Is the Coronavirus Making Us Sick?

Here’s a very current topic and what it teaches us for our success: the coronavirus. It is the all-dominant media topic these days. 

I don’t want to trivialize a single death due to the virus—even one was one too many. But some mechanisms make the virus a “media hit,” and these mechanisms are not caused by the real danger. Otherwise, the media would be full of reports every day of the year about deaths from the common flu (of which there are thousands to tens of thousands every year in Europe alone) or road deaths or hospital infections.

The mechanisms that make the coronavirus so prominent in the media are different from the facts (and we can all learn from this situation if we want to spread news quickly):

• Newness. The virus is new, and for this reason alone, it is exciting.
• Mysticism. The implications are not yet fully understood, which makes the idea of the virus a breeding ground for all kinds of conspiracy theories. Fascinating!
• Threat. Anything that poses a direct threat to our status quo attracts attention.

What can we deduce from these insights and apply to our daily lives, especially in business? Here are three ideas:

1. Emotion beats rationality every time. It beats objectivity every time we communicate. Emotion is irrational. You can use it in every piece of communication instead of hoping that people will change because of your great factual analyses.
2. Focus is crucial. The things that people consider important are the things they hear and see over and over again. For example, if we were to report on the threat of road traffic to thousands of lives every day without interruption, we would make different decisions.
3. Relevance matters. A virus can potentially affect anyone, so it is extremely relevant. In business, on the other hand, most communication is simply not relevant enough to the individual to trigger action.

The smartest people use crises to learn. That is what I want to encourage with this article. If you want to implement some of this in your field, simply contact me ➔ here.