Xiang Piaopiao's "ironic incident" set a particularly bad precedent

Glacier think tank

2024-05-07 15:28Posted on the official account of Zhejiang Glacier Think Tank

Judging from the "satirical incident" of Xiangpiaopiao, whether it is active hype or passive pandering, it reflects the proposition that enterprises have to face the online emotion (traffic).

Written by丨Wei Yingjie

The fragrance of selling milk tea is fluttering, this time it is to grasp the splashing traffic.

Because of the so-called "ironic incident", countless netizens poured into the live broadcast room of Xiang Piaopiao, directly raising the daily sales of Xiang Piaopiao's store by hundreds of times, which could only sell a few thousand yuan a day, and skyrocketed to millions of yuan on the same day. Xiang Piaopiao's stock price also soared one day, and the first trading day after the holiday was harvested.

In recent years, the sales of Xiang Piaopiao, with the help of this wave of traffic, there is a tendency to rebound against the trend. However, is it really a good thing for companies to take advantage of the emotions of netizens and harvest small pink traffic?

In my opinion, this is not only dangerous, but also harmful. Traffic comes and goes fast. Once it encounters traffic backlash, it is even more dangerous for the enterprise to overturn. In the era of Internet celebrity economy, many companies have become famous overnight, but they may also fall to the bottom because of this.

Hu Xijin, who is well versed in the law of traffic, scoffed at Xiang Piaopiao's "satirical incident", and did not fake the color, and bluntly denounced this move as "suspected of using the 'personal behavior of employees' to create a gimmick, consume and fool the public's patriotic feelings, this kind of posing is not much different from fabricating 'primary school students throw their homework books in Paris'."

The wording is very harsh.

01

Judging from the matter itself, Xiang Piaopiao's "Irony Incident" has set a bad precedent. That is to play the banner of national sentiment overseas and harvest the small pink traffic at home. The "flowers" outside the wall are fragrant inside the wall, and the soft rice is hard to eat, which is not only ugly to eat, but also has the meaning of recklessness.

In the past, many companies were involved in it, which was somewhat passively accepted. For example, Hongxing Erke, in the face of customers taking a product casually, losing money and running away, as well as the situation of countless netizens rushing into the live broadcast room for "savage consumption", can only helplessly call for "rational consumption".

Moreover, most of these incidents occur in China, and few companies will make a big fuss overseas. After all, enterprises are rational economic people, and since they want to open up the local market, how can they deliberately offend local consumers. You can't point at other people's noses and scold fools, and ask others to pay for them, right? If Xiang Piaopiao made up her mind like this, it can only make people admire.

My judgment is that Xiang Piaopiao in this incident is likely not deliberate at the beginning, but in the process of responding to public opinion, he chose to actively choose sides.

At the beginning of the incident, Xiang Piaopiao's official response was that it was an employee's personal behavior, but they were very supportive, and then posted on Weibo that "our employees are good". The focus of this response is to emphasize that this move is an employee's personal behavior, not the company's doing, and to express great support is to respond to netizens' concerns about whether the employee will be punished and dismissed by the company.

However, Xiang Piaopiao soon decided to take it a step further, and its signature move was that the chairman of the company personally pulled a banner reading "Welcome back to Xiang Piaopiao Warriors!" and picked up the Chinese employees at the airport.

This means that, regardless of whether the employee acted personally or not, the company has taken over at this time and is trying to dominate the direction of this wave of traffic.

Once this direction was established, it was not surprising that the company later said that it would reward "good employees", and even called fans "comrades" in the live broadcast room.

If this is a plot from beginning to end, there is nothing to say. After all, if the enterprise wants to die, it is useless for anyone to stop it.

But the question that comes to my mind is: in the face of this sudden wave of online public opinion, does Xiang Piaopiao have any other choice? Or in other words, can any enterprise say "no" in the face of similar incidents?

02

In the face of employees' personal posing and provoking the Internet, it is obviously not okay for Xiang Piaopiao to remain silent, so one option that can be done is to quickly make a cut and draw a line with the employee.

In order to avoid getting involved and causing unnecessary trouble, companies often choose to do so.

However, from practical experience, companies may not only be inseparable from the relationship, but may also encounter online violence.

I still remember that when the earthquake occurred in Japan on New Year's Day this year, the host of a local TV station made inappropriate remarks on the self-media, and the handling of the unit at that time was to investigate his suspension. There is nothing wrong with this, but it has been criticized by a large number of netizens. As a result, the host's personal account has increased by millions, and a calcium tablet on the product window of his personal account has sold hundreds of thousands of pieces.

If Xiang Piaopiao also dealt with this employee according to common sense, the result could be imagined.

Silence can't work, cutting can't work, what else can Xiang Piaopiao do? If you can't beat it, then join in. This is another option for Xiang Piaopiao, and Xiang Piaopiao obviously did the same.

Since silence and cutting not only do not reap traffic, but may encounter network crits, and joining the "chorus" and conforming to the mood of the network can reap traffic dividends, then what reason does Xiang Piaopiao have not to do this? This may be the main purpose of Xiang Piaopiao's handling of this network incident. As for what will happen after catering to this wave of national sentiment, I can't think about it so much for a while.

That's the point. The question I am concerned about is not whether Xiang Piaopiao is using posing to create momentum, nor whether Xiang Piaopiao deliberately consumes patriotic sentiments, but that it is actually difficult for companies to have the courage to say "no" when facing similar incidents. That's the sad thing about the whole thing.

This is reminiscent of the Nongfu Spring incident that happened not long ago. A seemingly inexplicable online carnival trampled a well-known legally operated enterprise under its feet. When online public opinion is swayed by national sentiments, enterprises may be coerced and kidnapped by this sentiment at any time, or even swallowed up.

Xiang Piaopiao is active hype, or taking advantage of the momentum to build momentum, this incident is objectively a touchstone, which can measure the market space and behavioral boundaries of the current enterprise.

03

This reminds people of the words of Liu Chuanzhi, the founder of Lenovo Group.

It was more than ten years ago, Liu Chuanzhi said at a small-scale entrepreneur forum: From now on, we will talk about business, and we will only talk about business and not politics in future gatherings......

After this passage was exposed, it caused a big discussion, involving issues such as whether entrepreneurs or enterprises should assume social responsibility.

I vaguely remember that at that time, many people on the left and right were dissatisfied with Liu Chuanzhi's words, and the people on the left pointed at his nose and scolded, and the people on the right also pointed at his nose and scolded. Looking back many years later, I feel that many people misunderstood Liu Chuanzhi at that time. His words were more of a concern than a statement.

It is impossible for any company to be above society, but it is the duty of an enterprise to create business value, and nothing else can be discussed. The business value created by the enterprise is 1, there is this 1, there is a 0 behind, without this 1, everything is 0.

The so-called "talking about business" is nothing more than saying that enterprises should stick to their duties, and at the same time, it is also an appeal to give enterprises a good business environment.

Judging from the "ironic incident" of Xiang Piaopiao, whether it is active hype or passive pandering, it reflects the proposition that enterprises have to face the online emotion (traffic). Emotions must be irrational, and corporate behavior should be rational, if enterprises have to cater to irrational emotions to survive, this has to be said to be a very bad and dangerous situation.

From this point of view, Xiang Piaopiao's "ironic incident" itself is a signal and a metaphor.

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