When a “boss” becomes an “Internet celebrity”, how should he build his personal IP?

Recently, Baidu Vice President Qu Jing posted several videos on TikTok, which quickly caused great controversy due to the content of the articles and other reasons. They were then on the hot search list and subsequently received a lot of "condemnation". Let's take a look at what happened.

In the early morning of May 9, Baidu Vice President Qu Jing apologized in a post on WeChat Moments for the controversy caused by the short video incident. Qu Jing said, "Before posting the short video, I did not consult the company in advance, which was not in line with the relevant procedures and did not represent the company's position. I hereby clarify and apologize. There are many inappropriate and inappropriate parts in the video, which caused misunderstandings about the company's values ​​and corporate culture, causing serious damage, and I sincerely apologize here."

Qu Jing said that her original intention of posting the short video was to do her job well, but she was too impatient and used inappropriate methods, which caused discomfort and trouble to everyone. She sincerely accepts all kinds of criticism. In the future, she will seriously improve her personal communication and management methods, correct mistakes, and care more about her colleagues.

In fact, this situation essentially occurs because, in recent years, as Internet traffic prices have become increasingly expensive, and since this year, companies have been focusing on reducing costs and increasing efficiency, so almost all companies have more or less traffic anxiety. On the other hand, people's dependence on short videos is increasing, and traditional media have also begun to try to get into short videos to gain more traffic.

The result is that companies are investing more and more in influencer marketing, from live e-commerce to various influencer short videos selling products. But no matter what, whether it is influencer marketing or short-term effect advertising, although the ROI may be really good, as long as it is put into use, it costs money, and if the effect is not good, it is a loss.

After Lei Jun became a top Internet celebrity, Zhou Hongyi, who was once called the "Red Cannon" by netizens in the PC Internet era because of his courage to say anything and his love for wearing red clothes, also relied on Lei Jun's behavioral research and returned to the center of attention in the mobile Internet through a series of hot events.

With the Beijing Auto Show, Lei Jun was surrounded by consumers, and Zhou Hongyi, who was sitting on the roof of the car, was on the hot search list one after another. The trend of companies learning from Lei Jun spread from the automotive industry to the entire Internet industry. Musk is outside, Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi are inside, and entrepreneurs are given a persona to personally go into battle and attract consumers' attention. Then the boss can complete the publicity. The billions of advertising fees saved, isn't that all the company's profit?

Unfortunately, Qu Jing, who wanted to become famous by relying on Baidu's public relations number one position and the image of a female boss, seems to have become the first person to fail because of a poor image. In general, the idea of ​​entrepreneurs using personal IP to complete corporate publicity is obviously a feasible idea in the current era when media and traffic are undergoing drastic changes and companies are in urgent need of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, but it is not easy to do it well. For this reason, Morketing summarizes 3 keywords about personal IP.

1. The first key: learn to be a weak person

Professor Zou Zhendong of Xiamen University wrote a book called Weak Communication, in which he states that "in the world of public opinion, the weak survive."

That is to say, it is completely opposite to the real world. In the world of public opinion, the weaker the person, the stronger the person. We can see these shadows in almost all recent hot events. Compared with CEO Dongfang Xiaosun, Dong Yuhui, who is completely weak, has received countless support in the public opinion field, such as the recent fat cat incident and the tenant in the lantern damage assessment incident.

From a psychological perspective, the strong party can easily trigger people's defense mechanism, resulting in vigilance, resistance and even boredom. On the contrary, the weak party will naturally make people think of the weak being oppressed by the strong, thus gaining more sympathy and support.

Back to the real problem, if we take stock of Lei Jun's large-scale out-of-the-circle events, it is not difficult to find that in almost all of these events, Lei Jun is almost never the high-handed preacher or the strong man. For example, because of the poor English "ARE U OK" was ridiculed by the whole network and made into a ghost video, Lei Jun did not object at all, and even bought the copyright of this ghost song, and used it as Xiaomi's ringtone, or as a promotional song in Xiaomi stores to be played in a loop. Or after the delivery of SU7, Lei Jun will personally open the door for the first batch of SU7 owners, and so on.

Zhou Hongyi was no slouch, speaking in Chinese at Harvard and saying that his English was only slightly better than "Are you ok". In a controversy with Cheng Qian in January this year, Zhou Hongyi was less aggressive overall, even saying on many occasions that his current approach to self-media was inspired by Lei Jun.

Therefore, in the public opinion field, Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi, these two seemingly "weaklings", received great support. Netizens labeled Lei Jun with a series of labels such as people-friendly and counterattack, and Zhou Hongyi was also named the president of the Lei Jun Research Association. His fans increased by 6 million in one month, and even boosted the number of searches and users of 360AI to a large extent.

