Write at the beginning
# Ma Yun said that he has no interest in money, in the same way, I have no malice towards Ali.
The public relations strategy of Alibaba in different periods is to help them recall the offensive strategy of the war plot in that year, not to revive the so-called "Ali media empire".
#理由很简单
Xinhua News Agency cannot remain silent at a critical moment because it has set up a "Xinhua Zhiyun" with Ali, and it is indispensable to be scolded.
#对公司来说
PR work needs to master the balance of trade-offs, and it is already good that the money is spent without practical results. There are more negative cases where the market budget is not less but still public opinion is boiling, such as Lenovo and Baidu.
ARTICLE
The Internet is like a glass of beer, and it is best to drink when there is foam.
In the past decade, the biggest fallacy of Internet companies has been to advocate that they are completely different from other industries, blindly innovate, transform traditional industries, and scramble to become the "hydropower and coal" of the Internet.
Alibaba, which grew up from the war of words, has taught the domestic public relations industry a vivid and detailed lesson: to do PR, in addition to drafting and deleting manuscripts, it is also necessary to have the auxiliary ability to blow up the company's business with cattle x.
Beautify it, public relations should be salty and sweet, and at the same time shoulder the heavy responsibility of corporate image ambassadors and senior foreign bodyguards to escort the development of the group.
Unlike The Qihoo 360, which zhou Hongyi personally led, Alibaba's public relations system is very perfect. Wang Shuai took Tao Ran, Yang Lei and Chen Liang to form a "public relations first day group" with more than 600 people. The so-called "Heavenly Group" is invincible and unfavorable, knows how to plan, has connections, mixes with the media circle, and can make them willingly speak for you.
In the decade after the "Fraud Gate", Ali PR Bingzang Mukuma put Nanshan, with capital as the first driving force, to build a media map that spans east and west and runs through the north and south. But at the same time, they gradually forgot the most important offensive strategy of public relations, and constantly collapsed in the battlefield between the internal world and external public opinion.
The latest case was interfering with the order of online communication in Jiang's public opinion incident, resulting in the interview of the head of Sina Weibo and the suspension of the hot topic list for a week.
In terms of the sensitivity of public opinion, Ali is no longer the one who can fight the most in the market.
This "PR first day group", which has graduated, is becoming arrogant, self-interested and mediocre. Its strength is no longer public opinion, but the draft and deletion.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > values are the shield of Alibaba PR</h1>
I believe that when Daniel Zhang internally reported the news that Ali's female employees were sexually assaulted, "shocked, angry, and ashamed" was sincere, but the time was a little late.
The female employee printed a propaganda banner and appeared in Ali's canteen with a horn, earlier than the time she posted on the intranet, and earlier than the time when the matter spread on social platforms such as Weibo and Zhihu.
Unfortunately, ali PR did not see her determination to go out. The first reaction from top to bottom is all "family ugliness can not be publicized", in the work group message to move out of the group chat, in the intranet post to delete the post, can not hide the #Alibaba # and #Alibaba ice-breaking culture # was on the top of the hot search.
A simple comparison makes it easy to understand the subtleties of these two keywords. Also a criminal case, in the Minnesota incident, the Weibo explosion was #Liu Qiangdong arrest photo#.
Ice-breaking culture has been debunked two years ago, and it is just right to use it. But what makes people wonder is that a migrant worker has committed an accident, why can't he wait to use #Alibaba# to confuse the public, and it is not the forty major thieves who took the Alibaba lair.
Maybe this is not a trick of their own people? Is it the enemy army?
(No, I said that blindly)
As a big company, there are bound to be all kinds of problems. Most people are used to more than less, the previous Ali is not the same, they like to sword to take the side, take the initiative to say the ugly, a "we admit that we have problems, we do not avoid problems, we are also solving problems" attitude.
Leaves you speechless.
In traditional Chinese culture, the year of the NatalIa is often associated with inauspiciousness. On February 11, 2011, people were still immersed in the joy of the Spring Festival, but Alibaba employees received a special email on this day to inform employees of senior personnel changes. A few hours later, major portals exposed the internal emails of Ma Yun and Wei Zhe, revealing the fraud chain that existed on the company's B2B business line to the people of the whole country.
