What Dong Mingzhu needs is not Wang Ziru

(Image source: IC photo)

Chen Bai/Wen In the past two days, the whole network has received the biggest scolding, except for Li Jiaqi, it should be Wang Ziru.

"I haven't read the salary slip that Gree gave me", "Can you give me an office close to you, I will report to you at any time", "Even if I don't do anything every day, I just watch how she holds meetings, I listen to what she says and does every day, I think it's a very happy thing", "Young people who have just graduated must learn to return to zero mentality"...

And this is still from Wang Ziru, an opinion leader who once became popular in the circle under the banner of independent technology evaluation. What really annoys Wang Ziru is not these expressions that violate common sense, but that he has stabbed through the window paper of the "kneeling" workplace culture that exists more or less in the entire East Asian cultural circle - in front of superiors and subordinates, independent personality and dignity are not worth mentioning.

But Wang Ziru is actually not the key to this farce. Some people also say that if the genders in this incident are reversed, everyone's discomfort will be much reduced, which is actually using the context of gender antagonism to cover up more real issues.

The real most uncomfortable thing in that group of shots is not Wang Ziru's expression, nor the eye transmission between Dong Mingzhu and Wang Ziru, but Dong Mingzhu, a representative of Chinese entrepreneurs who once thought that he had strategic foresight and excellent judgment, was willing to express such naked flattery.

One

Gree has been in turmoil this year.

Just a few months ago, Meng Yutong, who was popularized by Dong Mingzhu and even named as her successor, quietly left Gree amid the controversy. There are many rumors about Gree and Meng Yutong, one side thinks that Meng Yutong does not cherish opportunities, is ungrateful, and often arrives late and leaves early, and the other side strongly supports the latter, Meng Yutong's income in Gree and the direction that Gree has planned for her are obviously not suitable for her.

No matter what the real reason is, the final result of this "successor" hype is a piece of chicken feathers, and the joint delivery of Meng Yutong and Dong Mingzhu has been dismal. And even in the first year of Dong Mingzhu's live broadcast in person, he also faced great controversy.

In terms of numbers, the sales of 13 live broadcasts reached 47.6 billion yuan, supporting 1/4 of Gree's total revenue that year. However, this slightly exaggerated sales caused the industry's "brushing" questions at that time, and there was news at that time that Gree asked the supplier channel to support live streaming online.

At least from the brand point of view, Gree's attempt to rejuvenate and the transformation of the live broadcast room failed again. Even with Dong Mingzhu's blessing and sufficient exposure, in the live broadcast room, Dong Mingzhu did not find his own Dong Yuhui like Yu Minhong; Gree failed to become New Oriental, and failed to build Mingzhu Yutong Selection into the next Oriental selection.

Between Dong Mingzhu and Meng Yutong, there is no gender problem.

According to public information, Dong Mingzhu said that she and Wang Ziru have known each other for many years, but they broke off contact in the middle, and then reconnected due to a chance on Jingdong live broadcast. This "chance" refers to the live broadcast of Gree's 10th anniversary of entering JD.com in May 2020, which was hosted by Wang Ziru and had a conversation with Dong Mingzhu and JD.com executives. That live broadcast set the highest transaction record for live streaming of home appliances at that time, with a turnover of more than 703 million yuan.

And this may be the real reason why Dong Mingzhu and Wang Ziru will appear in our field of vision again a few months after Meng Yutong disappeared. This, in turn, further proves that Dong Mingzhu is looking forward to increasing exposure to achieve Gree's attempt to transform its channels.

Compared with other competitors, over the years, the core competitiveness of Gree's business model, to a certain extent, "mastering core technology" is not the first, but the dealer channel is. Gree has built a very sticky dealer network through cross-shareholding with large dealers, allowing Gree to dominate the air conditioning market for more than 20 years in the past era when channels were king.

Gree used to be most proud of the fact that there were more than 30,000 dealers offline. At that time, Gree could even compete with Huang Guangyu of Gome, but he didn't enter Gome's hypermarket.

But when Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya's Double 11 sales can be equal to the annual revenue of thousands of A-share listed companies, when Gome's offices are empty, the world has changed.

Two

As the real estate gradually enters the saturation stage, the air conditioning market has also entered the era of the stock market, and the consumption of air conditioning is naturally affected. According to data from Aowei Cloud Network, the air conditioning retail market will suffer three consecutive declines from 2020 to 2022. And the number of air conditioners has been at a high level.

Although the performance is still growing, it is an indisputable fact that Gree Electric is facing a "mid-life crisis".

Of course, Dong Mingzhu has seen this change, and she is still looking for the right path for Gree to enter the new digital world. But it is precisely this anxiety of urgent transformation that is obscuring Dong Mingzhu's judgment as a great entrepreneur, which may be the biggest source of the hidden crisis of the Gree Group.

Take a look at the position that Dong Mingzhu gave Wang Ziru - the person in charge of the channel reform project of Gree Electric Appliances. The theme of his lecture to Gree Electric Appliance Branch was also to interpret Gree's new marketing model digital system. But an executive in charge of the digital transformation of the enterprise has shown Gree's flattering culture in an extremely unbearable way, which has increased the exposure of the Gree brand, but is this exposure really a good thing?

In the face of such a "peer", Wang Ziru believes that all CIOs in the market and people of insight in the field of digital transformation will be ashamed to be with him.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with digital and online transformation, and it is also the trend of the times, but what I want to say to Dong Mingzhu is that the marketing of the channel in the industrial era that she relies on is no longer suitable for the current mobile Internet era. Attention exposure and traffic are not the same thing, and digital transformation is by no means just about finding a leader with traffic and creating a gimmick that pays attention to the whole people, and simply moving offline to online can be successful, behind which is a huge complex system engineering.

Look at Huawei, which really "masters the core technology", it doesn't even hold a press conference now, and the new mobile phone is selling out on the whole network;Look at Xiao Yang and Simba, who are crazy and exaggerated as gimmicks, behind their crazy price down, they are precisely seizing the demand of this market where consumption is downgraded;Then look at Temu and Shein who are swiping the screen overseas, and the price and supply chain integration capabilities make them invincible... These seem to have no direct competition with Gree, but behind these companies, what is really hidden is a huge adjustment in the business logic of enterprises in the digital age.

For Dong Mingzhu, the top priority may not be to find Meng Yutong's successor, let alone to win attention in such a way that gives onlookers goosebumps - she may not realize that this kind of attention has no commercial value at all, whether for Wang Ziru or Gree.

What needs to be done now is to return to Gree itself, whether it can truly understand and feel the underlying needs of users, whether it can bring truly disruptive product innovation, whether it can better integrate its own capabilities, and find a new blue ocean in the incremental market, which are actions that will benefit Gree in the long run.