COVID-19 and the Brand Response: Who Got It Right, Who Got It Catastrophically Wrong

In March 2020, every brand in the world had to answer the same question simultaneously: what do we say? The playbooks went out the window. The campaign calendars were shredded. Every CMO I knew was on emergency calls trying to figure out how to respond to something none of us had ever seen before.

A month in, the responses have crystallized into clear categories. And the gap between the brands that handled this well and the ones that made it measurably worse is one of the most instructive case studies in real-time brand management I’ve ever witnessed.

The Brands That Got It Right

Ford, GM, and Tesla pivoted manufacturing to produce ventilators, PPE, and medical supplies. They didn’t announce it with ads. They just did it, and let the news coverage speak for itself. That’s the most powerful brand statement possible: action over announcement.

Airbnb provided free housing to 100,000 healthcare workers. No caveats, no complex eligibility requirements, no marketing spin. They identified the people who needed help most, and helped them. CEO Brian Chesky was transparent on social media about the company’s financial pain and the decisions being made. It was authentic and it built enormous goodwill at a moment when the sharing economy was under existential pressure.

LinkedIn made its learning platform free during the crisis. Practical help for people who had just lost their jobs or were facing a completely changed job market. No elaborate campaign. Just a useful thing, offered freely, when people needed it most.

The common thread: these brands led with action, not communication. They understood that the moment called for doing, not advertising.

The Brands That Got It Wrong

And then there were the brands that sent “we’re here for you” emails to every address in their database without a single tangible offer attached. The brands that ran TV commercials over somber piano music with shots of empty streets and the voiceover “In these unprecedented times, we want you to know we’re committed to…” committed to what? Selling you the same things they were selling before?

I received one such email from a luxury hotel chain. I’ve stayed at their properties dozens of times. The email was beautifully designed, emotionally well-intentioned, and completely empty. They told me they were thinking of me. They did not offer me a refund on my cancelled reservation for three months. The gap between the sentiment and the behavior is where brand trust goes to die.

There was also the wave of brands that treated the pandemic as a marketing opportunity — pivoting messaging to claim relevance to “these extraordinary times” without any actual relevance. That transparent opportunism, in a moment when people were genuinely scared and suffering, generated some of the most damaging brand perception data I’ve seen in recent years.

The Lasting Lesson

A crisis is a brand X-ray. It shows the skeleton of who a company actually is underneath all the marketing. The brands that had built genuine cultures of customer care — not just customer service departments, but actual cultural commitments to doing right by people — showed that in their crisis responses. The ones that hadn’t, also showed that.

The marketing lesson from COVID-19 is the same as the marketing lesson from every major brand test: what you do in a crisis reveals your values more clearly than any campaign ever could. The brands that will emerge from this moment with stronger relationships are the ones that helped first and marketed second.

A crisis doesn’t build brand character. It reveals it. The brands earning trust right now aren’t running campaigns. They’re writing checks, building ventilators, and feeding healthcare workers.

Steve Wolf

Steve Wolf is a C-suite marketing executive with 20 years of experience. He serves as CMO of Pinnacle Global Network and CEO of Aquaphant.