Sales of Corona Beer Are Actually Up 5% This Month, Brewery CEO Says

• The CEO of the beverage conglomerate that owns Corona is looking to fight perceptions that the coronavirus is diminishing sales of the beer in the U.S.
• A phone survey done by a PR company found that 38 percent of Americans wouldn’t order the beer, unrelated in any way to the pandemic.
• “We’ve seen no impact to our people, facilities, or operations,” said Bill Newlands.

Somewhere, in the rush of news about the possible global pandemic, you may have seen a statistic that 38 percent of Americans would not order a Corona, the beer brand that unfortunately shares its first three syllables with that of the Coronavirus, a.k.a. COVID-19, which has killed 3,200 people and infected 92,000 across the world and impacted global trade.

The poll was conducted by 5WPR, a New York City-based public relations firm and was a phone survey of 737 Americans over the age of 21, done over two days in late February. It seemed designed to grab some viral headlines and expose the supposed ignorance of Americans. (There was no factoring for how eager a person might be to yank someone’s chain who was calling them from a random number in the middle of the day.)

The “news” provoked a response from the CEO of Constellation Brands, the conglomerate that owns the Mexican-born Corona brand (which, FYI, is a Spanish word for “crown”).

Bill Newlands said today that sales of the beer were up and rattled off some business jargon on profit trends. Then he added: “Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this terrible virus and we hope efforts to more fully contain it gain traction soon. It’s extremely unfortunate that recent misinformation about the impact of this virus on our business has been circulating in traditional and social media without further investigation or validation.”

“We’ve seen no impact to our people, facilities or operations,” Newlands emphasized.

There was a report that, in the two months since coronavirus spread through China, the company suffered a $170m loss in of earnings in the country. However, this trend may be more due to the fact that the Chinese population is, naturally, staying in and not spending much on beer these days—and not confusion over the name of the brew.

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