{"id":1704,"date":"2016-06-13T09:19:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T09:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.2open.biz\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2016-06-13T10:11:13","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T10:11:13","slug":"lancome-pr-disaster-china-what-we-should-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.2open.cn\/?p=1704","title":{"rendered":"Lanc\u00f4me’s PR Disaster in China and What We Should Learn From It"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/h2>\n
During this past week, Lanc\u00f4me has become one of the hottest hashtags on Weibo<\/strong>. This time, however, being the hottest was not beneficial at all for Lanc\u00f4me! Huge damage to its brand image and reputation in China has given Lanc\u00f4me China an unprecedented PR nightmare.<\/p>\n
What happened there?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
On June 2nd<\/sup> , the actress Denise Ho (\u4f55\u97f5\u8bd7or HOCC,), who was performing energetically at the 2016 \u201cOccupy Central\u201d event in Hong Kong<\/strong>, posted a picture about a concert invitation on her Facebook page. This concert was going to be hosted by Lanc\u00f4me HK and it was supposed to take place on the 19th<\/sup> of June. Since Denise Ho was one of the invited artists, some netizens in China Mainland found this post and reposted it on the Weibo platform.<\/p>\nThe picture posted on the Facebook page of HOCC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The news created a huge earthquake among Chinese netizens! The reason is that, for people in Mainland China, the \u201cOccupy Central\u201d is a sensitive topic<\/strong> and most of them hold an opposition towards this event. As one of the most energetic public characters who supported this event, Denise Ho was forced out of Mainland China. Consequently, in the middle of May this year, Denise Ho had met with the 14th<\/sup> Dalai Lama in Japan on her 39\u2019s birthday. For the Chinese citizens, the Dalai Lama is also a sensitive character since he supports the independence of Tibet. Thus, Denise Ho is tagged as \u201csupporter of the independence of HK\u201d and \u201csupporter of the independence of Tibet\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Almost immediately, overwhelming criticisms swept all over the social media in Mainland China including Weibo, WeChat and so on, directed towards Denise Ho and all the brands that belong to L\u2019OREAL Paris, including <\/strong>Lanc\u00f4me.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Nonetheless, the true nightmare came on the 5th<\/sup> June, when Lanc\u00f4me China posted an announcement on its official Weibo account<\/strong> shown below. In this announcement, Lanc\u00f4me China stated, \u201cDenise Ho, who is an artist in Hong Kong, China, is not the spokesperson for Lanc\u00f4me China.\u201d Although Lanc\u00f4me China had just made an apology, the netizens on Weibo did not show any forgiveness. Contrary to what Lanc\u00f4me China expected, the netizens began to create hashtags like \u201cAgainst Lanc\u00f4me\u201d, \u201cAgainst L\u2019OREAL\u201d, and some of them with comments like \u201cnever use any products of Lanc\u00f4me\u201d.<\/p>\nThe announcement of Lanc\u00f4me on Weibo, 5th June 2016<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe criticisms made by large numbers of netizens<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Under the huge pressure of public opinion, Lanc\u00f4me China announced that they would stop all the cooperation with Denise Ho immediately<\/strong>. In addition, Lanc\u00f4me announced that the concert was going to be\u00a0canceled due to security reasons.<\/p>\n
On 7th<\/sup> June, the authoritative media in Mainland China \u2013 Global Times<\/em>, published an editorial directed towards this event, named \u201cWho\u2019s responsible for Lanc\u00f4me being implicated by the artist who supports \u201cOccupy Central\u201d<\/em>(\u5170\u853b\u56e0\u201c\u5360\u4e2d\u827a\u4eba\u201d\u53d7\u7275\u8fde\uff0c\u8c01\u4e4b\u8fc7) ?\u201d. In this article, Denise Ho was blamed directly and it was pointed out that: the Chinese netizens will never show mercy to anyone who wants to \u201ceat the Chinese dishes but break the Chinese pot\u201d.<\/p>\n
This whole chain of events has reached an international level. In France, some netizens wrote e-mails to the headquarters of Lanc\u00f4me HK<\/strong>, and also announce online that if Lanc\u00f4me does not reinstate the spokesperson position of Denise Ho in Hong Kong, they will resist against Lanc\u00f4me in France.<\/p>\n
Now, not only Lanc\u00f4me China, but also the Lanc\u00f4me Group, or even L\u2019OREAL Paris, are facing this emergent PR crisis. With the words from the Global Times<\/em>, Lanc\u00f4me is now\u00a0in a \u201cCatch 22\u201d situation and everyone who is following this event is waiting for the new PR progress of Lanc\u00f4me.<\/p>\n
What can we\u00a0learn from this PR crisis?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Many international brands should conduct careful background researches before choosing their spokespersons, not only in China, but also in the rest of the world. The spokespersons can always influence the brand’s image and reputation if their behaviours are controversial.<\/p>\n
Nowadays the Internet is developing rapidly, especially in China, Social Media platforms, such as Weibo, have become an important tool\u00a0for information sharing, promotions, news, articles reading, etc. At the same time, due to 2 main properties of social media, which are divergence and interaction, any information shared on social media has the risk of causing bad influence or the opportunity of creating good reputation. Thus, evaluating information from all different angles before sharing is necessary and could, and should, avoid misunderstandings or even criticisms as much as possible.<\/p>\n
Also, as a brand or a company, which is related to business, it would be better if we could apply \u201cBusiness is business\u201d in practice. Especially when promoting in China, try to avoid touching the baseline or sensitive topics, which might be dangerous.<\/p>\n
Marketing in China is especially different from other parts of the world, trust us when we say, you do not want to have a problem like the one from Lanc\u00f4me, so, why not let us do it for you? With our multiple offices in Europe and China, we build bridges between your business and the Chinese market sustaining competitive advantage, focusing time and maximizing the budget.<\/p>\n
![\"Facebook](\"http:\/\/www.2open.biz\/wp-content\/uploads\/Facebook-post-of-HOCC-Lancome.png\")
![\"Lancome](\"http:\/\/www.2open.biz\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lancome-announcement-on-Weibo-5th-june.png\")
![\"Chinese](\"http:\/\/www.2open.biz\/wp-content\/uploads\/Chinese-critisism-Lancome-weibo.png\")