Can we brand a pandemic? Should we? The case for corona virus, COVID‐19 or SARS‐CoV‐2

• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Author: Emmanuel Mogaji,Nguyen Phong Nguyen
• Date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2546

COMMENTARY

Can we brand a pandemic? Should we? The case for corona

virus, COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2

Emmanuel Mogaji

1

| Nguyen Phong Nguyen

2

1

Department of Marketing, Events and

Tourism, University of Greenwich, London, UK

2

School of Accounting, University of

Economics, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Correspondence

Emmanuel Mogaji, Department of Marketing,

Events and Tourism, University of Greenwich,

London, UK.

Email: e.o.mogaji@greenwich.ac.uk

While this article has not taken the health implications of COVID-19 for granted and

recognizes that the pandemic has affected everyone around the world, it poses the

question of whether corona virus has become recognizable as a brand. Many govern-

ments, businesses, and individuals have worked on the co-creation of this brand. So,

should a pandemic be branded? Who benefits from this branding? Better yet, should

it be left alone? Theoretical explorations of these questions are relevant to practi-

tioners, policymakers, and academics. These explorations could help build an under-

standing of how governments are dealing with their campaign strategies, businesses

are using COVID-19 responses to build their reputations and consumers are engaging

with the acknowledgement of the pandemic. This article creates a foundation for a

broader look at the branding of a pandemic that can be used as a framework for

future empirical studies. This study contributes to the understanding of the social rel-

evance for the branding of a tangible product, service (intangible offerings) or even a

disease.

1|INTRODUCTION

Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious illness caused

by severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Its spread has been described as a pandemic by the World Health

Organization (WHO), and its impact is being felt around the world and

across different sectors. While recognizing the efforts of the health

professionals who are making sure people recover and that vaccines

are made available, this pandemic presents a theoretical insight worth

exploring. The American Marketing Association describes a brand as

“a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one

seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers”; mean-

while, the Dictionary of Brand defines it as “a person's perception of a

product, service, experience, or organization.”In addition, Marty

Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap, describes a brand as “a person's

gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”Consequently,

branding may mean different things to different people and that poses

the question, can a pandemic like COVID-19 be branded?

When this article was started, an extensive search for existing lit-

erature revealed that the subject of pandemic branding had not

received much academic interest. In 2010, Health Science Inquiry pub-

lished a two-page report by Huntington and Jones about the swine-

origin influenza A (H1N1) virus that appeared in 2009. Their study has

been the only published look at the brand power and marketing pros-

pects of diseases. While HIN1 was branded by the WHO as a threat

requiring special attention, this branding failed because the impact to

the public health was not accurately predicted. This failed brand

promise led to three separate international inquiries into the WHO's

declaration of H1N1 as a pandemic. It was also argued that the public

would not easily trust the next strain of influenza that was branded as

a“pandemic”(Watson, 2010).

Although it has a negative perception within the population as a

bringer of disruption and death, COVID-19 is a well-recognized brand

around the world. Unlike H1N1, which could be considered a failed

brand (Huntington & Jones, 2010), the impact of COVID-19 cannot

be ignored. Ten years after H1N1, there is a greater awareness of

public health, and the public has more access to informational tech-

nology and medias, which has led to an evolution in human behaviors.

Virus-related searches are now the most popular queries on Google.

People are more interested in COVID-19 than other news, politics or

shopping. Evidently, this is not a brand that will fade from the collec-

tive memory anytime soon.

By exploring various attempts to brand pandemics, with a specific

focus on COVID-19, this article aims to make a key contribution to

Received: 5 June 2020 Revised: 14 September 2020 Accepted: 27 October 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2546

J Public Affairs. 2021;21:e2546. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1of6

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2546