Behind the P&G advertising rollover: Why do those marketing veterans frequently "step on the thunder"?

Author/ Author of "Finance and Economics" Weekly Wei Yining

Editor/Letter of Song

On March 13, Procter & Gamble posted an advertisement on the public account of the member center: "Women's feet stink 5 times that of men?" Don't believe it now." In the advertisement, "popular science" has multiple "truths", such as women's foot odor is 5 times that of men, women's hair is twice as dirty as men's, and so on. Then, a girl wearing the word "Procter & Gamble" recommended a "P&G full-body fragrance five-piece set."

As soon as the ad was launched, it immediately exploded on social media. Many netizens believe that personal hygiene has nothing to do with gender, and P&G is selling anxiety. Some netizens also questioned that the sample of the bacterial reproduction rate of the male and female foot given by Procter & Gamble is not enough, and the data source lacks authority, which belongs to pseudo-science.

After the article sparked controversy, on March 24, Procter & Gamble issued a statement in response on its official Weibo, apologizing and promising to seriously rectify the operation of the public account, but the criticism of P&G by the media and netizens remained fierce. The official Weibo of China Women's Daily commented: "People will not pay for insulting 'marketing', and disrespecting women will make you really 'clean'." ”

Once, P&G was known for its successful advertising marketing, but this time, it angered its own consumers because of a rollover ad.

In the era of mobile Internet, consumers are easy to comment on advertisements online, and advertisements that make consumers feel uncomfortable are more likely to quickly "overturn" and produce negative publicity effects, even if many marketing veterans are no exception.

Marketing veterans, the scenery is no longer

After all, after entering the Chinese market for more than thirty years, it has always been known for excellent marketing and was once regarded as a model of excellent marketing.

After the reform and opening up, many international large enterprises have entered the Chinese market, in 1988, Procter & Gamble entered China with its first product, Haifeisi, becoming the first overseas daily necessities company to enter China.

At that time, China was still far from the Internet, and the penetration rate of television was not high, and if you wanted to open up the market, you had to choose offline marketing channels. After research, P&G found that there are many hair salons in Guangzhou, and Guangzhou people have the habit of washing their hair in hair salons, so P&G decided to open the market from hair salons.

In 1990, P&G selected ten hair salons in the bustling area of Guangzhou, established a cooperative relationship, and hired a group of beautiful female salesmen to carry out promotional activities in the hair salon. Next, P&G issued thousands of wash invoices for free, and consumers could cut out newspaper advertisements, go to designated places to get wash invoices, and wash hair salons for free.

Through the multi-faceted publicity of newspapers, radio, and television, the public knows that P&G Company issued invoices for free, the number of citizens queuing up to receive tickets reached tens of thousands, and the newspapers that printed P&G advertisements were also quickly sold out, and the free ticket giving activity made the sales of Haifeisi and Piaorou increase by 3.5 times year-on-year.

Next, Procter & Gamble sponsored a large-scale party of Guangzhou Television Station, inviting Chen Peisi, Feng Gong and other stars to participate in the performance, as long as consumers buy 30 yuan of Procter & Gamble products, you can get free tickets, and the 10,000 tickets of the party are all given away by P&G.

In 1994, in order to improve the popularity and consumer loyalty of Piao Rou Shampoo, P&G also funded the organization of the "Piao Rou Star National Competition" draft, becoming the first company in China to sponsor beauty contests. Consumers can send photos to Procter & Gamble and through primary selection, interview and voting, select the "Fluttering Stars" of each region and go to Guangzhou to participate in the finals.

After entering the Internet era, the draft activities of Fluttery began to combine with the Internet. In 2009, through Tencent's platform, Piaorou launched the "True Love Journey" couples selection activity for first- and second-tier cities across the country, with the theme of "True Love" and the reward of rich honeymoon products. Tencent's strong exposure effect coupled with The combination of Piaorou's TV advertisements attracted a large number of marriageable people, and 14,526 couples participated in The activities of Piaorou that year.

Procter & Gamble's offline beauty pageant lasted for many years, coupled with the refined advertising of "Piaorou, it is such a confident", Piaorou left a deep impression on consumers. In addition to P&G, procter & Gamble launched Haifeisi, Shu Skin Jia, Tide, Crest and other products are also widely popular, it can be said that for a long time, P&G contracted China's toiletries market.

From 1998 to 2013, P&G's revenue in China quadrupled sixfold, and China is known as P&G's largest market outside of the United States.

