Harbin Pharmaceutical Group Co (HPGC), a manufacturer and retailer of pharmaceutical products, was named for the second time last week as a seller of counterfeit drugs by the China Food and Drug Administration. For HPGC, this bad press must be particularly galling considering the amount it spends on advertisement.

HPGC is known by many thanks to the massive, celebrity-studded TV commercial campaign it started back in the late 1990s. Last year, the company reportedly spent 898 million yuan ($147.9 million) just on advertising, more than any other health-related company in China.

In today's information age, huge advertising budgets can't produce the same results as they did in the past. Easy access to a host of different media sources has eroded the dominance of TV and consumers no longer judge products based solely on advertising. If HPGC can't learn this lesson, then it will only continue to lose the trust of consumers.

The author is Zhang Jialong, a financial reporter for Tencent.

Tencent