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Text / Bi Andi
Source: Direct Face (ID: faceurhart)
| The public relations of the new forces should also be “refreshed”
Wei Lai taught everyone how to use “rotten eggs”.
Stinky eggs, which means putting the most rotten eggs last, are often powerful, and a small egg destroys everything.
On June 23, the news of “NIO’s test car crashing from a building” spread on the Internet, and the pictures of the scene that broke out gave people a direct visual impact: a car that rolled over has changed beyond recognition, with many depressions in the body and windows. Broken, there are suspected building fragments around, and several firefighters are struggling to rescue.
That night, Weilai responded through its official Weibo, with a total of 191 words, making it clear that it was indeed Weilai’s test vehicle that fell: “It fell from the third floor of the Shanghai Innovation Port Parking Building”, and there were “two people in the car”. The testers of the digital cabin, one was a company colleague and the other was a partner employee”, and both have “died”.
It was the last nine words that caused a storm of public opinion: “It has nothing to do with the vehicle itself.”
What a stinky Easter egg. These nine words overshadowed the rest of the statement and completely attracted the firepower of public opinion. Now NIO’s official Weibo has opened a selection of comments, most of which are the prayers of “rest in peace”, but in the media screenshots of the news released before, the top one is “the last sentence highlights the cold-blooded capital”, 8236 likes.
It didn’t take long for Weilai to modify the response on Weibo, and the controversial “rotten egg” was changed to “This is an accident (not caused by the vehicle)”.
This is not the end. On the 24th, a screenshot of WeChat came out. It was suspected to be the response of Ma Lin, director of public relations of Weilai, in the WeChat group. The small composition said a total of four points, and it was still the last one with the least number of words. Four points caused controversy: “The navy can’t beat me.”
And people who are familiar with the “new forces” car companies are afraid that they can only smile bitterly: it is the navy again, and it is a new force with hard lips.
A
The difference between “uncompromising” and “hard-mouthed” is probably only timing.
After proving yourself, a sentence of “uncompromising” is enough to be respectable, but when the facts are unclear and the time is not ripe, you are eager to distance yourself from the relationship (not my fault) and blame the imaginary enemy standing in the shadows (someone Fuck me), it becomes an unpleasant “hard-mouthed”.
It is a pity that this kind of stubbornness is frequently displayed on the new forces of car building.
Wei Lai, the protagonist of this test driver death incident, suffered a user car accident death last year.
In August last year, Lin Wenqin, the founder of Meiyihao brand management company, died in a car accident. The “Meiyihao” personal public account issued an obituary, saying that Lin Wenqin was “driving a Weilai ES8 with the automatic driving function (NOP pilot status)” when the accident occurred. .
After the accident, NIO told the media that the NOP pilot state is not automatic driving, but an automatic driving assistance function.
So far, the focus of discussion has been on the difference between “autonomous driving” and “assisted driving”, and whether companies have made the difference between the two clear to car owners.
However, what happened next was somewhat unexpected. On August 18, 4 days after Lin Wenqin’s obituary was issued, a joint statement of 500 NIO owners was distributed and circulated in major NIO owner groups, entitled “NIO Owners” Joint Statement on NP/NOP System Cognition. The statement mainly emphasizes that NIO owners are well aware of the current NIO NP/NOP assisted driving system, not an automatic driving system or driverless system; NIO’s introduction and promotion of NP/NOP does not confuse them and misleading.
The next day, the topic of “opposition to the joint statement of car owners” was released in the Weilai App. In just one day, 7,000 car owners participated, saying that they did not want to be represented. The car owner objected to the car owner, and this incident eventually became a Rashomon, each talking about it.
Another representative case is the Tesla owner’s rights protection incident last year. Ms. Che Zhang was standing on the roof of Tesla wearing clothes with the words “brake failure”. At that time, Tesla’s statement also came very quickly, saying that the owner of the rights-defense car was the owner of the “violation accident” in February, and “passed the very first” on the same day. You can obtain documents in a standard way to enter the exhibition hall.” Tao Lin, Tesla’s vice president, said bluntly in an interview: “She is very professional, and there should be (people) behind her.”
This is just the beginning. After that, the tug-of-war between Tesla and Ms. Zhang lasted for more than a year, and both sides responded with a tough attitude.
About 10 days after the roof was defended, Tesla released a detailed description of the incident, stating that the two sides had been communicating and negotiating since February last year, and said that Tesla actively cooperated with Ms. Zhang, but the other party refused to accept “third-party testing”, and Before the protection of rights on the roof, it has continued to defend its rights many times by spraying words on the body, playing negative Tesla news through speakers, and placing display boards.
More importantly, Tesla seems to believe that this incident was planned and organized in the description: “Some netizens provided information that Feng Moumou, Han Mou and others were the main organizers of the ‘rights protection’ event at the auto show. “Mr. Li (Ms. Zhang’s husband) made it clear that he has a ‘team’ from Beijing to assist him… The ‘team’ claims to be able to help him ‘clean up’ and satisfy his demands…”.
Subsequently, the two sides even launched a mutual lawsuit. Tesla sued Ms. Zhang for infringement of the right of reputation, demanding a public apology and compensation of 5 million yuan; while Ms. Zhang sued Tesla and Tao Lin for infringement of the right of reputation. The incident remains unresolved.
But in the end, whether Tesla can prove itself right or not, its reputation in the Chinese market is damaged, and it has become a given.
B
The stubborn image displayed by car companies to the outside world is not unique to the new car-making forces.
