On July 13th, Miniso was hit on the hot search list by a collaborative promotional video. The video is from an entertainment blogger with 530000 followers. In order to highlight the lightweight characteristics of Miniso's memory foam pad, the blogger designed a bizarre plot of "peeking into the female bedroom downstairs through the cracks in the floor", which was questioned by netizens for using secretly filming and peeping into women's privacy as entertainment advertising materials.

The video quickly received strong condemnation from consumers. On the evening of July 13th, Miniso apologized for the "oversight in the review work" and announced the termination of cooperation with the blogger, the removal of all platform content, and the upgrading of the content review mechanism as corrective measures.

This is already the fourth brand communication incident in nearly a month that has been embroiled in vulgar marketing controversy.

On the early morning of July 2nd, Green Source Electric Vehicle issued an apology statement. Previously, its official account posted a "Electric Seat Lunch Tutorial" on an e-commerce platform: a female model wearing stockings, a hip hugging short skirt, and pointed high heels, lying on the electric seat, resting her feet on the handlebars, and shooting directly at the front of the car, the sole of the shoe, and along the legs. The controversial footage quickly caused public dissatisfaction, and after the public opinion fermented, the video of Green Source Electric Vehicle was taken down, stating that the relevant responsible persons had been punished and announcing the rectification of third-party management and content review processes.

In late June, a plot advertisement for Dettol clothing disinfectant featured a male character judging a woman's "cleanliness" based on whether she had lived together before, and saying lines such as "I may not be the first time, but my future wife is not," which sparked strong public dissatisfaction and resistance. Under public pressure, Dettol deleted the video and apologized, stating that the video was created by a third-party influencer for the brand, with the original intention of criticizing gender bias and issues with content expression and review.

Just a few days later, some brands used phrases such as "kissing 8 men is no problem" to package the product's efficacy into a scene of multiple people kissing, and the related video subsequently fell into controversy over vulgar implications.

Economic Observer reporters found through multiple e-commerce platforms that different industries have similar marketing methods, ranging from clothing, snacks, yogurt to tea drinks: focusing on the skin exposure of specific parts of the body, or enlarging the size, length, softness, and other local features of the product, and then using puns or ambiguous expressions to guide the audience to associate and attract users to stay or discuss for a longer period of time.

This type of advertisement, which clearly carries vulgar guidance and carries risks, usually needs to go through multiple stages of control, including creativity, production, brand review, and platform release. But how did it emerge in front of the public through layers of checks and failures?

Both big and small brands have edge marketing

The reporter found through recent public reports that multiple related business entities have been exposed and subject to regulatory penalties for engaging in borderline and vulgar advertising marketing, mainly involving live streaming language, product packaging, and short video footage.

In March this year, Logitech authorized the distributor Shanghai Best Electronics Co., Ltd. to release a price reduction promotion video on the Tiktok number "Logitech", with the text saying "When I cut the price, you will not run like a dog". On July 8th, the Jing'an District Market Supervision Administration of Shanghai disclosed an administrative penalty decision, which showed that the company was fined 200000 yuan for publishing advertisements containing insulting language.

In April, the anchor of "Haihe Milk Flagship Store" on the Tiktok platform repeatedly used the dialect with sexual hints and cooperated with body movements when carrying goods. Haihe Dairy subsequently terminated its cooperation with authorized distributor Tianjin Baiyi E-commerce Co., Ltd; In June, the operator involved was fined 450000 yuan for publishing advertisements that violated good social norms.

In May, on retail platforms, the packaging of "Mushroom Planet · Noble Concubine Powder Ear" used female side silhouettes, with powder fungus texture filling inside the silhouette, and was accompanied by the slogan "Pink Dudu, Mushroom World Cute New", which caused consumer questioning. The platform subsequently removed the products and apologized.

In addition to the well-known brands mentioned above, the Economic Observer has found on multiple e-commerce platforms that videos and text content similar to borderline and vulgar marketing also appear in the advertising promotion of small and medium-sized brands.

