After the 3.15 Gala, how can brands prevent marketing risks?

The annual 3.15 Gala of China Central Radio and Television has ended recently. This 315 unveiled "earth pit" sauerkraut - some old-style sauerkraut buns are actually pickled in earth pits, electric bicycles of multiple brands blatantly speed up in violation of regulations, an investigation into the chaos in medical beauty training - training in 6 days without any qualifications, and so on.

Among them, the products related to "Laotan Pickled Cabbage" attracted the most attention from netizens. Uni-President apologized, Master Kong apologized, and Wu Gu Fish Meal apologized. Among them, a sauerkraut supplier named "Chaqi Caiye" was suspended from supplier status by many companies and its sauerkraut bag products were sealed because it stepped on the transported sauerkraut barefoot and purchased "earthen pit sauerkraut" .

Back to the topic, in the current Internet marketing, how can brand marketing avoid negative public opinion? How to prevent marketing risks ?

This article will explain the controllability and prevention of marketing risks by brands from several aspects, including brand channels, consumer markets, and communication platforms.

The saying “A thousand-mile long dam can be breached by a single ant hole” can better illustrate this truth.

the following:

1. Channels

We will first explore several "triggers" that can easily cause widespread negative public opinion about a brand from a channel perspective, and fundamentally understand several key points of brand marketing risk control.

1. Products

Speaking of products, many brands on the market have been severely punished by the State Administration for Market Regulation for non-standard product ingredients, use of expired ingredients, tampering with shelf life, using expired raw materials to replace labels for continued use, etc.

For example, last year, a Starbucks store in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, changed the ingredient labels and used expired ingredients.

The well-known milk tea brand Cha Baidao used expired raw materials and replaced the labels and continued to use them. It advertised that the products were made with fresh fruits but some of their products were replaced with fruit pulp.

This phenomenon is common in the industry. According to statistics from the Weibo platform, after April last year, brands such as "Shaolongkan" hot pot restaurant, "Mishe Bingcheng" milk tea shop, and "Wallace" fast food restaurant have successively exposed food safety issues.

Most of them are negative factors caused by expiration of products or improper operation of staff during product production.

In recent years in the catering industry, the main marketing selling points of many brands have shifted from being beneficial to the human body to the naturalness and rarity of product ingredients.

The classic advertisement of Great Wall Wine in its early years, "The Journey of Three Millimeters, a Good Grape Takes Ten Years", further verified the importance of screening of product raw materials to the brand for fast-moving consumer goods beverages.

Current coffee brands such as Starbucks, and tea brands such as Nayuki and CoCo all focus on the scarcity of their product raw materials in their marketing.

When product raw materials become "scarce", factors such as unplanned, unhygienic and non-standardized sales will slowly push the brand's only reputation to the edge of the cliff, causing consumers to gradually lose trust in the brand. This is a devastating blow to the entire brand or a brand that intends to expand its stores.

2. Franchisees

After many brands on the market have gained favor among consumers, chain franchising has gradually become a phenomenon of capital competition.

Franchisees can be found in every industry today, but when negative public opinion about the brand arises or a public relations crisis becomes irreversible, many brands often put the blame on the franchisees in their statements.

As for the field of brand franchisees, what should brands do?

Here I take Gu Ming milk tea as an example. According to Qi Xia Liao, the person in charge of Gu Ming’s franchise, “The probability of Gu Ming’s selection of franchisees is about 1 out of 100 applicants being approved.” What the brand can do is to screen excellent franchisees through various conditions.

The brand has also put forward some principles, such as not opening stores in certain areas. This not only ensures that franchise stores can make better profits, but also greatly reduces the chances of franchisees bringing negative impacts to the brand.

If a brand inevitably takes the franchise route in its development process, the only thing the brand can do is:

1. Let franchisees make money;
2. Strictly screen franchisees;
3. Establish relevant systems to ensure that franchisees and brand owners are as aligned as possible in terms of values, operational strategies , operational directions , etc.

In this way, partners with different values ​​can be avoided at the source of franchisees, and brand operators can achieve standardized operations as much as possible, which will greatly reduce the probability of negative public opinion about the brand during operations.

