The top ten PR cases that went viral in 2018, see who made the list!

It’s time for the year-end review again. Today, the editor has compiled the top ten public relations events in 2018, including the D&G suspected of insulting China, the Blue Label "dismissal" incident, and the Hongmao Medicinal Wine incident.

What other events made the list? Marketers, take a look!

01. D&G’s “account hacked” crisis public relations

On the evening of November 21, the famous luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana (hereinafter referred to as D&G) planned to hold a fashion show "The Great Show" in Shanghai. However, starting from the afternoon of the same day, guests related to the event, including Li Bingbing, Wang Junkai, Dilireba, Chen Kun, etc., announced their withdrawal one after another, and voices of boycotting D&G also appeared on Weibo. In desperation, D&G announced the cancellation of the event.

The cause of the incident started with a D&G commercial titled "Pick up your chopsticks and eat." The most controversial part of the short film was the strange chopstick usage posture of the Asian model and the narration. Netizens questioned whether it discriminated against Chinese traditional culture, and soon Weibo exploded.

Some netizens went to Instagram to question DG designer Stefano Gabbana, but Stefano Gabbana seemed to ignore them. During the conversation, he called China "Country of (shit)" and "ignorant, dirty, smelly gangsters."

As the controversy spread, Dolce & Gabbana’s official Weibo account deleted the relevant video. The official explanation given by Dolce & Gabbana is that D&G’s official account and the founder’s Instagram account were “stolen”. Stefano Gabbana then also made a "three-fold denial" on Instagram: That was not me, it has nothing to do with me, my account was stolen. He then said: "I like China and Chinese culture, and I am sorry for what happened."

However, D&G's "account hacking" crisis public relations did not win the trust of Chinese netizens. The next morning, the D&G designer responded again on Instagram. He believed that he did not discriminate, but there did not seem to be any apology in his words. D&G was once again pushed to the forefront.

"If DG had racism, they wouldn't have spent their energy paying attention to China and Japan, and wouldn't have let Chinese models appear in DG's shows! DG's stores have Chinese customers, the company has Chinese employees, there are many Chinese people around, just like there are many people from all over the world around! Different people, different cultures! I am an Albanian and proud, I work with them and don't feel discrimination! I feel sorry that you can only see discrimination from it.

On November 23, DG finally issued an apology, saying sorry in Chinese.

So the question is, is this apology a little late? What do you think?

02. Hygiene problems in 14 five-star hotels

On the evening of November 14, Weibo celebrity @花总失了金箍棒exposed the hygiene problems of 14 five-star hotels he had stayed in recent years through a 11-minute and 49-second video. This includes waiters using the same bath towel to wipe cups and toilets, and using towels used by customers to wipe water glasses.

Surprisingly, top hotels such as Ritz-Carlton, Sheraton, Waldorf Astoria, Peninsula Wangfu, Bulgari, Mandarin Oriental, and Aman Summer Palace are also on the list.

After the incident was exposed, it quickly caused an uproar in public opinion. So the question is, how will crisis public relations be conducted when faced with such a wide range of hotels involved?

According to statistics from the famous self-media person @万能大叔, among the 14 exposed hotels, more than 10 immediately blamed the public relations department when responding; and the copywriting of the statements of another 3 hotels was highly similar, almost exactly the same, full of routines and lacking sincerity.

03. The hornet's nest was destroyed? !

On October 20, an article titled "Is the tourism unicorn valued at 17.5 billion a ghost town made up of zombies and water armies? 》The article went viral in the circle of friends.

The article originated from the self-media account "Xiaosheng Bibi", and the content directly pointed out that among the 21 million user reviews on Mafengwo, 18 million were copied from competing websites such as Ctrip and eLong, accounting for 85% of the total number of reviews on Mafengwo.

In addition, the WeChat account also discovered an interesting phenomenon through analysis of these review accounts: they are keen on writing reviews on weekdays and during working hours, but disappear after get off work and on weekends, and the number of reviews drops sharply.

This makes people wonder: Does Mafengwo really employ a large number of professional internet trolls? Mafengwo, which has always prided itself on providing authentic and reliable content, would also falsify data? There was a lot of public opinion at once.

Under the attack of public opinion, Mafengwo also responded.

1. Review content only accounts for 2.91% of Mafengwo’s total data volume. The number of accounts suspected of making false reviews accounts for an even smaller proportion of the total number of users. Mafengwo has cleaned up these accounts. 2. The number of Mafengwo users stated in the self-media article is seriously inconsistent with the facts and the data of third-party institutions. 3. Mafengwo also stated that it will take legal action to protect its own rights and interests against the remarks in the self-media article that distort the facts and the organized attacks that have been verified.

