In 2013, "* lasted for 28 days with 67 pages and 76 reports, saying that Nongfu Spring was "not as standard as tap water".
At 19 o'clock on the evening of March 3, the founder of Nongfu Spring, Zhong Sui, published an article "Zhong Sui: Two or Three Things with Zonglao" on Nongfu Spring***, which made an official response to the recent network society ** about Nongfu Spring and himself.
Excerpt from Nongfu Spring***The full text can be consulted by yourself).
Since the death of Wahaha founder Zong Qinghou on February 25, various voices about Nongfu Spring and its founder Zhong Sui have gradually sounded on the Internet.
On February 28, an entry topic of "How did Nongfu Spring win Wahaha" appeared on the hot search on Douyin, officially bringing Nongfu Spring to the starting point of this ** turmoil.
Screenshot of Douyin hot search list).
Among them, the controversy among netizens mainly revolves around "Zhong Sui was once the provincial ** of the Wahaha brand, and was later expelled by Wahaha for rushing goods", "Zhong Sui's first pot of gold came from Wahaha", "Zhong Sui's son is an American citizen" and so on.
According to the Blue Whale** report, since February 28, Nongfu Spring's official sales have been sold for 5 consecutive days**, which has fallen by more than 90% compared with the daily sales before the storm. On March 3, the single-day sales were only 50,000 yuan, while the previous single-day sales on February 27 exceeded 1 million yuan.
At the same time, Nongfu Spring's share price closed down 338%, in the Hong Kong ** market on March 4, Nongfu Spring's share price exceeded 2% after the flat opening.
It can be seen from the public opinion index chart of Nonggu Spring brand in the past 15 days that the negative index has risen sharply after February 28, and the negative index has reached the highest peak after the founder of Nongfu Spring Zhong Sui officially responded to the incident on March 3. Although it fell back the next day, it remained high.
Nonggu Mountain Spring brand public opinion index chart in the past 15 days).
Obviously, netizens did not buy the response of Nongfu Spring's founder Zhong Sui to the incident.
Nongfu Spring incident data summary from February 24 to March 5.
On the other hand, Wahaha's recent sales situation. Wahaha officially issued an announcement on March 1 calling for rational consumption, but the data shows that two days after the announcement, its account has increased by more than 1 million followers, and the current number of fans is close to 2.5 million.
At noon on March 4th, Wahaha's official *** resumed live streaming after many days, and the real-time sales exceeded 1 million yuan in only one hour, ranking first on the real-time live broadcast hot list and food and beverage list.
When the topic of this old dispute between Nongfu Spring and Wahaha intensified, even the founder of Nongfu Spring was caught in a whirlpool of self-evidence. And behind this ** turmoil, what is the problem of insinuation?
In the Wahaha brand hot word cloud map in the past 15 days, we noticed that in addition to the words related to Zong Qinghou's death and brand-related words, the frequency of words "entrepreneur", "spirit", "nation" and "domestic products" accounted for a high proportion.
Wahaha brand hot word cloud map in the past 15 days).
With the rise of domestic brands in recent years, hot topics about domestic products have repeatedly occupied the hot list. Netizens have also rushed into the live broadcast room of domestic brands in the hot event ** circle more than once to spend wildly, in order to show their support for domestic products.
Behind this behavior, it is actually a manifestation of contemporary netizens' emotional identification with national brands.
During this period of time, netizens' memories of Zong Qinghou, the founder of Wahaha, and their support for the Wahaha brand also stem from this emotional identification and value recognition of national enterprises and the older generation of national entrepreneurs.
Similarly, as a Chinese brand with a history of nearly 30 years, Nongfu Spring has accompanied the growth of a generation. For such a company with the highest emotional value, it is easy for people to have a super high moral cleanliness for their brand and corporate founders, and have the strictest moral requirements for the brand and the founders from external behavior to internal motivation, and no flaws are allowed. Once there is a behavior that does not meet the standards, it is easy to arouse people's disgust and rejection.
In today's "post-truth era", online discourse expressions mostly pursue emotional catharsis, and the public's "position" is higher than "facts", and people's first reaction to judging events is often to believe in their own feelings, and then even if there are views that are contrary to their intuition, they will be more inclined to selectively ignore them.
Therefore, even if the founder of Nongfu Spring personally proved himself, he could not completely dispel the negative emotions of netizens and effectively reverse the brand image crisis of Nongfu Spring.
For Nongfu Spring, if you want to resolve this crisis, you may need to really face up to the social sentiment behind public opinion, and do a good job of corresponding emotional guidance while expressing the facts.
For ordinary consumers, considering the driving force behind the incident and maintaining enough sanity in the whirlpool is the greatest support for China's private enterprises, and it is also the greatest respect and remembrance for the elders.