12 objects of a pandemic
Everyday objects and indispensable inventions that are suddenly essential.
Object Lessons: A look at the COVID -19 pandemic through the history and meaning of the objects that surround it — all the strange, ordinary and essential things that the rise of coronavirus has made us think about in new and unexpected ways. From everyday household items to inventions that have become indispensable, these are the objects our coronavirus isolation will be remembered by.
When I worked in retail, managing a cell phone store in a shopping mall in Ottawa, I kept a bottle of Purell behind the counter, and I would sanitize my hands with it about 300 times a day. The job was sales- oriented, and I was shaking hands and handling cash almost constantly, so of course it was prudent to sterilize regularly and reduce my risk of illness. But the real reason I used Purell so often was that Purell is extremely addictive — compulsively, irresistibly addictive, to the point that I couldn’t wait, at the end of every transaction, to douse myself in the stuff.
That’s been one of the few agreeable consequences of the coronavirus pandemic: We’re all using a lot more hand sanitizer, and using hand sanitizer just feels really good.
Alcohol- based hand- sanitizing products have been around for decades, introduced in hospitals and other health- care environments in the 1980s. But it wasn’t until 1997, when Purell was first marketed to households, that a hand sanitizer was considered to be of interest to anyone outside the medical community. Even then, it wasn’t an immediate success. The sensation of actually using Purell had to be experienced for it to take off as a consumer product, finally transforming a once-niche remedial accessory into a fixture of North American homes.
Purell is basically ethanol and water and perfume. It’s very good at eradicating germs and limiting the spread of illness, and because it’s cheap, effective and easy to use, it more or less sells itself — especially in the middle of a global health crisis, when disease is rampant and proper sanitation can literally save lives. But in the ’ 90s, before Purell was a household name, very few people knew what hand sanitizer was, and with soap and water readily available, it was difficult to convince people that they needed this product at all.
When GOJO Industries, the company that manufactures Purell, started marketing it to consumers, their first goal was to build awareness — not only for the brand, but for the brand category, which to most consumers was a completely unfamiliar concept.
The initial marketing campaign emphasized education. They wanted to impress upon consumers the dangers against which Purell could shield them, and they did so by warning about the spread of germs and promoting the importance of washing hands. “The first consumer advertising for Purell concentrated on alerting consumers to the risk of transmitting bacteria through hand contact,” writes Noel Capon, in his book The Marketing Mavens. “The advertisements included television commercials that built awareness that germs can be found on many things we touch, like an ATM keypad and video rentals, and that using Purell can get rid of germs that may cause illness.”
These advertisements proved compelling, and Purell gradually gained a foothold in a consumer marketplace that had previously never heard of it. But even more than educating people about proper hygiene, it was the tactile element that really caused Purell to explode — the feeling of actually applying this sanitizer to your hands.
How do you get people to try your product? With free samples, of course. Retail displays with a free tester began popping up first at small- town health stores, and then at Walgreens across the U. S. GOJO set up sample bottles of Purell, encouraging people to try a squirt. “Once people tried it, they couldn’t get over what a cool concept it was. Purell just flew off the shelves,” a representative from GOJO said at the time. “Not only is it effective at killing germs, it is just a very pleasant product to use.”
That pleasant feeling made the difference between niche success and utter ubiquity. Soon it was picked up by Wal- Mart; in the early 2000s the brand was bought by Pfizer. And of course the effectiveness of hand sanitizer in killing germs and halting the spread of disease is an essential part of why Purell is so popular. But it might not have become such an inescapable staple if it also didn’t feel so damn good.