The Hainan Coconut Tree Group's "coconut water rubbing milk" advertisement that began on May 6 was fined 400,000 yuan, which seems to be far from over and is still fermenting.
According to a number of media reports, after the 400,000 yuan fine was exposed, Coconut Tree Group withdrew the relevant advertisement, but issued a statement of "one worry" and "two dissatisfaction" on the evening of the 9th, complaining that he was fined. On the afternoon of the 11th, an online video said that the four female anchors of the Coconut Tree Group changed their previous dressing style, wore long sunscreen clothing, and danced on the background wall of the "Coconut Tree Group 2024 Hainan Stability and Happiness Run" event.
The video of "Coconut Tree Live Room Style Changes" went viral on the Internet. Screenshot of the tide news video
The video went viral on social platforms on the 12th, "After being fined 400,000 yuan for the coconut tree's side advertisement, the anchor's live broadcast was tightly wrapped" and "The style of the coconut tree live broadcast room has changed greatly" quickly became a hot topic on the Internet, causing widespread attention and controversy.
As of press time, the official Coconut Tree Group has not responded to the latest viral video.
1 After the coconut tree was punished, the video of "wearing sun-protective clothing" and dancing attracted attention again
On May 6, Coconut Tree Group was administratively fined 400,000 yuan by the Longhua Branch of Haikou Market Supervision and Administration Bureau. According to reports, the promotional graphics and texts published by the Coconut Tree Group on its own website used state officials for commercial marketing, and used advertising slogans that violated public order and good customs, such as "rubbing milk with coconut (juice)" and "South Pacific beauties rarely 'airport'", violating the relevant provisions of the Advertising Law.
On the evening of the 9th, Coconut Tree Group issued a statement of "one worry" and "two dissatisfaction". Screenshot of Coconut Tree's official website
On May 8, topics related to "Coconut Tree Involved in Rubbing Advertising Was Fined 400,000 Yuan" rushed to the hot search on multiple platforms.
On the evening of the 9th, Coconut Tree Group issued a statement of "one worry" and "two dissatisfaction", which was interpreted by the outside world as a "hard" fine. The statement said that they were worried that the famous brand would be destroyed and "smash the jobs of nearly 20,000 employees of 'coconut trees' and upstream and downstream enterprises." Coconut Tree reprinted on its official website "Rubbing milk with coconut water" and "South Pacific beauties rarely have 'airports'" is popular science education, not a commercial advertisement, "You can do it if the law does not prohibit it".
On the 10th, the Haikou market supervision department told the media that Coconut Tree Group had withdrawn the relevant advertisement. If there are such violations in the future, further follow-up will be followed. For fines, companies will be required to pay them within a time limit.
On the afternoon of the 11th, a video related to "The Style of the Coconut Tree Live Room Has Changed" appeared on the Internet - 4 female anchors suspected of being Coconut Tree Group changed their "cool" dressing style in the past, wore long sunscreen clothing, wrapped their faces and bodies tightly, and danced in front of the background wall of the "Coconut Tree Group 2024 Hainan Stable and Happiness Run" event.
Screenshot of the video of "The Style of the Coconut Tree Live Broadcast Room" that went viral on the Internet.
On the 12th, the related video went viral on the Internet. "After the coconut tree was fined 400,000 yuan for the side advertisement, the anchor's live broadcast was tightly wrapped" and "the style of the coconut tree live broadcast room has changed greatly" and other topics quickly aroused widespread attention and discussion.
In this regard, some netizens ridiculed that "the coconut tree boss is anti-bone". Some netizens left a message: "What kind of wind is the coconut tree live broadcast doing? At first glance, I thought it had been stolen, and now I have switched to selling sunscreen clothing. "This is obviously unconvincing", "400,000 is just for them to save 400 million advertising costs", "400,000 three on the hot search, this level is really high! ”……
The previous painting style of the live broadcast room of the Coconut Tree Group. Screenshot of the tide news video
Upstream News noticed that on May 12, in the recent videos and live broadcast records posted by the official account of Douyin Coconut Tree Group, no video clip of "female anchor wrapped tightly and dancing" was found. However, in a video released at 9 p.m. on May 11, there was a background wall of the "Coconut Tree Group 2024 Hainan Stability and Happiness Run" event in the online video, with five or six male and female anchors running in normal running clothes and shorts.
Up to now, Coconut Tree Group has not officially responded to the authenticity of the videos related to the "Coconut Tree Live Room Style Change", shooting (or screen recording) time and other issues.
2 The activity and interaction of users of the official Coconut Tree account have soared
Upstream News noticed that the official account of the Coconut Tree Group on the Douyin platform showed that at 11 o'clock on May 12, its number of fans was 2.012 million, and at 14:20, the number of fans was 2.023 million. The number of fans increased by 11,000 in 3 hours, with the blessing of hot search topics, such a number of fans is decent, which is not particularly amazing.