3. Operator or supplier

Perhaps you have rarely heard of brand operators. In the tea beverage or other emerging industries, after the brand is incubated and listed, some companies’ operations department is responsible for daily brand operations.

Some companies do not have an operation team and will outsource the annual or quarterly operation services of the entire brand to an operation company, allowing them to be responsible for the maintenance and operation of the brand throughout the entire process.

Depending on the industry, the operators are called differently. Perhaps you will be more familiar with it if you just call it a public relations company.

In the operator field, perhaps you have heard that a brand’s posters or articles were fined and became a hot topic because of using unauthorized fonts or pictures. You may also have heard that some brands have delayed releasing public relations statements after negative public opinion emerged.

On the operator side, what brands can do is:

First, the daily operations of the brand and operators need to clarify the operation strategy and phased operation strategy to avoid the situation where the brand content issued is contrary to the original idea of ​​the brand due to various factors such as unclear information communication.

Second, improve the content review of operators' external brands. During major brand festival marketing or daily marketing, brands need to increase their review of the content of operators' external promotions.

Avoid inconsistent external communications between the brand and operations due to business issues or sudden promotional content.

For example, in the early days, the headline tweet of FamilyMart’s official account, “Passionate scenes of many internet celebrities leaked.AVI”, was pornographic, Cha Yan Yue Se was suspected of vulgar propaganda, and Juewei issued a Double 11 warm-up poster with “dirty jokes” in its stores.

These are all because there are loopholes in the brand or operator's review process before the content is released, which leads to big mistakes and the formation of large-scale negative public opinion.

Suppliers are easier to understand, like "Chaqi Caiye" which provides sauerkraut to well-known brands such as Master Kong, Uni-President, and Wu Gu Fish Meal.

4. Spokesperson

There are too many cases where brands have suffered heavy losses due to using the wrong spokesperson and failing to express their attitude in a timely manner afterwards. How can brands avoid brand marketing risks when it comes to celebrity spokespersons?

1) Fit

Ever since the “first generation of top stars” failed in film and television dramas, brand endorsements, etc., whether it is film and television dramas or brand spokespersons, for producers or brands, using a traffic idol as a spokesperson is something they are afraid of.

Hiring a spokesperson is a double-edged sword for a brand. The good ones can use the star effect to drive a substantial increase in product sales;

The bad ones include brand reputation collapse due to tax evasion, private life issues, or values ​​​​making remarks that harm the country and the people. It is not uncommon for brands to be terminated due to violation of relevant laws and be boycotted by consumers.

For example, Yunmi X Deng Lun a few days ago, Infiniti X Wang Leehom, Zheng Shuang X Prada, Li Yundi X Piano, etc. last year, some of them failed as spokespersons just two hours after being announced, some of them collapsed as soon as the promotional materials were released, and some were named by the official after half a year of endorsement.

2) Risk Control

Before looking for celebrity spokespersons, many brands do not seek detailed investigation and analysis of the spokespersons’ risk profile in recent years from professional organizations. Instead, they follow the advice of relevant agents and sign endorsement contracts. Little did they know that signing a spokesperson so easily would lay the fuse for the brand to face huge negative risks in the future.

What’s worse, some brands are unwilling to issue a statement to resolve the issue after their spokespersons were officially criticized for inappropriate remarks, thus losing their only “popularity with the public”. For example, when internet celebrity Wanwan endorsed Rolls-Royce, she immediately attracted a lot of negative comments, and many Rolls-Royce owners "taught by example" in response to this short video on Weibo.

As a result, the frequent failures of brand spokespersons have forced some brands that want to invite celebrities as spokespersons to give up this method. What should brands do at this time? You can consider the following two points!

① Virtual brand spokesperson

Tmall beauty platform’s virtual celebrity face control (Mao Xiaomei), Carisma launched a virtual spokesperson (Big Eyes Kaka), and domestic cosmetics brand Hua Xizi launched a virtual spokesperson with the same name.

After the virtual human group composed of virtual spokespersons of brands such as Mao Xiaomei, Pechoin, and Carslan appeared at the Golden Makeup Awards, everyone saw a new wave of virtual brand spokespersons.

