer “under any circumstances” because of the totally unrelated — coronavirus hype.
The survey, conducted by 5WPR, also found that 14% of people who usually drink the popular beer would not order Corona in public and 16% of beer-drinking Americans were confused about whether Corona has any relation to the new viral infection. Yeah… the only connection is the letters in the names and of course we’ve talked at great depth about how people link up common letters between names and their impact on being influenced.
Meanwhile the public’s perception of Corona beer has gone from 75% net positive to 51% net positive in the last month. That’s almost impossible. And in marketing research the number of people who intend to buy Corona beer has been reduced by almost 40%.
And that of course is the result of hypnotic marketing. The meme has become enough to bypass critical thinking (definition of hypnosis) of a few BILLION people on the planet.
Finally google searches for “corona beer virus” have skyrocketed.
Arriving at the airport here in Chile, four days ago….
I’m shaking my head in disbelief as I suffer in the Passport Control line for foreigners.
“And what are you doing?”
She was probably a pretty girl and she was aiming her laser at my forehead.
“I am taking your temperature.”
I sigh….
“Why?”
“If you have coronavirus you will have to step out of line.”
I nearly laughed, only to remember, I’m just visiting… but I can’t contain myself either…
“And you can diagnose that with a thermometer? I’m sorry but come on, do you know what the chances are that ANYONE in this airport has that specific virus who can easily transmit it to you are?”
“My job sir.”
“Sorry, I’m just tired.
(People suck at math. And meanwhile she got her reading.)
“You are fine.” (Maybe she was smiling, I don’t know.)
“Thanks I was pretty scared.” (I winked. I can be sarcastic after 17 hours of flying.)
My best instant calculation was about 1 : 5,000 by the way. About 1/500,000 it was me…
I figured my odds of death from ANY virus approached 1 in 10,000 this year.
But my chances of dying from like…dying…. in 2020…from normal stuff are about 1 in 125.
That’s math and that’s why worrying about a “virus with a name” is absolutely insane.
By the way if you are 25 years old, your chances of dying from all causes combined this year is about 1 in 2500.
What happened when Kevin got to Passport Control in Chile? What other virus is spreading like mad that really will impact you? Continue….
