Communication During a Pandemic: An Analysis Through the Lenses of Brand Management Strategy

Introduction

In order to become consumers’ choice, a brand must hold important and consolidated attributes. It is essential for a successful brand to have a consolidated positioning in the minds of the customers that reflects its values, its vision for the future, and its essence. Brand positioning refers to the unique space that a brand occupies in customers' minds (Aaker, 1997; Pogorzelski, 2018; Rajagopal, 2019; Ries & Trout, 1981; Wang, 2015). It enables customers to see a specific brand in a unique way, to associate the brand with emotions, characteristics, and feelings, and consequently to distinguish the brand from its competitors. Another essential brand attribute is the recognition by its target markets. Brand awareness identifies how brands are perceived by their customers (Aaker, 1997; Arli, 2017; Cheung, Pires, & Rosenberger, 2019; Romaniuk, Wight, & Faulkner, 2017) and portrays how each company is associated with its products. But both brand attributes are volatile, particularly during crises. In fact, crises can directly impact a brand, changing the course of its entire marketing planning.

Although the literature on crisis communication is quite vast, it appears that most of it is related to internal crises, that is to say, those that are for instance generated by rumours and events and that are specific to a company or brand (Bundy, Pfarrer, Short, & Coombs, 2016; Coombs, 2006). Thus, business communication related to global crises (e.g., natural disasters) is largely unexplored. There are relevant contributions regarding communication crises in social network sites and also on the multiplication of messages during Hurricane Katrina (Garnett & Kouzmin, 2009; Macias, Hilyard, & Freimuth, 2009; Veil & Husted, 2012) and the epidemic H1N1 (Freberg, Palenchar, & Veil, 2013; Lin, Jung, McCloud, & Viswanath, 2014; Lin, Savoia, Agboola, & Viswanath, 2014). Still, little is known about brand positioning strategies during natural disasters and pandemics.

Since the end of 2019, news about COVID 19 or Coronavirus have gained worldwide attention and spread throughout the world. The first case was reported in Wuhan city, in the Chinese province of Hubei, and in March 11th the World Health Organization declared the outbreak as a pandemic. As a consequence, several countries were quarantined for a period of time, impacting global supply chains (Ajami, 2020; Raffaetà, 2020) and the world economy. Brazil had its first case recorded on February 26th (Aquino & Monteiro, 2020) and its first death on March 17th (BBC News, 2020). From its start, the financial markets have been seriously impacted by the pandemic, making it not only an important health and social issue, but also an economic and financial issue that worried companies all over the world.

This chapter main purpose is to understand brand communication strategies and the consequences on brand followers’ engagement during a pandemic period. Exploratory netnographic research was conducted considering four brands from large Brazilian companies in different sectors. This research comprised the analysis of brands' feed on Instagram. Data was collected for five weeks, between February (when the first case of COVID-19 was registered in Brazil) and April 1^st 2020, and analyzes 155 posts from 4 different brands and a total of 33,168 comments.

This study makes important contributions to the literature. It approaches the unexplored topic of brand communication during global crises, which despite the relevance given by practitioners has been so far disregarded by researchers. It provides anecdotal evidence of several strategies that brands adopt in the context of a global crisis such as the one related to the Covid-19 pandemic. By analysing communication strategies and further relating it to effectiveness indicators of social media communication, this study provides relevant cues for both academics and practitioners, namely by identifying alternative strategies and proposing their effectivess. Indeed, these outputs provide interesting suggestions for both future researchers and strategic communication managers of companies and brands from diverse sectors, namely the ones mostly affected by the pandemic.

The chapter is organized as follows. Next section presents a literature review which covers important concepts such as brand positioning, awareness, crisis management and communication strategies. The method section describes the study carried out and delves into the netnography approach. The results section presents the findings. Finally, the final conclusions and limitations encountered during the process are presented in the conclusion section.