In 2015, Internet Marketing Will Never Be Moral

Is China's Internet in a prosperous or chaotic era? It all seems to make sense. China accounts for four of the top ten Internet companies in the world, competing with the United States. This seems to be the best proof of prosperity. However, along with the surge in market value, hostility has also increased, and the attacks among Chinese Internet companies have reached a peak. The chaos behind the prosperity is the ubiquitous and unscrupulous Chinese-style marketing.

Throughout the year, almost every Chinese person is subjected to multiple rounds of highly saturated marketing bombardment. From the family affection of the Lunar New Year to the romance of Valentine's Day, the marketing curtain slowly opens, the pace gradually increases, and the moral integrity continues to decline, covering the entire year, and ending with the e-commerce explosion on Double Eleven and Double Twelve. Throughout the whole process, there is a bottomless and unscrupulous creative war, which is becoming a norm.

The reason why creativity has no limits is related to competition!

Competition is nothing more than a combination of soft and hard tactics. As US President Roosevelt once said, "Soft words in the mouth, a big stick in the hand." Today's Internet marketing is also well aware of this, especially e-commerce. The grievances between Alibaba and JD.com have a long history. The marketing offensive and defensive battle in 2014 attracted a lot of attention. Looking into the history of the feud between the two e-commerce companies, it is not important who started first. Alibaba, which started with the eBay model, and JD.com, which started with the Amazon model, are natural enemies. Sooner or later, there will be a war. However, as both companies maintained high growth rates after their IPOs and the industrial chains behind them are complicated, it is impossible for Alibaba to overwhelm JD.com with its market value of US$240 billion alone. The value of marketing is naturally infinitely magnified. This is expected. There is only one thing that Jack Ma, who is in charge of the strategy, did not expect or underestimated. Under Alibaba's strong marketing and public relations attack, the stubborn Liu Qiangdong learned quickly.

The marketing war between Alibaba and JD.com went through three stages:

The first stage is teasing. Before 2013, Alibaba's communication advantage was brought to the extreme, and JD's voice was almost completely suppressed, especially during the annual 618 promotion. In February 2013, JD's VP rotation strategy was launched. Xu Lei, formerly Liu Lang's boyfriend, took control of the market again, and the beautiful vice president Lin Yingchun switched from finance to business. She began to sound the clarion call for counterattack in the form of long Weibo posts.

The second stage is mutual abuse. Since the cat-and-dog war, Alibaba and JD.com have entered a period of mutual criticism. When Double Eleven came, JD.com, which was no longer a nobody, could even use heavy-tasting combination advertising ideas such as "the fastest speed since the beginning of time" to challenge Alibaba and emphasize its own logistics advantages.

The third stage is where the bottom line is truly broken, as Alibaba takes pleasure in attacking the opponent's weak spot. Alibaba directly escalates the Double Eleven marketing war to the legal level, trying to strike JD.com in another dimension. JD.com, on the one hand, distributes open letters to unite second-tier e-commerce companies in a low-key manner, and on the other hand, uses a series of advertisements called "Same low price, buy a real one!" to directly attack the soft spot of Taobao C2C.

The climax of this public relations war was the "JD tragedy theory" which set a bad example. Although Jack Ma apologized and clarified in time, JD's anger can be imagined. On WeChat, JD's counterattack in the form of verses was well received because of its mysterious language and implied meaning. At the annual meeting, Liu Qiangdong strongly emphasized JD's "tax contribution" and implicitly criticized his opponent, which triggered a new round of war of words.

Corporate competition has become a public topic, which is the contribution of Internet marketing, but who is the winner of this carnival? Is it a consumer? Their sense of involvement in this game is getting stronger and stronger, but the benefits they get are getting less and less. Old chain retail entities such as Suning and Gome have long accused e-commerce of fake promotions and virtual price cuts, but most of them remain at the public relations level. It is difficult to shake the advantages of Alibaba and JD.com at the consumer level because there is a generation gap between the two sides in integrated communication. Consumers even unconsciously defend e-commerce. Taking fast-moving consumer goods and 3C products alone, the price difference between e-commerce and retail is already very small, and the advantages of e-commerce are largely achieved through specific activities and membership systems.

