Baidu Public Relations No. 1 short video turmoil replay: a thirst and backlash about splashing traffic

The Paper

2024-05-11 21:10Posted on the official account of Shanghai The Paper

Baidu Public Relations No. 1 short video turmoil replay: a thirst and backlash about splashing traffic

After a huge traffic peak, the resignation of Baidu's No. 1 public relations position was also "approved in seconds".

Recently, Xuan Jing, the former vice president and head of public relations of Baidu, created a "female boss" character on her personal Douyin account, but the video content caused controversy, and the sudden public opinion heat engulfed Xuan Jing and Baidu.

The controversy over the rhetoric of Xuan Jing has further extended to corporate values, the culture of large factories, and the differences in attitudes towards work between generations.

On the evening of May 9, The Paper reporter learned from people familiar with the matter that Baidu's vice president Xuan Jing had resigned from Baidu, and in Baidu's internal system, Xuan Jing was labeled as "resigned".

But the controversy has not ended.

On May 11, Baidu announced a MV called Baidu Culture, "Divide the territory, set the threshold, and cooperate for each other"; "Coax upward, bluff downward, and work overtime to show work attitude"; "The communication between superiors depends on the words of subordinates, and as a result, they still say beautiful things at the end of the year" and other big factory diseases were found out one by one. This is a video made by Baidu a month ago for the advanced awards event held on the 9th. Announcing at this time means something different.

Cui Shanshan, senior vice president of human resources management at Baidu Group, said: "The noise of public opinion will always pass, and our self-innovation will never stop. ”

Baidu, which started as a traffic business, was caught in a whirlpool of public opinion a few years ago. Nowadays, Baidu, which is branded with artificial intelligence, is also facing the test of traffic anxiety in the face of the rise of short video giants such as Douyin and Channels.

On May 7, Xuan Jing had emptied all videos on her Douyin account. Screenshot

Behind the short video made by the No. 1 public relations position: the traffic thirst of the traffic factory

Xuan Jing's first video was released on May 1, and the last video of "Ba Zong's Personality" was released on May 6. These video topics involve "public relations people have no holiday on the Spring Festival weekend", "who makes more money and who pays", etc., perhaps because of the negative voices on the Internet, Xuan Jing then also posted a warm video, the topic is "The biggest regret of professional women for the family", but it did not increase the reputation as expected.

Some insiders broke the news that in recent months, Xuan Jing has launched a "short video project" in Baidu's public relations department, requiring all members of the public relations department to open short video self-media accounts on video accounts, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, and to assess the positioning of personal IP accounts and the number of publications. If there are less than 3 articles published and the content is not related to Baidu, and the content is "obviously deceiving", "no one can be exempted", it will affect the annual performance. Employees who do not agree with the requirements of the task are "recommended to stay in a place where they do not pay attention to short videos", and the requirements also clearly mention that "the leader (manager) and I lead by example".

Under such hard indicators, employees of Baidu's public relations department more or less began to update their IP accounts, and after the turmoil, the short videos posted by some employees were "hidden".

Why does the PR department have to make short videos on their own? Why would Baidu's management approve such a project? Baidu, as a super traffic entrance, has been in the traffic business for so many years, why did it "lose" itself in the short video era and even be eaten by traffic?

At first, the media and public relations circles saw Xuan Jing's video and thought that she was learning from Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, and that the "Internet celebrity" executives had spread from the automotive circle to the Internet circle, and Liu Qiangdong, the founder of JD.com, had also opened the "digital human" to bring goods.

It seems that it is not easy to let Robin Li end, he has expressed many times in media interviews that he is not good at dealing with people, "Can you imagine the scene where the boss personally ends the game, and the barrage may be all floating 'Wei Zexi'?" A Baidu employee told The Paper. And Xuan Jing said: "This (making videos) is one of the jobs, my job is public relations, and short videos are the basic disks." ”

Screenshot

Zhang Can, the founder of the career consulting firm, once had ten years of management experience in a large Internet company, he told the surging news reporter: "Baidu's previous traffic business was more of a pan-traffic and high-traffic business, and the tool attributes of the search engine have not changed, but the media environment and user behavior have changed, and everyone likes more accurate links." Now there are many kinds of tools and traffic entrances outside, and these traffic can be called circle traffic, interest traffic, vertical traffic, and precise traffic in terms of scale, and these traffic actually have the most obvious and direct impact on the traditional pan-traffic. ”

Xuan Jing hopes to create private domain traffic, which will facilitate the company's voice in the future. According to the news on the Internet, if the public relations department is built into an Internet celebrity IP, Baidu's public relations department will no longer invest money in external KOLs in the future, saving the company's public relations budget, especially when the budget is shrinking year by year, the company needs more cheap resources and channels.

