Events

7 Marketing tips during Covid-19

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Here are 7 different marketing ideas that can be adopted during these difficult economic times brought on by the pandemic called Corona virus. Given below each of them is a link where you can click and read more about each of those topics to get a good handle of how it works. In some cases, there are even step-by-step tutorials, guidance and tools needed to get you up and running as quickly as possible.

  • Offer training

https://neilpatel.com/blog/business-in-a-box/

  • Go digital

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/349666

  • Paid advertising

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2019/07/30/cost-effective-ad-types

  • Prepare content

https://www.calendar.com/blog/time-saving-content-marketing-hacks/

  • Home jobs

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/306578

  • Be creative

https://marketing.toolbox.com/articles/creative-marketing-strategies-by-brands-covid-pandemic

  • Get help

https://www.ama.org/covid-19-support-for-marketing-professionals/

9 deadliest epidemics in the history of the 20th century

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Given below are 9 of the worst epidemics and pandemics that changed the 20th century bringing some nations to the brink of disaster and in some cases even total economic collapse. They filled people’s hearts and minds with despair and left them to their fate. Let’s have a sneak preview of them.

1)         Manchurian plague: 1910-1911

In 1910, China began to report that a deadly and rare pneumonic plague had reached the extreme northeast of China in Harbin, then known as Manchuria. Although it was confined largely to the country’s northeastern areas, cases were reported throughout the empire, in Beijing, Tianjin and along the railway line of Beijing-Hankou stretching down into central China, thus reflecting the scale of the pandemic. It is difficult to obtain the exact statistics about the plague’s death toll; however, it was reported that around 60,000 died, with a mortality rate of 100%. This placed the death toll of the plague on par with that of the great plague of London.

2)         Polio: 1916

Before Franklin Delano Roosevelt was struck with polio in 1916, the disease struck thousands in America, killing 6,000 people. During the pandemic, reports suggest that 9,000 cases happened in New York City, which resulted in quarantines. Polio would haunt the US for decades, afflicting thousands more each year. Twenty-five percent of the victims died in 1916 alone. In the 1950s Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine.

3)         Flu pandemic: 1918-1919

The flu pandemic broke out during World War I, which was the deadliest pandemic, killing double the number of them who died in the war. Reports estimate that 500 million people became infected with the H1N1 virus and it originated in birds. Out of the 50 million cases, 675,000 in the U.S. alone died.

4)         Russia typhus: 1918-1922

Typhus was a health problem in the early 20th century in Russia. Closely linked with overcrowded housing and poverty, this disease was endemic in both urban and rural areas, with small outbreaks and scattered cases occurring every year, mostly in early spring and winter. Great epidemics flared up whenever famine or war produced massive population movements and hardship. The worst typhus epidemics happened late in World War I and during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik revolution. Typhus claimed 2 to 3 million lives until 1922.

5)         Asian influenza: 1957

After the influenza of 1918, it went back to its normal pattern of epidemics of lesser virulence. In 1933, with the 1st case, speculation began about the role of a similar virus that happened in 1918. But it was difficult to determine that until the Asian influenza of 1957. For the 1st time, the global spread of an influenza virus was made available for laboratory investigation. The public was confronted by the pandemic with which it had no experience. It was proven that even without any bacterial co-invaders, the virus alone, was lethal.

6)         Hong Kong flu pandemic: 1968

The 1st case of Hong Kong flu pandemic was in Hong Kong in 1968. Outbreaks occurred in Vietnam and Singapore and within 12 weeks it spread to as far as South America and Africa. In the US, about 100,000 died. What gave rise to the H3N2 variation was a process called the antigenic shift, in which the virus of the earlier Asian flu in 1956 mutated. The death rate was lower than in previous outbreaks, with a ratio below 0.5%. Those who were earlier exposed to the pandemic became immune to this virus. The availability of antibiotics and improved medical care have been the factors for its slower spread. This virus is still in circulation these days as the seasonal influenza virus.

7)         Smallpox: 1974

In 1974, India was struck with the worst smallpox epidemics. Between January and May, 15,000 died from smallpox and many were left maimed for life. The authorities made attempts to prevents its further spread and contain the disease. The last case of smallpox was recorded on May 24 in the year 1975. However, the disease was completely eradicated 5 years later.

8)         West Africa meningitis: 1996

A severe epidemic of meningococcal meningitis happened in Nigeria in 1996. There were 109,580 recorded cases and 11,717 deaths, giving a case fatality rate of 10.7% overall. It was the most serious epidemic ever recorded in Nigeria, and the largest in. It took 3 months and the efforts of a task force set up by the WHO, the Federal Ministry of Health, UNICEF, Médecins Sans Frontières, UNDP, the International Red Cross and many other non-governmental entities to bring it under control. The main measures centered on mass vaccination, active treatment of infected persons, and health education.

