A few days ago, the essay incident of Dong Yuhui in Oriental Screening became everyone’s focus. But what happened? What are the problems with Oriental Selection’s management style? This article tries to give us the answer.
"Success is also Yuhui, failure is also Yuhui." Dong Yuhui undoubtedly played a key role in the process of New Oriental encountering Waterloo in the education and training business and re-entering the new track of live broadcast e-commerce. But recently, Oriental Screening also mishandled the "Mother-in-Law" fan group's enthusiastic love for Dong Yuhui, causing the "little composition" controversy to spread into a raging public opinion crisis. As a result, the stock price, live broadcast e-commerce business and brand image suffered heavy losses. loss.
Why did Oriental Selection, which knows crisis public relations very well, suddenly fail to work? What did it do wrong in this incident?
1. Event review
Dong Yuhui once improvised and blurted out a short composition during a live broadcast, which showed his excellent personal knowledge and quality. Yuhui, who is talented and well-spoken, was loved and promoted by the audience who cherished his talent, and also made the "little composition" It has become the personalized label of Dong Yuhui and Dongfang Selection’s live broadcast e-commerce. This time, Oriental Selection suffered heavy losses precisely because of "small compositions".
First of all, let’s summarize the direct cause and development of this crisis:
Oriental selection business is highly dependent on anchor Dong Yuhui. Dong’s fans can’t stand that the editor team behind him is separated from the “halo of talent” that they think is exclusive to Dong;
The editor team neither wants to be unsung heroes nor wants to be attacked by these fans and fight back. The management of Oriental Selection failed to control the editor team and satisfy the fans' demands (asking the editor team to shut up and officially admit that all talents belong to Dong), in his response, he also criticized fans for engaging in "fandom culture", which triggered speculation and criticism from fans about official intentions.
The following is the timeline:
1. On December 5, 2023, when the controversy over the essay first started,
Oriental Selection released a warm-up video about Oriental Selection’s trip to Jilin on its official account, and pinned the top line “Promotional copy from The answer comment "whose hand" said that most of the classic short compositions are created by the copywriting team, not all of them are written by the host.
These remarks caused dissatisfaction among Dong Yuhui's fans. Some netizens responded: "Yu Minhong said that Dong Yuhui wrote the Shanxi essay. Is it you who lied, or did Yu Minhong lie?"
Subsequently, the Oriental Selection "essay" incident continued to ferment. It caused quite a stir on the Internet.
2. CEO Sun Dongxu and Dong Yuhui tried to extinguish the newly ignited fire
On December 9, Oriental Screening CEO Sun Dongxu successively refuted the rumors in the live broadcast room and video content, making it clear that Dong Yuhui participated in copywriting and that the company's success is inseparable from Dong Yuhui's outstanding contribution. . However, Sun Dongxu also emphasized that there is a clear division of labor within the company, and there should be no phenomena of flattery and oppression.
In another live broadcast that day, Dong Yuhui himself briefly responded to the operation editor's "asking for credit" behavior, thinking that it was the editor's "Hu reply" that he thought he knew the business well. Dong Yuhui used the team's offline snowball fights to show that the negative emotions within the team have been resolved and that they are still united and friendly.
3. The operation editor of Oriental Selection added fuel to the fire
On December 10, the operation editor of Oriental Selection was not convinced and left a message to netizens again, saying: "I have always been frustrated, but this time the comment area is so chaotic, I can't bear it! Yuhui's shot last night I said before that the editor 'claims to know the business very well' and 'answers'. It is one thing for the editor to work well with the anchor, but the editor does not 'reply'." Then, the editor listed several original copywriting articles In the process, there are both independent creation by the team and collaborative creation by the anchors.
