Text | AI Finance and Economics Chen Chang
Edit | Yang Jie
As we all know, Tesla has no PR. The only "official" response the media could get from the company since the last public relations/communications officer left last December was Musk's tweets and tesla's tweets.
After the Tesla female owner roof protection incident at the Shanghai Auto Show, Tao Lin, vice president of Tesla China, said that "never compromise" to make Tesla's public relations level "out of the limelight", And Tao Lin also said that the woman "did not accept vehicle testing and insisted on high compensation." In addition, the survey shows that 90% of customers are willing to choose Tesla again. ”
After the Shanghai Auto Show incident, on Baidu Encyclopedia, there was only Tao Lin's job introduction at Tesla, not her previous experience.
Who is Tao Lin? Why did Tesla choose her as a "public relations"?
What is Tao Lin's past experience?
According to public information, Tao Lin joined Tesla in January 2014, is the global vice president of Tesla, is responsible for the overall government affairs, public relations, market and brand of the Greater China district, and served as the vice president of Tesla China.
Before joining Tesla, she had very little resume information on the Internet, and what could be found was that she had worked for Companies such as Baidu and Renren, and worked as a reporter, producer and director for CCTV and Wuhan TELEVISION. After the Tesla Shanghai factory project landed, Tao Lin also introduced the progress of the factory in public many times.
Judging from her repeated interviews and responses to questions, Tesla has obviously given her some functions of public relations in China in disguise.
"The skills of doing public relations itself are mainly high emotional intelligence, being able to perceive the emotions of all parties, and being able to make all parties satisfied without violating the facts and the interests of the enterprise, rather than intensifying the contradiction." From this point of view, she is obviously unqualified, which may be related to her previous occupation, so it is more real and stronger. But on the PR side, she didn't change her role very well, so it caused this consequence. Self-media people, public relations experts "Almighty Bear" analysis said.
He further added that many domestic companies have similar problems, and the choice of public relations teams often pays more attention to the person's own media channel resources and publicity capabilities, but many people cannot complete the transformation of identity, which is easy to cause similar things. Tesla's current situation is only more extreme.
In response to many people's questions about "what is the confidence of Tesla and Tao Lin to do this", the almighty bear said that the confidence still comes from Tesla's own outstanding performance in China. And Tesla itself "is a company that hates public relations and the market, they are not willing to communicate with the public, just to create a mythical image of the boss, as long as the boss is satisfied, which also causes their work to deviate."
Tao Lin's arrogance, not the first time
"The biggest disastrous statement in the history of public relations", many people in the industry commented on Tesla's public relations. Regardless of Tesla's internal division of labor, Tao Lin's speech is more or less with company-level instructions. Almighty Bear told AI Finance and Economics that in general, the significance and value of public relations lies in alleviating contradictions and gaining public understanding. As for the right or wrong of the matter itself, it is not the primary job of public relations.
He believes that Tao Lin's problem is basically to make all the mistakes of public relations. First, she does not respect consumers, that is, users, alluding to the fact that there are people behind users who have other special purposes to blackmail enterprise manufacturers; second, she does not respect the media, she believes that media supervision she said that because she did not receive delivery, because they do not give money; third, she is arrogant and always responds to all problems based on her own problems, but obviously this is inconsistent with the facts.
Just before the auto show in late March, Tao Lin just accepted an exclusive interview with an automotive information platform, responding to the recent public opinion of the vehicle out of control, spontaneous combustion and other questions.
In the video dialogue, the host asked that there have been many cases of Tesla out of control recently, such as Tesla in Beijing directly on the balcony of others, Tesla in Hangzhou is into the lobby of the hotel, and Nantong Tesla directly flies into the women's toilet. Tesla has not had a clear response.
Tao Lin said that the proportion of loss of control is very, very small, slamming on the brakes will cause a hug, not the car is out of control, it is too slippery, and stepping on the wrong pedal is also a more common situation in traffic accidents on the road.
When the host asked how to view the spontaneous combustion problem since there are objective reasons for the loss of control, Tao Lin said that most of the fires have some reasons, not for no reason.
According to interface statistics, since 2013, Tesla has had at least 218 accidents worldwide. "Out of control" is the main cause of Tesla accidents, a total of 200 accidents caused by loss of control, of which 9 caused death; a total of 8 accidents of simple fire, no casualties; a total of 7 accidents that were out of control and fire, of which 1 caused injuries and deaths at the same time, and 2 caused deaths. Its autonomous driving assistance system has been questioned as a result. However, Tesla has been responding negatively. Tesla officials have responded 14 times in China. In 11 responses, Tesla said the vehicle itself had no systemic failures, including 9 runaway accidents and 2 fire accidents.
In the above-mentioned interview, Tao Lin also cleverly attributed the cause of Tesla's accident to the owner's operation, and she also metaphorically said that if you compare a person, Tesla is like a child who is not very good at socializing.
Tesla had another accident, and Tao Lin was absent from the Boao Forum
In addition to Tao Lin's response to the media, in response to the Tesla "rights protection incident", Tesla's official Weibo has spoken out three times, the first time was on the afternoon of the 19th, the statement said that the owner of the car at the auto show site had a collision accident due to speeding violations, insisted on returning the car on the grounds of product quality, and did not accept any form of testing, Although Tesla officially actively negotiated but was strongly rejected.
The second time was late at night on the 19th, Tesla said, "If it is a problem with Tesla products, Tesla must be resolutely responsible for the end, the compensation that should be compensated, and the penalty that should be punished." This is our consistent attitude and approach. At the same time, we need to explain that not compromising on unreasonable demands is also our attitude. ”
Subsequently, after a number of official media issued critical voices, Tesla issued an apology letter late at night on the 20th, saying that it respects and firmly obeys the decisions of relevant government departments, respects consumers, abides by laws and regulations, and resolutely and firmly cooperates with all investigations of relevant government departments. Tesla has set up a special handling team, specializing in special affairs, and strives to meet the demands of car owners in the case of compliance and legality, and strive to satisfy car owners.
After the formal apology letter came out, netizens did not buy it: "For all Tesla customers, what you should do is to thoroughly find out whether Tesla's brake system has design defects or product quality problems, not just 'strive to make female owners satisfied'." ”
The roof leaked during the overnight rain. The day after the apology letter was sent, on April 21, the Internet rumored that a Tesla crashed out of control and caused a fire that killed 1 person, and the police responded that "the incident occurred in Guangzhou Zengcheng and is being verified."
On the morning of the same day, Tesla Vice President Tao Lin was absent from the Boao Forum for Asia 2021 Annual Meeting. In the agenda previously announced by the conference organizers, Tao Lin will attend the "Building a Safe and Controllable Industrial Chain Supply Chain" forum on the 21st, and discuss with Yang Xu, President of Intel China, and other guests how to build a safe and controllable industrial chain supply chain. However, Tao Lin did not appear and did not participate in the forum online.
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