In contrast, Qu Jing not only pasted the title directly on the screen, but even chose the character of "domineering president" which Lei Jun avoided as much as possible. And from the video we can actually see that Qu Jing has obviously made sufficient preparations. Whether it is clothing or styling, they all revolve around one core - de-feminization.

Short hair, sharper eyeliner, and neutral clothing. In fact, you can feel the obvious difference in the avatar and the background. Ultimately, it breaks away from the stereotype that is often associated with women in traditional concepts - gentleness and low aggression, thereby better showing the image of a domineering and strong superior.

So, she naturally became the weak one in the public opinion field, and the final result was that she was ridiculed and attacked by opponents. Or we can use a simple method to judge that when the boss sets up a character, he can naturally bring this character into the daily life scenes such as playing chess with the old man at the village entrance, dancing square dance in the square, etc. without appearing abrupt, which may be half successful.

2. The second key: public opinion is unreasonable

If we look further, we can see that almost all entrepreneurs, Internet celebrities or other successful people who have been troubled by public opinion storms in the past have had similar experiences: being ridiculed by the entire network for liking to give consumers "truths", or trying to reason after public opinion erupted, but being further criticized for the details.

In fact, it is still the same reason, because the objective world is rational, and the world of public opinion is a world constructed by sensibility, a world where emotion prevails over reason.

If we look back at some scenes where public opinion broke out, it is not difficult to find that almost all the processes of public opinion development have certain similarities. In most cases, the process of things developing is: the incident breaks out, both parties start to comment on and express their opinions on the incident because of their own views and ideas, and then the two parties with different opinions try to persuade each other, which eventually turns into a simple emotional venting and attack on each other.

This was the case with the 227 incident involving the former top star Xiao Zhan, and the recent public opinion storm involving Nongfu Spring. After all, reason cannot arouse resonance, but feelings and emotions can. Ultimately, the resonance caused by emotions brings people closely connected and forms a huge public opinion energy.

This is why, in fact, to some extent, Qu Jing has completely chosen the wrong route, standing on the opposite side of most people's emotions and talking about a lot of powerful people's principles. So we see that netizens' disgust is almost all centered around emotions, and most of the supporters say that although what he said is not pleasant to hear, it makes sense. But unfortunately, in the world of public opinion, emotions are the main source of energy.

On the other hand, during the road show of "Investiture of the Gods" this year, a fan asked Fei Xiang a question: "Mr. Fei Xiang, why do you want to destroy your image and play such an unforgivable person?" Fei Xiang did not try to persuade the other party with facts or reason, but chose to ask the other party: "Then can you forgive me?"

The fact that this incident was widely circulated on the Internet and even became a hot topic at the time, and was regarded by many people as an important point of communication about Fei Xiang's charm, is enough to explain some problems.

3. The third key: Not “alive” is “dead”

In fact, if we look carefully at all the cases used in the above text, we can easily find that almost all of them are event-based. With the changes in the media and traffic environment and the advent of the era of media decentralization, everyone’s time, attention, and focus are fragmented and scarce. Therefore, if you want to compete for attention, you have to create topics, gain traffic, and ultimately gain support.

These abilities are the most important abilities of internet celebrities and also their core competitiveness. The internet celebrity Mao Yibei, who was in trouble because of fake news some time ago, is a very representative one among them. To use the words of the Internet, this person has "skills".

Or we can use the popular and widely circulated "Battle with the Shamatte Captain" (also known as "Dongbai Past") which was popular in the past few years, although it reveals abstract meanings in various senses. After the popularity of "Dongbai Past" faded, a conversation between Brother Dao, one of the protagonists, and netizens was enough to give us a glimpse of the situation.

"How's Brother Tiger doing lately?"

"He's dead."

"Dead?"

"If he's not alive, then he's dead."

Just like what was said in this conversation, no matter what language is used to describe today's mobile Internet, the essence of all Internet celebrities is to constantly create topics, events, and hot spots. Without this ability, they will disappear in the public opinion field and become "outdated Internet celebrities." In the public opinion field, if they are not "alive," they are dead.

IV. Conclusion

In general, these three are a process of complementing and achieving each other. If it is only alive, but loses emotional resonance and weak aggression, it will become "hard alive", and the final result may be worse than the cat meme on Baidu Netdisk, or simply biting a lighter. If it is only weakly aggressive, without emotions and aliveness, it will lose its spreadability. If it is only emotional, it will be backlashed by public opinion, or it will become a confrontation between two opposing emotions. For any company, these are probably not a good publicity direction.

Obviously, it is not an easy task for either the boss or the public relations department to make the boss an internet celebrity.

Author: Innocent Roland; Source: WeChat public account: Morketing (ID: Morketing)