Strategies and methods to guide brand crisis public relations activities!

Introduction: In crisis public relations, making good use of public opinion guidance strategies can make your public relations activities more effective.

In 2019, there were many crisis public relations events that attracted much attention.

Visual China was attacked by the public due to a copyright dispute, Mercedes-Benz faced public controversy due to a female owner sitting on the hood of her car to defend her rights, and D&G was collectively resisted by the Chinese public for allegedly insulting China in its commercials and had to close many stores.

Not only are companies facing constant crises, celebrities are also facing a crisis in their own image. Zhai Tianlin's painstakingly built "academic tyrant" persona was slapped in the face because he "didn't know CNKI", Wu Xiubo's original "elegant uncle" persona was also broken, and he became a scumbag condemned by everyone. Zhang Yuqi also broke her originally painstakingly built "mature woman" persona because of her inconsistency, and attracted public ridicule.

Whether it is the corporate image or the celebrity personality, crises are inevitable during the operation process. The key is how we can turn the crisis into an opportunity and transform it into a successful marketing through successful crisis public relations.

I. The mechanism of public opinion dissemination of crisis information

Dialectical materialism tells us that contradictions are unity of opposites and that the two sides of a contradiction can transform into each other. Crisis is also a unity of opposites. When a crisis event is handled properly, it can also become an opportunity for marketing.

In an era of information overload and rapidly changing hot topics, people's attention is mainly focused on a few explosive hot topics and traffic stars. When a company encounters a crisis, the company's traffic will surge rapidly due to the public's "watch the fun" and supervisory mentality. At this time, as long as you can make good use of crisis public relations skills, you can turn the crisis into a successful marketing event.

In order to make good use of crises, we must first understand what public opinion is and what its basic characteristics are.

As early as the ancient Greek period, people began to study the issue of public opinion. With the development of capitalism, the term "public opinion" has gradually entered our lives. The term "public opinion" was first proposed by Rousseau. In his "The Social Contract", he combined the words "public" and "opinion" to form the term "public opinion".

After that, Tarde wrote "Opinion and the Public" and Elberg wrote "Introduction to Public Opinion". Scholars' research on "public opinion" made "public opinion" begin to be understood by the public.

“Public opinion is the collective and common opinion of the majority of people within a certain range.”

——Liu Jianming, "Principles of Social Opinion"

Public opinion is formed through interaction, with the media as the carrier and the masses as the main body. When a hot event is discussed in a huge volume, public opinion is born. The birth of general public opinion goes through the following process:

1. Generate influential social topics;

2. The public spontaneously joins in the discussion of the topic, and hot topics emerge;

3. The media spontaneously follows up on the topic and further increases the volume of discussion on the topic

4. More members of the public join the discussion and public opinion is formed.

According to academic research, during the formation stage of public opinion, public opinion exhibits a "five-level growth law" from gentle to intense : the first level - unconscious extensive discussion; the second level - conscious discussion of the topic; the third level - strong emotions emerge, hot spots are formed, and the scope of dissemination continues to expand; the fourth level - public opinion is generated, and the media joins the discussion team; the fifth level - unrest occurs, crises appear, and the volume of public opinion continues to expand.

From the perspective of the types of public opinion, public opinion mainly presents two patterns. One is the "falling snow" type, which continuously accumulates the volume of public opinion like snowflakes blown by the wind; the other is the "popcorn" type, where the hot events at the center of public opinion quickly become major events that concern the entire nation.

Crisis events encountered by companies or individuals often show a "popcorn" growth characteristic of public opinion. Whether it was "Fan Bingbing's tax evasion incident", "Dr. Zhai's ignorance of CNKI incident" or "Visual China's black hole photo copyright incident", they all reached the peak of discussion within a day or two, remained high on the hot searches, and quickly exploded and bloomed like popcorn.

2. During the crisis communication process, what are the guidance mechanisms for public opinion?

1. Crisis also requires "gatekeepers"

The term "gatekeeper" was first proposed by Kurt Lewin in his book Channels of Group Life. It refers to the process in which information is screened and controlled by individuals, groups or governments in order to stabilize the public opinion environment and avoid crises.

Lewin believes that at every node of information dissemination, there should be a certain number of "gatekeepers" to conduct appropriate guidance of public opinion. In the era of traditional media, the government is the main body that holds the power of "gatekeeper". In capitalist society, financial oligarchs and celebrity tycoons also gain appropriate voice by controlling the "gatekeepers".

However, in the new media era, the progress of the information society and the development of media have enabled everyone to become an independent traffic portal through "self-media". The right to speak is constantly being diluted, traffic is gradually decentralized, and the right to choose information is in the hands of every user.

At this time, the application of the "gatekeeper" theory is mostly reflected in the government's monitoring of public opinion and information, and enterprises seem to have lost control of the "gatekeepers".

Some people say that the "gatekeeper" theory has completely failed when it comes to corporate crises. In fact, this is not entirely true. Companies can still use "gatekeepers" to nip some crises in the bud.

Enterprises’ application of the “gatekeeper” theory is mainly reflected in two aspects: one is to kill the crisis information at the beginning of its dissemination so that such information is not known or paid attention to by the public; the other is to kill the crisis at the early stage of the dissemination of information that may cause the crisis, so that the crisis is blocked at the “second level” of dissemination.

In practice, the second method is used more often. If you want to make good use of "gatekeepers" to block the spread of information that is unfavorable to the company, the key is to be "fast, accurate and ruthless" and respond quickly before public opinion expands and takes effect.

Here we take Haidilao’s crisis public relations as an example:

When faced with food safety questions due to the "rat incident in the backstage", Haidilao gave a textbook crisis public relations response. Just three hours after the media reported the incident, Haidilao posted an apology letter to the public on its official blog.

