Corona Beer Through the Pandemic: Tweets Tell the Tale

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc across the world, affecting lives, business, and essentially disrupting our way of life. But woe to any company that has the misfortunate of having a brand associated to the coronavirus.

Such was the case for Modelo’s Corona beer, a product I happen to like. However, the brand was a sizable target that served as a lightning rod that for the collective angst consumers looking for a target to vent their frustration. Or relieve their stress for those with a wry sense of humor.

A search today for “Corona beer coronavirus” yielded 270,000,000 hits in .55 seconds on Google. That’s one for every person living in Indonesia, the fourth largest country by population in the world.

For example, about three months ago we read this amusing wording on a marquee fronting a popular German restaurant in our area: “Open to carryout and delivery. Corona sucks, drink German bier.”

Here’s a string of Tweets on Twitter that traces the various viewpoints since March. If there's no such thing as bad publicity, Corona may be a case study example. 

More recently, favorable humor appeared amidst the occasional jabs, such as this one...

This Tweet looked to turn the tables in a bizarre conspiracy plot twist.

For a number of weeks I was feeling sorry for the unfortunate brand, but there was one last surprise in store for me:  It turned out that Corona got the last laugh and was doing just fine — social-media-driven backlash had no effect. In fact, the brand's sales were flourishing.

Cheers to some sense and sensibility during a period of pandemic.