© The original author | Guo Ruiling
Wu Yifan doubled over again.
In June this year, Wu Yifan's "gossip girlfriend" Du Meizhu's girlfriend broke the news on Weibo that Wu Yifan broke up with Du Meizhu coldly and violently, causing him to be depressed. In July, Du Meizhu herself broke the news again, saying that Wu Yifan had unspoken rules on multiple women, including many minors.
In the face of these allegations, Wu Yifan himself has posted a self-justification, and his studio has also joined forces with Star Rights lawyers to fight back that "the woman is just speculating, and she wants to immediately take evidence and appeal." But with the passage of time, the material thrown by Du Meizhu has become more and more fierce, and public opinion has almost tilted to the woman.
Just yesterday, in an interview with NetEase Entertainment, Du Meizhu "exposed" Wu Yifan's routine in more detail: through the network of contacts or in the name of casting actors and small meetings, routines and tricks girls were deceived. At the same time, it is suspected that Wu Yifanfang's sealing fees and transfer records have also been exposed by Du Meizhu, and Du Meizhu, who claims to hold "unbelievable things", directly asked Wu Yifan to "quit the entertainment circle".
Such a major scandal placed on the top stars is naturally a breaking news.
As one of the former "four sons who returned to China", Wu Yifan has served as the mentor of "China Has Hip Hop" and the commentator of the NBA All-Star Game in Toronto after returning to China for development, and his career has been smooth. At the same time, he has more than 50 million followers on Weibo and has a fairly good popularity.
Du Meizhu's paper article made Wu Yifan quickly rush to the headlines of social media such as Weibo and Douyin last night. The melon-eating masses also participated quite enthusiastically, from angrily rebuking the scumbag to expressing solidarity with Du Meizhu, creating countless stems in a short period of time, such as "stand up like a man" and so on. At the same time, the old accounts were also turned out by netizens one by one, Qin Niu Zhengwei put the top and Wu Yifan's Weibo to clear the relationship, Xiao G Na's old melon continued to eat again, Lin Thea wanted to recover the justice that was seven years late, and so on, and the endless black material was staged in turn, and netizens even bluntly said that "Wu Yifan was hammered to death."
A series of similar incidents have been exposed, and Wu Yifan has lost his faith in front of the public. This morning, Wu Yifan himself responded on Weibo, emotionally sent nine exclamation points in a row, but the comments of netizens are still "I did not do anything wrong and still have to give money to the woman, are you a famous Canadian philanthropist?" ”
No matter how much public opinion changes, the moral requirements for public figures have always been not low. Although celebrity rollover is no stranger to Volkswagen, the brand endorsed by Wu Yifan and the third party with which it cooperates are still the first wave of people affected.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="25" what do > brands do? </h1>
Under the melon material, fans are crying, passers-by are reveling, and some partners are watching, but some have already made choices.
With the popularity and reputation accumulated on variety shows and social media, Wu Yifan has won many well-known brand endorsements in recent years, from Louis Vuitton to Korean bundle masks, good shops, etc., there are nearly 13 brands, covering luxury goods, FMCG, beauty and other categories.
Overall, brands have reacted quickly. Since yesterday afternoon, there have been brands that are replacing and cutting materials at the "speed of light". For example, after the news of Du Meizhu's interview with NetEase Entertainment spread, brands such as Liangpin Shop and Lancome have set the authority of the official Propaganda Weibo endorsed by Wu Yifan.
The actions of the brands to hide the blog posts are actually relatively cautious. Since the Dumei bamboo incident, it is more of a unilateral hammer for the woman, so before the entire incident is undecided, it is not difficult to understand that some brands have a fluke mentality, weighing the subsequent "contract problems" and "economic disputes", and do not want to easily lose the spokesperson.
But under the surging public opinion, some brands act quite decisively.
On July 18, at 7 p.m., Han Shu announced on the official micro-micro that he had issued a "Notice of Termination letter" to Wu Yifan to terminate all cooperative relations with Wu Yifan, and then the topic of #Han Shu announcing the termination of the contract with Wu Yifan was on weibo.
In the era of "submissive people chang", this behavior brought "unexpected" benefits to Han Shu. The live broadcast of the HanShu Tmall flagship store, which was originally only watched by dozens of people, poured tens of thousands of people in an instant last night, and the anchor could not help but exclaim that "there have never been so many people." At the same time, in the live broadcast room, the original 299 yuan product was also auctioned up to more than 1200 yuan, and the anchor directly called "What's going on?" Don't add it, it actually sold more than 1,000."
