Rastmusser Global Marketing announced today that they would no longer be in charge of marketing the swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus. RGM President Robert Rastmusser gave the announcement himself, apologizing for what appears to be one of the worst marketing campaigns in epidemiological history.
When asked why the swine flu failed to catch on in spite of a massive multimillion dollar global promotional campaign, Rastmusser replied, “well, the buck stops here, so I guess it was really my fault. But we sure had a lot of unusual problems with this one.”
Rastmusser pointed out “branding” problems that beset the campaign almost from the very start. “We started out with a fabulous and highly recognizable established brand name-‘swine flu,’ but then various client committees got together and changed it to H1N1. Now I ask you: if we put Coca-Cola in a can and called it H2N2 cola, would you buy it? It just wasn't memorable. And the jingles were a nightmare– almost nothing rhymes with 'N1.'”
Rastmusser went on: “But that was just the first problem. I think we did a great job of building up a lot of consumer expectation and market anticipation, but delivery of the actual product came so late in the season it was hard to maintain the energy. I mean, you can talk about how deadly it is, but if someone has a perfectly good head cold, they’re going to forget all about other products. This is a very ephemeral market with very little brand loyalty.”
Rastmusser’s comments failed to address possibly the most pressing issue though, which is that the standard, generic, freely available seasonal flu kills half a million people every year, while the H1N1 swine flu has so far only killed something like 28,000.
“We thought we might have a chance when so many people decided to not get the vaccine,” said Rastmusser. “But it turns out this virus was a dud in terms of being contagious. It's nice that it's 3 times as deadly, but if only 7 people catch it in the first place, what's the point?”
Rastmusser also noted that a hoped-for social media “push” from putting the virus on facebook and twitter also failed to materialize. One Youtube video, which featured an infected flu victim sneezing so hard that he fell backwards off of his porch, was highly rated, but had less than a thousand downloads.
“We had a high hopes for the online marketing avenue,” said Rastmusser, “it was our last and best hope. But this was one case where a virus just refused to go viral.”
(c) Justin Locke