② No brand spokesperson

Advertiser George Ogilvy once said that celebrity endorsements may not be effective because viewers will think the celebrities in the ads have been bought. This is indeed the case. Celebrity endorsements are expensive, and the audience is likely to remember the celebrity and forget the product.

2. Consumer Market

1. Attitude

The above mentioned the controllability of brand marketing risks from the perspective of brand channels. Now let’s discuss how brands can prevent large-scale negative brand public opinion in the consumer market from the perspective of the consumer market.

First of all, the most direct group of people in the consumer market are consumers. When a brand has a major event or a major marketing festival, the most direct participants who become the source of communication are the brand’s die-hard fans, that is, loyal consumers.

Consumers are the bridge between brands and the mass consumer market. The good aspects of a brand need to be spread by consumers to their social circles, and the bad aspects need to be suggested by consumers for the brand to improve.

From the time a brand goes on the market to the time its products are sold to consumers, transactions are formed and consumers purchase a product based on their preferences, interests, and needs. Among them, some brands cater to young people, while others target middle-aged people.

Among these, the attitude that the brand conveys to consumers and user groups needs to be clearer; whether the values ​​are clear, and whether the brand's tone to the outside world and consumers is consistent when facing major marketing festivals. At this time, the brand’s attitude or marketing methods need to give consumers a clear range.

It cannot be ambiguous or changeable.

2. Word of mouth

A brand with a good consumer reputation can help it launch new products quickly and generate substantial sales in the consumer market. On the contrary, when a brand faces marketing risks, it needs fans or loyal consumers to justify the brand in the consumer market.

In the Internet age, brands need to "lower their profile and listen carefully" to consumers' feedback on brand usage in some aspects. After all, many netizens who shop online now decide whether to buy a product only after reading reviews.

3. Public opinion

In the Internet consumer market, good public opinion can help products quickly open up the market and gain recognition from consumers. However, there are also cases where a brand suffers heavy losses and loses a lot of popularity due to widespread negative public opinion.

Therefore, when dealing with various brand marketing risks, brands need to actively guide consumers, humble themselves and listen to consumers’ voices, and actively handle consumers’ demands. The direction of public opinion on a brand can instantly affect whether the brand will “go all the way to the end” or see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sometimes, a brand can quickly turn a brand crisis into an entertaining event by making appropriate self-deprecating remarks or ridicule, thus “turning decay into magic.” For example, Ali Dingding begged for mercy and sang a self-deprecating song, Tencent and Lao Gan Ma, Jiaduobao uttered the tearful "I'm sorry", "Burger King burned down the Burger King restaurant", etc.

3. Communication Platform and Source

1. Weibo

As the most active social networking platform at present, Weibo has evolved from a simple social sharing platform to an online platform that gathers entertainment gossip, event opinions, and current political affairs. It is also an online platform for major brands and artists to "apologies and statements."

For brands, Weibo is a place to create topics. As long as the topic has enough attention, it can enter the hot search rankings and attract more attention.

Similarly, Weibo is also the most important platform for brand marketing risk control. If the negative impact of a brand forms a certain topic of discussion on Weibo, it is very likely to continue to ferment for a certain period of time.

What brands can do on Weibo is to express their attitude within the first three hours when an emergency incident poses a brand risk, so as to prevent the incident from further escalating, avoid more people participating in the discussion and forming public opinion, and allow related topics to become hot searches.

To prevent related risky topics from continuing to ferment on the Internet, it is necessary to give the audience and consumers a clear attitude at the first time, and then provide the public with a detailed investigation process of the incident, and give corresponding solutions and subsequent system modifications of the company in response to this incident.

2. Xiaohongshu

In recent years, Xiaohongshu has become an important battlefield for brand promotion. Combined with the current brand promotion strategies on Xiaohongshu, brands will choose this platform with more than 100 million active users per month to do pre-launch promotion before the brand goes public.

Otherwise, work backwards from the results.

What brands need to pay attention to on Xiaohongshu is to prevent individual bloggers or KOLs from posting notes that are unfavorable to the brand, and to avoid some mid-level KOL bloggers from "criticizing" the brand for the sake of traffic.

