Sometimes marketing simply isn’t the right thing to do

With the world on quite sensible lockdown due to coronavirus, it’s hard not to be fearful of future unknowns. Rather sadly, albeit predictably, the fact that we’re facing a life-threatening global pandemic hasn’t stopped a wave of tone-deaf efforts to jump on the Covid-19 bandwagon, with some brands seeing fit to capitalise on the incapacity, uncertainty and fear sweeping every household.

In 1321, 26 years before the Black Death landed, author Dante Alighieri died. Luckily, modern medicine has become less about witchcraft and more about science in the intervening 699 years, making it even more dumbfounding that people needed a national TV campaign to explain how to properly wash their hands.

Dante wasn’t a jolly man (The Divine Comedy is anything but) but even he might want to re-imagine the nine circles of hell he described in Inferno in light of some of the codswallop being farted out into the ether, either by brands seeking to polish their godly credentials or by the general public, some of whom seem to have decided a collective lobotomy was an essential medical procedure to demand of an already overstretched NHS.

In Dante’s world, the first Circle of Hell is Limbo, where the virtuous pagans reside. It’s kind of ‘Hell Lite’ so a fitting home for panic shoppers. As the excellent pop-up website ‘How Much Toilet Paper’ so eloquently demonstrates, the average hoarder is going to be offloading triple ply until the end of time, and that’s without the consideration of why bog roll has become the most in-demand grocery item.

The second Circle of Hell is where the lusty make their bed, or in this case, their dinner. For in the great Covid-19 pasta shortage of 2020, it was the sex toy retailer Ann Summers that proved to be an unlikely saviour, selling its famous penis-shaped pasta not for an ‘inflated’ price, as one might expect, but as part of a threesome for two offer. One can only imagine the uncomfortable silences around dinner tables across Britain as families tucked into their meaty Bolognese…

‘Gluttony’ is the third Circle. Covid-19’s virulent capability to spread to all corners of the globe has only been exceeded by the speed with which celebrities and social ‘influencers’ have jumped on the bandwagon. From tearful videos shot in glistening neo-Georgian mansions to faux-sentimental sales pitches flogging whatever nic nac is put in front of them, each hash-tagged to the hilt with #StaySafe messages. A whole series of Insta stories are being milked, fluffing their #Survivor stories and thanking their Patreon fans for keeping them #Blessed.

In the fourth Circle of Hell are the Greedy. Very few people would consider Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley as modest in either self-esteem nor appetite, and yet his brass balls must be his most flagrant asset. Sports Direct hiked prices on exercise equipment by up to 50% then tried to persuade the government that its stores should remain open. This was roundly dismissed by the government and Ashley was left to skulk back to his lair to angrily dive, one would hope, into a pool of gold bullion, McDuck-style.

In Dante’s fifth Circle, the angry wage eternal battle on the banks of the River Styx. Less far afield, nothing has made me angrier in recent history than seeing the crowds of revellers outside local pubs on lockdown Friday, enjoying one last hurrah with carefree joie de vivre, casually discarding any concerns about sharing a highly contagious virus with every unfortunate who crosses their paths in the next few months. Tommy Lee Jones summed it up best in Men in Black: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals.”

Heresy, when something is strongly at variance with established beliefs, is the sixth Circle and is in strong supply right now. At the top of the tree was billionaire PR fountain Sir Dicky Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic airline insisted all employees take an eight-week unpaid leave of absence. Missing the sentiment felt by literally everyone else, Branson’s Virgin Group relented last week with a $250m support package, showing that errors of judgement aren’t irreversible, however any genuinely ‘good’ business wouldn’t have to be prompted by public outcry.

‘Violence’ is the seventh Circle. Fortunately, it seems that mass rioting and looting have been all but avoided as the severity of coronavirus has been established, but there remains a special place in hell for the bottom-feeders who have been mugging NHS staff for their IDs to claim free food for themselves. This crowd will, in a fair world, die a death of a thousand shaving cuts while bathing in lemon juice.

In the next Circle, ‘Fraud’, we can place any and all companies that decided, in their misguided wisdom, to represent social distancing by putting gaps in their logos. McDonald’s even went so far as to *gasp* segregate their famed Golden Arches.

Well, one Golden Arch. In Brazil. For the photo call.

“McDonalds separates its arches in an act of coronavirus solidarity”

As 78% of their workers have no paid sick leave https://t.co/3DKfd7rEjt

— Senator Megan Hunt (@NebraskaMegan) March 24, 2020

It takes thermonuclear levels of chutzpah to perceive of one’s brand so highly that you portray it as Jesus incarnate, saving the world one typographical millimetre of k e r n i n g at a time, but they went ahead all the same, while in many cases shafting their workforces.

Dante’s final and most hardcore Circle of Hell is Treachery. Many brands deserve to be shoved in here, prioritising self-enriching to the detriment of the very people that keep them afloat in the first place – their employees. McDonald’s was a likely candidate but as they already feature, I’ll go for Wetherspoons – the ‘family friendly’ pubco. Led by mercurial chairman and poor man’s Hagrid Tim Martin, JD Wetherspoon Plc deigned to suspend all pay cheques until they get their government grant at the end of April, leaving 37,000 low wage staff wondering how to pay for rent and food.

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis, the marketing landscape is going to look very different and the brand autopsy will leave some hollow carcasses. Some, as mentioned above, will be reaping what they sow but sadly the majority of businesses that go under will simply be victims of hugely unfortunate circumstances.

While the NHS and its staff deservedly receive the headline applause, a pandemic on this scale needs us all to dig in with real (not fabricated) purpose so we can rise to greater collaborative goodness on the other side.

Brands that try and score points at a time like this will hopefully pay the penalty in customer attrition when the dust settles. The majority of brands will, appropriately, keep their hands clean and try to maintain business as usual, albeit in a highly disrupted fashion.

And those heroic brands that are acting altruistically and without fanfare? You’ll never hear about their good deeds because they’re likely to be those same unassuming brands you have warm, loyal feelings about even when the world doesn’t feel like it’s going to hell.

They don’t do the right thing because they have to – just because they want to.

Harry Lang steps down as Pinnacle marketing director

Harry Lang is the founder of Brand Architects, a brand and marketing consultancy. Currently bunkered down like everyone else, he’s available to take on copy, brand architecture, channel marketing and strategy briefs. You can contact him at Harry@BrandArchitects.co.uk