Haidilao not only issued a statement to apologize to the public, but also announced more specific handling measures. Including: closing the stores involved, proactively reporting the progress of the matter to government departments, welcoming consumer supervision, etc. Haidilao's public relations can be described as textbook public relations, as it neither put the blame on temporary workers nor forgot to appease the masses and grassroots employees.

Some media summarized Haidilao's crisis public relations response as "I take the blame, I correct the mistakes, and I support the employees."

The key to Haidilao’s success in this crisis public relations was its refusal to pass on the blame and its quick, accurate and ruthless response.

2. Make good use of the "agenda setting" theory and let "mainstream values" become your shield.

What is the theory of “agenda setting”? In 1972, Donald Shaw and Maxwell McCombs proposed the agenda-setting theory, which holds that mass communication can form an "agenda" for the public, that is, the more the media attaches importance to an event, the more attention the public will pay to the event.

Simply put, although the media cannot decide what the public thinks, it can influence what the public thinks. The media influences people's judgment of the "importance" of events in their lives.

In crisis public relations activities, there are two main ways for companies to use the "agenda setting" theory. One is to combine their own behavior with national affairs and mainstream values ​​to find legitimacy for their behavior; the other is to cleverly use the agenda to divert public attention and make the public ignore information that is unfavorable to the company.

So, what are the application cases of the "agenda" theory in crisis public relations?

Let us turn our attention to the "Gree VS Aux" public relations war that has recently aroused heated public debate. In this battle, Gree took the initiative and posted a message on Weibo, saying that it would publicly report the quality problems of Aux air conditioners to the national market supervision and management department, using scientific tests and detailed data to show that Aux falsely labeled the energy efficiency of air conditioners and deceived consumers. AUX responded immediately, stating that Gree’s accusations were all "groundless" and a long-planned false accusation. Finally, AUX issued a statement to fight back, saying that Gree's "internal strife" at a time when the Sino-US trade war is in full swing is "disregarding national justice" and disregarding "righteousness" for its own selfish interests.

In this battle, Gree tied the agenda to "consumer rights" and started a war with AUX under the guise of defending consumer rights. Faced with the crisis, AUX cleverly used the "China-US trade war", a major event of concern at home and abroad, to divert public attention, blur the accusations against Gree, and attempt to avoid the corporate crisis.

In this public relations battle, Gree used the "agenda setting" theory to cleverly attack Oaks, and Okoye also cleverly diverted the crisis by combining the "agenda" in our lives. This is the application of "agenda setting" theory in crisis public relations activities.

3. Using “opinion leaders” to deftly resolve crises

"In every social sphere, from the highest to the lowest, as soon as a man is out of solitude, he is immediately under the leadership of some leader."

This is how Gustave Le Bon described opinion leaders. In his communication book "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Psychology", he described the group as low-level creatures with low IQ, susceptible to infection and suggestibility.

In contrast, when one person in a group speaks out or expresses emotion, such emotion is particularly likely to spread to the entire group and infect everyone in the group.

But what we need to think about is, who should be the voice?

Lazarsfeld gave us the answer in his famous two-level communication theory. The process of mass communication can be briefly divided into two stages. In the first stage, the influence of mass media first reaches opinion leaders. In the second stage, opinion leaders convey the information they receive to the general public. Therefore, "opinion leaders" play an important role as a transit station for the public to receive information.

Here, opinion leaders are what we often call KOL (key opinion leader). In the era of mass entertainment, not only political and business celebrities play the role of opinion leaders in our lives, but also stars and internet celebrities are even more so.

In a corporate crisis, cleverly using "opinion leaders" and letting "big Vs" speak for you can play a good role in guiding public opinion. It is also a strategy commonly used by companies in crisis public relations activities.

An advertisement for the Gengmei app took advantage of women's fear of getting ugly and old. It used the theme "Life is not innate" and used slogans such as "Happiness never knocks on doors outside the Third Ring Road" and "Ordinary man, ordinary income, ordinary life, so ordinary that people are unwilling to spend their whole life with him." While it brought about a certain communication effect, it also brought about countless controversies. The ad was accused of objectifying women, worshipping money, and equating beauty with everything.

In order to defuse the crisis, Gengmei invited debater Bo Bangni from “The Debaters” to speak.

On Weibo, Bonnie Bai reposted the ad with the following caption: We once discussed on the stage of "The Debaters" whether plastic surgery can help you become a winner in life? After watching this video today, I still want to say: If you really want to modify your flaws, want to please yourself, want micro-surgery or plastic surgery, no problem. I will defend to the death everyone's right to treat their own body. But I don’t believe that plastic surgery can solve all the problems in your life…I prefer to think of it as the icing on the cake. Life is not innate, you are not who you are naturally, you are who you become through hard work.

In her Weibo post, Bonnie Bai downplayed the focus of the controversy surrounding the advertisement, namely the excessive objectification of female beauty and the materialistic ideology that equates beauty with a channel for social advancement. In her statement, she defined plastic surgery as a kind of "icing on the cake" and a kind of "effort", which undoubtedly shifted the theme of the advertisement and made it less controversial. This is an example of corporate crisis public relations making good use of "opinion leaders".

Conclusion:

When a company encounters a crisis, the company's traffic will surge rapidly due to the public's "watch the fun" mentality, "righteous indignation" mentality and supervisory mentality. At this time, as long as you can make good use of crisis public relations skills, you can turn the crisis into a successful marketing event.

In crisis public relations activities, as long as you know how to make good use of public opinion guidance strategies, you can turn the company's crisis into an opportunity for publicity.

Author: Fang Yun

Source: PR Home