Top 10 Marketing Events in 2023: There is always a battle to become famous, and there is always a "thunder point" to touch

In the first half of the year, there were many marketing failures, and some became famous overnight. This article selects the top ten classic marketing events in the first half of the year for analysis. Let's take a look.

2023 is already halfway through, and as usual, Communication Gymnastics will review the important marketing events in the first half of this year. You can get a basic impression of the marketing industry in the first half of 2023 through the following ten major marketing events.

Judging from the marketing events we have observed, public sentiment is becoming a double-edged sword. Many excellent marketing cases have hit the public sentiment, but at the same time, a large number of public relations crises have also stemmed from the backlash of public sentiment.

It can be said that brands are facing a very emotional communication environment. This external environment is like an amplifier, which can easily amplify the strengths and weaknesses of brands. This will make traditional brand theory ineffective to a certain extent. A brand may quickly accumulate volume and complete large-scale brand awareness education due to the fermentation of positive public opinion; or it may cause the brand image accumulated over decades to collapse due to the fermentation of negative public opinion.

Therefore, the emotional nature of the external environment is essentially a shock to the long-termism of brands, but at the same time it also highlights the role of a specific campaign in brand building, that is, brand marketing has become more "speculative." Whether you like the current communication environment or not, this trend will continue.

1. Coconut Tree "Earth Desire" Live Broadcast

Coconut Tree's marketing moves always attract public attention. Coconut Tree's official Douyin account started live streaming to sell goods during the National Day in 2022. At that time, the live streaming room was full of plump female anchors, dancing in tights to sell goods. Because the style was very similar to the 1990s, netizens called it the "earthy style" live streaming.

Coco Tree's live broadcast has caused controversy among netizens, and has been accused of objectifying women and skirting the line. Coco Tree has also been fined by market regulators for "earthy marketing" many times. However, Coco Tree still maintains its own "earthy" brand characteristics in the live broadcast room, and claims to "stick to its own brand aesthetics and focus on originality."

Since the beginning of March, male anchors wearing tight vests or black see-through outfits have appeared in the Douyin live broadcast room of the Coconut Tree Group. The Coconut Tree Group has also opened two accounts, one with blue characters on a white background for female anchors and one with yellow characters on a blue background for male anchors. Netizens joked that "Coconut Tree objectifies every gender equally." Now, Coconut Tree's "earthy live broadcast" has gradually been accepted by netizens. In a Weibo poll of 360,000 people, more than 300,000 people believed that Coconut Tree "is not on the verge of breaking the law."

It is worth mentioning that the appeal of Coco Tree Live is not to "sell goods". There are no products on the shelves in the store of Coco Tree's official Douyin account. Feigua data shows that Coco Tree has held 75 live broadcasts to sell goods in 180 days, but the cumulative sales volume was only 2,500-5,000, with sales of 100,000-250,000.

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With its own "earthy" style, Coco Tree has been a hot topic in recent years. At a time when traditional brands are seeking to transform themselves into younger brands, the value of Coco Tree is not that it has made any changes, but that it has not made many changes, but has formed a unified brand recognition and social communication topic. In contrast, many traditional companies do not have the determination of Coco Tree, but have failed in the process of brand rejuvenation.

The construction of brand awareness is largely derived from the repetition of information, so in the process of brand rejuvenation, it is necessary to balance the art of "change and constancy". New means such as online live broadcast, social networks, and IP co-branding can help brands reach young users, but the core of the brand and the user needs that the brand points to need companies to continue to stick to it.

Coconut Tree uses the live broadcast room as a scene for spreading brand value rather than a scene for bringing goods to sell. This is a relatively rare choice, but at the same time, Coconut Tree has also found the content form of "aerobics" to match the live broadcast scene, while avoiding the difficulty of price management in online and offline channels. From the perspective of long-term brand development, once Coconut Tree realizes the brand cognitive association with "good figure", it will undoubtedly have a huge role in promoting the brand in the future.

In fact, for the public aesthetic, the boundary between rustic and trendy is not clear and can be easily reversed. This can be seen from the examples of Mixue Ice City and Balenciaga. Therefore, "aesthetics" is actually not important. The unique "style" of the brand and the differentiated recognition of the brand are more important, and this is also the core reason why users consume products and recognize brands.

2. HEYTEA and FENDI Collaboration

The joint product of HEYTEA and luxury brand FENDI was launched on May 17. On the same day, HEYTEA's mini program had a bug due to a surge in visits and required multiple manual refreshes.