This afternoon, Tao Ran, senior public relations director of the group, took the lead in writing on Weibo:
This also became one of the excuses for the outside world to question Alibaba's show later. However, judging from the poll results of the portal, Ma Yun's thunderous means have won an overwhelming victory in the online world, with 85% of netizens supporting Ma Yun's defense of values, and only slightly more than 10% of netizens believe that this is Ma Yun's opportunity to shuffle and public relations hype.
We often cling to ali's values, three thousand miles in the first world war, but ignore the root of the problem. Let's pull the timeline back, in fact, Ma Yun should know best in his heart whether this is "ripping open his chest and showing the wound to people."
According to the information disclosed by Ali, there is a common feature of these fraud processes - the defrauded people are foreign customers. With the largest concentration of customers in the United States, these fraud cases are collected by the Financial Persons Association of Maryland, which has an increasing impact, directly leading to Alibaba being targeted by the Anti-Counterfeit alliance in the United States.
On March 1 of that year, Alibaba was blacklisted by the U.S. Trade Representative.
These are all disclosed through the US media, and the public opinion field in the East and the West once again shows two completely different styles.
At that time, Li Guoqing was still a sincere person. He shouted at Ma Yun on Tencent Weibo: "Alibaba has committed fraud, more than 2,000 victims, and 1.7 million US dollars in compensation." Does this require the CEO to resign? Dingwei Zhe! Dare to take responsibility! The replacement was the CEO of Taobao, who fainted. Then I had to ask Wei Zhe to drink the fake Rafi bought on Taobao. ”
Ma Yun said after "killing" Wei Zhe, I am the most painful. This pain is not only felt by the people, but even the "3.15 party" of that year also released Taobao, making Shuanghui a victim of substitution.
The same is dealing with executives. Daniel Zhang after "shock, anger, and shame", he "killed" Li Yonghe, president of the retail business group in the same city, and Xu Kun, HRG, and remembered Tong Wenhong, the chief human resources officer of the group. But the big guys are not only unsympathetic, but they criticize the hypocrisy and indifference of the capitalists.
In the two public opinion incidents, whether the person at the helm is going to stay or staying has little to do with values. Values should be the highest standard of personal morality and public order and good customs, not a bottom line issue that violates the law.
Obviously, commercial fraud and criminal offenses are both bottom-line issues.
The only thing they have in common is that they are all at an extremely sensitive time node - the transition period from Big Taobao to Big Tmall, and the transition stage from online to offline.
Values are a good thing. It successfully replaced PR and reached the top spot on the dumping pot list.
In fact, few of these executives who were abandoned were responsible for the incident itself. Alibaba just needs to pass a message to the outside world through them to protect the company's reputation. The difference between the two is that Ma Yun succeeded, Daniel Zhang did not.
Assuming that Xiao Yaozi's post was sent two days earlier and the corresponding personnel changes were announced early on the morning of the 7th, the story direction may change the world.
Not anymore. No longer will the top brass of a PR firm think that it is their sadness to live in the same era as Alibaba.
Therefore, in crisis public relations, there is a "golden 72 hours" time rule, in which the risk and the survival rate of earthquake rescue are equal.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="12" > the business that Ali blew with cattle x in those years</h1>
Taobao was born in the first half of 2003 and is a stereotype imprinted in our minds.
Too many years have passed, and to this day we have become accustomed to the saying that "SARS makes Taobao", and also remember that "free is the fundamental reason for Taobao to beat eBay".
But it ignores an important fact: 99% of the websites that adopted the free strategy have "died" during this period, and none of the remaining ones have achieved the same status as Taobao.
Why?
Before the introduction of eBay, eBay was the largest C2C e-commerce platform in the Chinese market. In 2004, after the "marriage", eBay eBay focused on the integration of eBay with global platforms.
Students who are familiar with history will know that all transitional stages are periods of great turmoil, great change, and great development. Among them, turmoil and change are the eve of development, with few exceptions.
During this period, Taobao made full use of eBay's weakness and gave its opponents a fatal blow: there is a detail that is constantly being amplified in the media, and in the process of eBay and eBay globalization docking, when Chinese users and foreign users have the same name, the name of foreign accounts is saved first.
