On Friday, B&T reported that Corona beer had taken a $260 million hit to the bottom line after drinkers (were somehow) linking drinking the beer to catching the coronavirus.
Yesterday, CEO of Constellation – Corona’s US distributor – hit back at the claims and media rumours that “38 per cent of people would not drink the beer under any circumstance” due to fears of catching COVID-19.
Bill Newlands labelled the claims as “extremely unfortunate” and “misinformation”.
And it appears Newlands may well be right. According to business intelligence firm IRI Worldwide, sales of Corona are actually up 3.1 per cent YOY.
According to reports on US news site The Daily Caller, sales of the Mexican beer had increased in recent weeks and that’s despite it being “a beer for the hot weather. It’s a beer for the beach. It’s not a cold weather beer.” Remembering its freezing cold in the US and Europe right now.
Other Corona naysayers have used its parent company – Anheuser-Busch InBev’s – tanking share price to draw some sort of link between the beer and the virus. However, as has rightly been pointed out, global sharemarkets are tanking everywhere at the moment.
Meanwhile, market research firm YouGov has noted a significant spike in PR and positive awareness for the Corona (beer) brand.
“We’ve seen no significant negative shift in awareness, consideration or reputation for Corona since 1st January and have actually seen an increase in word of mouth, attention, and ad awareness with a very large increase positive buzz. That is, people hearing positive things about the brand,” YouGov noted.
Yesterday, Newlands said: “These claims simply do not reflect our business performance and consumer sentiment, which includes feedback from our distributor and retailer partners across the country.” He added that “our company does not have much exposure to international markets such as China that have been most impacted by this situation.”
