Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Xu Xiaoqian
Source: pixabay
4 Douyin videos have allowed Baidu's public relations "No. 1 position" to occupy the Internet hotspot for nearly half a month.
Subsequently, the Baidu career of the protagonist of the incident, Xuan Jing, fell at a meteor-like speed. On May 9, Xuan Jing was revealed to have resigned from Baidu. In the afternoon of the same day, Robin Li, the founder of Baidu, and Cui Shanshan, the head of the human resources department, held a small-scale employee communication meeting, and this farce that caused the whole network to watch came to an end.
However, Xuan Jing had no intention of quelling the turmoil. On May 13, Xuan Jing hit back at the remarks of a Baidu resignation blogger, she commented under a certain video, you just rub a little less, spread less rumors, leave some morality to be a person, do I know you? Who are you to review me?
Behind Xuanjing's eagerness to make videos, it may be Baidu's traffic anxiety. However, when the No. 1 position of Internet public relations is focusing on the behind-the-scenes, Xuan Jing's overly exposed high-profile and flamboyant is no longer out of place, and it is difficult to fight her way out of the encirclement on the road of "black and red".
Before Xuan Jing detonated the media circle, Dachang public relations had not been active in the foreground for a long time. They followed the rhythm of the company's business development and changed their tune, no longer acting as high-profile corporate Internet celebrities, and the internal speeches of Robin Li, Ma Huateng, Ma Yun, and Liu Qiangdong once again became the focus, and the company's helmsman gradually turned into public relations in the real sense.
A risky test of the waters
The previous public relations directors of hundreds of degrees, from Liang Dong, Zhu Guang to Wang Lu, are all characters with a strong sense of presence in the circle.
Zhu Guang is Baidu's longest-serving public relations No. 1 position, after joining Baidu, he deepened the corporate image slogan of "Baidu, you know", and then got the 2009 Spring Festival Gala sponsorship, which also made the founder Robin Li intensively brush his face in front of the national audience.
At that time, Baidu was in the golden period of business development, Google withdrew from the Chinese market, Baidu took advantage of the situation to win 75% of the search market share, the company's public image is also relatively positive, in March 2011, Baidu's market value reached 48.1 billion US dollars, becoming the highest market value of China's Internet company.
Wang Lu, who took office as Baidu's No. 1 public relations officer in 2016, is also a ruthless character, on the one hand, he repairs the trust crisis of the company's "Wei Zexi incident", and on the other hand, amplifies Baidu's image as an artificial intelligence company.
In her last PR experience, she served as Vice President of Public and Government Affairs at Huawei, and dealing with her own PR crisis has become one of the biggest challenges in her career.
In fact, as early as March this year, Xuan Jing asked all members of Baidu's public relations department to transform into video self-media, in addition to the high-level, each employee was required to open their own video account, if the operation is good and the number of fans is high enough, they can bring goods to Baidu products. Employees' video account performance affects the year-end performance.
"Xuan Jing wants to be an Internet celebrity from 0, and her previous online voice and discussion degree are almost none, so she tries to highlight the opposition and contradictions in the setting of the topic." Xiaoxiao, who runs a Douyin account with tens of thousands of fans, told Times Finance that in her opinion, every piece of content released by Xuan Jing hides the fuel that detonates the emotions of ordinary people.
Yanan, who has been in the public relations industry for nearly 10 years, described the industry as increasingly thin-ice, and not suitable for publicly attacking competitors, even on her own turf.
"If the person in charge of public relations makes public his radical remarks, it is easy to be amplified and interpreted by the public, and the outside world will raise his personal thoughts to the company's values. Yanan told Times Finance that she believes that even the positioning of the No. 1 position in public relations is the behind-the-scenes personnel of the company.
"For an executive of Xuan Jing's level to present her views to the outside world, she must go through internal approval in advance, and it is difficult to completely cut her behavior from the company. It's just that this time it was made into a personal workplace show, completely ignoring the public's emotions, so it overturned. A former Baidu employee commented to Times Finance.
