Welcome to the WeChat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina
Public relations experts in the automotive industry have the same question: Why does Weilai have to add “no relationship with the car itself” in the statement?
Author | Wang Xiaoling
Source: 20 She (ID: quancaijing_20she)
In the past two days, the entire Internet has criticized Weilai for being too cold-blooded in its response to the crash.
Many people know the incident itself, so I won’t repeat it. The incident has now fermented into a PR crisis. How did Weilai turn the crash tragedy into a huge brand crisis?
In fact, like netizens, public relations experts in the auto industry have the same question: why must the last sentence “has nothing to do with the car itself” be added to the statement?
“If you don’t care about people at this time, you should first say that your products are fine, and you should think that it may provoke public anger.” A public relations expert from a multinational auto company said.
Under this version of the statement, “highlighting the cold-blooded capital” became the most liked comment. Later, Weilai’s official micro-blog made changes and moved this sentence from the end of the article to the middle.
Wei Lai so persistently stated in the statement that the accident had nothing to do with the car, which became the most important reason for the anger of netizens. However, I also have a question about this. In addition to the description of the incident itself and the expression of concern for the parties, the official statement must not be able to defend itself.
For PR, what if the company does need to deliver this message at the same time? Or to put it simply, does the boss require this part of the content?
The difficulty of this matter is that there are only two possibilities for the cause of the accident as a whole, either a car problem or a human problem. And even if it is really a human problem, at this time out of respect for the deceased, it cannot be directly stated. Of course, there is no conclusion yet as to what the cause is, and we still have to wait for the detailed investigation results.
The above-mentioned public relations people believe that, in fact, the handling of crisis public relations is to avoid public relations disasters, so it is also a disaster to cause widespread negative speculation about the product. “If you have to say it, you can say it, but you have to put it another way.”
For example, he said, don’t say “the accident has nothing to do with the car itself”, but through a simple description of the accident itself, so that readers can deduce this for themselves.
In his opinion, the biggest problem with this announcement is that it is not very good at speaking, or that it is too casual to speak in front of the public. In fact, compared with traditional car companies, new car-making forces at home and abroad have similar styles.
Tesla’s boss, Elon Musk, is already a famous mouthpiece. Last year, a Tesla Model S crash killed two people, and U.S. police say they believe no one was in the driver’s seat at the time of the crash.
Musk immediately jumped out and said, “The data logs recovered so far show that Autopilot has not been activated… In addition, standard autopilot will require driving on lane lines, which are not lane lines on this street.”
This first-time disclaimer is equally chilling.
From the perspective of traditional car manufacturers, Tesla’s PR strategy, like Apple’s, is to establish a “personal design” with good product quality. “Tesla’s message is that I don’t need PR because my product is so good.”
However, when the product itself fails, this strategy can backfire on the brand. For example, a document from the U.S. Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) created a crisis of confidence in Musk’s proud Autopilot.
In this document, there is a sentence: Autopilot aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact. That is, Autopilot aborted control of the vehicle less than 1 second before the crash.
Foreign netizens commented that this is equivalent to “when the big truck is about to hit you, the robot returns the steering wheel to you”.
And Weilai’s character design has always been regarded as the ultimate “user first” by the outside world, which has given Weilai a group of loyal fans. Simply put, NIO can bring pride to car owners.
NIO’s 2C communication ability makes traditional car manufacturers very envious, and there are also brands that organize internal discussions and learning. However, when Weilai fans, or its users, turn against the tide, the brand will also be attacked. In fact, the previous public relations crises of Weilai were more or less related to car owners.
In this incident, another magical operation is that the prospective owners of Weilai can obtain a detailed interpretation of the cause of the accident in advance in another way.
After the accident, “Daily Economic News” called Jinan Weilai Sales Company in the name of buying a car and asked whether the cause of the crash of Weilai’s test car was related to the braking system. The staff said, “It is not a braking problem. Put reverse gear into forward gear.”
Whether this statement is true or not, it conveys two voices to the outside world, which will undoubtedly bring confusion.
In the current Internet context, the word capital contains a very broad content. It is okay to say that capital is cold-blooded. The problem is that Weilai cannot position itself as capital. As a large company with a market value of tens of billions of dollars, it should have its own responsibility. corporate and social responsibility.
In this event, taking responsibility and maintaining the brand is the same thing in itself. Although the sales volume of NIO last year was less than 100,000 units, I believe that NIO will not position itself as a niche brand, but will strive to become the next generation of national cars at a critical moment in the transformation of the automotive industry.
That is to say, whether it is Tesla or the new domestic car-making forces, they should have the consciousness of seeing themselves as a consumer-grade brand, instead of only communicating with their own users and fans.
In the long run, if NIO’s brand image becomes just thinking about selling cars and disregarding the life and death of employees, will NIO car owners still be a proud label?
(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view and does not represent the position of Sina.com.)
This article is reproduced from: http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-06-27/doc-imizmscu8902531.shtml
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.