Does Inserting 'Punching' (Gender/Sensitive Agendas) into Marketing Materials Justify Legal Termination?

In recent years, whether in gacha games, otome games, or various consumer products,

PR and legal teams have been very busy—busy “cleaning up messes.”

In the past, PR crises might have been caused by terrible products, competitor hit pieces, or the boss’s “little scandals.”

But nowadays, “smuggling in personal agendas” is probably the most headache-inducing PR problem.

The market is saturated. Products need to expand their audience. Leadership is stressed.

That’s when some marketing or operations colleague steps up:

“I have a plan!”

The plan looks perfect—emotional value, social sharing, user resonance, “handles,” “closed loops.”

And of course, plenty of “clever little touches.”

The old-school boss doesn’t understand it.

But the old-school boss thinks it’s impressive.

“Loop in the other departments and figure out how to execute it.”

Then, the product gets attacked.

Overnight, 99+ DMs on company social media, app stores plastered with one-star reviews, “How do you see it?” threads full of gleeful long-form mockery on Zhihu, complaint letters forwarded from 12345 jamming the legal email…

The boss pounds the desk, pointing at the old-school boss:

“Fire them immediately! Not a cent in severance! If they don’t leave, you do!”

So here’s the question: when a marketing or operations person, while promoting the company’s product, deliberately exploits leadership’s unfamiliarity with social issues and current trends to smuggle in personal agendas, design promotional content hinting at “gender issues” or even inciting gender antagonism, resulting in the company being besieged by various users and bystanders and receiving a flood of complaints—

Under current labor law, can the company legally terminate them with zero compensation for “serious violation of discipline” or “causing substantial damage”?

And what about the approving manager?

[Note: “Punching” in this article refers not only to “female gender issues” but also “male gender issues,” “animal issues,” “environmental issues,” and various other sensitive topics.]

• This article represents only the author’s personal views and should not be considered legal advice.

I. Does “Punching” Constitute “Serious Dereliction of Duty”?

After a PR explosion, the most common mistake many companies make is emotionalizing a legal issue.

The boss gives orders easily, but it’s usually HR and legal who get headaches.

Article 39 of the Labor Contract Law specifies situations where companies can legally terminate employees without economic compensation. Generally, companies try to invoke either “serious violation of the employer’s rules and regulations” or “serious dereliction of duty, engaging in malpractice for personal gain, causing substantial damage to the employer."

"Serious Violation of Rules and Regulations”

To use this clause, the first prerequisite question is:

“Do the rules actually exist?”

In practice, when arbitrators or judges encounter companies using this defense, they basically ask the company to “show us the employee handbook.”

The company must produce an already legally published employee handbook or rules showing the relevant red lines are clearly stated.

But honestly, how many domestic companies’ employee handbooks explicitly state “it is strictly prohibited to use sensitive topics such as gender, region, ethnicity, occupation, identity, or animal protection for marketing”?

At most, they’ll have vague clauses like “strictly prohibited from harming company reputation” or “strictly prohibited from publishing information that affects company reputation.”

Too vague—vague enough for employees to play dumb in court, claiming they were just using a common internet meme without malicious intent, no thought of harming company reputation—it was just netizens overinterpreting.

Without a specific regulatory foundation, trying to blanket-terminate using “violation of rules” easily gets deemed as illegal termination.

The employee, satisfied with having expressed themselves, can happily collect “2N” compensation.

Sweet.

”Causing Substantial Damage”

If citing disciplinary violations is difficult, surely the company’s losses are “real,” right?

Player refunds, negative product reviews, “hot memes” flying everywhere, law enforcement showing up for investigation after too many complaints—the company has lost both money and reputation. Isn’t that substantial damage?

It’s really not that clear-cut.

As everyone knows, everyone’s struggling right now, cutting costs, “full of chill.” Competitors will jump at any chance to “start a fight.”

To prove “substantial damage,” the first requirement is establishing legal causation.

How does the company produce ironclad evidence in court that the recent revenue decline and refund requests are one hundred percent, without a doubt, solely caused by those few lines of “punching” copy?

How do they prove those angry DMs and complaints really come from real users, not the neighbor Wang using a “motherboard farm” to write hit pieces and fan the flames?

Without strong evidence and reasoning skills,

That’s really hard.

Moreover, there might not even be real damage.

