Author: Da Lao Deng
The thunderstorm of Jiyue is evolving in the direction of a "farce".
Over the course of a week, the focus shifted several times. On December 11, the supplier revealed that Jiyue was in arrears, and Xia Yiping held an emergency meeting that day to disclose the fact that the capital chain was disconnected. Starting from the 12th, the anchors of Jiyue's stores asked for wages live, and Shanghai employees blocked Xia in the company. On the 13th, Baidu and Geely, the two major shareholders of Jiyue, issued a statement that they would deal with the aftermath for Jiyue employees. But the claim that Baidu will take over is denied.
The company that has been sentenced to death has little future, and the focus of discussion is now on labor disputes and a review of its absurd management. A few days ago, a 10,000-word long Feishu document circulated on the Internet, "Jiyue Flash Crash Incident Review [Unfinished Version]", internal employees sorted out the reasons for the company's collapse, as well as his views on Xia Yiping's various styles.
Of course, with the same fate as the "public opinion collection" online document that caused a shock in the industry every time before, this Feishu link has expired, "risky content has been detected, sharing has been stopped", another bright Internet epitaph.
In fact, when Jiyue has been cleaned up by the media, this document may not be able to make too many waves, it is nothing more than to corroborate some speculations and add a line of notes to the company's critical illness notice. But after the incident, Xu Jiye, the head of public relations of Jiyue, blew the fire with his own hands.
As the No. 1 public relations position, he first had a low level of Yin and Yang in the circle of friends, and he talked about the collapse of the company as if the boss was possessed, and the employees were also responsible, and it was Xia Yiping who gave people money. "There are no heroes in the eyes of servants", Xia Yiping and thousands of Jiyue employees have defined their identities (heroes and servants, even warriors and flies), which makes people feel like for a while, who is the real servant?
The next day, an email nominally from Jidu Company circulated again, "Since the company's crisis, Xu Jiye, as the company's public relations director, not only did not maintain the reputation of the company and employees, but instead posted inappropriate remarks on the circle of friends to split employees, causing great harm to employees' emotions and company unity...... The relevant provisions of the company's "Employee Handbook" gave Xu Jiye the unilateral termination of the labor contract, and the criticism is hereby notified. ”
But the reversal is not over. Xu Jiye posted two moments in a row, the first one questioned the authenticity of this email, "The company is too chaotic now, and it is not excluded that someone has stolen the number and spread false remarks", "I can't contact Jidu HR Head and Xia Yiping himself, and I am worried about their situation". The second circle of friends looks like refuting rumors, "Basically figure out that it is a fake edict, go back and get some good melons for everyone to taste." ”
The word "false edict" makes people full of question marks, isn't the Qing Dynasty dead, where is the emperor?
Now that the truth of the situation is difficult to distinguish, it doesn't matter whether Xu Jiye himself was fired or not, in the face of a company that is about to die, who cares if his public relations director still has a job. Compared with the loyal defenders of the boss, the thousands of employees who have not yet received the social security provident fund and are owed wages are really worth caring about, they are not servants, let alone flies, but just victims.
Haruki Murakami once said: "Between the egg and the stone, I will always choose to stand on the side of the egg", apparently the public relations director does not agree with Murakami's nerd remarks, I don't know if he really prefers stones, or if he feels that if he is close to the stone, he can also become a stone.
There is enough content on the market to analyze Jiyue's business and Xia Yiping's person, and through this farce, we want to dismantle Jiyue from the perspectives of public relations and communication. It is normal for enterprises to fail, especially in the field of new energy vehicles, which has entered the knockout round, and people are ready to see life and death.
It's just that Jiyue's death method is very different, more like a public Ling Chi in the modern sense, the executioner may be Xia Yiping, or it may be the loyal "strategist" around Xia Yiping, or it may be a more "black box" trade secret, we are difficult to conclude. But the people who are responsible for the live broadcast of this execution are every Jiyue employee and downstream supplier who bravely spoke out and took up the weapon of live broadcasting.
