How to Uncover “Pushing Hand” Operations

This chapter suggests how individual netizens or companies can uncover “pushing hand” operations. It is vitally important that Internet users, either corporations or individuals should acquire some knowledge and skills in identifying Internet mercenary marketing schemes since unrestricted information manipulation has grown to such a large scale that it led to a media claim that 70% of visits to the Chinese Internet derived from pushing hand operations. Evaluating information and deciding whether it is in fact a genuine recommendation from netizens or managed information from pushing hands is not an easy task. Several clues of online information evaluation are provided.

Internet Mercenary Operation

Internet mercenary operation is a well-integrated part of the Internet public relations (IPR) business. IPR in the Chinese context is defined as a series of strategic communication activities that use the Internet and other new media technologies to promote awareness and ensure a positive image of a brand, product, service or any other entity which is concerned with its public image. Specifically, this chapter details the whole procedure of Internet mercenary operation including release design, target platforms, target audience, release volume and release duration. This chapter also documents in some detail the practice of release operation, including a pyramid of “pushing hands,” and the procedures of maintenance and monitoring.

History of Internet Mercenaries

The practice of Internet pushing hands emerged in 2004-2005 involving the making of some well-known “Internet celebrities.” This chapter first documents how Internet pushing hands emerged from several separate cases mainly out of netizens’ enthusiasm and interests and evolved into a commercial business which fetched business contracts worth millions of dollars. It then demonstrates a number of well-known cases which have been considered as classic examples of Internet mercenaries in China.

Social Media and Viral Marketing in China

Social media, a range of various new communication applications based on Internet and wireless telecommunication technology, provide a new media environment for marketing. This chapter first reviews literature about social media and social media marketing, specifically viral marketing. It then provides an overview on the development of social media in China, followed by a detailed description of a popular form of social media – microblogs. In the last section, some Chinese characteristics of social media marketing are briefly summarized.

Introduction

This chapter sets the scene by introducing “Obama Girl” who was present at President Barack Obama’s speech in Shanghai in 2009. She became a hot media “star” and representative of one of the many cases of “Internet pushing hands.” We define “Internet mercenaries” and clarify key terms such as “pushing hands” and “water army.” Then the key attributes of “Internet mercenaries” are listed. The chapter ends with a consideration of some of the “legal grey areas” pertaining to Internet mercenary operations

QQ Group as Organizational Platform

This chapter outlines in some detail how QQ groups work as an organizational platform. A significant phenomenon in Internet mercenary marketing is that a large number of these pushing hand projects are organized and coordinated through social media platforms, most significantly QQ groups. This chapter investigates in detail how Internet mercenary operations are organized in QQ groups including functions of the QQ platform, and the nature of the QQ group in the business operation. In the last section, a closer examination of virus worthiness of messages in pushing hand tasks is provided.

Viral Messages

Internet mercenary marketing entails both precision business practice and creative art. The operational model described in the previous chapter is mainly based on business science and IT technology which deal in such terms as mathematical calculations, categories of users, digital metrics and so on. However, there is a crucial part in the operation that involves art – the creativity to build a message that contains virusworthiness. The virusworthiness is defined as qualities in a message intended for viral marketing that is able to ignite a spontaneous transmission among individual users through the network. This chapter focuses on the process of creative design, specifically the essential issue of how a message can be created to be so compelling that it spreads like wildfire in SNSs.

Policy Concerns of Internet Mercenaries

This chapter examines the policy concerns of Internet mercenaries. Internet mercenaries operate in a legal gray area. The Chinese government, although notorious for its tight control over the Internet and implementation of the “great firewall,” has been quite equivocal about drawing up a clear guideline to set a legal boundary for Internet mercenary marketing. On the other hand, the government tends to resort to administrative campaigns to crack down on the so-called “illegal IPR” (IIPR), the term the government uses to refer to “pushing hand operations” when it needs to put a tight grip over it. The chapter reviews a nation-wide, two-month campaign to crack down on IIPR in the spring of 2011 and examines impact such administrative control rather than the tenet of law effect on Internet mercenary marketing.

Mainstream Media as Amplifier

This chapter focuses on mainstream media as amplifier and how viral marketers can have greater social impact. For viral marketers to achieve a greater social impact, the ultimate goal is to have their ideaviruses enter traditional mainstream media – national or regional television networks and influential newspapers, which function as an amplifier for Internet mercenary marketing. A usual pattern is first to launch an ideavirus on the Internet, to make it brew, grow and spread along the social media networks so as to infect whoever is in its path. When it obtains a certain online “reputation,” it is a time to get the mainstream media involved. Once it is covered by the mainstream media, it would intensify the interest on the Internet in searching and sharing the story.

Conclusion

This chapter concludes that Internet mercenary marketing in China which has been investigated in a detailed manner throughout the book represents a unique model of integrated viral marketing strategy on the Chinese Internet. Being an indispensable part of the IPR business, the Internet mercenary strategy attests to the tenet of viral marketing by taking ingenious approaches to build up a momentum of communicative influence over social media on the Internet by managing a network of paid posters (“water army”) and a multitude of virtual personas. It is viral marketing riddled with “Chinese characteristics.”