After graduating from China Foreign Affairs University, she served as a reporter for Xinhua News Agency, Vice President of Public and Government Affairs and Director of China's Media Affairs Department at Huawei. In August 2021, he joined Baidu and was responsible for the group's public communication department.

Screenshot

An employee of a major Internet company told The Paper reporter that there is a problem of adaptation for Xuan Jing's background to public relations, "Her strategy in the former company is not applicable to Baidu, because Baidu's 'reputation' is not high." ”

It can be seen that in this storm, Xuan Jing is the first person to be eaten by the traffic.

According to the surging news reporter, in the short video turmoil, many revelations about the past appeared on various social platforms at the same time. Some industry insiders pointed out that this is one of the reasons why the matter has rarely not subsided within a day or two.

Some people say that Xuan Jing spent a lot of money to find MCN institutions for training, and took the "Douyin Trader Class" of IP Internet celebrity bloggers, and some people said that Xuan Jing was angry because of the boss lady, Ma Dongmin, the wife of Baidu founder Robin Li, who made a special flight back from abroad to fire her.

A person familiar with the matter denied to The Paper the rumor that Ma Dongmin personally fired her, "However, Xuan Jing did take Brother San's class, and the employees of Baidu's public relations department also watched Brother San's class, and it was a video recording that everyone got together to watch, and the employees didn't spend money." Brother Sam responded to the media that Xuan Jing was not a member and did not take VIP classes, and her cost to Brother Sam was 5,980 yuan.

Brother San, who was studied by Xuan Jing, also posted a video saying: "Baidu's Lao Tie, someone must have done her about this, and she didn't enter our community, but we chatted very happily, and we were 100% sure that someone hacked her." ”

Once a storm of flow is formed, its outcome is difficult to measure.

In the early morning of May 9, Xuan Jing apologized for the public opinion turmoil caused by the short video incident. Xuan Jing said that before releasing the short video, she did not seek the company's opinions in advance, which did not comply with the relevant process and did not represent the company's position, and hereby clarified and apologized. There are many inappropriate and uncomfortable points in the video, which caused serious harm to the company's values and corporate culture, and I sincerely apologize.

On the evening of May 9, Baidu's internal system showed that Xuan Jing had left the company.

Who is lost in the "Dachang disease" that has been criticized?

Looking back at this turmoil, some people have a microscopic perspective, glad that they are exercising in a "low position", "When a person is put in a high position, all the details will be magnified." ”

Some people think that the public relations of large Chinese companies is not the problem of one company itself, but the problem of the entire industry and the whole market, and this challenge requires large companies to have a clearer understanding and answer it continuously and patiently.

A media person who has been following Baidu for a long time pointed out that Xuan Jing may be enthusiastic about making content, but she overestimated the public's empathy for emotions, the judgment and choice of content angle, and the burden of Baidu's brand public opinion in the past, the result was unexpected.

Public relations crisis, Baidu is experienced. In 2016, Baidu experienced an unprecedented crisis due to the "Wei Zexi incident", and Baidu's public relations department launched "This Baidu Public Relations" to face questions and respond to the media through the official account. Baidu's No. 1 public relations Wang Lu and Yuan Foyu are also working hard to improve Baidu's corporate image, and successfully expand Baidu's boundaries from search and bidding ranking to autonomous driving and artificial intelligence.

Until April 2023, Yuan Foyu will rotate to Baidu's intelligent cloud business group to be responsible for ecological construction, and take over the public relations business quietly. At that time, the large-scale model received enthusiastic attention, and the dissemination of Wenxin Yiyan also gave Xuan Jing more room to show. This is the business that Robin Li is most concerned about, because AI is becoming a new growth engine for Baidu. Last year, Baidu's full-year revenue and profit exceeded market expectations. According to Baidu's development strategy, the company's investment in generative AI and basic models this year is still firmly invested.

