What to Do When Users Question the Brand?#
#Omnivore
Highlights#
1. The Shift from PR Role to User Operations ⤴️ ^dc9d9012
Focus on deeper reasons
From user operations to accepting feedback ⤴️ ^ca2cbbbf
Did you know? When a negative issue arises, even after responding to the facts, long-tail discussions will still remain. These discussions serve as a wake-up call for PR work, reminding us that while the initial negativity may be random, most negative public opinion erupts some time after the event occurs. ⤴️ ^c809842c
This is a vague point; there’s no need to rush to respond. Think it through first, or things may spiral out of control.
From accepting feedback to appropriate guidance ⤴️ ^c5b0152b
Providing entertainment for the public might be a good choice; self-deprecation and humor are the highest forms of self-defense, applicable to both people and brands.
This article is from the WeChat public account: Wang Zhiyuan (ID: Z201440), author: Wang Zhiyuan, original title: "PR Enters the Era of User Operations," header image from: Visual China.
This article discusses the challenges faced by PR, namely that traditional PR responses are no longer effective when users question the brand. The author proposes the concept of cyclic PR, where information dissemination and public opinion management are continuous processes. Brands need to understand and respond to unexpressed dissatisfaction and be able to soothe consumers who have already made purchases. The article also points out issues that need attention in cyclic crisis PR, including key information behind the long tail and the silent majority of consumers. It explains survivor bias and the limitations of data, as well as how to understand key consumers more deeply and comprehensively to handle PR crises.
• 💥 Cyclic PR is a continuous process of information dissemination and public opinion management.
• 💡 The silence of key consumers and the key information behind the long tail are issues that need attention.
• 🚀 It is necessary to move from user operations to accepting feedback and appropriate guidance to handle PR crises.
Two things have been trending online for a long time.
One is the dispute between the two bosses of Wahaha Group and Nongfu Spring.
From early entrepreneurial stories that sparked endless arguments to now even Eastern Leaf, water quality, and other messy issues being dragged in. Even more absurdly, someone edited a bottle cap to resemble the Japanese national emblem, leading to a wave of online ridicule about "cultural invasion," which is both amusing and frustrating.
The other is the news about the Li Xiang MAGA car.
Are car companies really this competitive? Some netizens mocked the car's exterior design, saying the rear looks like a "coffin." Upon closer inspection, most MPV rear designs are quite similar, but this time it sparked unnecessary controversy.
A friend said: Managing brand public relations is becoming increasingly difficult. In the past, issuing a statement could quell the situation, but now it’s completely ineffective. In severe cases, it can even affect sales, stock prices, and the overall image of the company.
I have also managed a PR department and understand some traditional PR operations. Previously, most topics revolved around the brand and KOLs, and at that time, users were just bystanders.
Now it’s the same. However, if you casually say something clever, it might affect a large group of people, and likes and comments will become the new center of discussion.
Media accelerates the development of public opinion; anyone can become a voice in public opinion. Yes, the public voice has changed, PR has changed, so brands have entered cyclic PR (Cyclic Public Relations) .
One
What does cyclic PR mean? Let me tell you a story:
In 1946, American doctor and statistician Joseph Berkson discovered an interesting phenomenon in his research.
In hospitals, it seemed that people with diabetes rarely got cholecystitis; meanwhile, many without diabetes did. At first glance, one might think that having diabetes somehow helps avoid cholecystitis, right?
But the conclusion is clearly wrong.
Berkson pointed out that the phenomenon was due to a bias in the sample selection, focusing only on hospitalized patients while ignoring the large number of non-hospitalized individuals. Thus, we mistakenly believe there is a relationship between the two variables.
In simple terms, when different people enter the research sample with different probabilities, two originally unrelated events may appear to be related. Later, this phenomenon became known as Berkson's paradox.
You might wonder, what does this have to do with cyclic PR?
Imagine that the snacks and drinks you buy always boast low sugar, low fat, and no additives. Brands want to establish a connection between "0 sugar 0 fat" and "healthier," simplifying the dissemination of information.
Did you know? This kind of statistic only targets a small group of tested individuals, completely ignoring those who have never purchased.
In the past, people discussed Berkson's paradox; now anyone can express opinions on simplified information through media platforms. Therefore, when a certain phenomenon arises, other subsequent biases will be exposed.
For example: PR professionals say, "This statement lacks warmth and professionalism"; consumers say, "I felt something was off when I used it before," and so on...
In addition to visible information, there is also a subtle competition among brands. This way, various actions mix together like stones thrown into a lake, creating ripples, making opinions and facts become blurred.
When negative content in public opinion exceeds positive volume, a brand new public sentiment will emerge. This is the actual situation of crisis cycles; merely relying on a serious PR statement to respond to all users' doubts about the facts is already inadequate.
Thus, cyclic PR means: information dissemination and public opinion management are continuous processes; interactions between brands and the public, and information dissemination occur continuously, every word from consumers can trigger new attention, forming a continuously looping chain.
Two
Do you know which issues are most worth focusing on in cyclic crisis PR?
