Tax guys, do you like to look at the reviews before you go shopping? However, the recent evaluation industry has not been very peaceful.
Recently, there was a lawsuit that blew up the entire evaluation circle, involving the third-party evaluation agency Dad evaluation and the small safflower evaluation.
The cause of the matter is also very simple, the little red flower evaluation publicly bombarded the father evaluation, saying that it "deliberately made a false evaluation", "cheated", "deliberately falsified, deceived consumers, fooled consumers"; subsequently, the father evaluation used three lawsuits to sue the small red flower evaluation in court, there are currently two progress, the small red flower evaluation needs to apologize and compensate the father evaluation of 100,000 yuan.
With this operation, the small red flower evaluation smoothly "debuted", although the process was bumpy, but the fans soared, the influence was rapidly formed, it can be said that it was a perfect "rubbing traffic" operation.
The evaluation industry is so dramatic, as consumers, how should we eat melons?
A textbook marketing event
The lawsuit may only be an inevitable ending, but marketing may be the real planning case.
On February 5, Tao Chen, the founder of Little Red Flower Review, publicly posted an apology video on Douyin.
In the video, Tao Chen apologized for the previous defamation of his father's evaluation, and called on netizens to take him as a warning and abide by relevant laws and regulations when posting remarks online.
At the same time, Tao Chen also released more than 10 short videos related to the content of court judgments in one go, although some videos could not be issued for some reasons, but released so many video content in one go, which won a lot of public attention at once.
*Image source: Little Red Flower review TikTok works
Subsequently, public opinion was indeed out of control.
On February 6, an anonymous user asked: "How do you think that the false publicity of some products evaluated by Dad was found by the court but had a basis?" This question was later changed to "How to view the false promotion of some products of "Little Red Flower Review" designated by "Dad Review"? What is the real situation? And on the Zhihu hot list, above the two major issues of "sudden death of employees of Station B" and "Gu Ailing talking about nationality".
*Image source: Zhihu
Will things end at this point? No way!
On February 10, Xiaohonghua Evaluation connected with Wang Hai, who was "fighting fake living fossils", to conduct a live broadcast and once again launched an attack on Dad's evaluation. In the live broadcast, wang Hai stood behind a red sign that read, "Dad's evaluation of the five deadly sins was hammered by the court", and discussed his father's evaluation with Tao Chen.
What is the end result?
After some operation, the growth of Xiaohonghua's Douyin account fans has changed its previous fatigue and has grown rapidly since February 5. Little Red Flower Evaluation has also changed from an unknown to a "well-known" third-party evaluation agency in the eyes of the public.
Because of the "improper remarks" lost the lawsuit, the Little Red Flower Evaluation not only did not end it, but continued to bind the father's evaluation while shouting injustice while quickly increasing its popularity. From a marketing point of view, this wave of operations can be described as amazing. Because regardless of whether the final dad evaluation overturns or not, it will inevitably add fire to the little red flower evaluation.
In fact, this kind of marketing means that rely on deep binding of well-known enterprises to increase their own popularity is not uncommon.
Rulangjiu once stated in its own advertising slogan that it was "from the Chishui River" and "one of the two major sauce liquors in China", deeply binding Moutai for marketing. Shenzhou Chauffeur has directly used "Beat U, I am afraid of black cars", "let black cars change a vest", "Uber we are not about" and other terms to allude to Uber to market itself.
In the micro-business circle, this kind of marketing method of "hitting the big with small" is not uncommon. Everyone knows that Wang Han, a micro-business mask entrepreneur, prides himself on being a "former Ali beauty executive", "with an annual salary of millions and tens of millions of options", and posted a photo with Ma Yun to rub a wave of Ali traffic fiercely, bringing him naked benefits. The first article of its public account reached the sales results of 10W+ and 600+ masks.
Relying on the marketing method of rubbing traffic, it has obtained the highest exposure. If Commander Tang in the old movie "Tunnel War" came to reality, I am afraid that he would also give a thumbs up and say to these companies: "High, really high!" ”
*Image source network
What do you need to support yourself?
In addition to gaining influence and fans, is there any other appeal in this marketing case? Through this dispute, you can easily see that the third-party evaluation agencies that everyone believes in are also facing huge revenue pressure, and we analyze the profit difference between the two.
As early as 2017, when Tao Chen registered the "Little Red Flower Evaluation" WeChat public account, the "Little Red Flower Market" was launched on the WeChat mall. Five months later, its Taobao store of the same name was launched again, and the two jointly sold the products recommended by the Little Red Flower Review.