However, compared with the mature Internet marketing of emerging consumer brands, Procter & Gamble, which is accustomed to traditional TV media marketing, obviously did not make up for this shortcoming as soon as possible. Although P&G's overall strategy in recent years has been to increase investment in online channels, carry out cross-border joint names, and conduct online advertising and marketing through Weibo and WeChat public accounts, the marketing effect is not very good.

After 2015, P&G's market share in China has continued to decline, and in fiscal 2015, although P&G's sales in the Chinese market reached 39 billion yuan, sales have fallen by 5% compared with the same period in 2014. At the beginning of 2016, P&G's new CEO, Dai Huaide, said publicly at an industry conference: "P&G's performance in the Chinese market is unacceptable. ”

In the Chinese market, the impact that P&G has to face mainly comes from the booming Internet e-commerce. In the pre-Internet era and the traditional Internet era, P&G mainly mastered offline supermarket channels, and through cooperation with large department stores, offline supermarket channels occupied an important share, while cultivating consumer awareness and loyalty through TV advertising.

In 2018 and 2019, Procter & Gamble twice and PEACEBIRD cross-border joint marketing, launched a limited-time tide brand pop-up store, including Crest duck tongue hat, tide T-shirts, etc., for the WeChat Mini Program store diversion, although many netizens said "want to buy", but some people think that the trademark of the tide brand clothing is slightly weird, wear out like a salesman.

This forced cross-border approach did not bring too much traffic conversion, and since then, P&G has not made other cross-border products that have impressed consumers.

In terms of online advertising, before the advertising "rollover" incident, some of P&G's advertisements also appeared to be far away from consumers and could not make consumers feel resonant.

On the eve of Women's Day in 2021, Pantene released an advertising short film to promote the spirit of independence and autonomy of women in the workplace, in order to cooperate with the advertising effect, Pantene also changed the official Weibo name to "Panting", and typed out the copy of "Conquer the workplace, do not have to lose 'she', you can also shine like her", however, this slightly inconsistent, illogical copy, let many netizens feel puzzled.

After being questioned and criticized, Panting immediately changed back to her original name. Although this advertisement is not very "rollover", it still gives people a tiger's tail feeling and does not achieve the expected effect.

In the era of new media, Procter & Gamble, which once relied on marketing to hit the Chinese market, is trying to turn around, but it has become slightly inadequate.

Like Procter & Gamble, local beverage brand Coconut Palm Juice is also facing the problem of marketing transformation. Coconut brand coconut water was once known for its "simple and rough" and effective packaging design, the packaging is printed with coconut and coconut water patterns, as well as "xx years adhere to fresh squeezing, no add preservatives, flavor" of the simple copy, earthy packaging and excellent product quality combined, establishing a natural health, sincere and simple image.

To this day, the Coconut Brand is still the hegemon of the coconut juice field, but the market share is also quietly declining. According to Euromonitor market data, during the period 2014-2018, the Coconut Brand accounted for about 8.5% of the plant protein beverage market, but in 2018, Vitasoy came after it, surpassing Coconut.

With the change of public diet concepts and the rise of new consumption, consumers began to pursue healthy, low-sugar beverages, coconut palm juice with slightly lower sugar content than cola began to "fall out of favor", and in terms of online marketing, coconut palm juice is far inferior to emerging brands such as Yuanqi Forest.

As early as 2009, the products of the Coconut Tree Group had played advertising slogans such as "Afraid not to work, drink coconut brand pomegranate juice" and "papaya is full of my fullness", which was called by consumers to include coconut tree advertising in the category of sweeping pornography. In the same year, because the bus in Haikou City printed advertising words such as "Wife likes her husband to drink coconut brand pomegranate juice" and "Papaya is full and I am plump", it was determined by the local industry and commerce department to be published in violation of the law, and ordered to stop immediately and impose a fine of 1,000 yuan.

Since then, the marketing veteran has repeatedly overturned. In March 2019, Coconut Tree Group Hainan Coconut Juice Beverage Co., Ltd. was fined 200,000 yuan by the Market Supervision and Administration Bureau of Longhua District of Haikou City for obstructing social public order and violating good social customs. The basis for punishment is article 9 of the Advertising Law, which states that "advertisements shall not contain obscene, pornographic, gambling, superstitious, terrorist, or violent content."

On March 25, 2021, Coconut Tree Group published an advertisement in the official blog that "there is a car, a house, a high salary, and there must be handsome men and beautiful women chasing", which is even more exposed to an S-shaped beauty that highlights women's sensitive parts, netizens questioned that this advertisement is suspected of misleading job seekers, and only six days later, Coconut Tree Group was investigated by the Hainan Provincial Market Supervision Bureau.

Why did these ads stir up public outrage?

In the era of new media, the classic case of international well-known brands marketing has changed from Procter & Gamble to Durex.

Durex skillfully grasped the strategy of new media marketing, the official Weibo established the image of "old driver", used concise copywriting to tell humorous and witty connotation paragraphs, and maintained high frequency updates at an average rate of 8 Microblogs per day, and the content did not let go of any hot spots, such as festivals, entertainment news, and popular movies.

But even marketing veterans like Durex often roll over.

In September 2017, Durex put a female sex toy on the shelves of the Tmall store, and when advertising this product in June 2018, it used too explicit language, which was criticized by many netizens as too vulgar.

On April 19, 2019, Durex and Heytea conducted a linkage marketing, publishing a copy of "Not a drop is allowed tonight" on Weibo, with the pattern of the Heytea drink cup, and the copywriting of Heytea is "Hi Dudu, I remember that date, I said that from that day on, you always have my cheese on your lips." The English consonant "For one night" of "4·19" has the meaning of "one night stand", and the copywriting of Durex and Xicha makes many netizens feel vulgar and obscene.

On the same day, in addition to Xicha, Durex also linked up with popular software products such as Hungry, Taobao, budweiser and so on, which also caused controversy.

In the end, Durex was fined 810,000 yuan for the above two marketing incidents.

In fact, most of the ads that provoke public outrage are either because they offend female consumer groups or because they involve vulgar jokes, which makes both sexes feel very uncomfortable.

In January 2021, Cotton Times released a controversial advertisement: a young girl came home late at night, was followed by someone, and the girl used cotton remover cotton to remove makeup, immediately became ugly, successfully self-protected, and the video also accompanied the vomiting sound of the stalker seeing the girl after removing makeup. This Weibo was immediately scolded on the hot search, netizens accused the cotton era of women's fear as a creativity, the cause of sexual assault blamed on the victim's makeup, is the second harm to the victim.

The public has just forgotten the rotten stems of the cotton era, and the well-known talk show actor Li Shi has been spat on because of similar rotten stems. On February 24, 2021, Li Shi published an advertisement for women's underwear on his personal Weibo, which contained vulgar copywriting such as "My Workplace Lifesuit" and "Let Women Easily Lie Down and Win the Workplace".

Li's advertisement also makes many female netizens feel very dissatisfied: women's achievements in the workplace rely on hard work, rather than selling the hue of "lying to win", using the unspoken rules of the workplace that the majority of women hate as advertising words, which is very insulting to the dignity of women in the workplace. Therefore, six months later, Li Shi was listed on the list of illegal advertising cases by the Beijing Haidian District Market Supervision Bureau, and was confiscated 225,000 yuan of illegal gains and fined 651,000 yuan, totaling more than 800,000 yuan.

It's not just P&G that has recently offended female consumers. Some netizens broke the news that the dairy packaging produced by Shanghai Youchun Animal Husbandry Technology Co., Ltd. was printed with the advertising slogan of "We raise dairy cows as daughters" attracted attention. The netizen said, "I was also reported by the company for violating the right to reputation for publishing this slogan." ”

On March 23, 2022, in response to the milk packaging advertising storm, the company issued an apology statement, saying that the advertisement did not consider the problem of comprehensive, especially the feelings of women, and the company solemnly apologized.

Another type of advertising that makes consumers dissatisfied is the overwhelming online loan advertisement during the boom of online loans. This kind of advertising appears through the boom of consumption upgrading, often using consumers' lack of consciousness as a pain point for marketing, and even showing discrimination against low-income groups, making consumers feel "full of malice".

In October 2020, Ant Huabei placed an advertisement in the subway, including the construction team leader lending money to his daughter for his birthday, the graduates borrowing money to travel around the world, etc., and the advertising screen that lent money to his daughter for her birthday, with the copywriting is "the day of a family of three, no matter how carefully calculated, the daughter's birthday should also be decent."

Coincidentally, in December of that year, Jingdong Finance's video advertisement also involved low-income groups, the video content is a passenger dressed as a migrant worker on the plane to ask for help from the flight attendant, saying that the mother is motion sickness and wants to vomit, hoping that the flight attendant opens the window to breathe, and the surrounding passengers laugh at the lack of common sense of the migrant workers. Then the flight attendant recommended the upgrade service, and the balance of the migrant workers was only 53 yuan, and a big brother in a suit in the back row took the mobile phone of the migrant worker, clicked a few times on the mobile phone, helped him open the "reserve gold" of the Jingdong gold bar, and upgraded him.