4. Dong Yuhui’s fans “rebeled” and flocked to Gaotu Jiapin, and Oriental Selection’s stock price plummeted.
On the evening of December 11, Gaotu Jiapin’s live broadcast room was flooded with fans of Dong Yuhui, and many netizens with orange light signs of “Selection Group” above their heads swarmed in. Gaotu's live broadcast room "reported" and said directly, "You have to catch the wealth sent by Oriental Selection." Compared with 27,000 people on the previous day, Gaotu Jiapin’s live broadcast room reached 600,000 viewers.When the broadcast started at 7:30 a.m. on December 12, netizens from the selection team continued to pour into the live broadcast room, with nearly 5,000 people online at the same time, while the peak number of online people in the live broadcast room two days ago was less than 100.
Fans of the selection team flocked to Gaotu's live broadcast room not to jump ship and support Gaotu, but because these fans who call themselves "Dong Yuhui's mother-in-law" are "challenging" Dongfang Selection by "climbing the wall". They think Dongfang Selection is not doing its job. Assassin Dong Yuhui.
On that day, Oriental Selection’s stock price fell sharply, with an increase or decrease of -7.13%.
5. Sun Dongxu spoke out again, trying to contain the crisis
On December 12, Sun Dongxu once again responded positively to the "little composition" controversy.
Sun Dongxu said: "I first want to criticize the company's editors. It is understandable that they have emotions at work, but the way of communication is wrong, and they cannot complete their work with emotions." "I understand Yuhui very well. It is the editor who did it." wrong". At the same time, Sun Dongxu also admitted that everyone in the team shares weal and woe and achieves each other. However, due to his negligence, he did not notice the dissatisfaction of the content editing team, which led to Dong Yuhui's refusal to broadcast on December 10. He also criticized Dong Yuhui's emotional performance and believed that any internal problems should not affect the established arrangements for the live broadcast.
However, fans did not buy it. The traffic in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room is still difficult to recover, and the stock price is still falling.
6. Dong Yuhui officially responded to express his support for the company, but fans did not buy it, and the stock price plummeted.
In the early morning of December 13, Dong Yuhui posted pictures and texts on his Douyin account in response to the "little composition" controversy.
He once again described in detail the division of labor between himself and his team during the copywriting process, and at the same time expressed his support for the company's difficult transformation and entrepreneurship, "I am one of the participants and builders of the company. If the company develops well, more people will benefit. , this is my wish, and I will work hard for it every day I work here."
At the same time, he expressed, "It is not the original intention of the company, nor the original intention of the fans. I don't want to overwhelm the guest, and I don't want to respond too much."
However, fans did not completely buy it. Sun Dongxu and Dong Yuhui criticized the "rice circle" at the same time, which made some Mother-in-law fans feel disappointed. They pointed out: It is the active support of fans that makes Oriental Selection what it is today, and it is precisely with the support of fans that we can The "little composition" incident forced the company's internal conflicts to be resolved quickly, but the anchors and executives of Oriental Screening instead accused the fans of being "rice circles" and suspected of "killing the donkey".
On the same day, Oriental Selection’s stock price continued to fall, with an increase or decrease of -12.96%.
2. What did Oriental Selection lose because of “small compositions”?
Oriental Selection is a company listed on the Hong Kong stock market. This incident has posed a huge challenge to its short-term market value management. Since December 11, Oriental Select Hong Kong stocks have fallen for three consecutive days, from the closing price of HK $33.65 on December 8 (the market was closed on the 9th and 10th on the weekend) to the closing price of HK $27.20 on December 13. The stock price has accumulated It fell 19.2%, and the overall market value evaporated by more than HK$3 billion, which can be described as a heavy loss.
Judging from its main business, live broadcast e-commerce, the losses are also quite heavy. According to third-party statistics, the number of viewers of the Oriental Selection live broadcast room on December 12 was only 7.941 million, a decrease of nearly 9 million from the highest number of viewers on December 9; the live broadcast sales for three consecutive days on the 10th, 11th, and 12th , from the highest sales of 50 million to 75 million on December 9, sales dropped to 10 million to 25 million, only 1/5-1/3 of the peak period, and the number of account fans decreased by more than 100,000, and the loss was not insignificant. big.