Unlimited marketing is of very limited help to companies. The result of undermining each other is that both sides suffer. How can there be a real winner? But once you enter the world, you have no choice but to do what you want. Chicken soup masters like Jack Ma and pickup artists like Liu Qiangdong are nothing more than puppets manipulated by the marketing team behind the scenes.

The reason why creativity is so unscrupulous is mostly related to sexual fantasies!

A scholar is good for nothing. The poor scholar in "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" is bored all day long, but he firmly believes that "books contain beautiful women and golden houses". He fantasizes about romantic encounters with foxes, ghosts, snakes and monsters, deceiving himself. This kind of romantic encounter has two characteristics:

1. Throw yourself into someone's arms

A man sits in boredom all day long, when suddenly a beautiful woman comes to visit him, and they have sex and have a great time together. Such unexpected good fortunes are everywhere in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. The common point is that the heroine is both beautiful and intelligent, while the hero is extremely lucky but has a blurry face, like a passerby.

2. Gain both people and money

Yu in the famous piece "Bamboo Green" from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio is a scholar from a poor family. He failed the imperial examination and lived in a temple. He had starved to death, but he had a series of adventures. Not only did he come back to life, but he also married a beautiful woman and had a son. He escaped from his poverty. His fate was so extraordinary that everyone envied him.

The scholars in ancient times are the otakus today. The so-called Internet marketing of course specializes in this kind of people.

Therefore, it is not surprising that unscrupulous marketing such as "Singles' Welfare Day" that satisfies the fantasies of otakus is born. It is also natural that there are Weibo breast beauty contests, Peking Opera bikinis, lace peaches, beauties and handsome men delivering goods, etc. Of course, if you can achieve a perfect match between products and marketing like Durex, and act truly yourself, it will be perfect.

The spiritual qualities of a marketer

Chinese literati have two traditions: one is loyalty to the emperor and patriotism, and the other is literary talent without moral conduct. Sometimes the two are in perfect harmony.

For example, Wu Keduo, a famous scholar in the late Qing Dynasty, was good at poetry and writing, intelligent and studious. He was not afraid of power and pleaded for the people. He impeached Admiral Cheng Lu for killing innocent people and taking credit for his crimes. In 1879, he was willing to die to stop Empress Dowager Cixi from ruling the country from behind the curtain. He was described as "a man of tears in his eyes and a scholar as hard as stone." However, Wu was a man of bad morals. Before he passed the imperial examination, he was fond of hanging out in places of prostitution and did not return home for days on end. After being persuaded by his teachers and friends, he temporarily lived in Jiutian Temple and studied hard. At that time, the famous Peking Opera actor Yu Sansheng made a comeback, so some gossipers composed a couplet: Yu Sansheng revives the Sixi Troupe, and Wu Dapiao lives in Jiutian Temple again!

This kind of personality dilemma has existed since ancient times and has never changed. Bo Yang once said: If a strong man gets provoked and picks up a knife to attack, he is a hooligan; if an intellectual gets provoked and picks up a pen to write, he is a literary ruffian. A qualified and competent Internet copywriter must combine all of these in order to achieve great success.

Under the general trend of the convergence of marketing and public relations, the integrated communication of the Internet has not only lost its moral integrity, but has also become a new source of war.

A notable feature is that the aggressiveness has been greatly enhanced. Traditional marketing has complete schedules and plans, while Internet communication is measured in seconds. The only requirement is speed and intensity. There is no time to carefully consider the choice of words and sentences, and the possibility of accidental conflicts between competitors has greatly increased. Those bosses who are pushed to the front to perform may not all be sincere. They are more or less manipulated by the marketing team behind them. When Sun Quan advised Cao Cao to become emperor, Cao Cao said: "Is this kid trying to sit on my fire?!" I wonder if the Internet tycoons who seem to be in a glamorous position can empathize with this state of mind.

Internet communication is just an evolution of traditional marketing, changing one-way communication into two-way interaction. However, with the fierce competition in recent years, the trend of criticism has become increasingly prevalent. Under the mutual attacks and explosions, the bottom line has been gradually lost and moral integrity has been destroyed. In the sci-fi blockbuster "Ender's Game", Harrison Ford once taught the young team with the tone of an experienced person: "What matters is that we won!" The young man replied very skillfully: "No! How to win is the most important thing!" These words may also be given to those marketers who "will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals."