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Coronavirus, The Virus That Went Viral - When Going Viral SUCKS!

Coronavirus spreads from Asia to North America

The concept of a virus going viral seems a bit odd on the surface. Almost like a paradoxical statement that I never imagined I would have to cover. However, the extent to which the coronavirus (COVID-19) has gone viral for all the wrong reasons and taken the world by storm believe it or not has some lessons to be learned by marketers and business people everywhere.

Since mid-December, different portions of the world have been completely gripped by the negative implications of the coronavirus and this WHEN GOING VIRAL SUCKS moment. What first started in China slowly migrated to western nations across Europe and North America. As the virus moved west it continued impacting billions of people around the world and eventually turned into a health pandemic. This health pandemic has now caused a global financial crisis with experts struggling to find where and when the light at the end of the tunnel is.

The coronavirus is certainly a WHEN GOING VIRAL SUCKS moment for obvious reasons. For one, billions of people are feeling isolated and bored due to social distancing. Second, millions of people are going to lose their jobs as their employer closes its doors or slashes staffing headcount to try and frantically keep their books balanced given the dramatic slowdown their companies are seeing. Everyone is upset this health crisis took place and no one is happy about the repercussions we are currently facing as a result of it.

When thinking about some of the reasons this health pandemic has gone viral it’s easy to simply just think the reason relates to the hundreds of countries and billions of people the virus has impacted. That's true, but what about the reasons and moments that are underpinning this virality? For marketers out there trying to create viral campaigns or entrepreneurs trying to start viral businesses, I think there are deeper lessons to be learned which can be taken away from this WHEN GOING VIRAL SUCKS story.

Below is an analysis of the four reasons why the coronavirus has gotten as wild as it has, and some lessons learned that people can take away from them.

Meme comparing Corona Beer to Coronavirus

1. Catchy Relatable Name --> Whenever people around the world hear the word "Corona" they immediately think about the Mexican beer company Corona Beer. The COVID-19 virus has been consistently referred to as the Coronavirus. As a result, it was an easily relatable name for people to associate this scary virus with. The relatability of the name "Corona Beer" with "Coronavirus" then resulted in different comparisons being made between the two. For instance, think about the thousands of humorous memes that have been created and shared virally online with people promoting the spread of the virus. The relatability of this term “coronavirus” to one of the most popular consumer brands in the world can't be ignored. In the world of branding, coming up with a catchy name people can relate to is crucial, and so although the name of this virus has existed for decades in the medical field, the correlation to one of the most popular beers in the world I believe was a contributing factor to why this story initially went viral.

2. NBA Suspension Bombshell --> On March 12th, 2020 the NBA decided to suspend its season indefinitely after one of it's most talented players 7 foot center Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz had contracted the coronavirus. When this decision was made by commissioner Adam Silver, it literally felt like the entire United States froze in its tracks. Arguably the most popular sport during the months of November through June was all of a sudden suspended for a reason that no one ever could have seen coming. Immediately after this decision was made, it felt like everyone from the government, to the general public, immediately started taking this pandemic more seriously. All of a sudden something that people loved was taken away from them during one of the most competitive, evenly balanced and popular seasons of recent memory. For businesses the viral takeaway to be mindful of is the power of bombshell type moments. Bombshell updates can play a major role in anything going viral whether that's a new product release or a new product issue. When you inform your customers of major bombshell updates you need to be mindful of what the positive and negative ramifications of that news can have on your business.

3. Local / National News Media Coverage --> The Coronavirus has infiltrated the national and local news media at astonishing proportions. You can't turn on local or national news right now without the broadcast being at least 75% towards Coronavirus. This kind of coverage is fueling the viral spread of this story because people literally can't avoid it. Every television channel you turn on is covering the latest updates of the coronavirus and every newspaper page you flip is highlighting the same updates. This health crisis has also caused a financial crisis globally which is now forcing other niche business news stations such as CNBC to cover the story non-stop. The deep intertwining of this health crisis causing a sharp decline in the stock market now forces these specialized news stations to cover the coronavirus as well. Although people who know me well are familiar with my extreme LOVE/HATE relationship that I have with the mainstream news media covering silly and unimportant news stories, this kind of coverage of coronavirus has felt warranted and less biased than typical news broadcasts. When trying to launch a viral campaign it’s important to remember how important earned media and press coverage can contribute to the initial and sustained viral effect your campaign can have.

Concerned husband and wife about coronavirus

4. Emotional Alarms Triggered --> People care deeply about their health and when a virus is looming that could jeopardize your health the alarms in people's minds go off. People begin getting concerned that the virus can impact them, their loved ones and potentially result in casualties for people in their close network. If you've followed the "When Going Viral" blog you'll know how strongly we feel about how emotions can contribute to stories going viral. In this case the emotions people are feeling are emotions such as concern, sadness, unknown, surreal, as well as many others. These kinds of emotions are creating a fear factor inside of people that is causing a stimulating effect and resulting in people wanting to consume the coronavirus topic as much as possible. It feels like people won't stop talking about the coronavirus until any one of these emotions mentioned begin to feel at ease. For people in the marketing or business world, If you're trying to go viral you want to make sure either your product or campaign directly stimulates a strong emotion in people. If you're able to generate major emotional responses from people based on whatever it is you are doing you could have some of the pre-conditions needed to create a viral moment.

During these troubling, scary, and unprecedented times, our hope is that people will be able to dig deep, stick together and come out stronger than ever once this virus passes. Although this is a WHEN GOING VIRAL SUCKS story there are some other positive viral stories that are emerging in relation to coronavirus about people showing extreme acts of kindness and we are very excited to see this. We hope some of the lessons learned analyzed above can assist you in creating upcoming viral campaigns while also staying safe and healthy during the coronavirus pandemic.

By summer 2015, it became evident that our company was in a mad-dash to stay atop the Hoverboard industry as the market leader. Everyone and their grandmother were looking for the “segway” hoverboard as cheap as possible. Demand for the product was sky-rocketing and in order to stay ahead of the pack we needed an abundance of inventory to be continuously selling.

We figured, okay well other companies are now competing with us, so all we have to do is sell more product than them. This was our second horrible decision since the company went viral, as we soon found out and learned the hard way.

Back in late 2014, we had the opportunity to personally meet the Chinese factory owners we were purchasing our units from. This factory had developed a Chinese patent around their device and so, as a reseller here in the United States, our company felt confident that we were purchasing and re-selling the highest quality Hoverboard on the market.

When we first ordered our 20–30 Hoverboard units from this factory, we experienced zero delays in shipment. In fact, ordering Hoverboard units at this time was no big deal, primarily because the world (on a mass scale) wasn’t aware that the product even existed.

This seamless ordering process changed dramatically however, by the time May 2015 came. By the end of May, millions of people had become aware of our Hoverboard product because of the massive reach celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Justin Bieber had on social media when they would promote our company. The general public was becoming mesmerized by the Hoverboard, day by day. People even started seeing an opportunity to make a quick buck by re-selling the product themselves.

Suddenly, there was a massive number of people in the States demanding Hoverboards. But these Hoverboards weren’t just being purchased for personal use but rather for re-selling. New companies each day were popping up on the internet such as Buzzwheel, Monorover, Uniwheel, Skywalker, along with so many others by the time June 2015 came around.

These companies were being started by one or two individuals who would order 10–30 units from China in order to flip them for a profit here in the States. This saturation of the Hoverboard marketplace suddenly resulted in a significant jump in demand, which then put major pressure on Chinese factories to produce and ship Hoverboards by the millions.

The Chinese factories weren’t the only ones feeling the pressure. We were feeling intense pressure of our own. We were getting hundreds of orders per week, but we didn’t have adequate inventory to fulfill the demand we were receiving.

When delays in shipment started taking place, we would contact our factory usually between 12 – 4 AM EST due to the 12 hour time zone difference, trying to find out the status of our shipment. We would get in contact with our factory having to deal with incredibly difficult language barriers and we would continuously hear some of the following responses from our factory:

1. "Sorry for the delay, we will get your shipment out tomorrow."

2. "We're finishing up production very soon, don't worry."

3. "There was a delay with the shipping company, but we're fixing the issue."

These responses from our factory were excuses. Oftentimes, they were simply lies. Our factory was clearly not in a position to ship us our Hoverboards, but they were denying this fact by coming up with various excuses for the delay in our shipment. They were so inundated with other companies ordering their Hoverboards that they couldn’t keep up with the rise in demand that had taken place.

Once our shipment would finally arrive, there would frequently be issues. Oftentimes, we would only receive partial shipments of our order to the office. For example, we would have a 500 piece order scheduled for delivery and only receive 200 pieces. Then it would take another two full weeks before we received the remaining 300 Hoverboards.

Other times, we would receive our shipment of Hoverboards, but the keys wouldn’t be in the boxes accompanying the Hoverboards. Our keys were shipped separately and our small team would have to manually match up the keys for each Hoverboard individually by serial numbers on each of the Hoverboard boxes. It was a big pain that could only be solved through sheer force of will (and manual labor).

Our company took a big hit due to these problems that we simply didn’t have the ability to fix. This lack of consistency really damaged our reputation, as our company was on a high following the viral success of not only Hoverboards, but our company as the place to go for them.

The four week delay in shipment started creating miserable experiences for our young startup. It resulted in our customers calling our office, yelling and screaming at us trying to find out why their Hoverboard, which they had just spent $1,500 on, still hadn’t arrived.

Most importantly, the problems we had with our Chinese manufacturer made the simple task of fulfilling orders very difficult. This four week delay gave consumers the impression that our company was a scam, which a young business simply can’t afford. When customers didn’t receive their Hoverboards anywhere close to when we told them they would, they logically started concluding that our company had stolen money from them. It was at this point where things started to take a massive turn for the worse. These customers started calling their credit card companies complaining, and the results of these complaints resulted in one thing, disputes!

Stay tuned for Part 4, on Why Going Viral Sucks…

Big thanks to the team over a Silicon.NYC for allowing me to begin contributing to their publication. This was my first article published on their site and you can definitely check out this story and plenty more other exciting technology oriented stories over at Silicon.NYC.