On Xiaohongshu, after a note is published, it is analyzed based on data from people with similar interests, the same tags, keywords, purchase searches, etc. to determine whether it has increased traffic on the platform. Xiaohongshu's communication is different from the traditional platform's AISAS integrated marketing model, as it uses the CAS model to achieve communication.

Therefore, a brand or a product has a great chance of becoming popular on Xiaohong, but it is also very likely to suffer from traffic backlash. The premise is that the brand is indeed popular among consumers or a certain behavior of the brand has indeed touched the red line of consumers and is "condemned by everyone."

3. Bilibili

Bilibili has a feature that is different from other platforms - barrage. On Bilibili, scenes from some classic TV series, scenes of classic food, and some nonsensical and repeatedly repeated shots or pictures can easily become popular.

For example, a simple noodle soup collection can reach over 5 million views, and a mix of past clips from various classic TV dramas can also reach millions of views.

A video of Lei Jun holding a microphone and answering questions was made into a video by netizens that "caused the whole world to freeze" and it still received more than 6 million views. As the person in charge of a brand, you should be careful when speaking at daily press conferences or on public platforms to avoid your words or actions being repeatedly broadcast on the platform by netizens, which could at best affect your own reputation and at worst affect the company's stock price.

For example, a senior mobile phone leader once said at a meeting: Whoever controls the DS controls the world.

4. TikTok

As one of the most powerful short video platforms at present, Douyin has seen an increasing number of TV series and movies being preheated on the platform before their release in recent years, including the popular movies The Battle at Lake Changjin, Operation Red Sea, and the Detective Chinatown series.

According to the "2020 China Film Market User Report", the official Douyin account coverage of the top 10 box office films after the resumption of work in 2020 increased from 70% last year to 90%.

With new marketing actions such as short videos, the proportion of “new users” born after 2000 has increased significantly. Publishing promotional articles on TikTok has become a routine practice in film marketing.

In 15 seconds, short videos provide viewers with a "satisfying scene" through pictures and music. In this scene, viewers can switch topics of interest at will. The images presented in the video use people's visual perception to satisfy psychological pleasure in a very short period of time.

This is also the difficulty of brand marketing risk control. When a brand or a video clip of a negative event appears on Douyin, due to the curiosity of the audience, it is easy for a large amount of traffic to flow in at once, including some of Douyin's extremely influential KOLs.

5. KOL

For current brands, if negative public opinion ferments on the platform, the general path of dissemination is that certain behaviors of the brand (product problems, after-sales problems, operational problems) infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.

1. Consumers speak on the platform;
2. Attract the attention of some KOLs in the industry;
3. Industry KOLs speak out and create platform topics;
4. Other consumers see it and forward it to the corresponding social group or the brand fan group created by the consumer.

In fact, for a brand’s KOL, if a negative public opinion incident does occur for a brand, there is really limited what a single KOL can do. The most that can be done is that when the brand does not know the source of a certain piece of negative information, the KOL can use his or her fan resources to provide the brand with the source of negative information, so that the brand can resolve it as soon as possible after the negative information occurs.

However, this effect is really limited in dealing with brand marketing risks, so my suggestion is that brands can set up KOLs in their own brand categories, which can not only accumulate fan groups, but also lay a solid foundation for the subsequent operations of the brand.

6. WeChat Group and QQ Group

Many brands now have their own fan activity groups or regional customer QQ groups. For such communities, the brand should, in terms of risk control, discover a few loyal fans in the group in addition to the brand’s own staff, and distribute some of the community’s “rights” to these loyal fan group members to increase the stickiness between the brand and the fans.

In this way, no matter the brand is doing marketing or encountering negative public opinion in the future, these highly sticky group managers can speak up for the brand. In this way, the fan community becomes a community that provides "evidence" for the brand or speaks for the brand as consumers themselves.

4. How should a brand respond when faced with negative public opinion?

Next, let’s continue to discuss what steps a brand should take to issue a statement from the above perspective if it encounters a large-scale public opinion crisis?

First of all, the crises that brands encounter are nothing more than daily ones (product problems, operational problems, franchisees), emergencies (spokespersons are caught up in negative scandals, brand executives make inappropriate remarks, employee systems or salaries), etc.