The first response to the facts? Users' doubts? Neither. What comes first is the key information behind the long tail that has not yet emerged.
What does this mean?
You should have heard of survivor bias. To make it easier to understand, let me remind you of a story from World War II.
The Allied commander wanted to figure out where the enemy was most likely to hit fighter planes so he could reinforce that area and prevent further attacks. He examined all the planes that returned and found many bullet holes in the wings, planning to reinforce the wings.
At this point, a statistician stepped in and said, "Wait, you forgot to consider the planes that were shot down."
His point was: If a plane can return, it means the hit areas weren't that weak; the truly vulnerable areas are almost invisible, such as the fuel tank, cockpit, and tail...
The same logic applies to crisis PR.
Most brands believe that once they respond, the crisis is over; if a KOL stands up to guide public opinion, the problem is solved, and consumer complaints will vanish; but did you know? Consumer complaints are the biggest hidden danger, and brands often underestimate their power. Why?
On one hand, it’s obvious that the larger the public opinion, the bigger the topic, and the easier it is to flip, right? Therefore, brands generally adopt controlled PR to make negativity disappear quickly.
Typically, if a company has a sufficient budget, it will use a large amount of media to convey the desired message. The problem with this approach is that companies are often unwilling to spend time digging into the true reasons behind public opinion, especially not willing to develop persuasive strategies based on the truth.
Controlled PR only creates a climate of public opinion, providing emotional comfort to company executives, helping them stabilize their position, but it does not change actual purchasing decisions, such as enhancing brand trust or promoting product sales.
For companies with less money, it’s even more pronounced; they continue with traditional methods of stating facts and reasoning.
On the other hand, consumer discussions are layered; under a negative topic, different people express themselves in different ways, eliciting different reactions.
Many times, we only focus on the data (the most active, directly expressive group) while ignoring the silent majority.
These silent individuals, who do not directly criticize the brand in the comments, do not mean they have no opinions. If in a different setting, these individuals might be very outspoken.
Imagine a scenario: In a classroom, the teacher hears a few students in the front row actively answering questions and assumes the whole class has mastered the content.
But in reality, many students sitting in the back may still have unresolved questions; they just haven’t expressed them. Conversely, those actively speaking up may only be scratching the surface.
Similarly, during crisis management, if a brand only pays attention to consumers who directly voice their opinions, it will overlook the silent majority. These silent individuals are actual buyers and may be unable or unwilling to speak out for various reasons.
Take Li Xiang cars as an example: Most people who can spend 500,000 on an MPV will not publicly criticize on social media; they are likely to be business owners or executives. They care about their personal image and are more concerned about when the brand can turn unfavorable discussions into a "noble and elegant image," rather than suing a few rumor-mongers.
Potential buyers are more focused on how the brand responds elegantly to evaluations; as for the comment about the rear looking like a "coffin," that is not the core concern.
Thus, the real challenge is that brands need to understand and respond to unexpressed dissatisfaction and be able to soothe consumers who have already made purchases.
Therefore, there are two keys: First, when brands see direct negativity, they believe that responding can solve everything, which instead falls into survivor bias.
After all, people only see results that have undergone some filtering, unaware of the information from the filtering process, thus overlooking the key information that has been filtered out, which happens to come from the "silent population."
Second, brand responses to facts, while direct, are very basic and do not truly address the main demands of core consumers.
Three
Where to find user demands? Most people would say: data. But did you know that in crisis management, data and hidden demands are not equivalent?
Why do I say this?
Everyone thinks data can explain everything; user activity is measured by data, topic volume is measured by data, and with data, one can know what users are discussing. Have you ever thought about where the data comes from?
In my experience, generally, third-party public opinion companies provide employers with discussion volumes on certain event topics, the ratio of good to bad, opinions from core influencers, and trends of topics that are likely to develop.
If the data is not manipulated, then third-party public opinion companies can indeed be very helpful.
Now it’s different.
It seems that technology has advanced, but on some short video and graphic platforms, there are still a lot of bot accounts posting comments like real people, making it easy to fabricate. Sometimes, when you click on a comment, there’s not even a nickname or avatar.
Moreover, a self-media blogger posting the same sentence on different platforms will be counted as several pieces of information in public opinion reports. Theoretically, repeated content should be merged, but in reality, this is not possible because data from various social platforms cannot be integrated.
Additionally, evaluating the influence of influencers can also go wrong. Some influencers, to appear more popular, will inflate likes and comments on a post (under short content) to create a false sense of buzz, making it easier for us to misjudge the source of public opinion and its development.
You might say that false prosperity is still prosperity since the displayed information is always seen by concerned users. That’s wrong; the story of "deaf ears stealing bells" tells us that creating noise to cover the truth does not change the facts.
Furthermore, the illusion of false prosperity is essentially a hollow facade; even if it seems that information is being consumed in large quantities, it does not achieve cognitive transmission to the consumer group.
Video monitoring is even more challenging.