In a video released by the "Up Cosy Gold Specialty Store" on June 15th, the reporter saw a male model wearing a blue sleeveless long nightgown. Due to the tight fitting fabric of the nightgown, the male model's body contour is more prominent in the picture. Subsequently, the male model lay sideways on the bed, with subtitles such as "The feeling of emptiness below... Everyone understands" and "It's like not wearing anything" appearing in the picture.

When the reporter took a screenshot, the video had 4375 likes, 741 comments, 854 favorites, and 30000 shares. The associated product page indicated that more than 9000 items had been sold. The reporter clicked on the homepage of the account and found that it had posted a total of 8 videos, of which 3 videos related to the aforementioned images had a cumulative repost of over 90000, while the likes and comments of other product explanation videos from a conventional perspective were in the single digits.

These advertising images or video materials exhibit the characteristic of repeated use in multiple stores on e-commerce platforms, with the same main image with the intention of blurring edges appearing in multiple stores, and the same set of plot, shot, or copy being used to promote different products.

Taking risks under KPI pressure

How could an advertisement with obvious borderline intention and vulgar expression appear in the external promotion of big and small brands? Even posted on official social media accounts of some well-known brands?

A brand communication manager working for a leading company in their industry explained that if a brand wants to publish a creative advertisement, it usually goes through multiple stages such as budget application, project bidding, outsourcing, creation, review, and platform distribution.

Brand owners usually entrust daily account operations or specialized communication to suppliers, requiring them to achieve indicators such as exposure, browsing, and interaction.

Suppliers will continue to subcontract the needs of the brand owner - large public relations companies will be responsible for liaising with the brand owner after winning the bid, and then hand over copywriting, filming, editing, and expert cooperation to small studios, part-time personnel, or project-based teams. A content creator who once acted as the editor and director of Tiktok talent told the Economic Observer that the common process is that the brand side or the operating company sends out the demand, the content team submits the script, and the brand side confirms before shooting. In specific advertising placements, the brand usually specifies the second at which the product appears and which keywords must be retained; The influencer continues the original character image and content style of the account, and creates according to the requirements of the brand.

This process is only a standard specification, and in practical implementation, it is subject to various influences, and many links are prone to distortion and deformation. A common situation faced by brand owners is that under a project-based system, their demands are repeatedly distributed to multiple executing companies, which often involve hundreds of media, influencer, and amateur accounts. It is difficult for brand owners to review all the content one by one. In addition, the promotion and marketing of the brand are led by the executing company or downstream distributors, and the brand may not be aware of it. This is also why when marketing fails, the brand "throws the blame" to third parties.

Another reality is that both the brand and the executing company are under pressure to achieve the best results at the lowest cost. Under the guidance of this KPI (Key Performance Indicator), participants may not be unaware of the risks of borderline marketing, but are willing to take risks to achieve the KPI.

The brand communication manager mentioned above stated that on one hand, all parties are facing pressure to reduce costs. He used his company's recent project bidding as an example, a project with a budget of 1.4 million yuan, and the final winning bid was approximately 700000 yuan. In the past, brand owners would compare the advantages of different suppliers, but now they rely more on "the one with the lowest price wins". For suppliers, they will "save" profits by streamlining labor costs, such as having designers, copywriters, and editors serve multiple clients simultaneously, and then delegate some of the work to lower cost downstream service companies.

The interviewees also mentioned that under the premise of limited budget, the shortage of manpower, multiple projects, and tight delivery time have fundamentally changed the production methods of suppliers, and they rely more on "traffic experience" that can be quickly replicated. At present, AI has been widely used to write titles and scripts, generate creative ideas, and rewrite content. It can help understaffed teams complete high-frequency updates in a short period of time, and may also recombine existing vulgar memes, gender stereotypes, and controversial expressions online into "new ideas". Regular product introductions require continuous streaming, while content with elements of curiosity, conflict, or ambiguity is more likely to attract users to stay, comment, and share.

Another pressure comes from increasing efficiency. Some brands may add a CPM metric for suppliers, which is the cost required to obtain a thousand impressions. For brand owners, a lower CPM means that the same budget receives more exposure and becomes a basis for evaluating the efficiency of communication investment. In addition, brand owners used to focus on exposure, browsing, and interaction, but now they also need to consider how many sales leads, orders, and profits a marketing campaign brings.

