Tencent vs. Lao Gan Ma: A Big Drama Happened Between A Technology Company and A Chili Sauce Company
Why Tencent sued Lao Gan Ma?
June 30, 2020, a hot News shocked the Chinese market. Tencent sued the largest Chinese chili sauce company Lao Gan Ma (LGM) for $2.3 million in unpaid advertising fees. However, LGM said: “Others cheated Tencent; we had no commercial corporation with Tencent.” This event became hot searches on Weibo for several days. People started to make plenty of jokes on Chinese social media. Many people began to doubt the internal control of Tencent.
How did this drama start and end?
The story began in April 2019, Tencent announced LGM was the new sponsor of QQ speed S League and put LGM’s logo in the trailer of the competition. Also, for promoting LGM’s chili sauce, Tencent invited many professional players to join promotion activities and created thousands of “QQ Speed x LGM” co-branded chili sauce cans. After LGM denied the corporation, Tencent said they would do more investigation about this. July 1, 2020, Guizhou police released a statement that clarified the fact. There were three people pretended LGM’s employees and signed the corporation contact with Tencent using fake LGM’s seal. The purpose was to gain the free online game pack from Tencent and resale them online.
After the truth came out, Tencent apologized to LGM face to face and sent posts on Weibo to show their attitudes. They mentioned that to avoid similar events happen in the future, they prepared 1000 LGM chili sauces to be the reward for gathering clues. Because of this incident, the sale of LGM chili sauce is snowballing.
A flight between Tik Tok and Tencent
Many people were negatively judging Tencent. Liang Li, the vice president of Tik Tok, said on Weibo News: “a company freeze counterpart’s fund before investigating the fact because this company has formed daily thinking that uses public inspection to crack down on everything that is not conducive to it.” Tencent was unhappy about this judgment. Jun Zhang, PR Director of Tencent, responded to Liang Li by showing pictures to prove a similar event in Tik Tok before, and said: “insufficient knowledge reserves and a bad memory.” The story did not end; Liang Li sent another post to refuse Jun Zhang and explain these two events were not the same.
Attitude is important
This event affected Tencent’s reputation because social media spread the words extremely fast. However, Tencent dealt with this incident with the right attitude. One thousand chili sauces became a joke on social media now. I do not think it isn’t good for Tencent. Through this incident, I believe Tencent will realize the internal issues. The best way to avoid similar events is to figure out the internal problems and make adjustments. Also, I think Jun Zhang’s response to Liang Li was not suitable enough. He should use a more polite attitude and words to express his points.