It turns out that being pushed to the front before establishing an audience is a high-risk test of the waters.
Xuan Jing, who has not yet been scrutinized by the public, had to temporarily leave the Internet after being widely exposed, and slipped from the high level of tens of millions of annual salaries; Even Dong Yuhui, who has a certain fan base, will be pushed to the forefront because of the controversial topics in the live broadcast; Dong Mingzhu, who has always been resolute and outspoken, has also been criticized because he stands on the opposite side of the workers.
Unlike Xuan Jing, Dong Yuhui has gained a firm foothold in the live broadcast track and has become the head IP selected on behalf of Dongfang; Dong Mingzhu has been at the helm of Gree Group for nearly 10 years and has the absolute right to speak at the business level.
"If you're not too sure, you'd rather not touch it and just defend it. The current network environment is very complex, and the participants are diverse, making it difficult to control the development trend of public opinion. Yanan said to Times Finance.
Retreat into the background of the big factory PR
Xuan Jing has made a high-profile show on the Internet, and a group of old generals on the rivers and lakes have long been silently incognito.
In 2022, Wang Shuai and Cheng Wu will retire from the No. 1 position in public relations, and they will lead the public relations teams of Alibaba and Tencent respectively to expand their territory and cut through thorns in the battlefield of public opinion.
Wang Shuai used to be the anchor of Ali's public relations team, he quelled the scandal of Ali's internal corruption, established a corporate image of Alibaba that values integrity, fairness and justice, and subsequently helped Taotian bind the label of Double 11 shopping carnival, and has long enjoyed a reputation in the circle for the operation of "God Reply".
In the eyes of the outside world, Cheng Wu is a person with a cautious personality and a clear speech, and his strategy is not to cause trouble for the company, but only to adopt a defensive strategy. However, during Cheng Wu's tenure, he also contributed countless textbook-level public relations to Tencent, whether it was the old godmother incident that shocked the whole network, or the backwater battle caused by the celebrity turmoil, Tencent's public relations team has repeatedly resolved the crisis in a self-defeating and humorous way.
Compared with his predecessors, Tencent's current No. 1 public relations position, Zhang Jun, is more keen to reveal his own views, and he once posted on Weibo on May Fourth Youth Day, "When we are busy doing all kinds of plans to pay tribute to young people, young people are sleeping." The remarks caused dissatisfaction among netizens, and since then, Zhang Jun's personal social account has gradually returned to Tencent's business and products itself, as if it has become a publicity position for Tencent's products.
2022 is a turning point in the development of Internet companies, with the revenue growth of many established Internet companies falling below double digits, and the outside world's admiration and admiration for entrepreneurs have also died down, followed by a wave of drumming and fancy layoffs. When the cold wind blows through every corner of the Internet, most of the public relations positions active in the front desk gradually become invisible, hiding among tens of thousands of ordinary employees, responding to the storm of violent personnel changes with a calm attitude.
It is undeniable that the activity of Internet PR is often linked to the state of business development. In the industry has just entered a period of competition, public relations is busy charging into battle, firing at competitors, and striving for discourse space for the company's main business, and when the market is gradually divided up by players from all walks of life, public relations has gradually put away its edge and no longer shows up.
From 2010 to 2020, Chinese Internet companies lined up to go public, unicorns in niche fields were blooming everywhere, and the PR team could receive glamorous words such as growth, expansion, financing, and transcendence every day, and they urgently needed to build the company into a thriving, innovative and enterprising public impression.
Public relations practitioner Xiaoting has witnessed the rapid expansion of the team. During the expansion of the business, her group grew from 3 to 20 people in half a year, and now when the tide of the industry has receded, the workload has visibly decreased, and the tension with competitors has gradually disappeared.