It is said that Taobao has even set up a "virus marketing group" dedicated to monitoring public opinion on major online forums to guide netizens who are willing to try Taobao's free services after the "market public relations war", and to deal with various negative information that appears in major forums, communities and portals at any time.
Those who escaped from eBay eBay gradually migrated to Taobao through a campaign called "Ant Moving".
At the same time, market reports favorable to Taobao continue to be released. Among them, there are grassroots research such as "China C2C Market Data for the Fourth Quarter of 2005" by Analysys International, and there is also official recognition from the "2005 China E-commerce Market Research Report" from the Internet Development Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
This year, Ma Yun arranged countless interview plans for himself. From "eBay's Challenger" to "Taobao gives eBay an ultimatum" to "The war with eBay eBay is over", with a variety of highly impactful languages frequently appearing in major mainstream media at home and abroad (including CNN and Forbes), Taobao has completed the counter-overtake of eBay's eBay transaction volume.
Hesitation will lead to defeat, and decisiveness will be given in vain. The moment eBay decided to invest $100 million in its marketing strategy budget to sign an exclusivity contract with the portal, it was already losing.
To circumvent this blockade, Taobao spread its marketing budget across a large number of personal websites and subways, buses and televisions. There are investment banks on the other side of the ocean that have done tracking research, the same advertising costs, Taobao effect is several times that of eBay, because the display ads on the Taobao web page sometimes choose sexy underwear.
Although Ma Yun said that 100 million yuan (into C2C) was only a small amount of money, and later added a budget of 350 million yuan, the $60 million raised by Taobao was almost bottoming out.
More dangerous than this is the real e-commerce leader EBay made a $1 billion acquisition offer to Son Zhengyi to directly take control of the entire Ali.
Ma Yun is only one step away from Shao Yibo. After many tugs, the two sides reached a consensus: the investor who took over the order must be looking for, but must choose outside of eBay.
In August 2005, a news story about Alibaba enlivened both the media and analysts. This Chinese the largest merger in the Internet world (this record was maintained for many years, until JD.com completed a $1.5 billion Series C financing was broken), and in the eyes of Chinese and foreign public opinion, it has a completely different face.
While Chinese the world was still immersed in the joy of "Alibaba whale swallows Yahoo China, Yahoo billion dollar dowry", the New York Times published an article headlined Yahoo buying 40% of Alibaba.
Somehow, I suddenly remembered the entanglement between Tencent, Paipai and JD.com. JD.com's public relations pattern is still not open, they dare not say that they have acquired Tencent Guangzhou, Ma Huateng will also post them 215 million US dollars.
The same event, however, has two versions of the opposite direction. For this reason, Ma Yun prevaricated the past with no disclosure obligations of non-listed companies, and at the official press conference, he gave the following statement:
"We are announcing that Alibaba has fully acquired all of Yahoo China's assets, including Yahoo's portal, Yahoo's Yisou, Yahoo's Yahoo Messenger, 3721 and all of Yahoo's assets on Yipai. At the same time, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba, becoming one of Alibaba's key strategic investors. ”
Beneath the calm water, the two sides have long had a fiery game over the control of the company. Originally scheduled for the end of July, Ma Yun arrived at Yahoo's headquarters and found that all the conditions offered by the other company were in accordance with the mold of the joint venture.
Forcing Feng Qingyang to leave a sentence "Between economic interests and control, you can only choose one" and go away.
Later, in an interview with China Entrepreneur, Ma Yun would complain to reporters: Doing a good job in Yahoo China is their starting point, and my starting point is search engine, globalization, and there is no interest in Yahoo China.
While Yahoo's 8-K filing with the SEC soon brought the full picture of the deal to light, more people learned the truth about the incident, which was already the last leg of the marriage on the verge of rupture five years later.
The war between Taobao and eBay has not yet ended, and Taobao has been boycotted for violating the promise of "no charge for three years" and launching "Zhao Cai Jin Bao" to users. A few days later, a post claiming that Tencent Paipai hired a public relations company to attack Taobao spread widely, even attaching tencent's contract with the public relations company.
Taobao quickly launched a huge moral condemnation. In the melee, Ma Yunchu apologized to users, while promising to strictly abide by his commitments, and said that the cash reserves owned by the company can be free for Taobao for at least 20 years.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > Jack Ma: From Mr. Internet to Mr. International Public Relations</h1>
One of the most basic principles in feng shui is that water can make money.
