Tencent and spicy sauce, a publicity stunt?
China time, on June 29th, it was reported that Tencent, the Chinese Internet Giant, has sued LaoGanMa who is the manufacturer of China’s best-known spicy sauce for unpaid advertising fees of about $2 million (Sweeny, July 3rd). No one could imagine that this business case would become more and more like a comedy as more information was dig out…
Business comedy in the real-life
On June 30th, Tencent announced that they have signed an in-game advertising contract with LaoGanMa for promoting LaoGanMa spicy sauce in its popular mobile game. Since LaoGanMa did not pay anything for this contract even tough Tencent has already launched many ads in the mobile game for months. Tencent requested the court to freeze that unpaid $2 million in LaoGanMa’s bank account.
However, on the same day, LaoGanMa released the official announcement in which they denied any partnership or advertising contract with Tencent, and stated they already informed the policy for this case.
On July 1st, the police department in Guiyang, where is LaoGanMa’s headquarters, announced that they arrested three people who used faked company’s seals to pretend LaoGanMa’s marketing managers and signed the contract with Tencent for obtaining the promoting codes of that mobile game and then reselling them for profit.
What a funny story!
Everyone was laughing
The brand image of Tencent is always a smart businessman who will never make itself in a bad situation. But this time, three nobodies made Tencent lost almost $2 million with only some faked company’s seals. How ridiculous! Lots of people do not believe this news is true when it was released. After this happened, this case suddenly becomes the most concerning topic among Chinese Internet users. People predicted that it would have a negative influence on Tencent’s brand image and impact the confidence of stakeholders. Some even thought Tencent’s stock price would get down.
At that time, Tencent’s PR department started to show their marketing ability. To respond, they did not use the traditional method like releasing a serious official Announcement, they established an image of a victim for itself instead. Tencent’s official accounts on China’s mainstream social media platforms have updated some content in which Tencent uses this experience to make fun of itself. For example, on Tencent’s official Weibo account, it says that “I am the penguin who eats the faked spicy sauce!” (The logo of Tencent is a penguin). Tencent even made a video of this in the form of memes to entertain the public. Even the senior PR manager said something similar on his social media account to respond. On the other hand, Tencent paid for some KOLs on social media for spreading Tencent’s response and the identity of the victim.
Then, what is the result? Almost everyone was laughing and no one blamed Tencent for its critical business mistake. People showed their sympathy for Tencent’s experience and made lots of meme pictures to make fun of this case. Tencent has made this critical social media crisis become a marketing event in which almost everyone supports Tencent — the only victim.
However, at the end of last week, some media dug out deep information said that Tencent has sued LaoGanMa for the first time early in April. This is to say, Tencent should know their contract with LaoGanMa was a fraud and this had nothing to do with the real LaoGanMa company in April. But Tencent sued LaoGanMa again on June 29th and quickly responded as planned. In this case, some people started to realize that LaoGanMa was the only victim because their bank account may have been frozen already for two months with no reason. They believed that Tencent exploits this to transfer stakeholders’ attention to its mistake and did a publicity stunt. Although some people post the truth on social media and blamed Tencent, the enthusiasm of Internet users was already run out in the meme carnival. This case finally ended with a statement of the agreement between Tencent and LaoGanMa.
How I think
As one of the biggest Internet companies in China, Tencent was supposed not to make such a stupid mistake that signing the contract with those three people without any confirmation. Although some Internet users are now doubting that Tencent exploited this fraud case to conduct a publicity stunt, we have to admit the marketing ability and PR ability of Tencent’s PR department. They deeply understand Chinese Internet users’ behavior and the advantages of social media channels. They utilized their social media channels and people’s attention to this case to conduct an effective marketing event for its brand and successfully moved people’s attention from its business mistake which harms the brand reputation to other places. In my eyes, Tencent is still that smart businessman who must take some advantages of even a fraud that makes him lost about $2 million.