The co-branded products include 4 limited desserts and a specially blended milk tea called "FENDI Joy Yellow". What really prompted consumers to rush to buy was the offer of a FENDI co-branded coaster or badge and a yellow FENDI handbag for every purchase of 2 cups of 'FENDI Joy Yellow' drinks. In less than half an hour after the sale started, many co-branded peripherals were sold out.

IP co-branding is a common marketing method for new tea brands such as HEYTEA, NAYUKI, and Luckin Coffee, but there is no doubt that the cooperation with FENDI has made this IP cross-border product the hottest co-branded product of HEYTEA in recent years. Lei Jun, Xiaohongshu bloggers and all kinds of people have come together to "promote" a cup of beverage.

However, the industry has mixed opinions on Fendi, which has brought traffic through this joint collaboration. Some people think that Fendi has gained a screen-sweeping influence among young people, bringing new potential customers to the brand; however, others think that Fendi's participation will lower the brand image and lose its original core users.

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Joint marketing has become the mainstream and must-have option for brand marketing. Joint products can often better expand the "marginal circle" to drive sales. From the perspective of the tea beverage track, in 2022, Heytea's joint cooperation beverage launch frequency is about once every half a month in summer and once a month in winter; Nayuki's Tea, as a competitor of Heytea, also maintains a stable frequency of launching joint SKUs, with a total of 16 joint collaborations throughout the year.

In fact, the joint efforts of new tea drink companies and high-end brands can often achieve good communication results. For example, the joint efforts of Manner Coffee and HR Helena achieved good market response in the summer of 2022. For high-end brands that rarely engage in joint marketing, new tea drink brands and coffee brands are good partners.

Although the traffic brought by this Fendi joint cooperation is somewhat controversial, it is undeniable that Fendi's yellow theme color is now forming a brand imprint among Generation Z. It is worth noting that in this cooperation, the handmade bags at Fendi's "hand in hand" exhibition are priced at about 100,000 yuan, and the waiting time is 3 to 4 months.

In the era of mobile Internet, traditional luxury brands are facing communication difficulties with young consumers on the one hand, and are also impacted by trendy fashion brands on the other. In recent years, Balenciaga’s earthy products and LV’s Xiaohongshu live broadcast controversy are concrete manifestations of the marketing difficulties of luxury brands.

The normalization of IP co-branding also means that co-branded marketing needs to be explored in depth, whether for luxury brands or for new tea drinks and fast-moving consumer goods brands. The cooperation between HEYTEA and FENDI can be said to have created a model for current IP co-branded marketing.

3. Five controversial advertisements featuring female doctors

"My husband makes me mad, so I drink", "I stay up late to watch TV series, so I drink", "I'm one year older, so I drink", "Five female doctors drink, it's all your fault!" After facing condemnation for "insulting women", the five female doctors quickly became famous with the help of this elevator advertisement, attracting a lot of traffic.

Interestingly, a large number of consumers flocked to the live broadcast room out of curiosity and exploration, blindly and passionately placing orders. According to relevant data from Douyin, after the public opinion fermented, the sales of the five female doctors' Douyin live broadcasts continued to rise, and the increase even reached 168%.

After the advertisement was investigated, the production company "Red Production" and the operator "Uncle Golden Gun" behind it also attracted attention from the industry again. The company is good at using the "black and red" route, and once promoted the slogan "shamelessness is morality" and established a bonus system for being scolded. If the advertisement is ridiculed by the whole nation after it is released, the company will reward employees with 200,000 yuan.

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Under the pressure of survival and capital competition, new consumer brands may choose brainwashing advertisements such as "Five Female Doctors" as a communication method. In general, 4A advertising companies do not agree with the marketing method of brainwashing advertising, believing that it damages the brand's tone. The controversy over brainwashing advertising is also a major point of confrontation between 4A advertising schools and local advertising schools.

Whether the advertisement is "brainwashing" is not the point itself, the point is still the core value conveyed by the brainwashing advertisement. However, the content of the advertisement of the five female doctors caused anxiety among the people and intensified social contradictions, thus triggering a backlash from public opinion. It is not difficult to find that the previous advertisement controversy of Ulike's hair removal device "No sapphire, I won't take it off" has obviously received more public criticism than the brainwashing advertisements of Zhihu and Mafengwo.

