Okay, lemme get this straight, this ain’t another news report, this is something I wanted to write after I stumbled upon a tweet from Dhananjay Bhosale (you must’ve seen his videos on Youtube, he’s awesome!). Take a look:

Suddenly so many profiles commented Negative things about the Redmi Note 5. None of them follow me & almost all have an interesting timeline! Who do you think paid them to do this? pic.twitter.com/ov9eLPmhKk — Dhananjay Bhosale (@Dhananjay_Tech) February 13, 2018

Now, take a look at the next tweet:

This got me to check some of the tweets from his profile and stumbled upon these tweets:

This one is from the #DontBuyXiaomi hashtag:

I’m not going to embed the tweet because they might get deleted soon enough.

All the tweets have the same hashtag and most of them are regarding Flipkart’s tweet about Redmi Note 5. Also, all the tweets are posted around the same time too!

Hmm, might just be another trend you guess? Read on.

Now, take a look at the tweets from these profiles:

That too isn’t enough? Look at the below given tweets (copy paste tweets):

Not enough? Check below for more:

All of the above tweets are copy pasted tweets, and posted at almost same time. Also look at the last pic from the above one, it’s from Honor India twitter handle. Yes, these tweets are the copy paste of the official tweet with an added line “This is another reason to buy this and not Xiaomi“.

Now the next one:

This one is similar to the earlier one, copy paste of the same message :#Honor9Lite goes for its biggest flash sale and sold out in 6mins! #Add4Get9 @Flipkart”, followed by a message bashing Xiaomi.

Same story, different words, this time targeting that tweet from Flipkart Twitter handle.

Now, this one is different, targeting a tweet from Tech2 twitter handle regarding Redmi Note 5, random stuff against Mi in Hindi.

Now, finally, there’s video that all the twitter handles are retweeting, I’m embedding that video:

Bought a mia1 and faced recurring heating issues and this is how their customer service, they should stop making phones #MiSucks pic.twitter.com/Vqg9jShJFN — Reena Soni (@trulycrazy15) February 11, 2018



Can you guess which all accounts retweeted the video? Take a look yourself! (Look at these accounts too, if you wish to see what is going on!). This video has been retweeted with the hashtag #MiSucks, by the twitter handles we saw in the screenshots.

Also the video is said to be an old one, way before Mi A1 release. Check the replies from others:

I tried searching Youtube for the same video, and guess what, I found it:

The video was published in May 18, 2017, guess what? Mi A1 was launched in September 2017!

I guess that proves the fake claim here.

It’s clear as sky that this is a targeted negative campaign against Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 5 Pro & Redmi Note 5 release today.

And this isn’t the first time Honor has tried this. They were caught previously at the time of Honor 7x, when they tried to make 7x trending and made Redmi Note 5 trending instead. I remember that, I don’t have any proof for that at this moment. As we discussed that in Twitter and some Facebook groups regarding that. That was an incentivised campaign, with payout per tweet.

UPDATE: Found the mail, here you go:

UPDATE 2: Got hold of a different screenshot for the same, take a look:

It is from BuzzOne influencer platform. Take a look at their home page, Huawei sits prominently in their Clients section. No one can say the campaign is done without the knowledge of Huawei/Honor.

UPDATE 3: BuzzOne has now removed Huawei from their clients list, and have now replaced Huawei logo with MAHOU INDIA. You can guess the reason for that!

Here’s the screenshot I took last day, I didn’t think they’d remove Huawei logo, else I would’ve added the screenshot from PC, this one is from mobile:

Now, this campaign is also looking to be something similar, all these accounts are not bots (I guess). They’re accounts made to publish paid tweets. You can check any of the profiles.

Also, the hashtag by Honor India, #Add4Get9 is directly targeted at Redmi Note 5.

Also, add in the recent news about Honor’s mother company Huawei pushing in fake reviews into Best Buy. All of these marketing tactics doesn’t add up very well. And this will hurt the company in long term in my opinion.

Dear Honor India!

This is an open letter to Honor India.

Why do you have to engage these kinds of cheap marketing tricks to get traction.

Why do you have to try to sabotage another company’s hype on Twitter?

Why do you have to make up fake news and make people retweet it?

Why do all this when you’re having amazing products such as Honor 9 Lite, Honor 7x & Honor 9i in the budget segment now?

You must have the confidence about your own products, and keeping on bugging others doesn’t speak confidence.

Don’t fear competition, embrace it!

I wrote this because I feel this has to be said. Most people won’t say anything regarding this or publish this story, I guess. This has to be said and people has to know about this. And Honor should stop these cheap marketing tactics and focus on adding value and continue on making great products to the Indian market.

– Abhijith

Editor in Chief, OnPhones