The only positive I see from this entire crisis is how the country is coming together to fight the same cause. When have we really ever seen this happen before? We seem to all be on the same team and we are getting more and more creative with how we market our encouragement to keep fighting against the crisis. I have a few companies in mind that have caught my attention in terms of what they are advertising at the moment and what message that sends. In my opinion, these companies are doing it well. 

The first company doing it well is Netflix. Netflix seems to be one of the only companies that is truly benefitting from this pandemic, as they are able to provide easily accessible, quality entertainment in their consumer’s homes. They probably didn’t really need to market to anyone during this time because people were already flocking to the streaming service, but a group of students took it upon themselves to come up with a really clever advertisement anyway and place them specifically outside on billboards. They knew that Netflix consumers feared spoilers just as much as they feared the virus, so they created spoilers to popular Netflix shows and edited them as if they were hanging in the streets of American cities. While Netflix didn’t actually come up with this idea and execute it, they were still getting the attention and recognition like they did on Twitter. Users were posting the pictures with the edited ads with captions like “this is the best thing I’ve ever seen”, and that Netflix had “completely smashed it out of the park”. I even saw the tweets myself (before I knew it was fake) and thought very highly of the company, because that actually would steer me away from going outside. If I was debating on grabbing some takeout or not, the threat of seeing a spoiler to my favorite TV show would definitely keep me indoors. Netflix finally responded to the buzz via Twitter, claiming that while this was a creative way to promote the “Stay At Home” initiative, they personally had nothing to do with it and the ad is not real. The original tweets where people believed it was real have hundreds of thousands of retweets. Some people are going to see this tweet, but most people are probably going to continue living through this crisis with the assumption that Netflix is beyond creative and that they should stay inside if they don’t want a spoiler to Love Is Blind. It seems that sometimes, companies get lucky, and their fans do all the positive marketing for them.

The next company doing it well is Uber. I have also seen their ad on Twitter, which displayed a gray screen with the caption “This video is not moving. Neither should you.” This ad caught my attention, as it was a creative approach to reminding their consumers to stay at home. On Uber’s website, they have a page dedicated to how they are helping combat the virus and offer support to those working in the midst of the pandemic. The page title reads: “A company that moves people is asking you not to move”, with the following heading of: “The world is upside down. Everything has changed. Stay home if you can. If you stop moving, together we can end this virus. And with drivers, delivery people, and restaurants, we’ll help move what matters.” I especially like how Uber has established their role in this situation. They are a company that makes money from people doing the opposite of social distancing, yet they are pushing the notion that you should be staying at home and not using their services, as it supports a greater cause. I also like how they included the phrase “we will help move what matters”, because this shows that they are going to volunteer their services instead of waiting the crisis out, pledging 10 million free rides and deliveries of food for frontline healthcare workers, seniors, and people in need around the world. The page also includes a section about how drivers who are currently delivering can stay safe, and what their updated protocol to delivery is. As a consumer of Uber, and I’m sure most will agree, this makes me appreciate this company and their services more. I think their approach to how they are currently marketing themselves is great, as it immediately grabs your attention and informs you that this company is putting in action to stop the spread of this virus instead of just ordering people to “stay inside”. I decided to check out Lyft’s website to see if they were doing the same, and nowhere on their website did I find how they are personally coming to the aid for people handling the virus. Maybe it is somewhere on their website, but I did not find it easily broadcasted on their site like I did with Uber. We have learned in several college courses that it’s best to get your main point across right away and in the most effective way to grasp consumer attention, and I definitely think Uber did that this time around.