The Communication Errors of Short ‐ video Advertising: Taking the Ad of Yihetang and Rolls ‐ Royce in 2021 as an Example

: With the continuous development of new media platforms in recent years, short-video advertising has gradually become the mainstream form of advertising communication by virtue of its advantages of simple production, accurate audience and significant market driving. However, in order to win a place, some brands have created a breaking circle effect by openly using various means that take advantage of the loopholes of polices to carry out vulgar and malicious marketing. This not only backfires on the brand image, but also challenges the public bottom line and social ethics. Taking the advertisements of Yihetang and Rolls-Royce in 2021 as examples, this paper aims to explore the communication errors in today's short video advertisements, and provide a valuable reference for how to make more competitive short video advertisements.


The development of short-video advertising in recent years
Nowadays, two short-video platforms, Kwai and Tiktok, are the main platforms for short-video advertising creation and delivery. Since 2017, the emergence of short-video platforms has changed the audio-visual content that people are exposed to in their daily lives [1]. With the full opening of the short-video vertical segmentation mode, the user scale is growing rapidly, and the advertising business attached to it is also rising rapidly. Relevant surveys show that in 2018, among the advertisers' intention of social marketing, the intention of short-video advertising increased from 22% last year to 62%. The popularity of short-video business has a very significant driving effect on the short-video advertising market. For another example, in 2018, short video streaming advertising achieved a market size of 21.43 billion, an increase of 265.1% compared with the same period of the previous year [2], which has become an important part of advertising.

Development prospect of short-video advertising
According to CTR(CTR Market Research CO. Ltd)'s insight into the Report of 2021 China Media Market Trend [3], the short-video platform is accelerating the commercialization process, and the marketing focus of new advertisers in 2021 is more inclined to short-video + KOL marketing. The dividends of short-video advertising will not decrease, and richer content will continue to emerge.

Disadvantages of short-video advertising
Compared with the advertising in traditional media, shortvideo advertising have a wider spread, appear repeatedly in the daily browsing process, strengthen memory and have a profound impact. Therefore, there will be heated discussions immediately on controversial topics. If there is a problem with the content of short video advertisements, the negative impact will be worse than traditional media advertisements.

Value of this research
Most of the existing research focuses on excellent short video advertising cases. We can already know what factors can make your advertisement become a viral advertisement, or what kinds of short video advertising can be more profitable. However, the existing research cannot tell people what plot appear in the advertisement will make it face people boycott or even be taken down. This study will show the factors we should not mentioning in short video advertising to avoid the communication errors.

Analysis on the Failure Cases of
Short-video Advertising

Vulgar marketing of Yihetang in July 2021
The video was released by a short-video blogger, who used such words of recommendation as "three or four secretaries can drink such a big cup", "the quality of the stewardess, the price of the Jixiang village". The video was reposted by the official account of Yihetang after release.
According to the relevant laws and regulations of the Advertising Law, advertising should not violate the social atmosphere and affect the stability of social public order. When women are the subject of advertising, they must not damage the image of women, and the content must comply with moral standards and positive social values. The purpose of Yihetang is to publicize that its products are good in quality and low in price, which are worth buying. However, what the public sees is that the fragment and slogan designed in this short-video advertisement have strong features of discriminating against women and objectifying women. Take an analogy between a stewardess and a woman in the red-light district and insult the career of a stewardess. A large part of the problem of gender discrimination in advertising is reflected in the fact that women are in the "seen" position. The female image in the advertising is manipulated and operated by men, and is standardized and explained according to men's experience. In other words, it always reflects the perspective and needs of men and caters to the expectations of male audiences. The advertisement tries to make a male gaze from the perspective of "boss". It has a strong prejudice and stereotype on the profession of secretary. A secretary is a young woman who needs to please the boss in order to survive in the workplace. Moreover, this slogan intensifies the subordinate status of women in society. [4] First of all, as a famous milk tea brand in China, Yihetang's influence should not be underestimated. The advertising release should be subject to strict review, and this advertisement reproduced without careful review has really hit its brand image. In addition, in the follow-up apology letter from the brand, there was also a saying that "we just reposted the original video of the short-video blogger, which was not our intention". Without a correct understanding and apology for the mistake, the brand image was not recovered, but was denounced by the public on the topic of Weibo.
Secondly, the main audience of milk tea is mostly young women. Yihetang did not do enough audience analysis. Instead of catering to the audience, it did the opposite and influenced its brand. The "new generation" of young women have anti-discrimination thoughts on gender issues, and dare to defend their own interests and speak for themselves on public social platforms. [5]As a brand, it should convey its own excellent corporate image to the audience, rather than reposting others' vulgar marketing content without review. It can be seen that as a senior brand, the brand positioning is not clear, and the control and attention to advertising are seriously insufficient.