Jiyue did not leave any experience in China's automobile industry with survival, but left a strong mark with an absurd and vigorous death.
Unlike other companies that declared bankruptcy with an official document, the collapse of Jiyue has become a public delay in the era of Internet live broadcasting.
When the supplier revealed that Jiyue owed money, Xia Yiping urgently held an ambiguous internal meeting, and the outside world did not realize that the company could not bear it at all. At that time, Xia Yiping revealed internally that the company was experiencing cash flow problems, and the employees' social security could not be paid temporarily, but everything was temporarily covered up by the vague internal letter. There is no "whistleblower" in this matter, and the situation changes in an instant.
It didn't take long for the employees who may have accumulated disappointment to break out en masse, and Douyin and Xiaohongshu exploded. Xia Yiping tried to calm things The next day, two Jiyue anchors climbed onto the roof of the car and cried to Jiyue to pay back the money when they were connected. This time, the roof climb was not filled with joy like Zhou Hongyi's climbing on the roof of the Beijing Auto Show, but unveiled the emperor's new clothes and opened the naked street of Jiyue.
On the morning of the 12th, anchors in Hangzhou, Chongqing, Jiaxing, Changsha, Wenzhou, Guangzhou, Changzhou and other stores gave up their sales cars and began to promote themselves and apply for jobs online. Someone shouted directly and introduced himself in the live broadcast room. "Usually, the audience is only in single digits during the live broadcast, but I didn't expect that now it is facing closure, and the audience in the live broadcast room has reached nearly 10,000,000," a store anchor in Shandong laughed at himself.
Yes, Xia Yiping's live broadcast under heavy pressure has not been able to achieve a miracle for a year, and it attracted the greatest attention on the eve of its collapse.
Then someone posted a picture of Xia Yiping being surrounded by employees in the office on the Internet, "Take out your savings and pay social security to employees!" This was the most powerful cry of the day, but it was also the most helpless. And Xia Yiping's fluttering sentence "I am not the first responsible person of the company, I also invested money" is the most ridiculous counterexample.
In the evening of the same day, suppliers began to receive the dragon in the WeChat group, with more than 35 suppliers and a total amount of more than 160 million yuan. If there is a reminder for Chinese car companies that this incident can still give Chinese car companies a reminder, it is that they must not force suppliers to the level of online debt collection. At present, it seems that this is likely to be the most convenient way for suppliers to compete with Party A in the future.
Since that night, the employees who have been squatting in Jiyue and staring at Xia Yiping have started a large-scale live broadcast. In the live broadcast, the employees are generally relatively calm, and they are still chatting and taking pictures in the work area in order to pass the time. Most people can only sit silently, swipe their mobile phones, wait for the results of high-level negotiations, and those who can't hold it simply sleep on the sofa in the work area. All the footage was recorded live.
Since this period of time, more details of Jiyue's operation have been told by many employees through media reports. Why did the two major shareholders abandon Xia Yiping, how was Xia Yiping selected by Robin in the first place, and what does Xia Yiping usually say in meetings...... People know that Jiyue has a 7 billion capital hole, know that Xia Yiping calls himself a "marketing genius", and know that he is making a big deal in the company......
Combing through Jiyue's thunderstorm experience from beginning to end, we can see that except for Xia Yiping's halfway "guilty edict" circle of friends, the outside world has hardly heard any definitive words from the mouth of the company's person in charge of the company. The only statement that can reassure employees is that it finally comes from the two major shareholders of Baidu and Geely, saying that they will do the aftermath of the work for employees.
Everything is bottom-up, a sound coming from within. This is the self-help of the "servants", but fortunately, in the Internet era, employees who were originally silenced were able to use the right to speak out and protest themselves. Let the fragmented and weak voice be transmitted to the public in the live broadcast room.