The brand image of Oriental Selection was also greatly damaged in this incident.The business structure is single and there are shortcomings in corporate governance, resulting in over-reliance on the business of individual anchors but the inability to form effective control; there is a lack of sufficient team cohesion when the business is running wild, and internal management oversights lead to increased friction between teams; when public opinion risks arise, it is difficult to Vigorous control and disposal, causing spillovers to become crises; turning a blind eye to the demands of consumers who have driven the growth of Oriental Selection business, and even contempt for consumers...
Let me state here that the following content is not objective information, but is based on the information I have. It is a subjective analysis, but it does not involve judgment of positions or values. You do not have to think it is absolutely correct, and exchanges and discussions are also welcome.
3. Why did Oriental Selection encounter this crisis?
In fact, as early as February this year, there were rumors on the Internet that Oriental Selection was going to Dong Yuhui, which caused quite a public opinion crisis at that time. However, it was skillfully resolved by Yu Minhong. Therefore, Oriental Selection was considered to be very knowledgeable about crisis public relations and guidance. The crisis at the end of the year once again exposed the underlying risks.
Actually, I think this incident revealed two opposing contradictions at the level of public opinion: the conflict between the editor's team and Dong's fans, and the conflict between Oriental Selection officials and Dong's fans.
I believe that the core reason for these two contradictions is indeed the problem of "fandom culture" pointed out by Dongfang Selection executives, that is, fans are too enthusiastic about idols and deify them, and they are so called to defend idols with all their strength. On the surface, this It seems that they are liking the idol himself, but in fact it is to satisfy this group's pursuit of a certain perfect image. In addition to some fans who will attack those who offend their idols, even extremely fanatical fans will attack those who offend them. The idol himself who does not match his fantasy image.
The cause of this problem and how to solve it are too complicated. We will not discuss and analyze it here. Let us take a look at why Oriental Selection was hurt by the "rice circle culture".
1. Creating idols while chasing dividends also risks backlash
Just as Dong Yuhui’s signature before this crisis was “once a teacher, now a salesperson”, this sentence vividly illustrates the career transformation journey of Oriental Selection and Dong Yuhui.
When New Oriental began to try to transform after encountering huge setbacks in the education and training industry, it hoped to tap the accumulated purchasing power of fans on the e-commerce live broadcast track to seek a breakthrough. It also provided a new stage for many former training teachers, including Dong Yuhui. . I believe that Dong Yuhui was confused about Dongfang Selection and his future just like his colleagues who had transitioned into anchoring.
Dong Yuhui's knowledge and talent demonstrated by his accidental improvisation were appreciated and spread by the audience, and soon aroused great attention from public opinion and the public's love and pursuit. However, Yu Minhong and New Oriental have trained many famous teachers in the golden age of education and training. They have always been well aware of the influence of idols and the dividends they can bring. They immediately took advantage of the situation and praised Dong Yuhui, making every effort to create a civilian idol with a grassroots background, and hoped that Highly bind the platform image to Dong's image to inspire more people's empathy and appreciation, thereby obtaining high exposure and high sales. It is true that many people paid attention to Dongfang Selection because of Dong's talent, and paid attention to him and became loyal fans. Dong's contribution to this success is beyond reproach, and both parties can be said to have achieved each other's achievements.
However, everything is a double-edged sword. While Oriental Selection is creating idols and chasing dividends, there will inevitably be corresponding harm or risks.
First of all, praising Dong Yuhui will inevitably not give the same resources to other anchors. While Dong Yuhui has grown into a super popular anchor with tens of millions of fans, the living space of other anchors in the company has actually been compressed, and it is difficult to find suitable ones. Opportunities for growth, one person is great and everyone is mediocre. This can easily lead to the company's main source of revenue being too single. Whether Dong Yuhui leaves on his own initiative or the company wants him to leave, it will lead to huge risks.
Secondly, following idols can easily form the so-called fandom culture, and Oriental Selection can easily be coerced by it. Although this was not intentional by Oriental Selection or Dong Yuhui, they had no intention and could not stop it.Although the fan circle can contribute traffic and income, it is also a potential threat to the company. It provides convenience for the idols themselves or the fan circle group to implement the subjective will of some people through their influence, or the fanatical behavior of the fan circle is likely to be Harm the company under certain circumstances.