Many netizens said that Mafengwo’s public relations response was a typical three-part denial: “It’s not me, I didn’t, don’t talk nonsense.”

04. An Alibaba employee died after living in a Ziroom room with formaldehyde

At the end of August, an article titled "Ali P7 employee died of leukemia and rented a formaldehyde-filled house from Ziroom before his death" was hotly discussed on WeChat Moments, and Ziroom was pushed to the forefront for a while.

The general meaning of the article is: After renting a Ziroom apartment, an Alibaba P7 employee developed acute myeloid leukemia due to excessive formaldehyde and subsequently died. After the family appealed to the court, the compensation issue was not resolved. Similarly, this is not the only case of death or illness caused by formaldehyde in Ziroom rooms.

Formaldehyde, the word associated with house rental websites is undoubtedly a heavy blow and is extremely detrimental to the business development of the company. Ziroom also took the incident very seriously and issued two statements. In addition, two senior executives, Lianjia Chairman Zuo Hui and Ziroom General Manager Xiong Lin, also said in their WeChat Moments: "We will take all the responsibilities!"

However, the release of Ziroom’s statement did not seem to calm the public’s anger.

As the incident continued to ferment, many tenants applied for free air quality testing, but found that it was only limited to tenants after June 1, and that if the test was qualified, they would pay for it themselves, and if it was not qualified, Ziroom would bear the cost.

For more information, refer to the following articles:

1. An Alibaba employee died after living in a "formaldehyde-filled room". What is the loophole in Ziroom's crisis public relations?

2. A “late” crisis public relations analysis report of Ziroom

05. "Stewardess was killed while riding Didi Hitch" incident

This year, Didi has experienced two vicious passenger murder incidents, which has caused the public to question Didi's Hitch product design, legal, ethical, and advertising methods in all aspects. Didi has experienced the biggest crisis public relations test in history.

On May 10, a flight attendant was killed while taking a Didi Hitch in Zhengzhou. On August 24, just four months later, Didi Hitch was involved in another vicious case. A girl from Yueqing, Wenzhou, Zhejiang was killed while taking a Didi Hitch. Relevant information disclosed on the Internet showed that before the incident, the victim's friend had asked Didi for help, but Didi not only did nothing at the time, but also shirked responsibility and was perfunctory.

Didi’s public relations, which was at the center of the storm, also exposed many problems. The most criticized of these was Didi’s statement of offering a “million-dollar reward”. Although it offered a one-million-dollar reward, it still avoided talking about the platform review mechanism that everyone was most concerned about. This Weibo post by Didi was criticized by netizens as a show, and Didi quickly deleted it.

Finally, on August 26, Didi Chuxing founders Cheng Wei and Liu Qing issued an apology letter: Didi will suspend its ride-sharing business indefinitely until the safety protection measures are recognized by users.

06. Toutiao and Tencent are suspected of blaming each other for "black PR"

On the morning of June 25, Tencent’s official Weibo account released a statement saying that the company had recently been subjected to continuous, intensive, and unconventional malicious attacks, with obvious signs of “black public relations” manipulation. Tencent said that it has officially reported the clues it has recently obtained to the public security authorities and will crack down on black public relations in accordance with the law.

Tencent's use of legal weapons to crack down on black public relations is not groundless. As early as June 20, Tencent public relations officer Zhang Jun posted a Weibo post exposing an article that was suspected to be a black public relations article, and denounced this black public relations behavior. At the end, he said meaningfully, "Guess who did this again." Alluding to Toutiao's actions~

Also on June 25, ByteDance (the company of Toutiao) also issued a statement saying that it had encountered large-scale, organized black public relations and had reported the case to the public security authorities.

Based on this, Toutiao also released several screenshots of chat records and transfer records. One of the screenshots showed that the transferor was suspected to be from Tencent Video.

The two companies simultaneously accused each other of black public relations. On the surface, it was a crackdown on black public relations, but in fact it was more like a continuation of the "Tencent-Bytedance War." It's not just Toutiao and Tencent. Looking back at the past, "public relations war" as a competitive weapon has also been repeatedly used by major companies. There is no right or wrong in public relations itself, but "black public relations" that deliberately discredits others and publishes false statements is indeed a cancer in the industry.

Finally, what do you think about the black public relations dispute between Toutiao and Tencent? Who do you support?

To learn more, please refer to the article : Tencent Toutiao stages a "black public relations" Rashomon, who is right and who is wrong?

07. Hongmao Medicinal Wine Incident

In mid-April, the "Hongmao Medicinal Wine" incident became the focus of public attention and was on the hot search list on Weibo many times.