At the same time, the review of the "Jiyue" company completed by a number of employees in Feishu relay also revealed more about the company's difficulties than external investigations and even the founder's self-reflection. Xia Yiping's casualness in personnel, disrespect for the rigidity of professionals, putting all his energy on marketing, and ignoring the company's financial predicament, etc., have exposed the underlying logic of car manufacturing and given more inspiration to industry practitioners.
To a certain extent, if in the end thousands of employees successfully get the compensation they deserve, this is a victory for the "servants" and a victory for the mass media.
Looking back at the whole incident, from the perspective of the brand, this incident is enough to remind the "Lao Deng Public Relations" that the industry has been accustomed to for many years: employees do not have any position to empathize with the superiors, and crisis public relations is not a means of "loyalty" to the superiors. As for resolving the crisis, perhaps the PR perspective should be more inward, rather than inward. "Outside must first be inside", resolving the emotions of employees and solving the problems of employees in the first time may be the beginning of resolving the crisis.
In the past, in response to the crisis, the first thing that came to the mind of public relations was probably to "cover up" internally, first whitewash the peace, and then use both grace and power. In the traditional perspective, the bottom-up actions of Jiyue employees are most likely defined as "mixing", "messing around" and "not having a big picture". But for thousands of ordinary workers, everyone who leaves the workplace has the most immediate life problems to solve. The Jiyue anchor cried in the live broadcast that she and her colleagues had to pay off the mortgage, and some had to provide for the two children to go to school, which was not enough to crush the burden of ordinary people. Why should these people ask them to empathize with their bosses, who have long been financially free?
Xia Yiping's earliest internal letter was to cover his mouth, and now in retrospect, the slogan of "second entrepreneurship" was actually his self-deception. At that time, Xu Jiye posted a circle of friends, talking about his feelings and saying that he would fight Jiyue to the end, without a word to clarify any issues. From an external point of view, this circle of friends did not solve any confusion, nor did it stop the crowd.
The problem of Jiyue has not been overnight for a long time, but the top management has not made any internal ventilation and preparation. Dealing with long-term problems in a silent, evasive, and negative way is actually a kind of business and management laziness. In fact, many employees who have contacted the front line, including those who have contacted suppliers, have realized the problem, but Xia Yiping is still live broadcasting and patrolling stores like no one, so that many people react afterwards and find out that something is wrong.
During the entire crisis handling stage, people could not see Xia Yiping's responsibility as a corporate leader, but blindly wanted to pull the major shareholder to the stage to wipe his ass for him. When he was besieged by employees, he could only repeatedly emphasize that "he was negotiating" and "he was trying to find a way to deal with it", which was also his decision-making mistake, which could only arouse the anxiety and distrust of employees.
Of course, the collapse of the enterprise is first of all a business problem, but in the face of the problem, it chooses to conceal and remain silent, and there is an attitude of pulling the employees to die together, which also lays a mine for the collapse of the enterprise overnight. This is an era where secrets cannot be hidden, and it is also an era in which workers are generally anxious and emotionally tense at all times. Stories like tragic heroes, doom persistence, and the death of idealists no longer make sense, and everyone cares about their own rights.
If companies have to pull the strings until the last minute and don't let go, the fragile strings will only break faster than expected. The collective voice of Jiyue employees directly hastened the company's death. This is not the ingratitude of the wall falling down and everyone pushing, but the rational choice of the person who is high in the face.
It can be said that, to a certain extent, Jiyue has opened a new chapter in its business history, the first company to be completely disintegrated from the inside by a large-scale live broadcast, the first company to be completely disintegrated from the inside by angry employees, and the first new energy vehicle brand to fail with unprecedented popularity...... Jiyue used a failure to create the largest exposure in the history of the brand, leaving behind an extremely clear and almost secretless story of defeat.
This story is not only a sensation in the car manufacturing circle, but also enough to become a wake-up call for many industries and many climbing brands in the future.