Gree Electric Appliances and Hisense Air Conditioning have recently launched a fierce public opinion confrontation around the slogan "Real Copper". Gree Marketing Director Zhu Lei publicly questioned a friend on a social platform for plagiarizing his original ideas, which immediately triggered a strong counterattack from the other party.Zhu Lei pointed out in his post that inDuring the Shanghai Home Expo, some friends directly borrowed Gree’s original four-character real copper material for promotion. He said sharply that if a brand's products still use aluminum wires in motor windings, then it has no qualifications to call itself real copper.
In response to Gree's accusations, the relevant person in charge of Hisense Air Conditioning responded quickly. Citing historical reports, the person in charge said that as early as 2016, companies such as Hisense, Changhong, and Skyworth had already been mentioned in reports about insisting on real copper materials, but Gree was not on the list at that time.
The person in charge emphasized that these four words do not belong to a specific person or company, but to all Chinese people who pursue quality. This statement aims to eliminate Gree’s exclusive possession of the word. It is currently unclear who plagiarized whom.
Behind this war of words is actually a deep-seated game in the air-conditioning industry regarding the standard for replacing aluminum with copper. Zhu Lei revealed that at the end of last year, 19 industry companies jointly advocated the use of aluminum instead of copper to reduce costs, but Gree did not participate in it and chose to stick to real copper to the end.
However, this statement was quickly questioned on a factual level. According to the relevant application form, Gree took the initiative to apply to join the aluminum strengthening application research working group in March last year. This gap between public statements and actual application actions has become the focus of counterattacks by friendly businesses.