How is Pinduoduo’s crisis public relations?

Yesterday afternoon, Pinduoduo held an emergency media communication meeting in Shanghai to respond to huge doubts from the public and the media. Although I was far away in Guangzhou attending Skyworth's new product launch conference, I still felt the "power" of the Pinduoduo storm.

How hard is Pinduoduo’s public relations? How is the crisis public relations going? Chat at 7 o'clock.

1. Hurry

Obviously, this was a media communication meeting that was not originally planned. From a few details we can see:

a/ The city we chose was a conference room in Shanghai, the operation headquarters, instead of Beijing, the media center. This was completely different from the strategy of holding the launch conference in Shanghai;

b/Huang Zheng did not attend the media communication meeting. It was said that the media were planning to leave, but he finally rushed there and temporarily added a media group interview session.

Of course, there is another point of view that Pinduoduo's response was slow. It took a week for them to hold a communication meeting after the incident became so serious. I think it could have been faster, but in fact, the destructive power of black jokes is accumulated bit by bit, rather than from a single negative article. This is a typical case of regressing based on the results.

2. Strategy

Although this communication meeting was a bit hasty, including the rough PPT, it was not the case in terms of communication strategy. Throughout the communication meeting, Pinduoduo’s core communication strategies actually had three:

a/ Clarification . Are those jokes, screenshots and animated images on the Internet true? Pinduoduo said that most of them are fake: Xiaomi's new products were all removed from the shelves a few months ago; "gyro" razors, "small pieces" black masks and "black feet" slippers are not sold on Pinduoduo; the 7.5 yuan product is not milk powder, but chrysanthemum crystal...

b/Differentiation . Huang Zheng believes that the difference between "copycat" and "fake" is a question of "interest" and "right and wrong". He specifically mentioned expired milk powder, which is a bottom-line issue of "right and wrong".

c/Bundling . All the problems I have encountered so far have been found on Taobao and still exist, including expired milk powder. I used Taobao’s “anti-counterfeiting” logic before, but now I find it is not enough and I have to upgrade. Like all e-commerce companies , I have zero tolerance for selling counterfeit goods.

I think that among the three strategies, clarification and bundling are relatively successful, and the attitude towards fighting counterfeiting is also very clear. The most difficult thing is to make the issue of "counterfeiting" clear.

Faced with the question of "Pinxixi has made China regress 20 years and return to the era of copycats", Huang Zheng believes that this is "stigmatization" and confuses the three concepts of "copycat", " brand " and "fakes". However, "copycat is not a brand, it is equivalent to fakes" seems to be a common consensus among the public, media and brands. For example, vivo is a brand, but vivi is not a brand, it is a copycat, a fake impersonating vivo.

As a result, the copycats couldn't explain themselves clearly and dug a big hole for themselves.

3. Golden Sentences

The media always likes to catch "golden sentences".

"Pinduoduo is just a three-year-old child with many obvious problems."

We saw that this sentence began to be amplified yesterday. It was said by Dada, the co-founder of Pinduoduo. Its original intention was to acknowledge the problems of the platform and not to evade them.

There is actually another sentence before this sentence: "Pinduoduo puts consumer satisfaction first, so it has a zero-tolerance attitude towards counterfeits."

Obviously, "3-year-old child" has more traffic and topicality than "0 tolerance".

And why mention "3 years old"? Obviously you will be criticized. You have listed it, 300 million people are using it, and it has a market value of 30 billion US dollars. You should bear the corresponding responsibility instead of making excuses like "youth". It is speculated that the strategy at that time might not just be to call for a committee, but to let other e-commerce platforms share the responsibility of combating counterfeiting, the so-called "bundling" strategy.

But judging from the current results, the media kept dwelling on the 3-year-old and made it a headline .

4. Enmity

Regardless of whether Pinduoduo adopts the Tmall model or not, it should adopt a friendly attitude towards merchants who settle on the platform.

As of now, among the larger brands, Skyworth and Xgimi have respectively issued statements to Pinduoduo, asking it to remove products involved in infringement. Last night, during the group interview session after Skyworth's new product launch conference, the media was also very concerned about the delicate relationship between Skyworth and Pinduoduo.

It is estimated that if Pinduoduo cannot come up with a solution to deal with products that like to "steal traffic", whether it is arranged or not, more brands will have to stand up to "fight against counterfeits", which is definitely not what it wants to see.

5. Black PR

In fact, before the communication meeting, yesterday morning, Pinduoduo first sent a strong signal to the outside world in the form of a press spokesperson accepting an interview: There are black PR people who are discrediting me! This laid the groundwork for the afternoon communication meeting.

The official statement is: "Pinduoduo is under a rare wave of online public opinion attacks, and there are special teams and personnel on the Internet to maintain it. In this regard, Pinduoduo is reporting it to the National Internet Center, and detailed materials will be announced to the whole society when appropriate."

