Qinchi bid ¥320M for China's top TV ad slot, and the product couldn't back the fame

Qinchi was a small county distillery in Shandong. In November 1995 it stunned Chinese business by winning CCTV's prime-time advertising auction — the '标王', or 'bid king' — with a ¥66.66 million bid, beating far larger rivals. The bet worked: blanket television advertising made an obscure brand famous almost overnight, and sales surged.

Emboldened, Qinchi bid again in 1996 and won the 标王 a second time with ¥320 million. Sales reportedly reached ¥950 million that year, with profit and tax of ¥220 million — several times the year before. The company became the national symbol of advertising-driven growth.

The problem was the product behind the advertising. Qinchi's own capacity to brew base liquor was only about 3,000 tons a year, far short of what it was selling, so it bought bulk liquor from small distilleries in Sichuan and blended it. In 1997 reporters exposed the practice. For a brand built on prestige, the '勾兑' — blending — revelation was fatal: consumers felt they had been sold an image, not a liquor.

Sales collapsed to about ¥300 million in 1997 and Qinchi faded from the market within roughly two years. The case became a staple of Chinese marketing teaching: advertising can buy attention, but a 标王 crown paid for with money the product cannot earn back is a debt, not an asset.