9)         Malaysia Nipah virus: 1998-1999

The Nipah Malaysia virus outbreak resulted in 265 cases of encephalitis with the fall of the pig-farming industry and 105 deaths. Because it was at the initial phase attributed to Japanese encephalitis, early measures were ineffective, and it spread to the whole of Malaysia and nearby Singapore. What led to the outbreak control 2 months later was the isolation of the Nipah virus, the aetiological agent, from the cerebrospinal fluid of a victim.

How Facebook Contained The Pandemic

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In mid 2007, when Facebook wanted to generate its revenue stream, they produced a manifesto of social advertising. It boiled down to inserting sales pitches into the conversations among friends. The idea was to have real stories that the advertisers could then sponsor that would go to all the friends in their contact list with an implicit recommendation. It worked under the premise that Facebook is all about learning about friends. And so, learning about services and products through the lens of friends, especially if the ads have relevant information about friends, seems like it should work. That was the theme of Facebook’s ad business and they code named it Panda, a hybrid of the words Pages And Ads. Later on, the name morphed into something more ubiquitous these days: Pandemic.

1) Pages

Pages would allow companies to have profiles, something previously forbidden by its policy of permitting only individuals to have accounts. They would be like storefronts or even websites within Facebook. It helped users to find things that they need. It also provided value to businesses by helping them find more customers. And pages have the capability to attract both organic and paid traffic.

2) Ads

The most important conversations of people were between themselves. This concept was a big part of the strategy of Facebook and a distinguishing point of its social ads. Another part was to be even more significant. Facebook changed its ad system to more about targeting ads to the right people and less about how many people saw them. They created a system where advertisers could bid against each other to place ads alongside News Feed in the sidebars. The metric that advertisers paid for would not be exposure-based but engagement-based. In other words, people would pay not for the number of eyeballs grazed on the ads but for clicks. It’s very much like Google Adwords. The only difference is while Google used keywords, Facebook used demographic information as bidding criteria. This part of Pandemic became a full-scale package of business-based features. It set the tone for Facebook’s ad model that is still working today.

Beacon

Pandemic used non-celebrity endorsement called beacon as a means of spreading the firm’s ethic to the web and tying clients to Facebook. Facebook struck deals with partners to put monitors called beacons on their web pages that flagged activity to Facebook. When somebody bought something from the site, the news would be shared on their friends’ News Feed. This broke ground that should have remained unbroken. Earlier, the interests of users were self-reported. Although Facebook did automate some news, they were based on activities that happened on Facebook. But beacon would stealthily track activities as people made purchases on the web and then circulate the news to their friends. There would be a pop-up warning of the actions needed to disable it. The history of user experience indicated that most users would ignore that warning. Facebook interpreted your nonaction as consent if you didn’t respond. Beacon would then let all your friends know about your purchase. It was so successful that in the run-up to the Pandemic announcement, Microsoft struck an investment deal with Facebook for $240 million in exchange for 1.6% of the company. When Microsoft began cashing out, its 1.6% slice would be worth $8 billion.

Privacy violation

After Facebook made the Pandemic announcement, the headlines from the launch focused on social ads and microtargeting, but attention soon shifted to beacon’s disregard for privacy. Although for some it was quite an innovative ad product it was definitely an incredible violation of privacy. The media in the tech world warned that automatically spreading news of purchases could result in some unintended outcomes. Rightly so, people started complaining about their purchases appearing on people’s News Feeds. For days, Facebook did not respond to the criticism because there was so much disagreement within the company of the direction it should take.

Opt-in or opt-out

Facebook had a big discussion whether it should be opt-in or opt-out. The opt-in side would have Facebook asking if people wanted to participate or not. It would then take effect only if interest was expressed. The opt-out side would have Facebook share purchase information by default. Facebook believed that once it was implemented, just like the News Feed, people might like it. And if they didn’t, Facebook could always pull it back. The debate about whether to use opt-in, opt-out or any other variations of it continued. Meanwhile people began thinking that maybe Facebook was something that they could not trust. Facebook finally decided to use opt-in wherein users had to consent proactively before a story was published, finally restoring its default status. But that did not quell the objections.

Backlash

Experts discovered disturbing aspects. Beacon transmitted data even if you opted out. Moreover, it gave Facebook a lot of information about what users did outside websites and even about users who did not sign up for Facebook. By then the press, privacy advocates and users were demanding the firm kill beacon outright. A week later, Facebook installed a privacy control to completely turn off beacon. The outcry died down and the purchases did not show up on News Feed anymore. That was the final fix to contain the Pandemic.

Adapted from the book "Facebook: The Inside Story" by Steven Levy published in 2020 by Penguin Random House UK

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