Brainwashing ads need to rely on strong media for output, and elevators are almost the only scene for brainwashing ads. That is why Focus Media's Jiang Nanchun frequently supports brainwashing ads and has previously launched a set of "super-overlay marketing" methodologies. The brainwashing ad phenomenon is obviously difficult to disappear in the context of rising traffic costs, but the backlash effect of public opinion brought about by it requires brands to pay more attention.

But the controversy over the five female doctors' advertisements has also triggered a new problem, which is the advertising and marketing problem of the functional food industry. With the rise of the new health consumption industry, more and more functional food brands have emerged, but according to laws and regulations, the "effects" of functional foods are strictly limited to advertising. At the same time, the definition of functional foods in my country is unclear and the supervision is relatively vague. Coupled with the long-standing "IQ tax" public opinion in the industry, all these factors have led to the marketing dilemma of health consumption brands.

Therefore, behind the brainwashing advertisements of the five female doctors, there is not only the issue of brand marketing itself, but also the issue of supervision and development of the functional food industry, which are problems that are difficult to effectively solve in the short term.

4. "Zibo BBQ" breaks the cultural tourism circle

Zibo has become a hotspot because of barbecue. Cars with license plates from the south or the north can be found at the entrance of Zibo’s Badaju Market. “Go to Zibo for barbecue” has become a popular term on social media.

The Zibo barbecue craze first started in early March, when a large number of college students came to Zibo to taste barbecue, which attracted widespread attention and became a hot topic. On March 13, Zibo City opened 21 special barbecue bus routes to provide convenient transportation services for tourists.

In April, the popularity of barbecue in Zibo exploded, increasing by an astonishing 599% month-on-month. On April 16, the Zibo Municipal Government issued a reminder to regulate the pricing behavior of operators to ensure that the prices of barbecue restaurants are fair and reasonable. Then, from April 28 to May 2, Zibo City built a new barbecue city covering an area of ​​100 acres, which lasted for 20 days and attracted about 120,000 people to Zibo.

Zibo became the biggest winner during the May Day holiday after the epidemic was lifted this year. Under the promotion of the Zibo government, it also established a city cultural and tourism brand in one fell swoop. "Zibo Barbecue" (barbecue with scallion rolls) has also become a new way to eat barbecue, and a large number of Zibo barbecue restaurants have appeared all over the country.

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On the one hand, Zibo's popularity is due to the tourism dividends brought about by the relaxation of the epidemic. In the context that consumption has not yet recovered as a whole, "affordable" Zibo has become a kind of tourism "consumption downgrade" destination. Zibo barbecue was initially ignited by students' graduation trips.

But what is more noteworthy is the active actions of the Zibo government in the "Zibo BBQ" trend, which has successfully made Zibo popular. For example, a new barbecue city that can accommodate 10,000 people was built within 20 days; a "barbecue license application window" was opened in the local government hall; a barbecue association was registered to standardize industry standards; a "Golden Furnace Award" was set up and barbecue coupons were issued to merchants; the "Smart Zibo BBQ Service" applet was launched, a barbecue train was opened, and barbecue buses were added, etc.

It is worth mentioning that Zibo has opened a large number of parking lots of party and government agencies and public institutions to tourists for free use, and lifted the ban on roadside stalls. Urban management is also serving the cultural tourism economy and people's livelihood. This requires considerable courage from the leadership of the Zibo government to a certain extent. These measures have received considerable praise on social networks, shaping the image of Zibo as a "proactive government."

The popularity of the new style of barbecue has boosted the cultural tourism brand of Zibo and even the cultural tourism economy of Shandong. From the perspective of communication, Zibo has activated the topic and communication heat of social networking platforms through government services. On the one hand, official media and government officials have actively spoken out and spread on social media to seize the traffic heat; on the other hand, a large number of bloggers and UP hosts have come to Zibo to create and disseminate content. The continuous interaction between official media and users has jointly given birth to the "Zibo phenomenon."

5. BMW MINI Ice Cream Public Relations Crisis

On April 20, the BMW MINI booth at the Shanghai Auto Show was suspected of discriminating between Chinese and foreign visitors when distributing ice cream - BMW staff refused to provide free ice cream to the person who filmed the video, but later enthusiastically provided it to foreigners and instructed them how to open the package. After the incident was exposed, BMW MINI quickly occupied multiple Weibo hot searches and was accused of "worshiping foreign things and fawning on foreigners".

On April 20, German BMW AG (BMWG) closed down 3.62% at 100.02 euros per share, and its market value evaporated by 2.421 billion euros, equivalent to about 18.3 billion yuan. Some netizens jokingly called this the most expensive cup of ice cream in history.