It is hard to say who is smearing Pinduoduo. We look forward to detailed evidence. There must be people fanning the flames. But Pinduoduo seems very aggrieved when saying this publicly, but in fact, it cannot gain any sympathy: You have a problem, someone stands up to question you, and you say that someone is slandering you? Isn’t this Wu Yifan’s “There are always villains who want to harm me” routine…

In addition, Pinduoduo's huge investment in television media, the 40% surge in its stock price just after its listing, and of course the business model itself, are all the "gasoline" that ignites public sentiment. Such a large-scale concurrency is difficult for a single company or the water army suppliers behind it to handle.

From my experience, I have three WeChat accounts and more than 300 WeChat groups , and almost all of them are discussing Pinduoduo. Self-media like to chase hot topics, and Pinduoduo is a big hot topic in the eyes of self-media. I feel like I can’t keep up with the times if I don’t talk about it. Even I started arguing with my friends in several groups.

But what’s interesting is that even Huang himself admitted that despite encountering such a huge negative public opinion, Pinduoduo’s traffic and business have not decreased but increased.

A group of people who have never bought anything from Pinduoduo are worried about it.

6. Black jokes

Continue speaking through black public relations. The following is an act of black public relations by making up funny jokes, as pointed out by a Pinduoduo spokesperson.

“#Pinduoduo is listed# The following brands congratulate Pinduoduo on its successful listing in the United States: Xiaomi new products, Panasonic new products, Lao Yu Ma, Yue Li Yue, Lei Bi, Kangshoufu, Wawaha, Dabaimen, Taibai Rabbit, Qipihen, Green Scissors chewing gum, Coca-Cola, Bixiangyin tissue, Pampers, Abidas, and Adidiaos clothing (in no particular order).”

There is a "complaint point" in the screen-sweeping theory, that is, if a brand wants to enter the user's circle of friends and be discussed by everyone, it must create jokes and pre-buried complaining points, so that users can complain about you while helping you to spread the word a second time, and then sweep the screen.

Obviously, black PRs have also learned this trick, and "black jokes" have come into being, together with "WeChat chat screenshots" and "WeChat 10-second short videos", which have become the three "weapons" for crisis screen-sweeping . All PRs should be careful.

But it still stands to the point made above. It is actually very difficult to judge which jokes are written by competitors or improvised by well-intentioned netizens. My personal suggestion is that brands should think more about red jokes.

7. Email to all employees

This is also a typical PR routine, which happened yesterday morning.

It is estimated that Pinduoduo’s public relations department anticipated that Huang Zheng would not be able to attend the communication meeting in the afternoon, so they specifically sent out the email that the boss sent to all employees first to represent the boss’s attitude.

The title of this email is "Stick to your duty and interpret even malicious attacks in a kind manner." Huang Zheng said: "We are not pursuing one-sided positive attitude, and one-sided negativity has never been the real Pinduoduo." The email also revealed an important message, which is that "everyone's options will be locked for three years and they will continue to work hard."

The quality of this email is the best among all the public relations actions yesterday, even better than the media interview Huang Zheng personally conducted yesterday. It shows a clear and objective understanding of the complex events.

The following is the full text of the letter to all employees:

I just finished a staff meeting with everyone, and told everyone that their options would be locked for three years. We will continue to work hard and prepare to receive attention, praise, slander and even attacks. Unexpectedly, it came the next day. It comes so strongly. I would like to say a few words to everyone here. 1. We must unite and firmly believe in the model we have created together in the past. Although it is still a long way from Costco + Disney today, past practice has shown that it has tenacious vitality and great prospects. We must firmly believe that there is a future only if we create value for the vast majority of consumers. 2. We must stick to our responsibilities, hold ourselves accountable when facing doubts, embrace supervision from the public and competitors, ignore stock price fluctuations, and adopt a persistent spirit to solve practical problems one by one. 3. Be consumer-oriented, not competition-oriented. Faced with numerous doubts and even accusations. We should not panic, we should not try to do everything at once, and we should not try to achieve everything at once. We cannot be competition-oriented and do whatever others tell us to do. We must firmly grasp the consumer orientation, start from the most direct interests of the consumers, begin to make changes, and make continuous changes. It is fate that brings us together, and it is our luck to meet Pinduoduo. We must have the courage to take responsibility and continue to endure doubts and even injustice. No great change or creation comes so easily or so obviously. We do not pursue one-sided positivity, and one-sided negativity has never been the real Pinduoduo. We must get down to the most practical level, work hard, and push for Pinduoduo's real progress bit by bit .

After seeing this series of combined punches, the editor believes that Pinduoduo's public relations is really hard-working and has used almost all the tricks it can use. Although there are some flaws, there is also a shortcoming, which is that it has fallen into the "copycat" pit dug by itself and its opponents and cannot extricate itself.

Last night, Pinduoduo's stock price fell by 12% at one point, and finally closed up slightly by 0.40%.

Fortunately, the government stepped in.

This morning, the State Administration for Market Regulation said it had asked the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce to interview platform operators... to conduct a serious investigation into the issues of selling knockoff products and imitating famous brands on the Pinduoduo platform reported by the media and complaints from consumers and trademark rights holders...

This second media communication meeting will definitely be held.

Source: Wannengdedashu (ID:wannengdedashu)