Text|Historical Curiosity.
The article was first published by the Headline of the Institute of Historical Knowledge.
With the rapid development of China's economy, Chinese have achieved consumption upgrades. As a must-have summer product for Chinese people, ice cream has gradually become a daily consumption in the family refrigerator, and the market scale has been expanding.
At that time, the leading enterprises in the domestic ice cream industry focused on the affordable ice cream market, so the competition in the underlying market of ice cream was extremely fierce.
The high-end ice cream market has long been dominated by foreign ice cream companies such as Häagen-Dazs and DQ, and domestic first-class ice cream is in a vacant position in the market.
At that time, it was also the trend of Chinese people supporting domestic production. The founder, Lin Sheng, seized this opportunity and led his team to found Zhongxuegao.
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In 2018Beginning,Lin Shengand Zhou Bing in Jiading District, ShanghaiFounded Zhongxuegao Foods (Shanghai)**, began to enter the ice cream market.
The company's name "Zhongxuegao" is actually a homonym for "Chinese ice cream". Zhongxuegao was founded with Chinese ice cream as its main product.
On Double 11 in 2018, Zhong Xuegao launched a video called ".Ecuador pink diamondsThe ice cream, which advertises that it uses the world's fourth chocolate, is far rarer than diamonds, and firmly captures the "taste" of consumers.
So, even ifUnder the premise that the price was as high as 66 yuan, 20,000 pieces of "Ecuador Pink Diamond" ice cream were still sold in 15 hours, setting a sales record for the same category
Zhong Xuegao also appeared on the hot search and became famous with an instant hit.
Zhong Xuegao, which is full of development potential, is inIn the year of its establishment, it completed two rounds of investment, the angel round and the pre-A round
In 2019, Zhong Xuegao once again set a record in the 618 e-commerce festival to reach 2 million sales within 21 minutes of sales.
Even in 2020, when the new crown pneumonia epidemic was rampant in China, Zhongxuegao sold 48 million ice creams.
As of the end of April 2021, the cumulative sales of its ice cream exceeded 100 million.
From its inception in 2018 to 2021, Zhongxuegao's sales have achieved explosive growth every year, and the company's prospects are promising. However, while Zhong Xuegao seems to be thriving, various criticisms have also come and gone.
Why did Zhong Xuegao, who entered the ice cream market with lightning speed, also decline at the same speed?Relying on eye-catching publicity, Zhongxuegao became popular on the Internet, and consumers who came to the wind posted their tasting experience on social platforms after tasting Zhongxuegao ice cream for the first time.
Some consumers think that although ice cream is a bit expensive, it is delicious. However, more consumers feel that Zhongxuegao ice cream is not delicious and does not have the taste that this ** should have.
As a result, since Zhong Xuegao's ice cream entered the market, it has been receiving a lot of negative comments because it has been questioned that it is too expensive and the price is not matched, which has caused a lot of turmoil.
"Love or Not" Event:On June 4, 2021, Lin Sheng, the founder of Zhongxuegao, accepted an interview program broadcast by Beijing Satellite TV's financial channel"Ai Asks Characters".Interviews.
When the clip of the interview began to circulate on the Internet, "Zhongxuegao ice cream is the most expensive at 66 yuan", rushed to the first place in the hot search on Weibo.
As a result, netizens began to launch various satirical secondary creations in response to Lin Sheng's sentence "Do you want love" in **, and a large number of negative information about Zhong Xuegao emerged on social platforms.
For a while, the words "love or not" put Zhong Xuegao's public relations department under tremendous pressure. So, in what context does this sentence appear?
This phrase appeared in the interview, when the host asked:"Such an expensive **, the confidence to come?”Time.
Lin Sheng replied:"It's the a**, do you love it or not. Because it is true that the cost structure is like that, even if I sell it at cost price, or even if I sell it upside down, some people will still say that it is too expensive. ”
Based on the premise that Lin Sheng said in the interview that the cost of Zhongxuegao ice cream is high, and a ton of grapefruit and yogurt alone costs 1.2 million yuan, the remark of "love or not" means that the cost of grapefruit as a material is higher.
Therefore, the original words should be"(Yuzu) it's the **, do you love it. ”
Having said that, the phrase "love or not" is indeed a bit arbitraryIt should not be a statement made by a business manager in public.
Therefore, even if this "Do you want love" turmoil was later confirmed to be a malicious edit and taken out of context, Xue Gao's brand image has shown an irreversible decline at this time.
After this incident, Zhong Xuegao gradually tended to be negative on the Internet.
"Non-melting" ice cream incident:We set the time back to July 2, 2022, and on this day, Zhong Xuegao Ice Cream once again rushed to the hot search of Weibo topics.
The hot search content is a blogger named "Beijing Red Someone", who carried a post from Xiaohongshu on July 1 about the so-called Zhongxuegao ice cream melting "experiment".
The experiment "used Zhongxuegao's sea salt coconut ice cream as the subject, and claimed that the ice cream did not melt after standing at 31 degrees Celsius for an hour.
As a result, **uproar, rapid fermentation, and many **bloggers, in order to gain popularity, posted various Zhongxuegao ice cream melting "experiments" on social platforms for the first time**, and even the ice cream "can't be burned"**.
That night, that is, at 21:26 on July 2, Zhong Xue ** officially responded to the matter through Weibo. In the face of the majority of netizens' questions about Zhong Xuegao's excessive additives, which caused the ice cream to "not melt" or even "burn", Zhong Xuegao responded many times.