On the 21st, MINI China issued a second public relations statement on the same day, which brought the incident to a climax. The statement was not only contradictory and inconsistent, but also used a reverse question to the public - "Can you please give them more tolerance and space?"

This subsequently triggered a public backlash across the Internet, with netizens saying that this was an "epic lousy PR" and even rewriting the PR draft for the MINI brand. The ice cream incident has now become a major PR crisis.

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In the past, corporate public relations crises often occurred in advertising and marketing, product promotion, and executive speeches, but now the causes of public relations crises are becoming more comprehensive. The BMW ice cream incident shows that we have entered an era of "micro" public relations crises, where any small move by a brand may lead to a large public relations crisis through the fermentation of public opinion.

In the BMW ice cream incident, the public relations crisis originated from a very small detail, the distribution of ice cream, but it was continuously magnified by the brand's erroneous public relations strategy, forming a butterfly effect. BMW has always had a good brand image in China and has a complete marketing and public relations system, so it is surprising that such a major public relations crisis was triggered.

This also means that China's social psychology and user needs are undergoing tremendous changes, and traditional foreign brands such as BMW are misaligned with Chinese user needs. Especially against the backdrop of the rise of new energy vehicle brands, traditional gasoline vehicle brands such as BMW have shown signs of fatigue.

In the past, BMW MINI once became the travel choice of the urban middle class, but with the emergence of emerging brands such as Tesla, the decline in BMW MINI's market competitiveness is obvious to all. According to data from the China Passenger Car Association, in the first five months of 2023, the import volume of the MINI brand fell by 43% year-on-year, and the sales of MINI (non-Countryman and Clubman) models fell by 40%. According to official data disclosed by MINI, in 2022, the MINI brand delivered a total of 28,700 vehicles in the Chinese market, accounting for only 3.63% of the group's total sales in China.

Public relations crises themselves usually do not seriously affect the long-term sales of products, but in general, public relations crises are only a side effect of the decline of brand power. If BMW MINI was the protagonist of the auto show, the brand's on-site arrangements would be more rigorous and orderly, and the ice cream incident might have been avoided. Therefore, the problem of BMW MINI is more about strategic choice and brand obsolescence, which is also a common problem faced by a large number of old foreign brands.

6. Cathay Pacific’s public relations crisis

On May 22, a whistleblower posted a post on Xiaohongshu, accusing Cathay Pacific of discriminating against non-English speaking passengers. The whistleblower publicly released recordings of flight attendants saying that if passengers could not ask for blankets in English, they did not deserve blankets; making announcements in Cantonese, mocking mainland tourists for not understanding; and impatiently answering mainland tourists' questions about entry cards.

At about 10 p.m. that night, Cathay Pacific apologized for the report by netizens that the flight attendants discriminated against non-English speaking passengers, and said that they had contacted the passengers to understand the situation and would investigate and deal with it. At about 2 p.m. the next day, Cathay Pacific issued another statement saying that it had suspended the flight missions of the flight attendants involved, and immediately launched an internal investigation, and promised to announce the results of the handling within 3 days.

At nearly 10 o'clock the next evening, Cathay Pacific released the final investigation results and announced the dismissal of the three flight attendants involved.

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Behind the Cathay Pacific incident is the strengthening of the voice of mainland consumers, and more broadly speaking, it is the commercial friction caused by the integration of Chinese consumers into the global consumer market. Today, mainland consumers have become an important consumer group in the global consumer market, and as mainland consumers' cultural confidence increases, cultural conflict incidents may occur more frequently.

We can interpret the Cathay Pacific incident from various angles. For example, it reflects the discomfort of the Hong Kong aviation industry in the face of internal and external challenges, the arrogance of international brands in the face of mainland Chinese consumers, and the fact that Xiaohongshu is becoming a new battlefield for brand public opinion explosion...

Frankly speaking, Cathay Pacific's public relations response was on point, with timely responses and careful wording, which prevented the incident from triggering further public backlash. But more importantly, Cathay Pacific's internal brand management system and employee norms need to be upgraded urgently, otherwise it will only be a temporary solution and not a permanent solution.

7. Great Wall reported BYD

On May 25, Great Wall Motors' report on BYD attracted market attention. On April 11, Great Wall Motors submitted report materials to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and issued a statement to the public, reporting that BYD Qin PLUS DM-i and Song PLUS DM-i used normal pressure fuel tanks and were suspected of not meeting the emission standards of evaporative pollutants. This was also the first time in the history of China's automobile industry that a company in the same industry made a public complaint.