Just on the first day of this month, BYD’s official account “BYD Network Reporting Center” released a message “Reports are rewarded, up to 5 million! 》
What to report? Black PR. According to this article, one year from June 1, “we have decided to adjust the reward for reporting from RMB 50,000 to RMB 1 million to RMB 50,000 to RMB 5 million.”
On June 20, Geely followed suit and launched the “Internet False Information Reporting Center”: “Accept the clues and evidence provided by netizens about insulting, slandering, rumoring, slandering and other operations against Geely”, and “will follow the clues. , The value of the evidence will be rewarded up to 1 million yuan.”
The so-called “black public relations”, to put it bluntly, is to pay people to find trouble for competitors, and to discredit them in a planned and organized manner. The “water army” is the person at the bottom who takes money to publish news online.
To say that today’s car companies’ attention to “black public relations” and “navy” are probably the remnants of the “black public relations” of Geely and Great Wall in 2018. At that time, a screenshot of a WeChat chat suspected of Geely releasing a mission to the Navy was revealed: 2 for Geely, 1 for black domestic products (mainly targeting the Great Wall, 5~7 hairs for each, 13% personal rebates per day…
The power of the screenshots can be imagined. Great Wall Motor issued a statement condemning “it is an indisputable fact that a certain brand has a large number of navy”, and then Geely denied it and took Great Wall Motor to court.
The incident continued from October to December, and the two car companies finally reached a settlement and jointly expressed that the misunderstanding was resolved. The incident “was caused by someone falsely using the name of Geely Auto’s employees to fabricate false information to attack Great Wall, mislead public opinion, create misunderstandings, and give Serious harm to both brands.”
So it was Geely who was exposed to black public relations, and then denied and accused Great Wall of doing black public relations. Finally, it was a third party who did black public relations… It was a bit of a brain-burning reconciliation.
C
The competition in the new energy vehicle industry is still fierce: the first echelon of “Weixiaoli” invaded each other’s territory one after another, and the second echelon such as Nezha and Leapao were chasing after them. Traditional car companies turned around and entered the track. Power has also increased into the game, and car companies are afraid of negative news, and they are also afraid of not being able to get ahead.
Whenever negative news is exposed, car companies are not only stubborn in public relations, but sometimes bosses are even more stubborn.
In July last year, when the ideal car encountered the “mercury gate”, it was the founder Li Xiang who jumped out directly and “positively”. At that time, an ideal ONE owner said that a substance suspected of mercury was found inside the seat, and he posted a message in the ideal app.
On July 5, a netizen asked Ideal Auto about this matter. Ideal Auto issued a statement saying that it “highly attached great importance to it and has launched a comprehensive investigation as soon as possible”, and then Li Xiang posted on Weibo with fierce words: “The people who spread rumors about our mercury Media, may you have mercury flowing in your blood and mercury in your brains!”
Posted three times and deleted three times, this Weibo was finally completely deleted. Li Xiang then posted a new Weibo, saying that someone had poisoned with mercury and maliciously framed it, and asked, “Who is operating it?”
It is worth noting that when Li Xiang scolded someone for framing, there was no investigation result of the incident. On July 7th, the owner of the car in question released the test results and @李思, sarcastically said: “Hello, Mr. Li, I am the owner of the car who found mercury in the car, and I went with the people from your headquarters to pick up the test report results today. Here, there is mercury in the car seat! As for whether there is mercury in my head, I will wait until I go to the hospital for examination.”
Li Xiang also refused to admit defeat and replied to the message that “mercury smuggling is a serious criminal offense” and “ideal car 100% supports you to report the crime”.
Ideal official also issued an official statement, one of which is to affirm the test results, there is mercury; the other is to deny that the mercury is owned by the ideal car itself, “either the external items containing mercury in the use process are damaged or spilled, or there is external poisoning. criminal suspects”.
In addition to passively triggering hard-mouthed skills, the bosses of the new car-making forces will also take the initiative to attack and frequently create hot spots. For example, in the case of diss fuel vehicles, almost no one has fallen.
In 2013, Tesla just launched its first electric car, the Model S, when a car fire occurred. At that time, Musk published an article on Tesla’s official blog, explaining in detail the cause of the fire, but did not forget to add: If this accident happened on a gasoline vehicle, the results could be much worse.
Li Bin, the founder of NIO at the center of the storm, said in an interview at the end of last year: “How nostalgic is it to buy a gasoline car! Except for the smell of gasoline, I really can’t think of anything good.” This interview Aroused thousands of waves, Li Bin was directly sprayed on the hot search, and was criticized by netizens for “why not eat minced meat”.
Regarding this matter, Li Bin only responded in several interviews, saying that “it may seem a bit shocking because of the simple interception of that paragraph, but I hope that everyone will consider electric vehicles when buying a car.”
There was Li Bin before and then WM Motor CEO Shen Hui. He posted a long content on Weibo, explaining that “traditional oil trucks can’t go back.” Although this was not an “out-of-context” interview, many people still didn’t buy it. Facing the controversy, Shen Hui chose to silently change “traditional oil cars can’t go back” to “smart cars can’t go back after using them”.
The harm of “hard-mouthed public relations” may not be fatal in most cases. Companies can always apologize after an apology, and issue a new statement after the statement; Can save danger.
But when hard-mouthed public relations meet the loss of life, the impact cannot be completely eliminated by a “sorry” or “ill-considered”.
No matter what Weilai does next, the phrase “has nothing to do with the vehicle itself” and the unproven phrase “the navy can’t beat me” may have forever become Weilai’s dark history.
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