The creators of the aforementioned content have also felt this change. He told the Economic Observer that the requirements of the first party (brand) for advertising communication have extended from indicators such as views, likes, comments, and shares to actual sales such as seeding and conversion, which has also brought pressure to many creators.

Under this assessment, the high playback, high interaction, and low exposure costs brought by edge marketing will be presented in intuitive data. The above-mentioned interviewees mentioned that in practical operation, a sentence that provokes gender emotions and a shot with sexual implications will be more likely to receive completion, comments, and reposts. Even though the comment section is mostly critical, KPI related data such as views, comments, and shares continue to rise, and CPM continues to decline. Each link has shifted from chasing traffic to chasing low-cost traffic, after all, 'black and red are also red'.

Brushing the edges can obtain natural traffic

The brand evaluates the effectiveness of an advertisement based on various indicators such as viewing, commenting, and forwarding. From the platform's traffic rules, if these data perform well, they may also gain more exposure. For example, the operation data released by Tiktok E-commerce shows that the 3-second bounce rate, completion rate, interaction rate, attention rate and negative feedback rate of short videos, as well as the room entry rate and dwell time brought by videos for live broadcast rooms, will affect the distribution of natural traffic.

Multiple interviewees told the Economic Observer that the platform has a clear ban on vulgar behavior and content. Taking Tiktok as an example, the Detailed Rules for the Handling of Vulgar Behaviors updated on July 7 wrote that it is not allowed to publish, disseminate or display any vulgar and illegal content with sexual hints, sexual provocations, and easy to trigger sexual associations. The types of violations listed in the rules include intentionally displaying sensitive parts, simulating provocative actions, creating ambiguous scenes, and using sexual topics for ridicule, suggestion, and humiliation; The association of sexual behavior or organs through implicit language is included in the scope of governance. Violating content may face warnings, removal of short videos or being visible only to oneself, closure of product sharing permissions, freezing of commissions, and in severe cases, permanent closure of e-commerce permissions.

But under this set of rules, in order to obtain more natural traffic distribution, creators have also formed a set of "borderline experiences".

Chen Xingqi, a short video director who used to work for MCN organization, told Economic Observer that for the operation team, "starting an account" is a process of "testing the waters", establishing a new content creation account to cultivate potential consumers and traffic pools with fixed tags, namely vertical accounts. After each short video is released, the data needs to be reviewed by the operator to determine at which second the user swipes away, which screen can extend their stay, which topics are more likely to generate comments, and which words will trigger review. The interviewee mentioned that entertainment content such as jokes and plots are generally more likely to gain exposure. As paid traffic becomes more expensive, people are starting to compete for natural traffic, and some teams will use controversial content containing borderline and vulgar content as a way to gain natural exposure.

Clear nudity, direct vulgar vocabulary, and obvious sexual innuendos are easily recognized and processed by platforms, and some creators switch to more subtle statements and images to explore the edges of the rules. For example, straightforward lines are replaced with puns and internet slang, sensitive areas are replaced with close fitting fabrics, side and back shots, slit clothing, and body parts, and gender topics are packaged as marriage disputes, character conflicts, and plot twists.

The critical voices in the comment section, as well as comments with emotional tendencies such as questioning and watching, will also increase the number of comments and reposts. The greater the controversy, the higher the short-term interaction may be, and the better the KPI numbers will look; The probability of violations and traffic restrictions also increases, until it is met with backlash from public opinion and regulation.

What would happen if a borderline advertisement containing sexual implications did not attract public attention and successfully achieved the desired effect for all parties in the chain? The brand communication manager of the aforementioned industry leaders stated that suppliers usually do not receive additional project payments as a result, but can package "extremely low investment and millions or even higher exposure" as successful cases for contract renewal, bidding, or winning the next customer. Brand owners may also perceive suppliers as "internet savvy, adept at capturing hot topics, and able to accomplish great things with small amounts of money".

(Author Luo Wenli)