At noon on May 10, Baidu's official account tweeted that at an internal event of Baidu on May 9, Cui Shanshan said that the hustle and bustle of public opinion will always pass, "I think the company has been almost 25 years, and it is not strange that there are problems, and it is wrong not to be able to look at them soberly and rationally." Baidu also has the problem of big factory disease, some of which are quite serious, not to blame the employees for complaining, the company's management is also anxious, and they are focusing on it and starting to solve it. ”

Cui Shanshan also mentioned positively, "It is estimated that everyone has paid more or less attention to some public opinion and controversy recently, and some students may still be troubled or even swayed for a moment, but please believe that in Baidu, there is nothing more worthy of adhering to and defending than simple and trustworthy values." ”

Cui Shanshan's statement let the outside world see the attitude of Baidu's higher-level management.

Through this matter, the outside world also began to think, from the perspective of the brand, Baidu's exposure of the problem is a general outbreak of industry problems, such as, the public image solidified, the brand image stayed many years ago, long-term continuous negative evaluation from the public opinion field, external aphasia, etc.

In this regard, Zhang Can told the surging news reporter: "Baidu's image has actually changed, in summary, the first stage of Baidu is the returnee culture, Robin Li is the representative of the returnee elite, in 2000, he returned to China from the United States with entrepreneurial ambitions, the business target is Google, in the business competition at that time, Robin Li's role image is positive and positive; The second stage is around 2015, the development of the mobile Internet, many business models, rising stars emerged, these new companies are related to the Internet manufacturers, but everyone sees more is Ali, Tencent is doing the corresponding layout, at that time, people discussed, Baidu is not left behind in the BAT. ”

Zhang Can believes that in 2017, Baidu began to transform to artificial intelligence, involved in autonomous driving, large models and other fields, but in the eyes of the general public, in addition to search, Baidu does not have a more recognizable product, "then everyone's impression of you will become blurred, you did not appear in the positive voice you should have, which is a crisis in itself, and you should not have a negative voice, it will definitely become a greater crisis." This is the current media environment and business environment. ”

Robin Li said on the 9th that people always overestimate the short-term value of technology and underestimate the long-term value of technology. In 2023, the dawn of artificial general intelligence has appeared. In 2024, if you get through it, you will be able to turn into a butterfly.

The relationship between the old and the new workplace collides

"If you're in PR, don't expect weekends off" "Keep your phone on 24 hours" "Why should I think about an employee's family? I'm not her mother-in-law." Another nerve touched by this turmoil is the attitude of young employees in the workplace.

Zhang Can gave an example to The Paper: "The people who supported Dong Yuhui at that time were opposing Xuan Jing, and Xuan Jing's situation on the Internet was similar to that of Dongfang Xiaosun, the former CEO of Dongfang Selection. In the past, the workplace was about the pursuit of success, but now there is a part of success learning, but it is more about general learning and survival learning. The simple idea of employment is not in line with the workplace concept of young people, although it is also based on employment and contract, but everyone is more pursuing a new type of workplace relationship, which involves some keywords, such as equality, mutual assistance, trust, openness, etc. ”

More issues extending from the workplace are being discussed, such as whether social media accounts have strong personal attributes, should the whole department be a self-media account?

A former Baidu employee told The Paper, "It's really worth thinking about, should personal social platforms be part of the job?" Even if it is not a clear instruction from the leader, if the leader does it and you don't do it, you will definitely mumble in your heart. ”

A person who worked under Xuan Jing also talked to The Paper about his feelings about the content of the video, "Netizens slammed her for saying that PR people don't have weekends, and there are no holidays during the Spring Festival." The outside world may not understand that public relations is indeed not a standardized work, and when there are relevant topics for the Spring Festival, it is necessary to ensure timeliness, which is indeed the case from the perspective of communication. However, from the perspective of ordinary workers, it is not in line with mainstream values. ”

Zhang Can said that a new type of workplace relationship is being built, and Xuan Jing and Dong Yuhui can be seen as a conflict between the old and new models.

A former colleague of Xuan Jing said in the article "Xuan Jing is wrong, I hope she can grow from her mistakes, and I also hope that rumors and cyberbullying will end here": "I don't know what happened in Xuan Jing's career, what kind of environment and selection mechanism will make a person change so much." ”

The person pointed out that people who do not know the inside story should not spread rumors that insult the personal dignity of others, nor do they initiate cyberviolence, "To be kind to others is to be kind to yourself." ”

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