Two interesting articles today, both having to do with Chinese Internet culture, and both leading into an ethical question that came up in a conversation recently. The question was this: Is it OK to put out “viral” videos that embed brands or have some kind of commercial message, but not identify the company behind them for a couple of weeks? (I put “viral” in quotes because the sole viral aspect of most would-be viral videos is their ability to create feelings of lethargy and disgust.)
I’ll answer question that from my point of view in a moment. But first, there were two related articles in the last day or so I thought worth mentioning. One was a post on the always useful China Media Project providing a brief overview of the history and significance of the bulletin boards (or “forums”) in China. The persistence of the forums as agenda setters is one of the defining characteristics of the Chinese Internet. It’s also a major thorn for ethical PR people because the forums can be difficult for companies to engage with and the easiest (and laziest) solution is often to pay off commenters to promote your brand or disaparage your rivals. The rationalization is something like this: It’s relatively cheap, it seems to work and, hey, even the government uses paid commenters to manage public opinion, so why shouldn’t we?
Well, to paraphrase something my mom used to say, if the Chinese government jumped off a bridge, would you? (In my case, it depends. Is the government wearing cool shoes?)
Call me naive, but I continue to believe that the best long-term approach is transparency and respect for customers, fans and Internet users in general. But as long as companies operating in China don’t want to feel like they’re fighting asymmetrical battles against companies willing to employ such tactics, or feel like this is the easiest route to buzz or managing issues, the temptation will be there.
The second article is a long Xinhua piece on the phenomenon of cyber-celebrity in China. This has been another defining aspect of the Chinese Internet. It’s not unique to China –America, after all, gifted the world with Gary Brolsma and the Numa Numa Dance– but I don’t think we can compete with China in terms of color, consistency, or cynical appropriation for marketing purposes. This article gets into a discussion of forum ethics and promotion of Internet celebrities. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the pathos that seeps out of the article. One thing China and the US have in common is the degree to which people will humiliate themselves by publicly attempting to demonstrate that they have talent despite vast evidence to the contrary. There’s a surprisingly bitter appearance by the formerly impervious-to-self-doubt Furong Jiejie.
So, by an indirect and rambling route (sorry, but you should be used to it by now) we come to the question I posed earlier. Is it OK to release a viral video with an in-obvious brand message and only disclose the identity of the brand after a week or two?
Well it’s legal, and sometimes even successful, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.
There’s an obvious question that arises in that you can do a print or TV ad campaign that doesn’t immediately identify the brand. So why not an Internet campaign? The problem is that a viral campaign requires people to be complicit in spreading your ad, while most other campaigns do not. For a funny video, most people might not care if they’re unwitting agents of advertising, but at a fundamental level it’s still deception. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Facebook’s recent problems it’s that you can get yourself in trouble by overestimating the desire of people to be involuntarily coopted into marketing campaigns. Perhaps that reaction isn’t as strong in China, but I’m reluctant to bet a reputation on it. Personally I think that if someone is going to forward a link to their friends, they have the right to know who they might be promoting by doing so, and to weigh that in their decision. If you want to build a real and sustainable relationship with your community of customers, you should treat them with due respect. Part of that is not deceiving them, even as part of a joke that you will let them in on later. Finally, many of the most powerful viral videos I’ve seen have been completely clear about the brand behind them. It seems to me that if you’re sufficiently creative, you shouldn’t need to resort to deception, and take the risks that it entails.
I have no doubt that there will be different opinions about this, especially as it relates to China. Sock it to me.
Furong Jiejie. Who says China doesn't have soft power?
Both Churchill and McCluhan talked about the third world war being an information war. If we look around that looks spot on. Answering your question would take a lot of contextual ground covering. So yes and no in short.
I think you’re right that it’s much better for “viral” videos to be upfront about what they’re promoting.
Chinese sofa-sitters have great appreciation for anything 牛逼, whether it’s in a good way or bad. I think that as long as your video is remarkable in that way, you’ll have a living room jam-packed with sofas and elegantly-carved ‘zitan’ chairs.
Remember that video of the Shanghainese “mistress” bitching out her boyfriend to get a Buick? (Gotta love the Chinese – Buick relationship, by the way.) If Buick were more upfront about the sponsorship of the video, I bet the comments would still be full of disses about bitchy Shanghainese girls and weak-handed Shanghainese men. The add would still have been a success.
I agree with your analysis – I just want to add that the key element of successful viral ads is 牛逼lity (spelling stolen from the equally awkward Englishization of 装逼 to “zhuangbi-lity”).
Most soy-sauce-buyers have a fairly healthy suspicion of almost any video uploaded onto the message boards, so it’s not like companies are really going to sneak one by. Sure, people arguing over the authenticity of the posts jacks up the viewership, but is that really the kind of press companies want – especially when it’s not even necessary?
Anyway, your new site is as 牛逼 as ever. I felt so lost while you were off “working” and “spending time with your son”.
Keep it up,
Luc
A much delayed response here, but thanks again for answering my questions so thoroughly. I definitely feel there should never be a need to deceive–content promoting a brand or product should stand on its own, independent of its creator.
The problem then perhaps is that content produced by or in the name of a brand is automatically ignored by the online Chinese masses, no matter how good it is. Are Chinese net users, at the risk of generalizing terribly, just that suspicious of branded content? I’ve certainly seen my fair share of excellent viral videos and photo slideshows and mini sites created in the name of brand promotion, but I’m not sure how such kinds of content have fared in China.
Or it is simply that there is a dearth of good branded content–companies doing business in China may be hesitant to invest in digital PR because it does appear to be a scorched wasteland of BBS detritus and outlaw forums in which any brand message would be lost, maimed, pillaged and destroyed.
Despite the bleak outlook, some have taken the plunge and succeeded–Nike, for example. Nike created a video about Liu Xiang’s return to hurdling in the run up to the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix, very professional, definitely expensive. It has received half a million views on tudou.com, not bad for a branded video that’s 24 minutes long. I don’t know if that can be considered a complete success in China, but it certainly can’t be a failure. (The video also appears on Youku, but I have a feeling it wasn’t promoted there–it has only 10,000 views.)
No doubt China’s Internet regulations and the industry’s inability to regulate itself presents many hurdles (cheesy pun intended) to successfully engaging in digital PR, but the shady unethical tactics seem borne more out of laziness mixed with low budgets, rather than any “response to the nature of the Chinese Internet.”
Put me down for the weaselly “it depends”.
I don’t often see the point in advertising that doesn’t state what’s being advertised & who’s advertising it. That is, I don’t think it’s necessarily morally wrong to hold back the brand or the company, I just think it’s usually strategically wrong.
When could it be good strategy? When pushing or revealing the brand/sponsor will impede the goals of the communication. What circumstances are those? Not many.
But consider:
* market research efforts, when you often want to sample unbiased opinion
* corporate philanthropy, where pushing the brand TOO hard can negate the benefit to good will the philanthropy was intended to generate.
* when you’re trying to enter a market your brand or identity may not otherwise give you “permission” to enter. IOW, when the brand is an albatross, not an asset *in that market*. Of course, that’s an argument for a new brand line…
Trying to pass off corporate talking points as spontaneous comments from a consumer with no financial stake in the company is deceptive, and may blow back. It risks smearing any authentic netroots supporters as company puppets. If the operating assumption is that everyone talking up a company has a stake, there may not be enough real credibility there to save. But if it exists, it’s a pretty valuable asset, and it’s an asset that’s easy to destroy. So I’d be quite reluctant to be in the vanguard of those firms pursuing the “astroturf” approach.
-Bob