The incident originated from a complaining article with less than 3,000 hits. Guangdong Provincial doctor Tan Qindong published an article questioning the efficacy of Hongmao Medicinal Wine, "China's Magic Wine "Hongmao Medicinal Wine", Poison from Heaven". One month later, Tan Qindong was arrested across provinces by the police in Liangcheng, Inner Mongolia, where the wine company is located.

Because an article was caught with less than 3,000 hits, netizens also had a lot of discussion about the "power behind it."

In fact, at the beginning of the incident, Hongmao Medicinal Wine Company could have contacted Tan Qindong and tried to get him to delete or modify the article and apologize to Hongmao Medicinal Wine. It could have also used legal means to send a lawyer's letter to Tan Qindong and apply for a civil lawsuit.

However, Hongmao Medicinal Wine chose a "show of muscle" approach to allow the police to arrest Tan Qindong across provinces. Its purpose was probably to "kill one to warn the hundred."

08. Blue Label "dismissal" incident

On March 15, the circle of friends was filled with an article titled "BlueFocus, the so-called largest public relations company in Asia, is cheating its old employees like this. Doesn’t it really hurt its conscience?" 》The article went viral. The author of the article (with the public account “有点自”) claimed that as a Blue Label employee, he was threatened and persuaded to resign by HR and his supervisor, and was unable to obtain employee resignation compensation. Soon, the incident caused heated discussion.

Around 6 o'clock that evening, the person involved deleted the post and apologized. Blue Label seemed to have successfully "publicized" the matter, and Blue Label issued a statement shortly afterwards. However, the content of the statement was suspected to be a veiled criticism of the person involved.

On the evening of March 22, the person involved in the incident issued another statement: "I deleted the article and issued a statement, but in return I received slander and uncompensated dismissal from BlueFocus," causing the incident that had already calmed down to stir up waves again. Soon, BlueFocus was not willing to be outdone and issued a "Follow-up Statement."

So far, Blue Label’s two statements have also been criticized by many parties, and many netizens commented that "the statements are completely cold" and "they show the arrogance of a large company, but lack the magnanimity of a listed company."

For more information, please refer to the article: The person involved in the BlueFocus "dismissal scandal" speaks out again, and the matter is far from that simple...

09. "Starbucks coffee causes cancer" rumor floods the internet

On March 30, Starbucks was hit by a "crisis public relations" incident. The reason was an article titled "Shock! Starbucks' biggest scandal exposed! The coffee we drink is actually this kind of stuff...》 An article went viral. To increase the credibility of "Starbucks causes cancer", the article also cited a US court ruling, requiring Starbucks to put a standard "toxic" warning on the outer packaging of the coffee it sells. Soon, the entire public opinion was boiling, and news that "Starbucks is said to cause cancer" appeared on the Internet one after another.

It is worth mentioning that in just two days, Starbucks public relations cleverly resolved the crisis and successfully launched a beautiful self-defense counterattack.

First, they reported the WeChat account that spread the rumor and invited the authoritative account Dingxiang Doctor to refute the rumor. Second, they actively responded to the media and attached a picture of the relevant announcement of the American Coffee Association in response to the "court ruling" mentioned in the article that went viral. Obviously, they also took the opportunity to educate the public on whether coffee is healthy or not.

In addition to going with the flow, it is obvious that Starbucks’ crisis public relations this time was inseparable from its past brand reputation, so everyone quickly forgave Starbucks! Yes or no? !

To learn more, refer to the article: Why is Starbucks’ crisis public relations so easy in the face of rumors?

10. Marriott Hotel Incident

On the morning of January 9, Weibo user @仲举扫地 posted a group of pictures. In a questionnaire released by Marriott Hotel, the list of "countries" included options such as Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Tibet. Soon, the Marriott Group, which owns 124 hotels in China, was pushed to the forefront.

That afternoon, Marriott’s public relations department responded that it was just a “system error,” but netizens did not buy it. Netizens later found out that Marriott Group’s “Marriott Rewards” Twitter account had liked a post by the Tibetan independence account “Friends of Tibet.” At this point, Marriott has completely fallen into a crisis of trust.

Finally, under the condemnation of public opinion, Marriott ended its painless "toothpaste squeezing" apology. Marriott International President and CEO Arne Sorenson issued an apology letter in the early hours of the 12th.

It is reported that negative information caused by products or company behaviors involving government policies, government public opinion orientation, public safety, extreme religious forces, and separatist policy content are all regarded as the highest level of crisis public relations and touch the red line. However, in such a crisis, Marriott's public relations were not effective, which ultimately damaged the hotel's reputation.

Source: Meihua Event