In addition, idol halo can easily bring backlash effects. Once an idol's persona collapses and fans find it difficult to accept it and flee or take irrational actions, it will affect the company's business security. The criticism from outside public opinion will not show any mercy, causing serious damage to the brand image of the idol himself and the company.
In fact, Dongfang Selection was aware of these risks from the beginning, but could not let go of the huge temptation of idol bonuses. It could only run all the way and work hard to eliminate the risks, and took measures such as supporting other anchors to build an anchor matrix, increasing platform brand building, and adding additional selections. Measures such as supply chain management were carried out in the hope of "de-fading" as much as possible, but the results were limited until this risk spillover became a public opinion crisis.
2. The profit distribution mechanism leads to internal team friction
Dongfang Selection’s e-commerce live broadcast transformation can be considered a success. This is inseparable from the far-sighted planning and decision-making and strategic management of senior executives such as Yu Minhong and Sun Xudong. It is also inseparable from super leaders like Dong Yuhui. The outstanding contribution of Ju anchor is also inseparable from the hard work of YOYO, Mingming, Dundun, Qiqi, Jesse and other anchors, and it is also inseparable from the silent dedication of the editor team and other departments behind the anchor.
Since everyone has contributed, it stands to reason that everyone should enjoy the dividends of the company's development and have the right to take a share of it.
But in fact, people have a strange psychology: they feel that they do more and get less. Executives, super anchors, ordinary anchors, editor teams and everyone in Oriental Selection Company are no exception.
In the process of profit distribution, if the company cannot provide reasonable, reasonable, and compliant rules and mechanisms, it will easily lead to tension in internal relationships and intensify internal team friction.
Dong Yuhui has gone from an ordinary teacher to an Internet celebrity anchor with tens of millions of fans. Regardless of fame and fortune, his gains are no longer the same as when he was coaching at New Oriental. Perhaps he feels in his heart that the benefits allocated to him by the company are equivalent to his contributions, but everyone can What we can see is that his fans believe that the rewards he received are far from enough, which can be seen from the discussion about his salary that has been generated by this controversy.
The editorial team (content planning and production team) behind Dong undoubtedly feels that it has suffered a loss. As a literary person, no one cares about reputation. The copywriting they produce serves the company's business, and the reputation of talent is reserved for Dong alone. It is also a sentiment in his heart. It’s excusable, and I don’t know if Oriental Selection has distributed enough benefits to make up for this loss of reputation. I don't think so, because this turmoil was caused by the dissatisfaction of the editor's team spilling over to the media and public opinion. We cannot guess whether there will be friction in the distribution of interests between
shareholders, executives and other groups, but anything that happens is groundless. Some people speculate that the editor’s team’s statement and subsequent arguments over the copywriting rights were authorized by the company or even senior executives. Others said that Sun’s response reflected a certain conflict between him and Dong. Some even commented that Yu Minhong must learn from Sun and Dong. Take one, these are all reflections of some problems.
As for how to solve this problem, Yu Minhong and shareholders need to think hard from the perspectives of corporate governance, team management, corporate culture, etc.
3. The crisis management system is not perfect and the response measures are inappropriate.
Although many people evaluate Dongfang Selection as the one that knows the best about crisis public relations, judging from the development process of this crisis, there are still many problems in its crisis management work. For example, the crisis management system was obviously incomplete and could not nip risks in the bud, and the response measures after the crisis were inappropriate, resulting in unnecessary losses. The
section will be expanded below to give you a detailed analysis.
4. What problems exist in the crisis management work of Oriental Selection?
Before analyzing, we need to define the connotation of crisis management.
I believe that crisis management is a series of management activities for enterprises to predict, analyze, respond and recover from possible crisis events. It should include three stages: crisis prevention, crisis response and crisis recovery.
The crisis mentioned here not only refers to the brand reputation crisis that occurs in the public opinion media, but also includes the crisis in all aspects of enterprise production and operation such as production, finance, law, and human resources.