At the beginning of the business, Ma Yun did not make much money when he went north to Beijing, but his harvest was greater than anywhere else. To sum it up simply, he went from a small local boss with no name to an information technology pioneer known to many high-level government officials at the feet of Tianzi.
In 2011, when describing Alibaba's media influence, Wealth Weekly quoted an insider as saying that Alibaba currently has access to almost all mainstream media in the country, medium-sized activities usually invite hundreds of media, and large-scale events such as online business conferences usually reach 300.
But few people know that this propaganda began with a driver in Beijing.
The driver's eldest brother works for Beijing Youth Daily, and not only posted the public opinion manuscripts given by Ma Yun on five media at the same time, but also made the relevant articles on the front page of China Trade News. Through his matchmaking, Ma told more than 30 reporters and editors about the Internet and the Chinese Yellow Pages at a club next door to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.
The speech lasted for more than two hours, and the reporters and editors in the audience listened to it in a daze, but invariably made a decision: We began to promote the Internet.
When China's Yellow Pages could not continue, a reporter from China Trade News wrote a 5,000-word "Into Ma Yun", and later a Hangzhou fellow who was a documentary director on CCTV's "Oriental Time and Space" made a film called "Shusheng Ma Yun", which further built Ma Yun into the Mr. Internet of China's Internet.
After leaving the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, Ma Yun received an invitation from the Asian E-Commerce Conference. At that time, the development situation was doomed, and most of the people who went to Singapore were blonde white people, and there were few yellow people with yellow skin and black hair. As soon as ma Yun, who was not very tall, opened his mouth, the whole venue fell silent.
"Asian e-commerce has entered a misunderstanding. Asia is Asia, the United States is the United States, and now e-commerce is all American model, and Asia should have its own unique model. ”
He asked questions, but did not give answers. A few months later, www.alibaba.com came out, and Ma gave B2B a whole new definition: Businessman to Businessman, businessman to businessman.
Before the official launch of Alibaba, Ma Yun, who held the millennium traffic password, took the initiative to enter the period of silence, and did not appear in the media eye for half a year.
Instead, it made the media full of curiosity about Ma Yun's movements, which reached its peak when some people said that an AK-47 rifle could be bought on Alibaba's website.
It even attracted BusinessWeek, which has always been known for its news sensitivity, followed by the English version of the South China Morning Post and more foreign media that chose to follow.
While Sina, Sohu, eLong.com, and eBay are still busy making a name for themselves in the Chinese advertising world wars, our Mr.Internet has taken Alibaba out to sea and gone to the other side of the ocean to frantically throw money.
One theory is that Alibaba's advertising in the United States at that time was second only to that of the Bank of China.
In July 2000, Forbes magazine was launched early. A Chinese man with a somewhat unique appearance has replaced the leaders of major multinational companies who have long occupied the cover position, this man is Ma Yun, and the text with the picture is "Fighting for eyeballs". However, the title of the article on the inner page is different - "B2B of small shrimp rice".
In a short period of time, Forbes has focused on the newborn Alibaba twice in a row.
That high-profile Jack Ma is back.
On April 16, 2000, former WTO Director-General Peter Sutherland officially joined Alibaba's Advisory Board.
On May 22, 2000, Jack Ma was invited to give a speech at the "Global Internet Summit".
On June 30, 2000, Alibaba was named "Best B2B Website" by Forbes Magazine.
On July 10, 2000, Alibaba was featured on the cover of Forbes.
On September 10, 2000, Alibaba hosted the "West Lake On the Sword", the "Paradise Silicon Valley Network Summit".
On November 30, 2000, Alibaba was named "Best B2B Website" by Far East Economic Review.
……
Two years ago, when Yu Liang of Vanke shouted "live", some people said that he was putting on a show, but they did not know that this was the remaining slogan that Ma Yun played twenty years ago.
It seems that it is impossible to reproduce the transmission path of Ma's quotations without making people stunned, after "living", Ma Yun has put forward a lot of commercial copy that is still familiar today, such as "daily income of 1 million", "daily profit of 1 million" and "daily tax payment of 1 million", all from Ma Yun's mouth.
