The recent smear campaign involving two mainland dairy giants has put malicious online marketing in the spotlight, stirring calls for better regulation to serve as a warning and improve ethics.
Inner Mongolian dairy company Mengniu last week apologised for an act of commercial libel by one of its former employees against major competitor Yili, but said it had also been the victim of such smear campaigns launched by Yili. The latter denied it in an interview with the Beijing News, saying Mengniu was trying to 'mislead the public'.
Media commentators and internet users believe the public sparring has shed light on the common practice many mainland companies use to belittle their rivals.
Instead of having correct information to help them make purchasing choices, the public is witnessing the tactics that are still battering the reputation of the dairy industry, two years after the scandal over milk tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.
Online gossip and innuendo, which are widely practised on the mainland in the consumer goods area, are by-products of the widespread use of the internet on the mainland, where 420 million Net users are more reliant on the Web to make purchasing decisions than people in the West, a Chinese consumer report by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants said this year.
The strengths of online marketing over more traditional public relations methods are that it is faster, more interactive, can target its consumers more precisely while also reaching a wider audience and is much cheaper. That is why about 90 per cent of existing traditional PR companies and numerous newly established companies use online strategies, according to the China International Public Relations Association (Cipra).