It is worth noting that when a risk in any link evolves into a crisis, it will evolve into a brand reputation crisis when it spreads to external media and attracts the attention of public opinion. A brand reputation crisis will cause the external environment to lose confidence in the enterprise and reduce support. , further bringing negative impact to the overall operation and management of the enterprise.
Returning to the analysis of Dongfang Selection, judging from its past handling of public opinion crises, its ability in this area is indeed remarkable, especially in defining relevant stakeholders and core conflicts, and it is very accurate and good at passing through Sort out relationships, solve problems and guide public opinion to control the development of the crisis and gradually minimize the negative impact.
However, judging from its handling of this crisis, it failed to effectively prevent the risk and caused it to evolve into a major crisis, reflecting its lack of a complete crisis management system and its handling of the crisis when it occurred. some problems.
In fact, the best crisis management is to prevent crises from happening, that is, to do a good job in crisis prevention. Enterprises should classify and classify crises in advance and formulate corresponding contingency plans, improve personnel's awareness of crisis management, establish a crisis early warning mechanism, and take countermeasures after promptly discovering potential risk events, so that risks can be nipped in the bud and not evolve into crisis.
Since he is pursuing idol dividends, he is also aware of the risks that come with it. As a super anchor, Dong Yuhui carries even greater risks. It is of great significance to the company's business security and even strategic development. Oriental Selection should be highly vigilant and do preventive work. . Apart from anything else, it is necessary to at least establish a monitoring and handling plan for public opinion risks related to Dong Yuhui. Once relevant problems are discovered, they should be reported to the company's management and shareholders, and a crisis management team including Yu Minhong will conduct a dedicated investigation. Disposal.
This again reflects the lack of a complete crisis management system in Oriental Selection.
The enterprise's crisis management work system must at least include the establishment of crisis management personnel, crisis classification and response plans, crisis monitoring systems and other institutional systems. These systems are not independent, but are interrelated and operate collaboratively.
The establishment of crisis management personnel should clarify the crisis management related responsibilities that senior executives, middle managers, and front-line employees should assume in different departments and positions, and how to communicate and cooperate in different crisis situations.
Crisis classification and grading need to classify and grade crises according to regulatory regulations, production methods, sales methods, etc., so that enterprises can formulate corresponding plans according to different crises. What needs to be explained here is that in fact, in addition to the crises related to anchors, as a live broadcast e-commerce company that directly faces consumers, crisis risks such as supply chain control, product quality, after-sales service, laws and regulations, etc. will directly affect Its business security and even strategic development should also be highly valued by Oriental Selection. Judging from recent incidents such as netizens questioning the quality of the corn it sells and Tietou cracking down on counterfeit Wuchang rice, I am afraid that this aspect is not enough.
After classifying and grading the crisis, a response plan should be drawn up. Pre-planned disposal plans should be formulated for different types and levels of crises, and the corresponding management departments, communication mechanisms and disposal measures should be clarified. Enterprises can initiate plans as soon as possible for crises that occur and respond appropriately to minimize negative impacts.
In addition, enterprises should establish an efficient and agile crisis monitoring system, including public opinion monitoring system, production safety monitoring system, product quality control system, customer complaint system, etc., which can help enterprises detect crises as early as possible and handle them in a timely manner to avoid them evolving into larger problems. The crisis may spread into a crisis of public opinion.
After the crisis management system is established, the enterprise should formally publish and implement it in the form of a document, run it through learning and training, actual operations, and assessment and evaluation, and make it a part of daily work.
In the process of handling the crisis of short essays from Dongfang Selection, we can also see some more specific problems.
First of all, there is a lack of effective management mechanism for the content release of the company's official media. The ownership of the
company's media account belongs to the company, and the sound it emits represents the company's attitude and opinions, which will seriously affect the outside world's perception and judgment of the company. Especially for an account like Oriental Selection with a huge fan base, the content it publishes has great influence and is more related to the company's business security. It needs to be strictly controlled. It is clearly required that only content related to the company's business can be published, including Dong Yuhui, editor, Individuals, including new media and senior executives, have no right to use company media accounts to express personal opinions without authorization.