In recent days, the Douyin Coconut Tree Group account has indeed performed amazingly in terms of likes, comments, and retweets (shares). Screenshot of Feigua data
In addition, according to the data of the professional data platform Feigua, in the past 7 days (from the 5th to the 11th, it is the time period when its "coconut water rubbing milk" advertisement was fined 400,000 yuan) has increased by a total of 31,000 fans (not counting the data on May 12), with an average daily increase of 4407 fans (including 4884 live broadcast fans), which is about 1/3 higher than the usual increase in fans (data of the last 30 days) 3319. It can be seen that with the blessing of this wave of topic traffic, although the increase in fans is not amazing, the improvement effect is still obvious.
In terms of likes, comments and retweets (shares), the official Douyin account of Coconut Tree Group has an amazing performance. Take April 29, when this wave of topics did not start, as an example, its likes were 1539, comments were 115, and shares were 175; On May 6, these three data increased to 24030, 4238, and 8198, and on May 9, these three data were 25092, 3098, and 3138. There is a more than 10-fold increase in likes, and dozens of times an increase in comments and shares. It can be seen that this wave of topics has greatly improved the brand exposure of coconut trees.
3 Punished many times and still "dissatisfied"
In recent years, Coconut Tree Group has been on the hot search for alternative marketing (also known as reverse marketing and reverse marketing) many times, and has been fined many times, most of which cannot be avoided by being questioned vulgar advertising and controversial publicity. However, most of the coconut tree groups chose to be tough, or "discounted" sexual obedience, and "the main one is not convinced".
The controversial "I've been drinking since I grew up" coconut tree advertising slogan is still in use. Image source/Internet
In February 2019, in an advertising video of Coconut Tree Group, several female models in swimsuits were running on the beach, with the text "A cup in the morning and evening, white and tender" and "Drink from childhood to adulthood", which was accused by netizens of vulgarity and false advertising. In March of the same year, Hainan Coconut Water Beverage Co., Ltd. of Coconut Tree Group was fined 200,000 yuan by the Administration for Industry and Commerce of Longhua District, Haikou City, for obstructing social public order or violating good social customs. Coconut Tree Group's explanation for this is: "I have drunk from childhood to adulthood" advertising slogan, which does not refer to coconut water breast enlargement, but refers to drinking from children to adults, so as to promote consumers' trust in coconut palm brand coconut water, and does not violate the advertising law. At present, Coconut Tree still retains the slogan "Drink from small to big" on the packaging.
In March 2021, Coconut Tree Group released a recruitment advertisement on its official blog, "Cultivate the re-enrollment of the school of the president and deputy general manager", "If you enter the school, you will have a car, a house, and a high salary, and there will definitely be beautiful women and handsome guys to chase", which caused controversy, and the local market supervision and administration bureau subsequently filed a case for investigation. On April 2 of that year, Coconut Tree Group posted a post on Weibo and its official website "Hard", saying that this sentence did not clearly violate current laws and regulations. On June 9 of the same year, the Hainan Provincial Market Supervision Bureau announced the results of the administrative punishment and pointed out that the copy "conveys a vulgar view of marriage and love that worships money, misleads the orientation of social values, and violates good social customs", and Coconut Tree Group was fined 400,000 yuan for "obstructing social public order or violating good social customs".
In March 2021, the Coconut Tree Group's job advertisement sparked controversy. Image source/Internet
In April 2022, similar advertisements of Coconut Tree Group made a comeback, and the content basically remained unchanged, except that last year's "There must be beautiful and handsome guys chasing" was deleted, and the advertising slogan became "If you enter school, you will have a car, a house, a high salary, a future, and you can get rich"; The color is red and rhubarb, and the black and bold art words are all over.
CCTV commented that the advertisement of the Coconut Tree Group not only used exaggerated expressions, but also followed its spicy red and rhubarb, black and bold "little yellow station" visual style, which is highly consistent with some unhealthy websites, and it can be said that the "healthy expression" and legal obligations of the advertisement have been thrown out of the clouds, and the Coconut Tree Group is criticized as "the 'old fritters' in the vulgar advertising industry".
In October 2022, the coconut tree live broadcast room exploded on Douyin, attracting 350,000 fans in 10 days, and the number of Weibo topic readings exceeded 180 million, ranking first in the hot search. However, the style of its live broadcast room has caused a lot of controversy. The online video shows several women in tights dancing while showing the coconut palm coconut water in their hands during the live broadcast of the Coconut Tree Group.
