A review of the top ten crisis public relations events in 2020

The following is our compilation of the [Top Ten Crisis Public Relations Events of 2020], with a full text of more than 6,800 words. I hope you can learn to "avoid pitfalls" from other people's cases.

We try to simulate MBA-style teaching, that is: one case + one methodology.

1. Alibaba: The PR team is not a panacea

I have great respect for Alibaba’s PR team. This group of people can be regarded as the Huangpu Military Academy of China’s PR circle. However, Alibaba's performance this year can be described as starting high and ending low. DingTalk won Alibaba a lot of applause at the beginning of the year, but it started to decline in the middle of the year. This shows that the PR team is not "omnipotent" because:

Although now it seems that Jiang's wife and Zhang Da have both "come back" and everything seems to be fine, the Cyberspace Administration of China summoned the person in charge of Weibo and ordered it to rectify the situation of Weibo interfering with the order of online communication in Jiang's public opinion incident, and to suspend the updating of the hot search list for one week. The meaning behind this action is profound: capital cannot control public opinion.

I happened to watch the live broadcast of a certain Yun's speech at the Shanghai Financial Forum. At that time, I was deeply impressed by one detail: he came on stage with several sheets of A4 paper, which meant he had a manuscript in his hand. Throughout the speech, he kept looking down while speaking, and even turned the pages. This detail shows that Mou Yun’s speech was not an impromptu speech, but had a clear strategy.

I guess all PR colleagues are thinking about one question:

Who wrote Jack Ma’s speech? Have you shown it to the public relations department? …

About a week after the incident caused a huge stir, a report from Caixin revealed this detail:

"Caixin reporters learned from various sources that Jack Ma wrote his own speech and did not ask Ant colleagues with a lot of financial backgrounds for comments. No one even knew the specific content of his speech in advance."

Everyone knows what happened next.

I cite these two examples not to "excuse" the PR team, but because the reality is too cruel. It is so difficult to "manage upwards" for a team like Alibaba PR, which makes us see the limits of the capabilities of PR practitioners. Not only do public relations people need to see this boundary, but bosses need to see it even more. Let me ask you a question: even if your public relations department is given a preview, what good will that do? Will it affect the ending? Who should be held responsible for this matter?

Tencent also experienced two crises in the first and second half of 2020, less than two months apart. One was the "Backwater Battle" article that went viral, and the other was an advertising dispute with "Laoganma", which the industry called "Dou E Yuan".

In both crisis events, Tencent’s public relations department used a killer move: self-deprecating in a cute way.

Tencent PR cleverly incorporated this "honest" personality image into the response graphics and texts, deliberately avoiding the routine of writing a serious crisis public relations statement. In addition, Tencent Public Relations also "migrated" the response platform from Weibo to Bilibili. This "homework" came from DingTalk and also achieved amazing results.

The uncle also emphasized in his comments at the time that the two counterattacks of Tencent’s public relations, on the one hand, benefited from its own “cute self-deprecating” strategy which was more in line with the Internet sentiment and was more acceptable to young people; on the other hand, and the most crucial reason was that the actual lethality of these two incidents themselves was not as great as Alibaba’s incident. Neither did they involve values, and there was even a reversal of facts. If handled properly, they would naturally gain more applause. Therefore, we cannot simply make a direct comparison between the two.

Looking back at Tencent PR’s response to similar self-media articles that went viral in the past, Tencent’s bigwigs did not take action this year. On the one hand, they sent representative Zhang Jun to respond positively to some of the questions in the article. On the other hand, they pushed a wave of financial reports and refuted with facts. However, this traditional response routine was too serious to go viral. Tencent PR added drama to the “backwater” and went viral with a combination of cuteness and self-deprecation.

If we were to find a negative example of "responding hastily without understanding the crisis" this year, it would definitely be "Ele.me". The public relations team of this business that was acquired by Alibaba didn’t even ask for the opinions of the Tiantuan?

I originally wanted to take advantage of the hot topic, so Ele.me published an article titled "Would you like to give me 5 more minutes?" 》 had the opposite effect.

When faced with the same article that went viral, Ele.me’s public relations department may have believed in the theory of “the golden six hours of crisis public relations” and actually put the blame on the users.

If the crisis is misread, the response will inevitably be wrong, and the users who are blamed for this will obviously not buy it.

There was an even more fatal mistake. The article that went viral was aimed at Meituan, the industry leader, but Ele.me took the initiative to "take the bullet" for its competitor. Everyone should know the final result: Meituan copied their open-book homework. Rather than saying that Meituan’s public relations are smart, it is better to say that Ele.me’s public relations are too aggressive.

After talking about the case of hasty response, let’s talk about another case of no response. It came from Durex, which loves to take advantage of hot topics the most. How weird is that.