Also discussing the annual development goals, Guan Mingsheng's tasteless "achieving a comprehensive break even" was slightly polished, and it became the "Alibaba in 2002 to make a dollar" that has been handed down to this day.
By the time Alibaba was its third anniversary, reports about the Chinese company and Jack Ma had spread to more than 400 mainstream media around the world, and they had never stopped.
During the "Second Gulf War", Alibaba advertisements were released on CNBC, "Let honest businessmen get rich" was broadcast on CCTV during "SARS", and in 2004, he won the top ten economic figures of the year, and in 2006, he became the general judge of "Win in China"...
The most prestigious "Mr. International Publicist" of this century has paid off handsomely for his large investment. Not only did he successfully promote alibaba's website, but he also squeezed himself into the ranks of China's top entrepreneur club.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" >2014, is the beginning of Ali PUBLIC RELATIONS from attacking the heart to attacking the city</h1>
Since 2012, Alibaba has invested in more than 90 media companies through direct, indirect, affiliated companies, individual shareholdings and other forms.
Calls to be wary of Alibaba's media empire reached their climax in 2016 when they stepped into Caixin's Series C financing.
Through the combing of enterprise investigation and network related information, we have compiled a "Ali Media Investment Directory" and classified them according to time and scale, trying to strip away some clues before and after the turn of Ali's public relations style.
From the perspective of time, Ali's investment in media has shown a deferred trend since 2013. This is a rather sensitive time node, the next year is Alibaba to the United States listing, the past is their and "IT Times Weekly" bad, Wang Shuai posted on Weibo said that "Taobao rejected the "IT Times Weekly" more than 8 years of advertising requirements, enjoyed up to 8 years of black-exposed reporting treatment." It's an open secret that there are many companies in IT circles that have had similar experiences like ours. ”
At the key node of Ali's listing silence period, they unusually reported it under real name to public opinion coercion and malicious infringement of goodwill in IT Times Weekly, and in the same period, they also sued the famous "Ali Black" Ge Jia for infringing on the right to reputation.
In any case, the court's judgment, they all lost money to Ali.
This is a microcosm of Ali's lawsuit against the media, and later JD.com and Pinduoduo have learned from each other, demanding that the media stop infringing, apologize and claim millions of dollars.
On the brink of peace and war, roosevelt the elder brandished his carrot and stick in unlit Africa and Latin America, and with great success. When Ali moved this set to the field of public opinion, the same applies.
Among the media institutions invested by Ali, most of the early ones are self-media with names and surnames in the industry, which occupies an extremely important position in the territory of Ali media investment. Among them, there are investment and financial management communities that pay attention to the primary market, as well as individual bloggers who pay attention to the pan-technology field, and more are the new media matrix under various newspapers in the system.
As for those media who intervened only after strategic investment or even listing, all of them are decisive places for the fermentation of public opinion. Examples include Weibo and Focus, and WPP China.
CAUTION！ Through the form of investment and advertising, there is a certain reason for pursuing a relatively stable and controllable public opinion environment, but it is difficult to be foolproof.
To take a very easy to understand example, Xinhua News Agency cannot remain silent at a critical moment because it has set up a "Xinhua Zhiyun" with Ali.
In mid-2014, the news of Ali's stake in 21st Century Media spread wildly. Combined with the background of Ali PUBLIC RELATIONS, most of whom came from the southern newspaper department, if it were not for the scandal of paid silence, all this would have become a foregone conclusion.
Unfortunately, there is no if, so Wang Shuai can only be an executive of CBN.
Ali's pry has long since stepped off the altar. Today, when they deal with the media, there is nothing new to say except that the draft is about dinner, wine, and coffee.
Now their favorite "water, electricity, coal, gas" is already a relic of the "Big Taobao" period.
When Baidu's market capitalization was the first in China, it certainly did not think that it would one day fall behind. But the failures of large companies must have been self-inflicted, because when the giant fell, the body temperature was still warm.
Author: Mu Yao
【References】
[1]. Inside the Ma Yun Empire, Wei Xin, Shi Hai'e, 2013
[2]. Inside the Jack Ma Empire: A Secret History of World-Class Public Relations, Financial Weekly, 2011
[3] Jack Ma demystifies Yahoo's Alibaba merger: This was my toughest year, Chinese entrepreneur, 2006