Rolls-Royce influencer endorsement in 2021
After Rolls-Royce's influencer endorsements were released, Wang Sicong (Wang Sicong(Sephirex):Sephirex is the director of Wanda Group，Son of Wang Jianlin)announced in the message area that he would not buy again in the future. Rolls-Royce is the world's top luxury brand. Most of the people attracted by the influencer are ordinary people in society. They use their short free time at work to browse short videos to relax and have no purchase demand. This group is not the sales target of Rolls Royce. It can be seen that Rolls Royce doesn't have enough analysis of its own brand positioning and brand audience.
In addition, this influencer couple are not ordinary influencers with misdeed. They made many remarks that caused public discomfort.
"Are you ok? I want to send sunshine and food to you from this island".
"The heavy rain in Henan is an opportunity for Henan from god".
The first comment was posted when the COVID19 broke out in Wuhan in early 2020,and they fled to Thailand for vacation.They were commented that they do not know the people's livelihood.Soon after, they posted the second comment when many people were died in the Zhengzhou flood,and made people unimaginable and lamented that the couple didn't have the correct concept. It can be seen that Rolls-Royce brand did not conduct background investigation on the spokesperson when making short-video advertisements. Based on the above two negative factors, some netizens commented that people who watch advertisements can't afford Rolls-Royce, and people who really buy Rolls-Royce don't watch advertisements.
After the negative event, the Rolls-Royce brand did not apologize at the first time. Instead, the spokesperson, the man of the influencer couple, openly challenged netizens in the comment area of the video. When the event was pushed to the hot search by many netizens, the brand apologized and the comment area was closed by the apology blog. This operation once again triggered a heated discussion among the public. It can be seen from the related topics on the Weibo that Rolls-Royce owners feel that their taste has been lowered due to the purchase and use of its product, and their desire to buy again has dropped to the bottom. In addition, ordinary netizens who are not car owners are also generally publicize the negative side of the brand. The handling behavior of the brand and attitude towards this incident offended many people, and the corporate image suffered a major blow.

Creating short-video ads based on avoiding social ethical issues
First of all, short-video advertising aims to promote a product or a service. Therefore, advertising should show that the product quality is excellent or a service provided is in place, rather than using short-video advertising to express the ethical issues that are already in the cusp of public opinion. Secondly, short-video advertising, as the name suggests, takes a relatively short time, most of which is about 15 to 30 seconds. This time is too short to elaborate on ethical issues. Thirdly, even if the short-video advertisement of the brand clearly describes a certain ethical issue, it will not have a significant positive impact on the product or service, which is an act of painting a snake with feet.

Brand positioning and audience must be well analyzed
If they are not clear about their brand positioning, how can they make good advertising to convey the brand image to the audience. Analysis of brand audience includes but is not limited to the gender, age, consumption strength, nationality, belief, and other factors of the audience. Only by doing well in the above two aspects can they accurately convey the content that the brand really wants to the targeted audience.

The short video should be strictly reviewed before release, and the spokesperson should be carefully selected
The network communication influence of well-known brands is huge, and the communication speed and scope of short-video platforms are far exceeded by traditional media before. Therefore, they should be responsible for the content when advertising on the short-video platform, and should not publish or repost short-video advertisements without approval. The image of the spokesperson largely determines the image of the brand. In addition, the selection of spokespersons should carefully consider their conduct and development prospects, and should not be selected blindly because of their "high traffic" and reputation.

In case of communication faults in advertising, which may damage the brand image, or the spokesperson falls into a negative cusp of public opinion, it is necessary to timely and sincerely apologize to the public and stop the loss in time
According to the image cognition theory of psychological research, it can be concluded that the inconsistent image of the spokesperson will have a negative impact on the brand to a large extent. However, when the brand takes the initiative to apologize, consumers' attitude towards the brand will change, and their propensity to buy products will be greatly improved [6]. Therefore, when the brand spokesperson falls into the negative public opinion that is difficult to reverse, the brand should immediately adopt the strategy of apologizing to the public to reduce the associated impact of the spokesperson on the brand. It also helps to maintain the relationship between the brand and the spokesperson, shorten the time of controversial advertising in public discussion, and help to maintain the spokesperson's image. As for the brand, it is impossible to predict what will happen to the spokesperson in the future. What they only can do is to prepare for the crisis in advance.