Durex was fined 810,000 yuan because its Internet advertising content for a women's product violated relevant provisions of the Advertising Law. This news quickly became a hot topic on Weibo. At that time, iPhone 12 was released, and everyone associated this punishment with Durex's iPhone 12 poster, conveying the message to the outside world:

Of course, the vulgar poster of the cross-border cooperation between Durex and HEYTEA was brought out as an example again to confirm this conclusion.

According to general public relations knowledge, the company was subject to administrative penalties and became a hot topic. This must have been a negative impact on the brand, so public relations must respond, right? ? As a result, Durex’s Weibo did not respond directly to the matter, nor did it even provide an indirect response. This is totally inconsistent with the rules of crisis public relations!

As a public relations practitioner, I myself didn’t quite understand Durex’s strategy at the time. The official could have just made a joke and continued to fan the flames, letting netizens and self-media speak out for themselves, but Durex chose to remain silent.

Uncle often says that crisis public relations is two battlefields, one is the front battlefield and the other is the side battlefield.

The fact that Durex’s public relations department did not respond directly does not mean that they did not try to guide public opinion through comments and third-party commissioned articles. After all, a third party saying hello is far better than the official trying to be clever, because this matter involves corporate values ​​and mainstream social values ​​represented by administrative penalties. If the tactics are not handled well, it is easy to fail and both netizens and the government will be "offended", so it is better not to say anything.

With Huawei in front and TikTok behind, the path for China's high-tech companies to go overseas has become more uncertain this year. The uncle believes that individual cases cannot be viewed in isolation, and more and more Chinese companies need to learn to find certainty in uncertainty.

Trump signed an executive order on August 6, stating that TikTok poses a threat to U.S. national security and will ban any U.S. individual or entity from conducting any transactions with TikTok and its parent company ByteDance after 45 days. On August 14, he signed another executive order requiring ByteDance to divest all interests in TikTok's operations in the United States within 90 days.

Before and after the order was issued, rumors related to TikTok had gone viral. ByteDance’s response statements are both long and short. The two internal letters written by Zhang Yiming were severely criticized in China! Finally, in the third letter, ByteDance became extremely tough, just like Huawei's style. "If the US government cannot treat us fairly, we will appeal to the US courts."

While publicly calling for the "rule of law," ByteDance for the first time publicly encouraged its 100 million users in the United States to express their opinions to U.S. lawmakers at all levels, including the White House government, and to incite the emotions of the American people instead of inciting domestic national sentiments. This is a risky move, but what really worked was not TikTok's external statements, but its "dragging" strategy.

On December 7, a federal district court judge for the District of Columbia passed a temporary injunction to halt the U.S. Department of Commerce's restrictive measures on TikTok. This is the second time a federal district court judge has made the same ruling.

6. 315 Gala: Highly repeated “high attention”

This year's 315 Gala was postponed to mid-July due to the epidemic, which greatly reduced its overall destructive power. However, as the annual "Spring Festival Gala" of the public relations circle, it still attracts a lot of attention within the circle.

Last year, I particularly noticed that before the official start of CCTV's 315 Gala, there was no concentrated hard advertising display time for companies. There are still no advertisements this year. I guess the "unspoken rule" of ensuring safety by placing pre-program ads may be out of date.

Looking at the responses of several companies involved, I found a serious problem, that is, everyone's crisis public relations statements are becoming more and more similar. For example, the phrase "attach great importance" is highly repeated. It seems to be a good thing that companies are paying more and more attention to public relations, and the response efficiency has greatly improved. However, routine statements, especially those starting from a delaying tactic, are reducing the value of public relations.

Taking Hixue.com as an example, CCTV’s 315 Gala said that it had received hundreds of letters of complaint. Its crisis public relations strategy is: 1. No matter what negative news is reported about me, I will respond first, and this response can be applied to any negative news; 2. Based on the specific exposed content, give a phased decision and action.

After talking about the insincere statement, let me give another example of sincerity, which is Haidilao.

Haidilao apologized for the previous price increase through its official Weibo account and restored the original price.

Related topics quickly became hot searches on Weibo. An apology letter conveys three core messages:

1. The management is to blame for the price increase and should apologize!

2. Restore the original price.

3. There is a 31% discount for self-pickup service.

The three messages are linked together: apology is an attitude, restoring the original price is an action, and emphasizing discounts is a sales strategy. Therefore, this is an apology letter with attitude, action and strategy, which quickly attracted rave reviews!

Subsequently, catering companies such as Xibei followed suit.

At that time, some people in the public relations circle began to question: Was Haidilao’s apology directed and performed by the public relations department itself?

The uncle thinks not, because Haidilao took the initiative to raise prices and invite criticism just to lower prices in the future and then win favor through an apology letter. This is not very logical.