For this model, Tao Chen called it "excellent e-commerce": that is, accumulating fans through evaluation, and then selling excellent products selected by evaluation to fans to achieve traffic realization. In this regard, Tao Chen called it "business to raise tests", he said: "Reasonable profits are wanted, we have to support ourselves, right? ”
A cursory look at the latest 100 video content of the Little Red Flower Review, with nearly one-third of the product links, sells a wide range of products, and sometimes the same products are repeatedly recommended in different videos.
Behind such high-frequency recommended products, it is not difficult to see the survival dilemma of the third-party evaluation industry's waist and tail self-media: traffic bottlenecks and monetization difficulties.
As a head agency, Dad's evaluation of the "business model" is also controversial.
Little Red Flower Evaluation bombarded Dad's evaluation, one of which was to question the "Dad Sampling" model.
In the face of doubts, Dad Review said in a statement that in addition to continuously exporting non-commercial evaluation content, as a company that must survive and develop, it has also developed profitable businesses such as e-commerce and sampling. Generously admits that "Dad Sampling" is indeed a profitable business.
*Screenshot from dad review official statement
Due to the particularity of the industry, in the short term, it seems that no third-party evaluation agency can completely get rid of the original sin of "being both a referee and an athlete", because the public needs to evaluate content to guide purchasing behavior, and the evaluation agency needs to support itself.
However, no matter what kind of "business model" the third-party evaluation agency adopts, it will mostly use marketing to leverage traffic, and conscience and content are the long-term bond between the evaluation agency and the fans. Once you lose your objective and neutral attitude and lose your original intention to do evaluation, you will lose the support of users and will become a passive water and a wood without roots.
Because, from ancient times to the present, there has never been a company that relies on fraud to become bigger and stronger; it has never relied on marketing means to make the company bigger and stronger.
The history of the founding of the two institutions
Finally, the IQ Tax Research Center takes the majority of taxpayers to take a closer look at the two evaluation agencies, and also sorts out the causes of this dispute from the source.
Founded in 2017, its founder Tao Chen was born in the media industry, worked in Guangzhou Daily and First Finance for more than ten years, and then left the media industry to start a business, with the brand of "Little Red Flower Evaluation", releasing maternal and infant product evaluations on major platforms.
Up to now, Xiaohonghua has evaluated 388,000 Douyin fans, 22,000 Weibo fans, and more than 6,000 B station fans. Although it is not too bad, compared with the father's evaluation, the current influence of the little red flower evaluation is still much worse.
Before the establishment of the Little Red Flower Review, Wei Wenfeng, the founder of Dad Review, had already become famous with the "Problem Pack Book Skin" incident.
In 2015, Wei Wenfeng found that there may be a problem with the bag book cover used by his daughter, so he took the bag book cover at his own expense and sent it to a professional laboratory for testing, and found that the bag of book cover contained toxic chemical components that exceeded the standard, which caused great concern in the Chinese mother and baby circle, and the father evaluation was established in the same year. After its establishment, Dad's evaluation has exposed plastic runway and hormone cream and other issues of products, which have been loved by many users. So far, the whole network has more than 50 million fans, including more than 20 million Douyin fans, more than 3 million Weibo fans, and more than 4 million fans of B station.
*CCTV reported on the Wei Wenfeng BookCase incident
The relentless bombardment of the little red flower evaluation on the father's evaluation seems to verify Guo Degang's sentence: "Only among peers, it is naked."
In the "Hangzhou Railway Transport Court Civil Judgment", the court pointed out that Xiaohonghua Evaluation and Dad Evaluation belong to competitors in the same industry, and there is a certain relationship between the market share of the two, and there is a large number of remarks around Dad's evaluation in the content released by Xiaohonghua Evaluation, and as a company that uses sampling services as a way of profit, it has professional knowledge of products and standards, and its subjective malice is obvious.
The first "shelling" of the Little Red Flower Evaluation on Dad's evaluation was also earlier than last year's 315.
On January 7, 2021, Dad's review revealed that hormone creams have sparked a hot discussion. On the same day, the little red flower review released a video "Dad review video said that buying baby cream needs to see a health permit, is that right?" ”。
Although some netizens in the comment area pointed out that it misinterpreted the meaning of Dad's review, this video still received 5W likes, much higher than other videos released by Xiaohonghua review at the same time.
In the video, Tao Chen constantly claimed that his "anti-counterfeiting father evaluation" was for the majority of consumers, and constantly shaped himself as a hero image of "although tens of millions of people are looking forward to it".
However, once the traffic desire gate is opened, it will not be easily closed, and after two collisions, some people see the benefits of rubbing heat.