Jingdong Love Story

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In recent days, rumors of the breakup between Liu Qiangdong and Zhang Zetian, the male and female protagonists of "JD Love Story", have intensified. The cause was simply that the two deleted some personal Weibo posts, but the versions of the breakup derived from this are varied. It is rumored that Liu Qiangdong paid 30 million yuan in breakup fee, Milk Tea Sister joined JD Flash Purchase, and there are also rumors that Milk Tea Sister's father was suspected of senior executive corruption, etc. There is no smoke without fire.

Last night, JD.com issued two statements overnight to refute the rumors, strongly denying all the breakup rumors surrounding Liu Qiangdong, and also sued the rumor spreaders. It can be seen that the remaining influence of the "JD.com Love Story" has become a negative asset for JD.com.

There is a joke on the Internet that says: Liu Qiangdong is now worth 4.8 billion US dollars, which is about 30 billion yuan in RMB. The 30 million breakup fee from Milk Tea Sister accounts for about 0.1% of his total assets. If a man has 100,000 yuan in savings, and the woman asks for 0.1% after the breakup, which is 100 yuan, and you don't even give her 100 yuan, this man is really bad.

The spokesperson's frustration

In April 2014, the relationship between Liu Qiangdong and Milk Tea Sister was exposed, which immediately triggered a public outcry. The brand awareness of Liu Qiangdong, Milk Tea Sister and JD.com increased sharply, but side effects also continued to emerge, and there is no sign of a stop-loss until today. It seems that JD.com has transformed from an e-commerce company into an entertainment dream factory overnight.

The author can see from the statement of "JD.com spokesperson" yesterday that JD.com officials deliberately avoided the rumors of "whether the two have broken up" and only identified multiple subsequent rumors on the Internet as rumors.

JD.com's spokesperson is not Liu Qiangdong's agent and should represent the overall interests of the company. Liu Qiangdong's love affairs should have nothing to do with the company, but the increasingly intense hype has seriously affected the company's brand image. The company needs to refute the rumors, but it is not appropriate to comment on Liu Qiangdong's personal love affairs, so the statement is watertight and appropriate.

But it leaves more room for the public's imagination. Have Liu Qiangdong and Milk Tea Sister broken up?

Many netizens commented: The 30 million breakup fee has nothing to do with me, I only care about whether JD.com is offering a discount now?

Excessive exposure of a person's private life does not bring much benefit except for celebrities in the entertainment industry. The same is true for entrepreneur Liu Qiangdong. If he is not careful, it will affect the company's brand image and damage various potential business interests.

Failed public relations can be devastating. If the company's collective interests are damaged due to the leader's personal inappropriate words and deeds, this is also unfair to investors, shareholders and employees. Liu Qiangdong has obviously become a victim of failed public relations.

JD.com lost half a year

Some people may say that there is a huge gap in size between JD.com and Alibaba, one of the BAT companies, and the two are not at the same level at all. However, in the field of e-commerce, especially in the B2C market, JD.com is already Tmall's biggest competitor, and the two are neck and neck in terms of industry influence.

JD.com has already been listed on the stock market, so there is no need for it to stir up gossip to increase its popularity, nor will it help improve its reputation and valuation. For Liu Qiangdong, the exposure of his relationship with Milk Tea Sister means that he has broken up with Zhuang Jia, the person involved in the Tomato Gate incident. The impact on his personal reputation is more disadvantages than advantages.

In the past six months, for JD.com, we have seen more of the bloody plots of the "JD.com Love Story" rather than JD.com bringing us more surprises in the e-commerce field. Where has JD.com gone?

During the half year that JD.com lost, its largest competitor Alibaba had its best time. Alibaba became the largest IPO case in history, Jack Ma replaced Li Ka-shing as Asia's richest man, and also set off a new round of god-making movement in the whole society, becoming famous all over the world.

However, JD.com, Tmall's biggest competitor (no other competitor), is still playing out the miserable "JD.com love story". Its leaders frequently become hot topics in the entertainment industry, but have become a forgotten corner in the e-commerce field. JD.com's golden signboard of e-commerce is gradually fading in the quagmire of entertainment gossip, and it is difficult to extricate itself.

If you don't believe me, in the past six months, apart from Milk Tea Sister, do you remember any unforgettable communication cases of JD.com in the past six months? Is it 6.18? Or crowdfunding to buy a house?

From a political perspective, Liu Qiangdong, who looks simple and honest and has always presented himself as an entrepreneur, should not have much in common with the flashy entertainment industry. However, he suddenly became involved with the innocent-looking female college student Milk Tea Sister, which immediately became a hot topic, causing the public's attention to be successfully diverted from JD.com's most mature e-commerce business to the boring gossip of the leader. Is this a big move by JD.com or Liu Qiangdong?

However, Liu Qiangdong has repeatedly stressed his opposition to the public disclosure of his private life. At the same time, he is also distressed about being turned into an entertainment figure, complaining that he is being manipulated into an entertainment figure rather than an entrepreneur.

From this, I think this may be a big move by Alibaba to hype up boring gossip about JD.com and dilute its brilliance in the e-commerce field. In other words, no matter how hard JD.com promotes its new services and products, it is difficult to cover up the actions of Milk Tea Sister. JD.com's public relations have failed.

If this move was indeed made by Alibaba, it could be one of Alibaba's most successful public relations campaigns, and it might be included in classic MBA or journalism courses. Just think about it, just making Liu Qiangdong's love affair public was enough to make JD.com stop its activities for a while, killing people without being seen.

It has to be said that in this successful public relations battle, JD.com was completely defeated.

When will JD.com return?

Allport, an American scholar, proposed the famous formula for determining the generation of rumors: R=I*A, where R stands for rumor, i stands for importance, and A stands for ambiguity. This formula points out that the generation of rumors is proportional to the importance and ambiguity of an event. In other words, the more important the time and the more ambiguous the relevant information, the easier it is for rumors to be generated and spread.

On January 4 and 5, the "JD Spokesperson" posted three statements on Weibo. In addition to clarifying multiple rumors such as the naichabiao.com domain name, the 30 million breakup fee, and the fact that it had nothing to do with the arrest of senior executives, the spokesperson also sued the Weibo blogger of "Dr. Wang's Spiritual Home", believing that he maliciously linked the deletion of Liu Qiangdong and Milk Tea Sister's private Weibo accounts with sensitive events, which had seriously affected the reputation of senior executives.

It can be seen that JD.com has realized the harm of various rumors about leaders to the company's brand and seems to be trying to stop the bleeding trend of this endless "JD.com love story", but the ambiguous statements seem to be covering up something.

For JD.com, in addition to making its financial reports public and transparent, the "JD.com love story" must also be revealed as soon as possible. Otherwise, no matter how vague and appropriate the JD.com spokesperson's responses are, it will not help ease the public's curiosity about Liu Qiangdong and Milk Tea Sister, and it may even lead to the tragedy of breaking up lovers around the world.

The author is a gold member of JD.com. In 2015, he hopes to see more news about JD.com’s improvement of products and services, and looks forward to the early return of the JD.com brand!