Many netizens believe that these advertisements use low-income groups to "play with stems", which has involved discrimination, and equating high consumption with the sense of ritual in life is pandering to consumerism and creating money anxiety. Moreover, the borrowing of money in the advertisement seems to be an understatement, but it does not tell potential consumers that the money is to be repaid with interest.

These advertisements have played a counter-effect, and many netizens said that not only do they not want to borrow money to consume ahead, but they want to turn off the flowers as soon as possible to avoid being controlled by consumerism and becoming a "delicate poor".

How to avoid rollover?

The successes and failures encountered by marketing veterans such as Procter & Gamble, Durex, and Coconut Tree can be said to be the epitome of network marketing in the era of self-media.

Network marketing on social media, it is necessary to continue to attract traffic, create explosive models, to improve user loyalty, and Internet users to love to play terrier young people, want to establish a brand image in the young consumer group, you must continue to create "terriers" through video, copywriting and other ways, with the help of online community rapid spread.

Just as traditional cross-talk and sketches often contain low-level fun "meat mouths", "ethical mouths" that use ethical relationships to make fun of each other and take advantage of each other, this way of creating "stem" marketing is easy to go to kitsch and vulgarity, and use pornography, discrimination against women, discrimination against low-income groups and other ways to create laughter and explosive points.

For example, in July 2017, faw-Volkswagen Audi published an advertisement on the official Weibo of used cars, which is a case of failure to create a "terrier". In the advertising video, the groom's mother "inspects the goods on the spot" at the wedding, checking the bride's appearance, pinching her nose, pricking her ears and lips. Before leaving the wedding scene, the mother glanced at the bride's breasts again. At this time, the voiceover sounded: "Important decisions must be made carefully." Audi used car online 4S shop, the official certification is assured. ”

This advertisement is obviously suspected of sexism, and under the criticism of netizens, Audi finally had to come out and apologize.

In the era of traditional media, advertisements are mostly published in newspapers and magazines in the form of covers and illustrations, or published on television in the form of videos, and traditional media are more strictly reviewed, so there are few overly kitsch and vulgar advertisements. However, in the era of self-media marketing, due to the lack of strict internal review of the company, many advertisements containing "rotten stems" were accidentally released from the network, which not only did not enhance the brand image, but also led to disastrous consequences.

As early as 2020, mainstream media began to pay attention to the negative impact of vulgar advertising. In 2020, after Jingdong released a loan advertisement for migrant workers to borrow money to upgrade, Xinhuanet's official Weibo commented that Jingdong's "three views are not correct". At the same time, Xinhuanet also pointed out that online lending, medical beauty and other industries have become the hardest hit areas of vulgar advertising, using content such as the gap between rich and poor, urban and rural differences to stimulate the emotions of netizens for marketing.

Xinhua pointed out sharply: "Provoking confrontation, creating anxiety, indulging desires ... As long as you can attract network traffic, you can do whatever it takes. Under the surface of these vulgar marketing, sensationalism is a distorted value orientation... The Internet is not a garbage dump, the bottom line can not be crossed, to create a clean and healthy network environment requires reverence! ”

In early 2021, Workers Daily interviewed Zhang Xiang, a professor at the School of Advertising at the Communication University of China and vice president of the National Academy of Advertising, on the issue of vulgar advertising. Zhang Xiang said that some advertising practitioners inadvertently rub the dross of daily life into public communication, and some practitioners deliberately create vulgar advertisements in order to earn traffic. Compared with traditional media, the Internet is more time-sensitive, faster and more open, which objectively amplifies the influence of vulgar advertising.

In recent years, there have been countless enterprises "stepping on the thunder" due to vulgar advertising, and these lessons are worth learning from later generations. Instead of being criticized by consumers, criticized by the mainstream media and punished by the regulatory authorities after publishing an advertisement that is not thoughtful enough, it is better to do an internal review of the advertisement at the beginning to avoid the overturning of the advertisement after it is released.

Resources:

Procter & Gamble lost again, and the Chinese market became the last stubborn (Tiger Sniff)

Fined 810,000, Durex "connotation advertising" overturned (Red Star News)

Durex 419 Cross-border Marketing: Cheng ye copywriting, defeat also copywriting (interface news)

A number of well-known companies advertise "rollover" Ideas are not vulgar enough to make up? (Workers Daily)

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