Yu Jiawen did a nationwide marketing campaign without spending a penny

Yu Jiawen became famous . I have no interest in discussing what his character is like. But the logic behind his fame is worth repeated scrutiny. The whole incident is closely linked and well-organized. I will never believe that "Yu Jiawen's popularity" is a coincidence.

I roughly sorted out the timeline of the Yu Jiawen incident:

1. On November 22, Yu Jiawen appeared on “Youth China Says” and made “domineering president” remarks. The online video has received over 10 million hits.

2. On November 27 and 28, negative news about Yu Jiawen and Super Course Schedule spread from Zhihu to self-media, reaching its peak on the 28th. I did a rough search of the data and found that within 4 days, more than 3,000 Zhihu readers paid attention to the question "Does Super Course Schedule have a profit of over 100 million?" and more than 10,000 results about negative news about Yu Jiawen on Baidu were found.

3. At 9:49 am on November 28, Yu Jiawen said on Weibo that "Since being hacked, Super Course Schedule has entered the fourth place in the app store"; at 9:37 pm, he published another article "Yu Jiawen, who has been hacked for a long time, finally spoke out: Should those born in the 1990s who start high-profile businesses die? 》, which has been forwarded and commented on Weibo for over 4,000 times, and liked for over 5,000 times; the number of views of this article in the circle of friends has soared to 100,000.

On the same day, another article titled "A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Crisis Public Relations Drafts" which used the copywriting of "Yu Jiawen's Autobiography" as an example began to circulate in the Internet circle and was then reprinted by many self-media.

4. From November 29 to December 1, mainstream media began to report mostly neutrally on Yu Jiawen. Among them, three articles from China Youth Daily, "Exploring the Mystery of Post-90s Overbearing President Yu Jiawen", "Controversy over Yu Jiawen", and "Those Old Guys Have No Idea What I'm Thinking" were listed as related articles when searching for "Yu Jiawen".

5. At 10:50 pm on December 1, Yu Jiawen once again posted an informative article on his Weibo titled "Decoding the Strategies Behind Million-Dollar Products", which was reposted by Forbes, Huxiu and others.

In just about a week, Yu Jiawen and Super Course Schedule became well-known throughout the industry and everyone on the street knew them. The marketing capabilities of this team are definitely comparable to those of a professional team. Compared with the crisis public relations of Jumei Youpin's Chen Ou counterfeit incident some time ago, Xiao Yu and his colleagues' approach was more focused and they were better at leveraging their strengths - in addition to crisis public relations, they also took the opportunity to carry out marketing promotions.

The conventional marketing thinking pattern in China is to launch a large number of advertisements - such as "Naobaijin". However, the brainwashing marketing method of Melatonin takes a long time to show results and is expensive. Yu Jiawen's marketing method is completely based on leveraging the power of others, and the number of product downloads increased dramatically in an instant.

The crisis public relations + marketing of Yu Jiawen's team was a spiral and gradual cycle: first, Yu Jiawen used the CCTV platform to publicize that he "gave 100 million yuan to employees", making the public think "Is this kid so awesome?" Then they developed a huge curiosity about him and naturally paid attention to and discussed his products. Yu Jiawen thus successfully directed the public's attention to the product itself.

As public attention increased, negative news about Yu Jiawen also exploded. But looking back, it is difficult for me to judge whether the news that "Yu Jiawen's internal employees exposed negative information about their boss on Zhihu" was a deliberate self-torture trick by the team to attract public attention. If so, the Super Course Schedule team is not simple. This is the "bitter flesh strategy" in Sun Tzu's Art of War.

However, this method is risky and the risk is too great. If one person cannot hold on, the entire team will be ruined. Therefore, it is not recommended for marketers to use this trick easily.

Then came the crucial step - Yu Jiawen’s autobiography on the 29th, “Always Being Hacked…” and “Hand-in-hand Teaching You How to Write Crisis Public Relations Drafts”. These two articles, one making a feint to the east and the other attacking in the west, directed public opinion to the aspect that was most beneficial to Yu Jiawen's team.

The article "Always Being Blackened" obviously regained the support of the public, especially young people, for Yu Jiawen. It is an excellent public relations article. Compared with the Jumei counterfeit incident where "Chen Ou became furious on the spot and directly threatened to cut off the entire luxury goods department", this method of moving the public with details is more direct and effective.

This article avoided the important issues in writing, had inspiring content, and was timed perfectly. It hit the nail on the head when negative news was at the forefront of the storm, and immediately brought back a large number of "fans". As for the public, they will download this software to play out of curiosity while watching the fun.

I don’t know whether the article “Hand in Hand” was written by Xiao Yu’s team. This article mentioned the article "Always Being Criticized...", which said that "the public relations strategy was very successful" and "various techniques were used flexibly", which deepened the impression among people in the Internet and investment circles who do not like Yu Jiawen or Super Course Schedule - "Yu Jiawen is indeed good at public relations."

At this point, most marketing teams would have called it a day, but Xiao Yu did not. On December 1, he published a speech on Weibo titled "Deciphering the Strategies Behind Millions of Products." Ordinary fans probably cannot finish reading or understand this article of several thousand words, but it actually has only one purpose - "Yu Jiawen is not a person without material." This move is the finishing touch, the content is good and it adds points to everyone's impression.

As of December 2, Yu Jiawen's personal Weibo followers reached 76,000, and Super Course Schedule's Weibo followers reached 950,000. After the performance of the past few days, these two have become the media accounts with the largest number of young people. This means that Yu Jiawen’s team will play an important role in the young people’s market in the future.

I heard from some insiders in the investment circle that after this battle, Yu Jiawen's team has successfully attracted the attention of some well-known overseas investors. It can be said that Yu Jiawen’s team has already led the Internet industry and the investor industry by the nose, and these smart people are being fooled by him.

Yu Jiawen and his team's marketing capabilities are indeed better than 90% of their peers. Most importantly, the team used the attention to promote the product to everyone at almost no cost. This method of leveraging one's own strength is worth learning from for any listed company. According to Yu Jiawen’s own words in the article “Deciphering the Strategies Behind Millions of Products”, “When I do advertising like this, the marginal cost tends to zero.”