《商业周刊》的一篇文章，如何操纵网络舆论
habpi
Oliver Ding
FYI
The PR Problem for Chinese Online Public Relations Firms
Several days ago, Sam Flemming of CIC, a Shanghai-based online reputation management company pointed me to a news article on Business Week called "Inside The War Against China's Blogs".
The article specifically highlighted a company called Daqi.com (in Chinese the name means "Big Flag" which has a certain nationalistic appeal), and cited a case in which it helped Toyota satisfy a customer who had not received his car after three months. According to the company's CEO, her company, an Internet online reputation management company, helps its customers, mostly western multinationals, to monitor their online reputations and help put out fires with users in China.
Out of curiosity, I then entered Daqi.com into my browser address bar so that I could visit the site and learn more about the company and what they do.
What I found, and what I did not find, were very interesting.
First of all, I thought I was going to find an online reputation management company, or public relations company, or whatever buzzwords they are using now to lure in corporate business.
But I found nothing of the kind. Instead, I was confronted with what I would call a typical Chinese portal website, complete with channels for "Homepage", "Society", "Military", "Strange and Curious", "Autos", "Digital", "Women's Makeup", "Pictures", and "Reputations" (in beta).
(I have uploaded the screenshots of the pages mentioned below to Picasa and you can access them here.)
Aha, I thought to myself, I'll click on "Reputations" and see what I find. When I went there, I found that it was full of forums divided into the categories "Cars", "Cameras", "Notebooks", "Digital Cameras", "MP3″, and "MP4″. The page is very long, and like most Chinese pages, scrolls on quite a distance with recommended products in each product category. This page, like the rest of the website, was designed very much to lure Chinese visitors. To visit the page, you can go to http://exp.daqi.com/
My next question was whether they took advertising? The only banner advertising I saw was for Dell, which ran on the two pages I visited. But it would be foolish to think that their only revenue came from banner advertising. Looking at how the page was designed, and the way some of the products were given larger photos and highlighted, it was easy to see that some makers were paying for higher rankings for higher visibility.
But nowhere did I see anything about their online reputation management services. So I thought to myself, "Surely the person who wrote the Business Week story, Dexter Roberts, could point to a website where Daqi offered their online reputation management services, in either Chinese or English."
I could find nothing of the kind.
Daqi claims that it regularly searches 500,000 forums daily for its corporate clients. I'm sure that it works on many sites which are not related to Daqi. However, it also raises the very uncomfortable possibility that it may actually manipulate online reputations by starting flame wars over product reputation, then charging their corporate clients money to put them out. (I'm not claiming that Daqi does, but the very fact that they run their own portal under their own company name and URI means that they have very little respect for their non-Chinese corporate clients and western journalists' capability to conduct online research in Chinese.)
The clash of interests which arises from revenue from makers for higher rankings on their own portal site, and then revenue from non-Chinese corporate clients for "research insights" and "firefighting services" into Chinese online behavior is obvious to anyone. The temptation to use their own forums to "seed" opinions must be very great. These seeded opinions would then quickly proliferate to other sites.
There is a simple way to find out, and that is to check timestamps of postings. All forum software includes a posting timestamp, and it's easy to check the timestamps on a subject to push it back in time to where and when a rumor started. What is harder to find out is the identity of the poster, but this can sometimes be done by checking the IP address of the poster if IP cloaking is not used. Different online identities sharing the same IP would most likely be the same poster.
I wonder how many corporate clients do this kind of checking?
I find the whole practice of hiring Chinese and paying them to post favorable comments on a per posting basis to be an unethical PR practice. According to the BW article, this is a common practice. A Beijing-based PR professional, William Moss, talks about this in more detail.
Online public relations firms will have to draw up and aggressively publicize clear guidelines on what they do, and what they don't do when it comes to monitoring online behavior in China. Playing multiple roles as player and referee doesn't make it in my book. I have talked about some of the skills needed in a previous posting.
This is part of the problem which actually slows down Internet growth in China. In spite of it all, there are healthy groups for product discussions.
Of course, each corporate client will have to make its own call as to what it is most comfortable with. And so will their VC backers. (I wonder if they read Chinese?)
But if someone does do an article on a Chinese company, at the very least, the URI mentioned should include, in either Chinese or English, the business they are in which is mentioned in the article.
Nobody likes bait and switch tactics, and I'm no exception.
Is that too much to ask for?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089060218067.htm
habpi
either unintentionally naive or intentionally playing dumb...
It is a serious accusation that DaQi.com were blackmailing their
clients, though it's not impossible. I appreciate the moral standard
the author held here. But I'm sad to see such standards hardly go
anywhere in the real business world. Actually, American bloggers have
been paid for political shouts (and probably other stuffs too) for
several years. These seem to be ubiquitous games. I'm not cynical,
just stating my observations. I do hate this practice, but don't see
any way out of it.
On Jun 18, 10:38 pm, "Oliver Ding" <swo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> FYI
>
> The PR Problem for Chinese Online Public Relations
> The China Vortex<http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner....>by
> admin
> <http://www.google.com/reader/view/user/04892492620045436933/state/com...>
> Several days ago, Sam Flemming of CIC, a Shanghai-based online reputation
> management company pointed me to a news article on Business Week called "Inside
> The War Against China's
> The article specifically highlighted a company called Daqi.com (in Chinese
> the name means "Big Flag" which has a certain nationalistic appeal), and
> cited a case in which it helped Toyota satisfy a customer who had not
> received his car after three months. According to the company's CEO, her
> company, an Internet online reputation management company, helps its
> customers, mostly western multinationals, to monitor their online
> reputations and help put out fires with users in China.