Perhaps it was Han Shu's emergence that made the rest of the brands see hope, and then the good shop and the Yunting APP also said that they had no cooperative relationship with Wu Yifan. Now under all the topics related to Wu Yifan, netizens have taken the initiative to remind Brands such as Louis Vuitton, Lancome, bulgari and ask them to respond.
Although some brands have not yet expressed their position, after all, the relationship between brands and artists is two sides of the same coin, the brand is the commercialization of the star's reputation, and the public opinion of the artist will affect the reputation of the brand. For brands, negative word of mouth is like a mountain, and brands are bound to make a choice when facing negative news about artists.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="48" > who else will face the impact? </h1>
Brand endorsement is only one of the many ways for celebrities to monetize, as a multi-habitat artist, Wu Yifan's scope is actually quite wide.
At present, Among Wu Yifan's works to be broadcast, the most concerned is the costume drama "Green Hairpin Line" cooperated with actor Yang Zi. It is understood that "Qinghao Xing" is Tencent Video's S+ project, if you infer according to the previous S+ project investment scale, the total investment of "Qingqiu Xing" should be about 300-400 million. After such a "fuss" by Du Meizhu, the future of "Green Hairpin Line", which was originally scheduled to be released in the summer file, is uncertain.
In addition to film and television dramas, Wu Tong, the general director of the third season of Zhejiang Satellite TV's variety show "Youth Travel", revealed at the China Merchants Conference in April that Wu Yifan was invited as a guest, but due to the lack of investment promotion, the program has not yet been officially promoted. I believe that after experiencing this scandal, Wu Yifan will definitely not be among the invited guests of major variety shows.
In addition, after the top Wu Yifan became popular for many years, his commercial tentacles also extended to many fields such as tide brands, music labels, and personal teams, and these brands that rely on Wu Yifan's star aura to survive may also be affected.
Source: Qi cha cha
Wu Yifan, who has always been fond of trend culture, led the establishment of Chaopai A.C.E. in 2018, although wu Yifan withdrew from the shareholders of A..C.E. main company 5 months after the birth of the chao brand, but according to the public information of the enterprise investigation, A.C.E. belongs to Tianjin Xingyun Culture, and the company xingrui culture media registered by Wu Yifan's mother Wu Xiuqin is impressively in the ranks of shareholders.
In other words, although Wu Yifan reduced his direct participation in the brand, he controlled the indirect management rights of the company through his mother and cousin, and the ultimate beneficiary of the A.C.E. brand still belonged to Wu Yifan and his family. On major social platforms, the most distinctive feature of A.C.E. is still "Wu Yifan's personal brand", and A.C.E. more or less relies on its star aura to operate.
As early as 2019, Wu Yifan revealed his personal music label name "20XXCLUB" in the variety show. Since then, the label has successively signed HIPOP singers such as Regi Chen Yanxi, Wudu Wudu, Wang Siyao Turbo, Lin Yuzhi, etc., and has also launched works such as "Soaring". However, after this incident, at present, many media such as CCTV News and Zhu Rong have also deleted the tweet of the new song "Soaring".
In addition, Wu Yifan, who became the spokesperson for Porsche China Motorsport in April this year, established the "20XX Racing Team" and also revealed that he would join the 2021 Porsche Carrera Cup Asia. At present, Porsche has set the authority of Wu Yifan's weibo endorsement, and whether The Wu Yifan team project can be smoothly promoted is also unknown.
Celebrity traffic is a double-edged sword, and when it is negatively entangled, the bound brand must be deeply affected by it and bear the collateral risks. Today, when there are more and more celebrity rollover incidents, the risk of brand, film and television investors, and program variety show producers selecting artists seems to be getting bigger and bigger, and even has a hint of "venture capital".
Of course, in such an environment, the brand side has now learned to be smart, they are not always hindsight, "dumb eat yellow lian", but in advance to take a variety of agreements, contracts to prevent, in order to reduce the negative public opinion of artists on the brand secondary disasters. For example, when many brands cooperate with artists, they will clearly indicate in the contract: "If the artist causes a major public opinion crisis due to personal behavior or speech during the cooperation period, causing negative events, the brand can ask the star to compensate for the corresponding losses." In the event of a breach, the Brand may also terminate the endorsement by giving immediate notice. ”
Brands that have experienced the storm have already had a certain ability to deal with crises, and most of the losses caused by default compensation and negative events are controllable. What has to be admitted is that in the hot event that arouses "public anger", how and when the brand responds has actually evolved into an event marketing. If you want to retreat in the event, or even "be blessed by misfortune" like Han Shu, what the brand really has to do is to make a stand in time and stand on the united front with the public.