"In the past, the company was in a hurry to develop a new move, and I wanted the whole circle to know that the budget for the public relations team was also sufficient. Xiaoting said.
"There is no sign of the company's business expansion, and the public relations department has less and less room to operate, and it is difficult to tell a new story in the performance report by doing some basic media maintenance every day." Another Internet public relations person told Times Finance that his company had bid farewell to the period of rapid development, and he chose to leave his post because he could not find business increments.
In the traffic chase competition, the number one is the strongest public relations
However, none of the leading companies are willing to give up the traffic position. Even Dong Mingzhu, who has achieved fame, has always been eager to create the next Internet celebrity and open online sales channels for the marketing of Gree's small household appliances; After parting ways with Meng Yutong, Dong Mingzhu still continued to fight on the front line.
In 2024, this trend of everyone striving to be an Internet celebrity will blow from the Internet circle to the automobile circle.
Lei Jun, who entered the car to make a car, took the limelight, he has been immersed in the Internet public opinion field for more than ten years, and is well versed in the way of traffic, which also puts Xiaomi cars in the focus of the topic, Xiaomi's new SU7 has become the hottest product in the automobile circle as soon as it comes out, and it has made a beautiful start.
The phenomenal popularity attracted a lot of big names in the car circle, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, and Xia Yiping, CEO of Jiyue Motors, entered the live broadcast room successively. In addition, the first generation of Internet tycoons with a certain mass base is also ready to move. Recently, in order to build momentum for the 618 e-commerce promotion, Ma Yun and Liu Qiangdong coincidentally made a high-profile appearance in another way.
Ma Yun's old post of "Taojianghu" has attracted the attention of the outside world, and the content of the post is that the biggest beneficiary of e-commerce should be users, which once again strengthens Taotian Group's strategy of "returning to users"; Liu Qiangdong's digital person appeared in the Jingdong live broadcast room and won the first battle of 50 million sales.
At the beginning of this year, he came to the headquarters of Oriental Selection, asked Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui for the Internet celebrity traffic password, and set himself the goal of increasing his followers to 10 million. According to Zhou Hongyi, people's brains have been formatted by short videos and live broadcasts, entrepreneurs are not Internet celebrities, and no one knows about the products.
Last month, Zhou Hongyi began to enter the Beijing Auto Show, from the red-clothed male model at the auto show to the auction of Maybach for 9.9 million yuan to test drive flying cars and live broadcast emotions, Zhou Hongyi seemed to have packaged himself as the top stream in the automobile circle, creating one Internet hotspot after another.
At present, Baidu, which missed the mobile Internet outlet, has got the ticket to the thousand-model war. After the release of the Wenxin Yiyan model, Baidu has to show its muscles almost every once in a while, but Baidu, which is shouting to surpass OpenAI, has not yet handed over an answer sheet that can be comparable.
At this year's Global AI Developer Conference, Robin Li reported on the results of Wenxin Yiyan's release in the past year: the number of users exceeded 200 million, the average daily API call volume exceeded 200 million, the number of service users reached 85,000, and the AI native applications developed by the Qianfan platform exceeded 190,000.
In addition to Robin Li's own star effect, Baidu did not bring out Internet celebrities who represented the company's position, which made Baidu lack an excellent communication window in the star-studded celebrity era. Baidu's key businesses for future development include autonomous driving and artificial intelligence, which are also aimed at C-end users.
Under the coercion of public opinion, the personal color of the No. 1 position of public relations has gradually dimmed, and Alibaba Group's public relations has lost its soul, and with the great changes within Alibaba, the public relations forces have become dispersed; Zhang Jun, Tencent's public relations director, put away his edge and focused on disseminating the company's products and responding to rumors from the outside world. The return of the bigwigs once again proves that they are the trendsetters of this era and the safety cards of corporate public relations.
Perhaps, in the future, there will be no public relations No. 1 position in the Internet rivers and lakes.
(Names have been changed.) ）