I once asked a public opinion company owner, and they said: To track video content playback data, it would cost several hundred million a year; moreover, video platforms have very strict content capture, making it nearly impossible to cover everything.
Let alone now, many PR companies provide strategies based on what topics are trending on social media, following suit. However, these trending topics do not necessarily accurately reflect the thoughts of "key consumers."
Because trending searches can be easily manipulated; on one hand, for money, some organizations will use tactics to influence rankings; on the other hand, platforms may manipulate trending searches for various reasons.
Thus, relying solely on data makes it difficult to provide effective supporting evidence for PR.
Do you think there are only these points? No. On social media, people love dramatic, plot-twisting stories; the more twists, the more satisfying. Many times, public opinion companies analyze user "cognition" merely by guessing how people thought before.
Users go wherever their thoughts lead them; emotional influence is often more powerful than facts. Users are less likely to change their minds based on some information or facts, but if a new story emerges or the visuals are particularly captivating, they might buy into it.
Of course, some key individuals have independent views; they prefer to listen to those they feel "understand them better and have consumed" rather than those who are hidden in friend circles or communities.
Did you know? Large social media platforms are no longer neutral; algorithm recommendations and platform rules can help favored influencers rise; I often see certain public opinions emerging in special support groups on a few platforms, where participation leads to traffic plans.
Seemingly influential influencers may not be the opinion leaders truly recognized by decision-makers.
Therefore, relying solely on data and public opinion monitoring reports to handle PR crises can lead brands into an illusion, mistakenly believing they truly understand "key consumers," which is survivor bias.
Four
So, how can we understand key consumers more deeply and comprehensively to avoid brands repeatedly unlocking negative topic whirlpools?
==1. Shift from PR Role to User Operations==
Do you remember the definition of cyclic PR? From one-way dissemination to two-way communication. The question is, how do we achieve two-way communication? Let’s take a look at how the thinking of PR leaders differs from that of operations leaders.
In the current market, PR operations mainly focus on how to respond and soothe public emotional value; they inherently pursue volume and observe positive and negative feedback. In contrast, those responsible for operations are more concerned with broad samples and will delve deeper into the cognitive motivations behind user behavior.
A content operations leader aiming for cognitive transformation does not just focus on clicks and likes; they will dig deeper into the thoughts and motivations behind users.
They will analyze who the key consumers are, why they care about this topic, where they come from, what time they choose to speak up, what they say, what they do, what their underlying thoughts are, and even who influences them and what kind of content they consume, based on 5W1H (Who, Why, Where, When, What, How).
In other words, content operations will focus on the performance and dynamic changes in cognition throughout the "user lifecycle."
2. ==From User Operations to Accepting Feedback==
Knowing this helps understand that merely issuing statements cannot solve problems. The issue is that brands also know they need to provide thoughtful responses to key, far-reaching issues.
PR personnel have long imitated advertising marketing strategies, establishing partnerships with KOLs or KOCs on social media; however, this imitation only stays at the level of interaction data, such as likes and comments, and rarely deeply evaluates the long-term or short-term changes in user cognition.
==Did you know? When a negative issue arises, even after responding to the facts, long-tail discussions will still remain. These discussions serve as a wake-up call for PR work, reminding us that while the initial negativity may be random, most negative public opinion erupts some time after the event occurs.==
The challenge for PR is to keep discussions focused on a particular topic, creating peaks of public opinion to trigger more self-propagation. Thus, a post receiving 100 replies is vastly different from 100 posts each receiving one reply.
Look at how the Hongxing Erke donation incident went viral during the long-tail phase, or the White Elephant instant noodle incident; you will find that the long-tail phase leaves opportunities for reversal, which are seeds planted at the right time.
The initial seeds lie in how "buyers of the product and those who have purchased the product view it."
3. ==From Accepting Feedback to Appropriate Guidance==
With the combination of factual responses and pre-embedded seeds, that’s still not enough. Brands need to provide a support point for those who smear, mock, and love to create memes, so that a reversal can occur.
Do you remember the situation where the logos of Heytea and Mixue Ice City were designed and smeared by people? Some netizens, to mock the brand, directly turned their avatars black and white, which would definitely warrant a lawyer's letter in the PR industry.
However, the two brands are different. They quickly followed up on their official accounts, changing the avatar to a user-edited photo and generating content like "Heytea got tanned, and the Snow King got tanned while picking mulberries," and even initiated a photo editing contest, encouraging netizens to create boldly.
This effectively turned negativity into brand popularity. So, when we say "crisis is an opportunity," where exactly is the opportunity?
It lies in responding based on facts, morals, and values after receiving a bad hand, absorbing all user complaints, and providing a platform for them to enjoy themselves, ultimately leading to a reversal.
In summary: Old thinking cannot reach new places.
Don’t fear crises, don’t resist, let go of self-protective instincts, and think about what core users truly want. The shift from one-way responses to user operations is not just a tactical change but a transformation of "principle." Isn’t it?
This article is from the WeChat public account: Wang Zhiyuan (ID: Z201440), author: Wang Zhiyuan.