It is worth noting that BYD's Song PULS DM-i and Qin PLUS DM-i models have become the protagonists of the controversy over emission pollutants, and these two models were also BYD's best-selling models last year.

BYD issued a statement on the same day, saying that it firmly opposes any form of unfair competition, and stated that the vehicles submitted for inspection did not meet the national standards for inspection, and that its inspection report was invalid and Great Wall Motors could not use it as a basis.

With the public relations exchanges between the two major automakers, the competition between the automakers surfaced. Since BYD and Great Wall are listed companies on the A-share and H-share markets, the whistleblowing incident also caused turbulence in the capital market.

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The constant friction and collision between car companies also shows that the automobile market has entered a new stage. Since the beginning of this year, the price war of new energy vehicles has quickly swept the fuel vehicle market. Tesla cut its prices at the beginning of the year, and the price of Hubei Citroen C6 dropped directly from 216,800 to 121,900, triggering a series of chain reactions. More than 30 car brands such as Buick, Chevrolet, MG and Roewe were forced to cut prices.

Behind the public relations war is a brutal market war. According to the China Passenger Car Association, BYD will have a 63% share of the plug-in hybrid vehicle market in 2022. This monopoly will obviously trigger competition from many friendly companies. The Haval H6, once the king of the fuel vehicle era, has also lost its championship throne with the rise of Tesla and BYD.

Now that Geely, Chery, Great Wall and other automakers have decided to enter the plug-in hybrid vehicle market, this will intensify the competition among automakers. Among them, Great Wall's sales materials are simple and straightforward. In a promotional display stand at a Great Wall 4S store, the third-generation Haval H6PHEV and BYD Song PLUS-DMI are directly compared, and it is pointed out that "BYD blade batteries have at least 43 spontaneous combustions in 2022, the king of spontaneous combustion!"

Competition in the automotive industry has become fierce in 2023, and the entire industry is facing a reshuffle. The new energy transformation of traditional automakers has also entered a critical stage. In the involutionary auto market, it may become normal for giants to fight each other. The automotive industry is a key industry for the outbreak of "black public relations", and the war of words between automakers will not stop in the coming time.

8. Banana Jingzhe Marketing

On March 6, the long video advertisement "Qingzhe Order" produced by Jiaoxia became popular in the brand and marketing circles, with a cumulative exposure of 700 million on the entire network. The content showed a strong Chinese temperament and made people resonate with China's solar term culture.

The content of "The Awakening" is essentially a customized MV for singer Tan Weiwei, and the advertisement brings out the brand positioning of Jiaoxia Lightweight Outdoor. It is not difficult to find from various media that Jiaoxia spent a lot of money on this promotion, which is considered to be a last-minute publicity before the listing to obtain a higher valuation and pricing from the market.

In the subsequent brand marketing activities of Banana, Banana officially announced that Jay Chou became the brand spokesperson and cooperated to launch the brand video "Simple Love", but the topic of discussion was far less than that of "The Awakening". However, in any case, this round of brand upgrade promotion of Banana is a very eye-catching marketing communication case in the first half of 2023.

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In recent years, brand marketing content has been constantly exploring traditional Chinese cultural elements. In addition to this Jingzhe Festival, Audi's Xiaoman advertisement also attracted attention, but the Xiaoman advertisement was a big negative. However, it is not difficult to see that for domestic brands, the potential for the dissemination of Chinese culture and national trend elements should not be underestimated.

It is worth mentioning that in today's short video era, long brand advertisements often fail to arouse user interest, but "The Awakening" has gained user recognition through the form of music MV, and has well integrated the brand concept of Jiaoxia. From the perspective of marketing communication, it is undoubtedly a success.

But behind the marketing of Jiaoxia is actually the problem of corporate development of new consumer brands. Like many new consumer brands, Jiaoxia has high marketing costs and low R&D costs. It has obvious "Internet celebrity" attributes, and its advertising costs have skyrocketed 16 times in two years. However, in the absence of sufficient R&D support, it is difficult to say that the product has a real competitive advantage, and the market is questioning whether the company can achieve "long-term success".

In the past, Bananaxia’s concepts and marketing have supported the company’s growth very well, but in the context of the cooling of new consumption today, the marginal effect of marketing is decreasing, and Bananaxia will also face new challenges.

