Is any publicity good publicity? Even the negative?
Keeping your brand in the mind of consumers is a crucial part of marketing after all if no one knows who you are why are they going to pay attention to your ads.
Some companies thrive on the ‘all publicity is good publicity’ mantra. Ryanair at one point was barely out of the news for bad customer service and numerous other issues.
But they were in front of people. And they were growing. Partly out of dominance but they also were able to get their prices in front of people for their popular routes.
The same can be said for Marmite and Peloton in recent times.
With Marmite, wanting to charge more because of Brexit made the brand unpopular especially after Tesco chose to drop the product rather than accept the price increase. This divided the nation, some loved the stance of Tesco and made Marmite unpopular.
The much-maligned Peloton ad released in time for Christmas showed Peloton Wife to be overly submissive to her dominant husband, a direct contrast to the huge #MeToo movement and a view garnered among many that it was just another advertising campaign that was out of touch with the reality of life.
The thing that these ads had in common was that they didn’t undermine or contradict the positioning of the brands. But because of being in the public mind through the copious amount of news articles and social posts condemning aspects of each, the sales went up.
Look no further than the searches of ‘Corona beer virus’ having increased massively between the January and February.
So whether the unfortunate (or is it fortunate) association of Corona with Coronavirus will have huge negative repercussions for the brand is unlikely. But becoming a fixture in the minds of the British public will surely only boost sales.
