It started as a simple story. Someone ate a bat in or from a Wuhan wet market, and then a virus spread around the world. From there grew one of the most successful marketing strategies in world history.
Circus operator, showman and con artist PT Barnum is reputed to have said that there is “a sucker born every minute”. He was so successful that he was known to use signs saying “This way to the egress” which bamboozled his customers into leaving. Egress is a fancy word for exit. (1) He also demonstrated a principle of marketing by using a beggar and 5 bricks to promote a museum. (2) You could say that the promotion must always be bigger than the sale. It’s quite likely that the marketers of the Wuhan virus learned a great deal from PT Barnum.
When the virus made its debut, it was late March and we were told how we all needed to buckle down and ride the virus out, for a period of two weeks. This perhaps was not the first con, but it laid the groundwork for one of the world’s most effective marketing strategies ever. (3) Patiently the sheeple waited, but the promised “two weeks” took off, lasting months or more, depending on location.
Any marketing strategy needs a brand name, and the politically arrived at name was Covid-19. This name was specifically derived by the WHO to avoid any reference to the country of origin, China. (4) Thus the legendary brand name of Covid-19 was born.
The media perhaps at first was bewildered. It’s hard to say, but soon the mainstream media began the marketing process. They had always done this with the Democratic party, but marketing a virus was another thing. It took some time.
One strategy that has been extremely effective in marketing the virus is fear. Fear is a well known marketing tool, a strategy often used to hawk a product or in this case a pandemic. The strategy is simple and straightforward to use. You plant a seed of fear in the potential customer, and you offer the solution, which is your product. Fear of the virus is used to sell the “solution” which in the earlier days of the pandemic was control, persuading people to give up civil liberties as a solution to the fear porn that was being offered. Fear based strategies can backfire, however. Scare tactics can drive customers away from your marketing base, and they are not always effective on all people. (5) The fear porn was gleefully used by the media, with the constant flashing of dubious statistics on TV and computer screens, showing how devastating the virus could be.
Every sale requires some kind of product, and what we were told was a product was the “vaccine”. President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” delivered on its promise to bring a “vaccine” to stop the spread. Surely thought the authorities everyone would flock to the “vaccine” centers and roll up their sleeves, but some were more wary and never showed up. The strange term “vaccine hesitancy” was born.
Puzzled and confused, authorities began using free gifts and bribes to get wary Americans to take the shot. From lottery tickets to food, free gifts were offered to Americans to get them to take the shot. In many cases the strategy did not work however, and the strategy of using free gifts by and large, went by the wayside.
Every brand needs a symbol. In this case, the symbol that drives the fear is the coronavirus image, and the symbol that represents the product is the syringe. That symbol is everywhere. Even entertainers have gotten into the act. Stephen Colbert, a nighttime variety entertainer, had dancing “needles” on his stage. (6)
Another symbol used in the promotion of the virus is the face mask. It too was offered as a solution for preventing the spread of the Wuhan virus. Yet 49 separate studies have shown that there is little use to the masks, and they have little impact in stopping the spread of the virus. (7) Still almost anywhere you go you can see the masks riding around on peoples’ faces. It is also an effective marketing tool, recognized as a symbol of the virus that has been so heavily promoted.
Businesses love monopolies! They love to shut out their competition. Given that, the big tech companies have largely shut out any opposing voices via Big Tech censorship, which is a whole topic in and of itself, and perhaps a topic for a later time.
Not everyone has bought into this. There are always those who won’t. Now we have “vaccine” mandates whose aim is to force those recalcitrant “customers” to accept the product. As we all know, this has resulted in severe staff shortages in places like hospitals, as many “customers” are still refusing the “product”. Where the money is coming from and going is a subject for later review. After all, marketing is one part of an overall sales strategy. At some point, we will have to look at the bottom line, revenue and where it is going.
We have looked at the overall marketing of the pandemic and a virus which is treatable. While I can’t speak for PT Barnum, I think that he wishes that he had a set of marketing tools like those owned by those pushing the “pandemic”, if he is looking in at us of course. PT Barnum was right about one thing. There really is a sucker born every minute.
- http://www.ptbarnum.org/egress.html
- https://kendavenport.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/03/how-barnum-used-bricks-to-build-an-audience.html
- https://nypost.com/2021/11/29/theres-no-safety-in-returning-to-covid-19-lockdowns/
- https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it
- https://techblogbuilder.com/2020/06/29/fear-based-msp-marketing/#:~:text=%20How%20to%20Successfully%20Use%20Fear%20as%20a,not%20only%20provokes%20a%20fear%20reaction%2C…%20More%20
- http://www.ptbarnum.org/egress.html
- https://kendavenport.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/03/how-barnum-used-bricks-to-build-an-audience.html
- https://nypost.com/2021/11/29/theres-no-safety-in-returning-to-covid-19-lockdowns/
- https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it
- https://techblogbuilder.com/2020/06/29/fear-based-msp-marketing/#:~:text=%20How%20to%20Successfully%20Use%20Fear%20as%20a,not%20only%20provokes%20a%20fear%20reaction%2C…%20More%20
- https://crooksandliars.com/2021/06/colbert-back-broadway-jon-stewart-and-joe
- https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/do-face-masks-work-here-are-49-scientific-studies-that-explain-why-they-do/