Laurel Tangyuan and Fuwan Chocolate Incident - How to do better people-oriented external communication

Abstract

The "Fuwan Chocolate", which originated in Pingtung, Taiwan, is a world-famous chocolate brand. In 2020, “Fuwan” won the gold medal during the “World Chocolate Competition”, which known as the "Oscar Award” in the chocolate industry. After winning the grand prize, "Fuwan Chocolate" took advantage of the momentum and launched joint products with well-known brands, such as Laurel Corp (Tangyuan). Unexpectedly, the father of Fuwan’s CEO sexually harassed a female intern five years ago, and the CEO also scolded the victim for the chaotic private life after his father being accused. This old matter that has been 5 years was brought up to the stage again this year. Although Fuwan apologized on their Facebook fan page afterwards, it was not accepted by netizens. After three weeks of uproar, its co-branded manufacturer Laurel announced the suspension of production of chocolate flavor tangyuan in collaboration with Fuwan. Many well-known Taiwanese manufacturers also followed the step in the meanwhile. The established credibility and image are now seriously damaged. This study is mainly to discuss the external communication methods and processing results of "Fuwan" and "Laurel" by comparing the pros and cons of their processing methods. We hope this research will be able to provide a better people-oriented communication method that may combined with local condition as a reference when same incident once happened in the future.