'Bamboo cicada' controversy offers lessons in digital-age crisis management

Editor's note: Huawei recently attracted public attention after videos featuring a traditional bamboo toy known as the "bamboo cicada" went viral online. The toy's buzzing sound was widely used in memes parodying a catchphrase from a Huawei product launch, sparking a broader discussion about online culture, brand communication and crisis management. Two experts share their views with China Daily's Li Wei.

When legal action meets online culture

The meme began when internet users noticed that the distinctive whirring sound of a traditional bamboo toy resembled the exaggerated “wow” heard in videos of a Huawei product launch. The comparison soon became an inside joke among tech enthusiasts.

When a company faces unexpected online attention, the instinct to seek legal counsel is understandable. In the age of social media, however, the first legal response is not always the most strategically effective one.

Huawei's “bamboo cicada” controversy began in the form of an internet in-joke that flourishes in online communities: playful, derivative and largely self-contained. It became part of a wider discourse only after attempts were made to remove large numbers of user-generated videos. What followed was a familiar inversion. The enforcement measures — not the meme itself — became the new story.

The episode highlighted a distinction many companies still navigate with difficulty: legal risk is not the same as reputational risk.

From a legal perspective, companies have every right to challenge content that fabricates voices, spreads falsehoods or deliberately damages a brand. But public opinion operates by different rules. Online audiences rarely judge an action solely by whether it is legally justified. They ask whether it feels proportionate.

That difference matters because today's internet has blurred the line between parody and defamation. Much of what circulates online is neither commercial infringement nor malicious attack. It is simply the vernacular of digital culture — a language of remix, imitation and inside jokes. Treating every unauthorized reference as a legal violation risks transforming ordinary users into reluctant protagonists of a corporate overreaction.

This is why crisis management cannot be outsourced to the legal department alone. Lawyers are trained to determine whether rights have been violated. Communications teams must ask a different question: What happens after we act?

The answer is often counterintuitive. A defamatory campaign may warrant swift legal action. A niche meme, by contrast, frequently burns out on its own. When it does not, a measured response — or even a willingness to acknowledge the joke — can deprive it of the conflict that fuels its spread. The objective is not to win every argument but to prevent a minor irritation from becoming a major reputational event.

The broader lesson extends well beyond Huawei. In an era when every advertisement, slogan and soundbite can be remixed within minutes, companies no longer fully control the meaning of their own symbols. Legal rights remain essential. But reputation is shaped less by what a company is entitled to do than by what the public believes it should do. The most resilient brands understand that protecting a reputation sometimes means choosing engagement over confrontation.

Zhang Dianyuan is a professor at the School of Journalism, Fudan University.