In recent years, brand marketing has frequently played creative edges in pursuit of the "breaking circle" effect, but has repeatedly fallen into controversy because of ignoring social emotions. The dairy brand "adopted a cow" has recently caused an uproar due to subway advertising. Its "COWS direct recruitment, moo directly with the boss" and "change jobs!

Slogans such as Dairy Cows were directly pointed out by netizens as "mocking workers" and "consumer workplace anxiety". Behind the incident, Disney used the "cow and horse spirit" to imply workplace exploitation, McDonald's "underground eight advertisements" to amplify the fatigue of workers, and other cases such as "substantial eight advertisements" that amplify the fatigue of workers, revealing the separation between the brand and the sensitive social issues when chasing hot spots.

When Cialis creativity becomes an offensive tool, how to find a balance between marketing innovation and public emotions has become a problem that companies need to solve urgently.

Adopting a cow is questioned and ridiculed by the worker

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Today, the dairy brand "adopted a cow" caused heated discussion due to a set of subway advertisements.

In many subway stations in Hangzhou and Shanghai, the poster slogan for adopting a cow shows, "COWS Direct Recruitment, find a job, moo directly to the boss!"; in the elevator in a community in Hangzhou, one of the posters said, "Just change jobs! Cow, I heard that you can't get the sun in your field?"

Related topics quickly became popular on social platforms such as Weibo, and some netizens pointed out that the advertising content "mocked the workers" and "consumer workplace anxiety" and so on.

In response to this, the adoption of a cow responded to Jiupai News: This is a series of advertisements recently. They did pay tribute to the design elements of BOSS Direct Recruitment on the advertising screen and obtained the license of BOSS Direct Recruitment brand. "Because cows need care and emotional value, the creative idea of ​​this ad is to express our importance to cows by recruiting cows, just like recruiting talents. At the same time, it can also convey the environment of our ranch."

Regarding the claim that a cow was adopted, Phoenix Finance asked BOSS Direct Recruitment to verify, but as of press time, the other party did not give a response.

Public information shows that adopting a cow was established in 2016 and has risen rapidly with the "adoption model", claiming that users can "adoption" dairy cows by paying fees and obtain regular dairy products.

Founder Xu Xiaobo claimed to be a "real estate businessman". According to the resume disclosed in the prospectus, Xu Xiaobo, born in 1970, began his career in Longyou Foreign Trade Operations Department (August 1990-January 2002), and has since served as the executive director of Zhongsheng Industrial and Yangjiang Trade (February 2002 to the present). From January 2011 to December 2016, Xu Xiaobo served as the head of the Hangzhou Branch of Zhejiang Guanghe Real Estate Development Co., Ltd.

Xu Xiaobo

Industrial and commercial registration information shows that as the chairman of Xu Xiaobo, Zhejiang Zhongsheng Industrial Co., Ltd., is an enterprise mainly engaged in wood processing and wood, bamboo, rattan, brown and grass products; and Yangjiang Trade is only engaged in wholesale business, which is obviously a certain gap with the image of "real estate businessman" he has shaped to the outside world.

In July 2022, adopting a cow submitted a prospectus to the China Securities Regulatory Commission, intending to raise 5.1 billion yuan for ranch construction, brand promotion and other projects, but later failed because the sponsor revoked the sponsor.

According to the prospectus at that time, from 2019 to 2021, adopting a cattle achieved operating income of approximately RMB 865 million, RMB 1.65 billion and RMB 2.566 billion, respectively, with an average annual compound growth rate of 72.27%; net profit was approximately RMB 105 million, RMB 147 million and RMB 140 million, respectively.

Behind the increase in revenue but not profits is the continuous increase in the cost of adopting a cattle, and sales expenses are increasing. The prospectus shows that the sales expenses from 2019 to 2021 were RMB 194 million, RMB 303 million and RMB 483 million, respectively, with sales expense rates of 22.46%, 18.35% and 18.82%, respectively, while the average sales expense ratio of dairy companies in the same period was 17.72%, 13.81% and 12.18%.

It is worth noting that in sharp contrast to marketing investment is its meager R&D expenditure. From 2019 to 2021, the R&D expenses for adopting a cow were RMB 0, RMB 613,900 and RMB 6.8713 million, respectively, with a total of only RMB 7.5 million in three years. This "focus on marketing and neglect of R&D" operation model has further aroused market doubts about its sustainability.

Recently, adopting a cow has been frozen for 48.3 million yuan in equity, and the execution court is the People's Court of Longyou County, Zhejiang Province.

When "cryptic creativity" becomes "offensive and ridiculous"

Those attempts to attract attention in brand marketing are frequently stepping into the minefield of social emotions.

Similar situations also appear in Disney's "Cow and Horse Spirit" advertisement. Just after the Lantern Festival in 2025, the Crazy Zootopian theme poster appeared at the Xujiahui Metro Station in Shanghai, accompanied by the slogan "Returning on the Long Holiday, the Zootopian spirit will reappear!" The original intention may be to use the animal image to convey the "resumption of work vitality".

However, the word "cow and horse" has long become synonymous with "explosive" in the contemporary workplace context. The image of animals in the advertising screen that was rushing to travel strongly with the commuters in reality, making many workers feel: "Isn't this just implying that we are driven like cows and horses?" Some netizens complained, "It's obviously the Year of the Snake, Disney has promoted so many idioms, and it turns out that they are scolding me."

In March 2024, McDonald's "On the Eight Advertisement in the Underworld" was overturned due to excessive visual impact. In Beijing subway station, a huge hand stretched out from the keyboard was combined with the copywriting "The early birds eat insects, and the early eight-year-old workers are American-style", trying to use exaggerated methods to express the early difficulties of the workers.

However, the picture was criticized by netizens for being like "Sakiko crawled out of the screen", and the copywriting was also criticized as being out of reality - "Don't the Yaba collapse? Does the brand have any misunderstandings about the resentment of workers?" Some netizens even complained: choose to visit the grave between being motivated and going to work, and choose to go to the ground between being down-to-earth and being connected to the jokes.

This creativity that tries to get close to the pain points but works too hard not only fails to resonate, but instead makes the audience feel that the brand is consuming their pain.

Earlier in December 2022, Qiancheng Wuyou’s “job comparison” advertisement directly hit the minefield of workplace discrimination. The ad copy reads: "You are doing work that takes 9 a.m. to get off work at 10 a.m. and only take one day off a week; we have a worry-free future."

The practice of raising one's own brand by belittling the working status of ordinary workers has been angrily denounced as "workplace PUA marketing." Brands may want to emphasize their strengths, but contrasting copywriting will only make the audience feel offended: “Does people who don’t work in your company deserve to be exploited?”

The common feature of these controversial advertisements is that they all try to trigger discussion with humor or sharp creativity, but ignore the real feelings of the workers. Brands want to "play with memes", but workers are more looking forward to "being respected"; brands want to use exaggerated methods to express reality, but what audiences dislike is "being educated" or even "being ridiculed".

When creative teams are addicted to creating topic gimmicks, they often have cognitive misalignment with the real situation of workers. What the audience expects is to be understood rather than preached, resonance rather than ridicule. At a time when workplace anxiety is becoming increasingly prominent, instead of dancing in the minefield, brands should learn to talk to their audience with a straight-eye rather than a downward look. After all, what workers need is not condescending "playing with memes", but the respect that is truly seen.

[Editor in charge: Ma Yidong PF171]