When it comes to advertising, there are a lot of buzzwords that are thrown about. Terms such as “organic”, or “original”, or “natural”, or “leading” are often seen on packing and on advertising materials. However China has a new advertising policy that came into effect earlier this month, and based on that new policy, Chinese smartphone OEM could have landed themselves in trouble.
According to a report from China’s Securities Daily, it seems that Xiaomi is being investigated by the Beijing Ministry of Industry and Commerce over the use of the term “best”. It turns out that Xiaomi had used that particular term in some of its advertisements for its products, which we suppose is natural and expected since all companies would love to say that they are the best.
However the new advertising law has set much stricter limits to what companies can and cannot say, and apparently using superlatives like “best” in advertisements is a big no-no. It seems that Xiaomi’s infarction was reported to the authorities by a rival smartphone company in China who was worried that Xiaomi’s use of superlatives could end up misleading customers.
Assuming Xiaomi is found to have violated these laws, they could be fined a minimum of $31,000, although given Xiaomi’s size and how well they are doing, that fine probably won’t have too huge a financial impact on them.