What if this campaign cleaned out some non-core users but kept the “hardcore fans”?

What if those “yelling” were just “bystanders” who would never pay for the product anyway?

What if it only cleansed “freeloaders” and “small spenders,” while the core “whales” were satisfied and increased their spending to become “mega-whales”?

What if, what if—

In court, without clear causation and precise quantification standards, pinning losses on a specific employee’s specific marketing materials is not as easy as people think.

As long as there’s a single crack in the causal chain, under current practice, courts are very unlikely to support zero-compensation termination.

II. Moreover, Gender Issues Aren’t Necessarily Illegal

First, under current law, not all promotions involving gender issues are illegal.

Companies can choose to make female-oriented products, and of course can make male-oriented products.

They can run ads emphasizing female empowerment, or themes of male growth, family roles, workplace equality, etc.

These promotional themes aren’t inherently illegal.

In fact, if done well, they can be excellent positive brand expression.

But the recent “Qinglang” (Clean Internet) campaign made it very clear: what’s truly illegal is:

“Inciting group antagonism.”

You can “show strength” (within realistic and physical laws), show achievements, make positive appeals.

But you can’t “double standard” or “compare and contrast.”

You can discuss related topics in a friendly manner, but cannot incite group antagonism.

You can express brand values, but cannot exploit divisions to provoke conflict.

You can serve your product’s target users, but cannot drag non-target users and ordinary people into the battlefield as virtual targets.

III. If Leadership Approved It, Are They Responsible?

Some companies might be wild enough to delegate promotional material release authority to regular employees.

But in most formal companies, a promotional plan’s journey from planning to launch inevitably involves “mid-level” or even “senior leadership.”

Supervisors, operations heads, marketing directors—even VPs—might express opinions in group chats or click “approved” on OA tickets.

Legally speaking, the moment a leader with approval authority signs off, the plan ceases to be an individual employee’s act and becomes a collective company decision.

As they say,

With greater power comes greater responsibility—and greater blame.

If the employee fully, truthfully, and clearly submitted the plan’s content, communication risks, controversies, and potential consequences to leadership, and leadership still approved the launch, then primary responsibility naturally can’t fall solely on the executing employee.

The “approve” button on OA isn’t there for decoration. Since the company set up an approval process, it means approvers bear corresponding management responsibility.

Of course, the employee might also have their own “clever little touches” in the plan presentation—only discussing content, benefits, and budget while glossing over potential social risks.

The “old boss” (maybe) doesn’t know the risks. The “mid-level boss” doesn’t know, doesn’t dare raise it, or knows but wants to see the drama.

And the plan gets approved.

From a corporate governance perspective, the relevant leaders certainly can’t escape blame.

Especially roles like marketing head, operations head, brand head, and PR head—their job descriptions naturally include promotion review, brand risk control, public opinion early warning, and content compliance. They can’t simply say “I didn’t know (about the risks)” to escape responsibility.

Understanding the current market environment and identifying risks is part of executives’ job duties.

When an employee does something “bad,” the leader, as manager, naturally shares the blame.

So if firing the employee is so hard, can the employee rely on their “own efforts” to get the leader fired instead?

Dream on.

If the leader merely made a general approval oversight or lacked understanding of internet slang, the company would typically issue an internal sanction, performance rating adjustment, bonus reduction, role change, or—if conditions are met—a management path for incompetence, “reassigning” them to another department or city.

But directly applying no-compensation termination still requires meeting the standards discussed above.

Are there regulatory documents? Are there actual losses?

Besides, leaders are leaders—

Would they really be that easy to fire?

IV. So There’s No Way to Deal with “Punching”?

If a company is truly determined to take action, beyond having rules in place beforehand, another key standard is:

“Intent.”

If the employee (genuinely or ostensibly) merely misjudged online public opinion, didn’t expect the backlash, and the plan went through multi-level approval, then the company trying to terminate under Article 39 carries high risk and difficulty. It’s more likely to be deemed a work error, with the company only able to resort to internal management measures like performance C-rating, training, role transfer, warnings, demotion, or annual bonus adjustment.

But if the employee deliberately exploited leadership’s information gap, knowing full well that leadership was unaware of the current public opinion environment, and inserted clearly divisive, insulting, provocative, sarcastic, or confrontational expressions into the promotional plan, subjectively pursuing or condoning public opinion conflict—that’s a completely different story.

