The most popular on the Internet recently is undoubtedly the former Baidu public relations vice president Xuan Jing incident.
During the May Day holiday, she posted a number of short videos covering topics such as workplace culture and management methods. In the video, she said that "I approve the resignation of employees in seconds", "public relations people have no holidays on the Spring Festival weekend", and she also said that the mobile phone is turned on 24 hours a day, and she is always available.
These "wolf-like" remarks have sparked a lot of controversy and criticism, with some arguing that she is simply saying things that others don't want to say explicitly. But there are many more people who think it's too insensitive, and it's a workplace PUA. More media outlets have begun to analyze whether these remarks violate labor laws.
Although Xuan Jing issued an apology on May 9, the incident did not subside, and even attracted the attention of many foreign media. The BBC, CNN, Fortune, The Guardian and other media have made special reports, and it can be said that bad things have spread thousands of miles.
So, what's the problem?
On the surface, this is a tactical problem with short video content planning. Obviously, the views expressed by Xuan Jing in the short video are naturally carefully designed, and even her account positioning, personality, and video title all match the content of the video, the purpose is to create the so-called "female boss" persona, so that those "wolf" speeches will appear.
Judging from the so-called "traffic" thinking, the video content she released has the element of "leading the war", that is, putting forward some extreme views, triggering people's discussion and forwarding, which is actually a common routine for quickly building personal IP on social media.
Of course, if you only look at the traffic and popularity, such a "leading war" routine has already worked. There has been a famous saying on the Internet that "black and red are also red", and now she has become popular out of the country and into the world.
Some people even joked that she was the first public relations executive to be reported by CNN, BBC and other foreign media because of the public relations turmoil, which is enough to go down in the history of the public relations industry of Chinese Internet technology companies.
However, the planning team of Xuan Jing and related short videos paid too much attention to traffic and ignored people's hearts, and the final result was a dismal ending.
In fact, the times have changed, and the so-called "996 is a blessing" and "wolf culture" have long been tiresome and even resistant.
Moreover, with the explosion of artificial intelligence, we have now entered another era of innovation, and the real value is not the "volume" working hours, but the "volume" innovation. Innovation requires leisure, learning to use new technologies and tools, rather than sticking to old ideas.
The question is, Xuan Jing is already a public relations executive of a large factory, even if she can't say that she is famous, she is also worry-free, why do she have to shoot short videos to attract traffic?
Because everyone knows that this is the era of short videos, more and more corporate executives have recently begun to make short videos and create personal IPs, and the representative figures include Lei Jun, Zhou Hongyi, etc.
In this case, when you see other executives making short videos to successfully attract traffic, you will think that you are also an executive and have the same resources, as long as you master the so-called "traffic password" and "traffic play", you can replicate the success of others, and put on a posture of being hands-on, which can better reflect the character of the "domineering president".
To put it simply, if you have a strong resource backing, you will think that "traffic" is at your fingertips. After all, the accounts of hundreds of thousands of fans can be bought directly, hundreds of thousands of video clicks and thousands of likes can be cast, and content planning and operation can be directly completed by MCN agencies, and others can be successful.
However, they only saw that the "traffic" was very obtainable and would bring benefits or commercial benefits, so they plunged into it, but they did not see that the "traffic" was more counter-aggressive, and the backlash was extremely fast.
If it is said that the "overturning" in the Internet era is faster than turning the face, then you may not have reacted when the "overturning" in the mobile Internet era.
So the question is, since it is the video content that caused the overturn, is it okay to change those controversial content, or to avoid the appearance of similar content in advance, so that you can sit back and relax?
Things are not so simple, in fact, the problem of Xuan Jing Video is not just a few sentences of copywriting wrong, but a serious misalignment of the overall content direction.
It stands to reason that Baidu's public relations executives should output professional content related to their own work, such as promoting Baidu itself, or sharing public relations expertise and experience, but the video content output by Xuan Jing is a workplace dispute.
Why? Or is it because of traffic thinking. The audience of workplace content is wider than that of professional public relations content, and the jargon is called "traffic pool", while the aforementioned "leading war" jargon is called "hook". To put it bluntly, their strategy is to hook more people with "hooks" in a larger "traffic pool".
Therefore, under the traffic thinking, it is easy to lead to the misalignment of the output content and the professional profession, and the professional misalignment is naturally easy to overturn, but it is just a matter of overturning sooner or later.
In fact, the content output of many traffic Internet celebrities now has nothing to do with their professional accumulation, such as Dong Yuhui and Zhou Hongyi.
Dong Yuhui can be said to be full of economy and high cultural attainments, but he brings agricultural products. Agricultural products are actually another complex industry, and there are many specialized knowledge that laymen do not understand, which naturally comes with potential risks.
Some people will say that Dong Yuhui did not overturn the car, but the goods he brought overturned the car. During the 315 period last year, 100% of the wild prawns that Dongfang Selection was exposed to be sold were actually farmed shrimp, and they were also on the hot search, and the final result was that the manufacturer said that the packaging was printed incorrectly.
And Zhou Hongyi stood on the platform for many car companies at the auto show some time ago, attracting a large wave of traffic. But he himself is not an industry insider in the automotive industry, and even if he stands for some automotive products, it is limited to user reviews by car enthusiasts.
The essence of this incident is that the internal governance of enterprises and employee care also require professional knowledge and ability, and even the public relations executives of large factories do not necessarily know how to scientifically carry out internal governance of enterprises, so they have made many low-level mistakes.
These are all problems caused by the mismatch between traffic thinking and professionalism, and this phenomenon will continue for some time. There may be more people like Jingjing, who blindly invest in it when they see the ease of availability of traffic, and then there will be more rollover incidents due to the mismatch between traffic and professionalism. The result is to make more consumers hurt their money and make more netizens sad.
So, why is this happening? Is it possible to change?
At the beginning, we said that this matter is ostensibly a tactical problem of short video content, but in essence, it is a strategic problem of migrating from offline society to online society.
Before the advent of the Internet, people have established a set of information dissemination and credit systems in offline society, but the mobile Internet, especially social media platforms, has broken the traditional credit system and transformed from a complex professional evaluation to a single traffic indicator, which is the so-called "like".
The more likes a video has, the more people will watch it, and after forming a growth flywheel, it will become popular content, and in the long run, people will become accustomed to trusting popular content, and as a result, the number of likes will become the only criterion for evaluating the quality of information.
The key is that likes are essentially emotional indicators rather than professional indicators, and there are many ways to stimulate emotions, such as leading the war, but this does not represent the authenticity and value of the information.
What's more serious is that there is also a concept in traffic thinking that "what has exploded will definitely explode again", that is, no matter what the quality of information is, as long as there is traffic, more people will imitate and copy, which will eventually lead to the situation of imitating the "female boss" but overturning.
However, this is only a phased phenomenon, because we are now in the middle of the transition from offline society to online society, and there will be confusion in the social credit evaluation mechanism.
In the future, we will enter the steady-state stage of the online society, which will be very different from today, and there will be a new round of credit restructuring, from being able to create public opinion first to being able to obtain professional credit, that is, we need to be professionally recognized and respected, and there will also be a new evaluation mechanism, not just an emotional like.
Such an evaluation mechanism is being nurtured, and we also hope that there will be less "overturning" in our lives and more valuable practical innovations.
Regarding the structure and ecology of the online society, Mr. Wang Yuquan has made a more detailed analysis in the science and technology training camp, and welcomes interested friends to join the science and technology training camp.
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