Any of the above events may trigger large-scale negative public opinion and even directly affect the stock market of the company. For example, Alibaba’s senior executives’ private lives put the entire company at the center of the storm, top-tier events caused countless brands to issue statements to resolve the issue, and large companies suffered violent layoffs, etc.

As a company, if unfortunately individual unexpected events find the company at the center of public opinion. You can quickly approach the incident and respond from the following directions, so that the parties involved, the public, netizens, and related platforms can see the brand's determination to resolve the issue.

1. Know that the general public is speaking out

The mass consumers here include brand consumers, netizens, the parties who initially released the event, and related platforms.

At this stage, many brands often refuse to communicate with the parties with a condescending attitude, and use the company's platform connections, so-called resources, legal teams, etc. to suppress the parties. Some companies even use a "threatening" tone to communicate with the parties, completely disregarding the reasonable demands made by the parties.

The correct approach should be for the brand or enterprise to contact the parties involved in the incident as soon as possible, understand the parties' demands in the shortest possible time, and propose corresponding solutions. At the same time, a statement should be released on the brand's official platform. The main content of the statement should be:

1. The brand has immediately tried to understand the cause of this emergency;
2. Brands are communicating with the parties face to face and listening to their demands;
3. The subsequent developments and results of events will be announced on this platform in a timely manner.

The above statement shows that the brand has not turned a deaf ear to consumers' demands, but has taken relevant actions and communicated with the parties involved, and the subsequent results will be announced to the public.

For the general public, it can be seen that the brand has taken action on the emergency, has brand warmth, and has followed up on consumers' demands in a timely manner and provided feedback. All measures are aimed at preventing the continued expansion of this negative public opinion crisis and preventing companies and brands from being caught in a larger public opinion storm.

2. Meet the reasonable needs of mass consumers

I have seen a case like this; several college students went to a hot pot restaurant to eat hot pot, and found foreign objects at the bottom of the pot during the meal. After negotiating with the store manager, these college students asked for a free hotpot meal. However, the store manager believed that the foreign object was brought by these college students and refused to agree to a settlement.

During the continued exchange and pushing, the store manager even got into a fight with the student, who then called the police and complained to the Consumers Association.

As a result, the hot pot restaurant was closed for rectification and compensated the students for certain losses.

In the above cases, as long as the consumer agrees, the matter can be settled privately; if the consumer disagrees, the brand can directly call the police, which is good for both parties. However, during the discussion, the store manager took direct action, and the nature of the situation changed.

Meeting the reasonable demands of the general public means that when something unexpected happens, the problem should be solved at the lowest cost, with the consent of the consumer or the party involved, to avoid the situation from getting bigger and bigger.

3. Optimize enterprise product initiatives

After resolving a sudden brand crisis, the brand must also reflect on itself, examine the reasons for the incident, and optimize its operating and review mechanisms, give an explanation to the general public and relevant media, and let consumers see the brand's attitude towards and solution to the problem.

Let’s take a look at the angles from which a brand’s public statement should be written when it suddenly encounters a negative public opinion crisis.

Before we look at it, let’s first look at the statement issued by Master Kong after being named on 315 this year.

Among them, the red framed ones are the company’s attitude towards sudden negative public opinion, the yellow one is the event review and solution, and the blue one is consumer supervision.

A complete external statement made by a company in response to a sudden public opinion incident will probably follow this template, although some companies may make some adjustments based on the differentiation of their own brands.

Affected by the 315 Gala, the share price of Tingyi Holding plummeted at the opening on the 16th. As of press time, it fell by more than 5% to HK$13.14 per share.

V. Conclusion

Returning to the topic of this article, "The controllability and prevention of marketing risks by brands", its essence is that only when brands have marketing risks will we take corresponding measures to control the risks. But when a brand touches consumers' bottom line or the law, any risk control is ineffective.

Therefore, the controllability of brand marketing risks for brands lies in reducing the incentives to create risks, such as brand products, R&D, operations, and suppliers. In the daily core operations of the brand, try to do a good job of content review in the above aspects, and the probability of marketing risks will naturally decrease one by one.

To conclude, we cannot prevent brand marketing risks from happening, but we can reduce and prevent them.

Author: Nan Sujian

Source: Nansujian