And cited the popular science ** of "Shanghai Internet Rumors" and "China Food Safety Network" to refute the rumors that the "experiment" on Zhongxuegao ice cream on the Internet is unscientific and unrigorous.
In hindsight, the "experiment" method of netizens is indeed unscientific and untenable. But Zhong Xuegao's public relations department still hasn't been able to completely reverse the negative evaluation of netizens.
And Zhong Xuegao, who has his own popularity, once again left a negative impression in the memories of netizens at this time. A wave has not settled, and another wave has risen. Zhong Xuegao has not yet gotten rid of the ** of "melting", and he has been pushed to the forefront again.
If it is said that the "love does" and "can't melt" incidents are due to too many negative reviews of products, corporate public relations is difficult to control the turmoil.
So,The punishment of the regulatory department is a "real hammer" to Zhong Xuegao, breaking consumers' trust in the brand
In 2019, Zhong Xuegao was twice administratively punished by the Shanghai Municipal Administration for Market Regulation for false publicity.
The first penalty letter explains: Zhong Xuegao has been selling a light milk ice cream product since March 2019, claiming that the product "does not add a drop of water", but in the ingredient list of the product, it is indicated that it contains drinking water, and the advertising content does not match the actual product, which is false publicity.Another punishment shows that Zhong Xuegao used the gimmick of "only using special red grapes from the core grape growing areas of the Turpan Basin" to sell a product called "Stuffed Red Grape Ice Cream".
However, the inspection showed that the raisins used were in bulk grade, which was inconsistent with the "special red grapes" it advertised, and constituted false publicity.
And Zhong Xuegao's false propaganda did not stop because of this. There is also a product called "Laoshubei Matcha Ice Cream", and Zhong Xuegao promotes the product with "only using Japanese Yabuku tea".
However, in the product manual provided by its raw material ** supplier, it shows that the product not only uses Japanese Yabu tea, but also uses Jiukeng and Longjing tea.
In addition to Zhong Xuegao's repeated false propaganda from these punishment letters, a conclusion can also be drawn that Zhong Xuegao used secondary raw materials whose cost was much lower than the psychological estimation of consumers as special raw materials and sold the product.
Consumers buy ice cream with the gimmick of premium red grapes, but what they swallow is almost equivalent to a dozen pounds of raisins sold in supermarkets, so how can taste buds meet tastes that have never tasted before.
If Zhong Xuegao had carefully controlled the quality of the product and had a thorough understanding of the advertising law, there would not have been such a big turmoil. Who would have thought that Zhong Xuegao, who has always emphasized real materials as his core selling point, overturned because of "real materials".
Is it tolerable or intolerable?
One is shoddy, and the other is deception, which is the most difficult for consumers to accept.
Repeatedly violated the law and deceived consumers through false propaganda, and dared to sell shoddy food, which is really ugly.
As a result, Zhong Xuegao, who has always been controversial on the online platform, has shown a momentum of one-sided criticism on the Internet.
Zhong Xuegao has become a "tide maker" standing on the cusp of the storm, which has completely ignited the anger of consumers. Netizens criticized Zhong Xuegao on the Internet, and at this time, a casual search on social platforms can see a lot of negative news about Zhong Xuegao.
How high Zhong Xuegao was praised at the beginning, and how badly he falls now.
On October 17, 2023, a netizen claiming to be a "former employee" of Zhong Xuegao posted on social platforms, saying that the company promised to pay the corresponding salary and compensation on October 15 after the dismissal, but the company did not fulfill its promise, so the party asked the company for an explanation.
In the post of the person concerned, the company replied to this:"The company's funds are very difficult now, so everyone's salary compensation has not been paid, and we are trying to alleviate the financial pressure."
As soon as this news came out, it once again became a hot topic of discussion among netizens. Subsequently, there were continuous news of arrears of wages for laid-off employees and arrears of final payments to ** merchants, which continued to ferment on the Internet.
There are also attentive netizens who found that the update of Zhong Xuegao's Weibo official account was also fixed on August 25, 2023, which should be in the "peak season" of ice cream. Its headquarters in Shanghai originally had two floors of office space, but now one of the floors is no longer occupied.
On October 20, Zhongxuegao responded to rumors of unpaid wages, saying that the company is actively resolving related disputes, and the company's current operations are normal.
At this point, the rumors of unpaid wages came to an end. However, although the operation of Zhongxuegao Company has not yet been clarified, it is not difficult to observe through the various signs shown by Zhongxuegao recently that it does have poor management and reduced scale.
Zhong Xuegao's overnight popularity, the essence of which is that it relied on the popularity of first-class products to hype online topics, and then relied on the Internet celebrity effect of social platforms to ignite consumers' "sense of taste".
However, Zhong Xuegao's excessive pursuit of marketing makes it ignore the real needs of consumers and the control of product quality.
So,Zhongxuegao ice cream has become a typical well-packaged but inherently hypocritical product, although it makes consumers amazed by its appearance alone, but it cannot stand the test of time after all.
It was only when consumers passed through the fire and unveiled the product packaging that Zhong Xuegao had painstakingly made to see the hypocritical truth hidden in its packaging gimmick.
As a result, although Zhong Xuegao ice cream is a big seller, its negative news also continues to increase, and under the impetus of several major events, Zhong Xuegao, who is difficult to support, has fallen under the criticism of netizens, and it is difficult to gain the trust of consumers.
Nowadays,This flame, which initially ignited people's enthusiasm for consumption, reversed the fire and gradually burned to Zhongxuegao.