The uncle has specially studied Haidilao’s Weibo during the epidemic. Friends who are interested can go and check it out. There is neither Xibei’s “complaining” nor Lao Xiangji’s “selling out”. It is just a down-to-earth narration of actions and occasional mention of problems.

After talking about so many corporate crisis public relations, how can the review of 2020 be complete without celebrities? "Time Management Master" Luo Zhixiang must have a place.

Although Zhou Yangqing's long accusation article labeled Luo Zhixiang with too many labels in one breath, such as: group sex, time management master, two mobile phones, insulting women, dark circles under the eyes, etc., the core is just one: scumbag, but she actually kept it back and did not provide any pictures. In this era of "no picture, no truth", the lack of persuasiveness also leaves room for redemption of the matter.

Luo Zhixiang’s first response was completed in 3 hours. The key point was not the time, but the content. One of Luo's core strategies in response is to avoid the important issues, avoid those negative labels, and instead focus on "no regrets" to win the other party's favor.

Some people think that this strategy of “avoiding the heavy and focusing on the light” is good. Do you think you can “avoid the heavy”? But after reading the second response, the uncle gradually understood Luo's strategy, because Luo's "scumbag" personality is simply beyond redemption. What he can do is not to go back and forth like Xue Zhiqian, making the argument bigger and bigger, but to quickly cool down, apologize, and beg for mercy!

Zhou has successfully "debuted" through this incident and became an Internet celebrity, while Luo continues to take a break from entertainment and wait for an opportunity. The two have a good understanding of each other.

9. Poly Real Estate: General Manager Wen Ling has been kicked out of the PR circle

If you don’t forward the message, you will be kicked out of the group. The “bullying” behavior of real estate public relations personnel against media personnel instantly detonated the real estate circle, media circle and public relations circle.

Regardless of whether you have worked in public relations or not, when you see the screenshots, you may not be able to understand why Wen Ling is so "stupid", and the uncle is the same. Thinking back on it, you may also make the same mistakes that Wen Ling always makes. This involves personal factors, but it also reflects some problems in the public relations industry.

What mistakes did Wen Ling always make? I have mentioned four points clearly in my previous article, and today I will focus on the spokesperson.

Judging from some of the interviews that Wen Ling has given, he loves to be interviewed by the media and is very talkative. Unfortunately, if a spokesperson neither understands public relations nor respects the public relations profession and does not respect the media from the bottom of his heart, accidents are bound to happen.

Although the incident ended with President Wen Ling expressing his apology in the group the next day, it is obvious that not only has his career basically come to an end, but the most important thing is that this incident will become a "joke" that will always follow him. It is strongly recommended that he change his career.

This should be the most devastating crisis event at the end of 2020. I will put it in the last case for comment.

Live streaming selling goods by internet celebrities has become a very large industry, and Simba is the head of it. However, the wild growth of this industry is bound to cause trouble, which is, in a sense, representative. Simba’s team’s response also basically reflects the current level of public relations in this industry.

This time, Luo has plugged all the mistakes and pitfalls that Simba has made. In other words, Simba's public relations team laid a solid foundation for Luo Yonghao's public relations team's high score through an open-book exam. Following Ele.me and Meituan, Simba and Luo Yonghao once again staged a typical case of "being cheated in an open-book exam"!

On the other hand, Luo Yonghao’s only response was about half an hour after he received the third-party test report. Is it true or false? Sales platforms and merchants should not act as "referees". They should use third-party inspection reports as the basis for determining facts. They should be well-founded and the public should be convinced. If they are wrong, they should maintain a correct attitude, without any quibbling or shirking of responsibility.

The uncle even concluded that Luo's public relations team had already written the statement, and they may have known whether the product was real or not, but chose to keep silent before getting the third-party inspection report. This was just copying Simba's "open-book homework": first understand the crisis, find out the facts, and then choose the time to respond.

Let me tell you another small detail about crisis public relations, think about it for yourself.

A few days ago, rumors spread that "Simba was under investigation" and even "faced 15 years in prison." When I saw the title, I felt it was a bit fake. How did Simba's public relations team handle this public opinion?

Maybe a lot of work has been done. The uncle saw one of them, which is SEO, search engine optimization. Simply put, it is negative sinking.

Although this basic work is worth doing, Simba’s PR team made two low-level mistakes: one was to find a small self-media account to publish articles in the tone of official media, and the other was even more "fatal". Both articles had the same sentence under them: "Disclaimer: The market is risky, choose carefully! This article is for reference only and is not a basis for buying or selling."

I can’t complain about the quality of this 500 yuan soft article…

It is strongly recommended that internet celebrities who sell goods through live streaming pay attention and copy these two "homework" carefully, because you have been "targeted" by professional counterfeiters and the media. If you don’t have a public relations team, please hurry up. Of course, compliance is more important!