In 2023, the live broadcast room of Coconut Tree Group will change its previous style, and the anchors will be replaced by a group of "muscular hunks": a group of male models wearing tight vests and holding coconut palm coconut water to show their muscles and bodies in the live broadcast room. This move once again sparked heated discussions among netizens.
The relevant person in charge of Hainan Remember Happy Culture Media Co., Ltd., the operator of the coconut tree live broadcast room, said that the live dance style of the live broadcast room is to express the central idea of "men have a man's taste, women have a woman's taste, and the coconut water has the taste of coconut water, focusing on the original taste", and emphasized that this is completely different from other products on the market.
3 Behind the edge marketing, the sales performance of coconut palms continues to rise
Corresponding to the continuous marketing and frequent punishment of the Coconut Tree Group is the continuous rise in its sales performance.
According to Hainan Special Zone Daily, on February 20 this year, the Coconut Tree Group's 2024 New Year Opening Conference was held in Haikou. In 2023, Coconut Tree Group will achieve a total annual sales volume of 700,000 tons, a year-on-year increase of 10.26%; sales of 5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.08%; The tax paid was 682 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.39%.
It is reported that this is the fourth consecutive year that Coconut Tree Group has achieved revenue growth. According to the data of the list of top 100 enterprises in Hainan Province over the years, from 2019 to 2022, the revenue of Coconut Tree Group will be 4.328 billion yuan, 3.989 billion yuan, 4.616 billion yuan, and 4.719 billion yuan respectively. According to the data of Coconut Tree Group's internal magazine "Coconut Tree People", Coconut Tree will achieve sales growth against the trend for two consecutive years in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, the sales volume increased by 16.82% compared with 2020; In 2022, sales increased by 5% on top of the double-digit growth in the same period in 2021.
Hainan Remember Happy Culture Media Co., Ltd. is a new media company incubated by Coconut Tree Group, mainly responsible for the publicity of Coconut Tree. Its person in charge, Yin Dandan, once recalled that before 2021, Coconut Tree also made many short films and promotional videos and distributed them to channels such as the official account, but because the content style was very official, the communication effect was not good. Until Yin Dandan stumbled upon the traffic password of the "coconut tree model".
Why can the coconut tree live broadcast room frequently go out of the circle and be unique? In this regard, Yin Dandan, the person in charge of the coconut palm coconut water live broadcast room, said that for the old brand, it is necessary to jump out of the original inherent publicity method and do another marketing and publicity, so as to inject a new model into the old brand and glow with new vitality.
Regarding the negative label of Coconut Tree Group on the Internet, the staff of Coconut Tree Group once responded: "I will respect different opinions, uphold an inclusive attitude, adhere to my heart, and hope that I will not lose the self-persistence of the brand in the opinions of netizens." ”
4. Enterprises cannot be "black and red are also red", and need to have a correct attitude in the face of disputes
Song Ruliang, director of the Guangdong Research Center for the Rule of Law, pointed out that the marketing of the Coconut Tree Group is a new type of marketing that can be called "legal dispute marketing", which is a kind of marketing under the condition of being familiar with the prohibitive provisions of the law, with a high degree of subjective intention, approaching or stepping on the legal red line, and the logic behind it is that regardless of whether it is punished or not, and regardless of the integrity record after the punishment, the ultimate goal is to increase sales.
One of the characteristics of this kind of sales is that legal elements such as penalties and criticisms, and disputes are regarded as marketing elements to attract consumers. Originally, sales would consider the destination's people, region, and preferences, but this kind of marketing does not consider these elements at all, and pays more attention to how to attract attention. Even though there may be negative effects and legal risks in the process, companies may have taken these into account in advance when marketing. These impacts, and this penalty, are likely to be in the company's marketing plan budget. Compared to the sales that were leveraged, the penalties were insignificant.
Jimu News commented that Coconut Tree Group has repeatedly been on the hot search due to edge marketing, and has been punished by relevant departments many times while enjoying traffic dividends. However, they do not seem to have changed their minds. There is no guarantee that similar problems will not occur next time. Because the fine of 400,000 yuan is only a small amount for the company's income, and the financial impact on the company is minimal.
This reminds us that fines are not an end in themselves. The regulatory authorities should do a good job in daily supervision, take the initiative to discover various problems in the publicity of enterprises, point out and require rectification in a timely manner, and no longer let the illegal propaganda spicy the eyes of the public. It is not allowed to allow companies to profit by misleading consumers, as well as enjoying the dividend of "black and red are also red".
For companies, it's time to make up their minds to change their marketing ideas. Even if illegal publicity can bring temporary traffic and sales, for enterprises, it is undoubtedly a drink to quench their thirst, and the dividends brought by it are also capped.