At the same time, we should strengthen the establishment of a strong restraint and management mechanism for editors and new media operators, such as clarifying relevant requirements in labor contracts, employee handbooks, etc. If there are violations, corresponding punishments and even legal responsibilities should be carried out. At the same time, we should strengthen Training on risk awareness and business capabilities for editors, new media operations and other team members will prevent them from deliberately violating the rules and reduce the possibility of making mistakes.
Secondly, Oriental Selection was unable to effectively control its external caliber during this crisis public relations process.
After a crisis event occurs, the public's attention to corporate image will rapidly increase. If the company's external caliber is inconsistent, it will lead to information confusion and misleading, causing public doubts and distrust, leading to further worsening of the crisis, and thus damaging the company's image and credibility. Corporate control can effectively maintain a company's image and credibility by maintaining a consistent voice and conveying clear and accurate information to the public.
This requires the company to designate an external spokesperson for the crisis public relations stage and formulate clear and accurate communication content after unified opinions. On the other hand, Oriental Screening failed to control the editor team after the crisis on December 5, which caused its response on December 10 to add fuel to the fire. Sun Xudong's response criticized Dong Yuhui. The information was extremely confusing, leaving fans to guess what the company was. The real attitude caused the crisis to continue to worsen.
Of course, some people speculate that this is indeed a deliberate move by the company to weaken Dong's influence or even drive him away, but I don't think so. When Yu Minhong was so unclear about the priorities at the time of the crisis, it was impossible for him to start New Oriental in the first place. .
In addition, although Oriental Selection clearly defined the relevant stakeholders and core conflicts, it adopted the wrong disposal strategy of delaying the resolution and abusing the cut because it was unwilling to give up the idol bonus.
may be afraid that the collapse of Dong’s influence after losing his talent halo will affect the sales performance of his live broadcast e-commerce business. At the beginning, Oriental Selection seemed to hope that the storm would gradually subside naturally and the fans would no longer pay attention, so the official did not come forward to make a statement, but there was no Thinking of the editor's team's aggressive approach to the rice circle, which worsened the crisis.
Sun Xudong’s speech abused cutting, hoping to separate the editor’s team from the company, and the fan circle from the fans. He wanted to maintain Dong Yuhui’s talent aura and continue to earn so-called “fans” based on Dong Yuhui’s personal influence in the future. "rice circle" money. But the abuse of cutting actually created a more serious confrontation, causing the fan circle to shift from attacking the editor's team to attacking the company, leading to the worsening of the crisis.
In my opinion, in the entire crisis management process, the most powerful weapon to deal with the fandom should actually be Dong Yuhui’s own voice. However, Dong Dongyuhui first tried to cover up the incident by singing along with Sun Xudong, and then criticized the editor's team, giving the fans a reason to launch an attack and allowing the crisis to spread. After the editor forced the fan circle and caused the crisis to worsen, all he needed to do was to publicly clarify the copywriting process to the fan circle and remove his halo of talent. The fan circle would accept it calmly and the storm would subside. Perhaps Oriental Selection can also start to promote the development of its anchor matrix more effectively.
However, it is unknown whether Oriental Selection was based on the concerns mentioned above or Dong Yuhui's personal reluctance, and it was always difficult to take this step. It was not until the early morning of December 13 that Dong publicly spoke out.
However, Dong Yuhui also changed his personal signature on social media from "Once a teacher, now a salesperson" to "No intention, no necessity, no solid, no me", and the IP address showed that he is currently in Shaanxi Province, triggering Speculations about its future direction. Yu Minhong, the star of
Oriental Screening, also posted a video on social media to speak out on December 14, admitting that a small matter within the company had turned into a raging public opinion due to improper handling, and took on leadership responsibilities and criticized the editor. He Xiaosun expressed his apology to Dong Yuhui. This can be regarded as Oriental Selection’s final conclusion on this turmoil, and it is also an explanation to Dong Yuhui’s rice circle (fans).
On December 14, although Oriental Selection’s stock price has stopped falling, the negative impact this small essay incident will have on its future business development is difficult to estimate.