But how do you prove “intent”?

Daily Behavior (Before the Fact)

People who insert “controversial topics” into product promotions can hardly avoid showing it in daily life.

Without infringing on personal privacy, the company could investigate the employee’s social media.

Check whether they had previously expressed personal opinions under related topics or written articles about them.

To prove the employee “knowingly” understood the topic would trigger controversy.

Performance Before Plan Launch (During the Fact)

Did they mention potential controversies in discussions before the plan launch?

Did they continue pushing the plan despite others raising concerns?

Did they privately discuss with colleagues the topics the plan might trigger?

Did they deliberately conceal relevant facts when questioned by leadership?

Did they deliberately package controversial expressions as ordinary copy or disguise them as common youth internet slang to evade leadership review?

Did they openly submit a broadly normal framework, then deliberately insert relevant topics during actual execution to make it a “fait accompli”?

Did they bypass legal, PR, brand, and compliance review before launch?

Attitude Toward Results (After the Fact)

Was their attitude toward the controversy normal?

Did they express approval of the controversy’s occurrence?

Did they make statements like “I wanted to break them” or “I did it to disgust them”?

V. How Can Companies Prevent This?

Some companies may indeed want to use various issues to further “expand their audience” or “purge their userbase.”

But most companies presumably don’t want their promotions to cause uncontrollable “backlash.”

Especially as the current domestic environment grows increasingly sensitive toward various topics—

With the “Qinglang” campaign targeting these issues,

Companies would be wise to establish defensive mechanisms in advance.

How exactly? The framework basically emerges from the analysis above:

Include relevant prohibitions in the employee handbook;

Add and strengthen training on related sensitive topics in employee training, especially for communications staff;

Strengthen compliance review while also training compliance reviewers on social public opinion awareness;

If relevant topics are involved, require pre-review by diverse personnel of different genders to ensure no one finds it “offensive”;

HRBPs should conduct routine observation, identifying employees who might be “interested” in or have “strong desires to express” various issues early on.

And so on.

Of course, leaders should also stay timely informed about social realities—especially among youth, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. Understand trending slang better to avoid amplifying or underestimating the social impact of certain issues based solely on outdated understanding.

There’s also a more modern, convenient method:

Many AIs come with “relatively sensitive” protection mechanisms. When unsure whether a plan contains relevant issues or might cause negative outcomes,

You can simply ask AI for its opinion in advance.

As long as it’s not a “people-pleasing AI,” whether AI answers or not, it should provide a reference-worthy result.

VI. Back to the Title: When “Punching” in Marketing, Can You Legally Terminate the Employee?

The answer is:

Not necessarily.

If it’s merely a promotional direction dispute, inappropriate expression, or misjudgment of current trends leading to user reactions exceeding expectations, directly firing the employee without compensation carries high risk.

But if the employee violated clear rules, or there’s evidence they deliberately exploited leadership’s information gap, smuggled personal topics into the expression, without authorization or through deception advanced high-risk promotional content, concealed relevant facts, induced approval, and pursued or condoned major public opinion crises, complaints, platform penalties, regulatory risks, or even economic loss—the company may have grounds for legal termination.

The most fascinating yet dangerous thing about today’s internet marketing is: old marketing methods are “stale and boring,”

While new marketing methods can “explode instantly” at any moment.

They might ignite trending topics overnight, bringing massive free traffic.

Or a single line of copy, one poster, one homophonic pun, one emoji, one character’s position, one endorser—can be reinterpreted by users and bystanders through various frameworks.

Especially in the current social climate, every industry is increasingly emotional and “hot-headed.”

Once a promotional material goes out, it gets screenshot, magnified, deconstructed, re-created, reported, excavated, confronted—

Eventually becoming something even the company doesn’t recognize.

Given current internet dissemination speeds, going from “triggering a topic” to becoming a “cringey meme” on every kid’s lips might not even take 72 hours.

Everyone is entitled to their own values, and certainly can express their opinions.

But workplace professionals cannot and should not treat their company’s official accounts as amplifiers or “whistles” for their personal agenda.

In the past, leaders could naturally be unfamiliar with internet slang, as long as they managed the business and controlled the direction.

But if they still don’t understand internet trends, the real meaning of certain terms, or the “landmines” of youth today—

They might get led into a ditch by their subordinates at any moment.

After all,

“Sir, the times have changed.”