9. The capital chain of Hutou Bureau was broken

The broken capital chain of Hutouju has once again poured cold water on the new consumer industry that has yet to recover. At the end of March, employees revealed the difficulties that Hutouju had encountered in the past six months, including closing stores, evacuating cities, broken capital chains, inability to pay rent, and arrears of employee wages and supplier payments. This darling that was once favored by top VCs is now in a dilemma of cash flow cuts.

Hutouju, whose life is hanging by a thread, has been pushed to the forefront, but this storm was not without warning. Last year, Hutouju successively closed stores in Chengdu, Chongqing and Beijing, many of which were closed within less than half a year. The company laid off half of its employees in July, and in December, it ran out of raw materials and suddenly announced that it would open up to franchisees.

It only took three years for Hutouju to go from being a top consumer with a single store valued at over 100 million to being on the verge of bankruptcy.

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Obviously, Hutouju is not the last new consumer company to get into trouble, but its predicament has broken many of the established perceptions of the new consumer industry and can be said to have taught the industry a new lesson.

First, break the "product-only theory". Product innovation in the consumer goods industry often cannot sustain competitive advantages. In the Chinese market with a mature supply chain, the cost of product replication is very low. Hutouju performed well in product innovation, but its innovation was quickly imitated by competitors, and it was difficult to maintain product dividends in the long run.

The second is to break the "trend-only theory". Hutouju has successfully seized the trends of multiple industries such as consumption upgrades, innovative categories, national trend culture and social communication, enabling it to be valued at 2 billion with less than ten stores in the early days. However, although the brand is innovative and focused on long-term strategy, it has fallen into a capital chain dilemma. The impact of the epidemic and macro events has put tremendous pressure on Hutouju, but its active store opening strategy has not focused on internal cost reduction and efficiency improvement, resulting in strategic misjudgment. In a tightening environment, business operations need to pay more attention to cash flow, otherwise it will be difficult to survive even with book assets and profits.

The third point is to break the "marketing-only" mentality. Many emerging consumer brands are too focused on results and conversions, but ignore brand building, which leads to the brand being short-lived. However, by observing the marketing strategy of Hutouju, we can see that they insist on investing in brand advertising and delivering brand value, and have not fallen into the misunderstanding of simply pursuing traffic.

This is also the reason why after the news of Hutou Bureau’s broken capital chain was exposed, many users on social media still felt sorry for Hutou Bureau. Unfortunately, “product + marketing” did not enable Hutou Bureau to avoid its current predicament.

10. HOUSE Laughing Fruit Incident

On May 13, talk show host HOUSE (Li Haoshi) used inappropriate content during an offline theater performance in Beijing. After the performance, an audience member posted the content on Weibo, which caused a huge uproar and the media outlets came out to express their opinions.

On the 16th, HOUSE's Weibo account was banned and removed from the list of performers on Xiaoguo's official WeChat applet. On the 17th, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism issued a notice to severely investigate and punish the "Xiaoguo Talk Show" company and individuals involved in the case, impose a fine of 13.35 million yuan, and suspend all performances held by Xiaoguo in Beijing indefinitely.

Xiaoguo officially accepted the punishment and immediately terminated its contract with HOUSE. It also suspended offline performances across the country and implemented rectification measures such as probation and salary cuts for senior executives and business teams.

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The Xiaoguo incident touched upon the sensitive area of ​​the content industry, which is essentially a matter of content risk control for brands. This type of minefield of content related to nationality has appeared frequently in recent years, such as the Three Squirrels "squinty eyes" makeup, the D&G insulting China incident, the HM Xinjiang cotton incident, and so on.

The Xiaoguo incident reflects many problems. First, offline talk shows, a new form of content, previously had certain difficulties in content supervision, but now they will be supervised more standardizedly. It is foreseeable that new forms of content such as podcasts will also be subject to strict supervision in the future.

Secondly, Xiaoguo artists are actors, with attributes of KOLs and celebrity artists. Li Dan has become the spokesperson for many brands. Celebrity artists are experiencing their image collapse in various fields. For example, Zhang Jike and Aaron Yan also experienced the collapse of their image this year.

Finally, there is the issue of brand content management. Nowadays, brands are speaking out in multiple traffic platforms. The brand's content outsourcing supply chain is complex, and the probability of content risk is high, which is easy to ferment public opinion. For example, the Audi Xiaoman incident is essentially a content management issue. Today, how brands build a content management and internal risk control system will be a major challenge for brand communication.

Author: Zheng Zhuoran

Source: WeChat public account "Spread Gymnastics (ID: chuanboticao)"