>
> Out of curiosity, I then entered Daqi.com into my browser address bar so
> that I could visit the site and learn more about the company and what they
> do.
>
> What I found, and what I did not find, were very interesting.
>
> First of all, I thought I was going to find an online reputation management
> company, or public relations company, or whatever buzzwords they are using
> now to lure in corporate business.
>
> But I found nothing of the kind. Instead, I was confronted with what I would
> call a typical Chinese portal website, complete with channels for
> "Homepage", "Society", "Military", "Strange and Curious", "Autos",
> "Digital", "Women's Makeup", "Pictures", and "Reputations" (in beta).
>
> (I have uploaded the screenshots of the pages mentioned below to Picasa and
> you can access them
> .)
> Aha, I thought to myself, I'll click on "Reputations" and see what I find.
> When I went there, I found that it was full of forums divided into the
> categories "Cars", "Cameras", "Notebooks", "Digital Cameras", "MP3″, and
> "MP4″. The page is very long, and like most Chinese pages, scrolls on quite
> a distance with recommended products in each product category. This page,
> like the rest of the website, was designed very much to lure Chinese
> Online public relations firms will have to draw up and aggressively
> publicize clear
> online
> behavior in China. Playing multiple roles as player and referee doesn't make
> it in my book. I have talked about some of the skills needed in a previous
> This is part of the problem which actually slows down Internet growth in
> China. In spite of it all, there are healthy groups for product
Oliver Ding
sharing by Oliver
网络广告业的变局
本文发表于当期的《新营销》专栏，是网络广告的变局的姊妹篇。
—————————– 全文的分割线 ——————————————
【作者注：这是承接上期《网络广告的变局》的续篇。】
上一篇我提到在搜索引擎的广告模式的进攻下，门户网站的原有的"卖位置"式的广告模式受到了极大的冲击。这种脱胎于报纸靠发行量加载广告的做法，已经不得不发生改变。商业的因素，不得不促使所有人都考虑这样一个问题：从营收角度而言，新媒体究竟是什么？
包括我在内的不少互联网观察者都认为，新媒体不再是媒体。这句看上去十分古怪的话的本质是：新媒体不能把它的信息接受者看成毫无反应的受众。换句话 说，包括广告在内的市场营销行为，不能再仅仅考虑如何"宣传"（propaganda），而更要考虑如何"传播"（communication），或者更 直白地说，如何"对话"（conversation）。
关于这段话，可以从三个角度去理解。
第一个角度更多的出现在学术理论界，事实上，也不是什么新看法。海外已经有不少大学取消了"广告"这门课，而升级为"整合营销传播"（IMC）课程 或者专业。从传播的理论立场上，以单向传播为核心的宣传早已经是过时的东西，更何况，在英语语境中，propaganda是一个带有贬义的词汇（比如说德 国纳粹时期的传播研究就称为宣传研究）。不过，这一次，实务似乎远远落在了理论的后头，一直到今天，我们还可以看到太多太多的单向宣传模式的广告。
第二个角度则是所谓的"互动营销"，这被称为整合营销传播的六大工具之一。这也是十数年前就有人提出的看法。以互联网为代表的新媒体时代，互动是最 核心的一环，也的确被广泛应用在业界。新媒体被赋予了增加互动的光荣使命，而不再是进行简单地信息宣传。它不仅仅是组织面向受众的传播渠道，也要能做到消 费者反馈组织的渠道。从这个角度出发，似乎新媒体和传统媒体依然没有太大的区别：还是一种媒介，一种让组织和消费者得以互通有无的媒体（平台）。然而，真 正从业的人都知道，这里面已经出现了微妙的变化。
让消费者互动是需要一些技巧的。
先要定一个策略（strategy），究竟需要互动些什么并不是一个互动方案的主要问题，组织更希望通过一次互动来完成一次有目的的传播。事实上， 互动只是工具，目的还是宣传，无非就是想让宣传更容易让受众接受，更容易让更多的受众注意。于是，这个目的为何，成为策略上的首要问题。由于各个新媒体的 特性不同（也许是blog，也许是sns，也许是视频网站），策略部分可能会要求新媒体做一些有限的参与。
然后要做一个策划（campaign），通俗地讲，就是要新媒体用PPT写出一个方案来。这个策划会包括如何搞这个互动，如何让这个互动更有趣些， 如何让新媒体自身的用户更有效参与以及让他们发挥出最大的特长。这个策划的主体工作是由新媒体完成的，广告主会做一些参与并提出修改意见。通常来说，策划 案是否最终为广告主接受并买单，是整个活动的关键所在。而由于新媒体本身的互动性太强，各家用户又不尽相同，作为中介的广告公司或公关公司 （agency），很难在这里面起到太过关键的作用。
这个策划案环节已经彰显了新媒体和传统媒体的不同。在传统的广告公关模式中，agency一般会单独向广告商提案，做一个所谓的"媒体拼盘"，并提 供这些媒体中的基本数据（比如发行量、收视率或者访问量）。但在新媒体介入的策划案，提案已经不像过去那样媒体无需参与，而是要新媒体更深层地进入到操作 环节中：做演示讲解。广告商对该策划案的疑问和修正，实际情况中，也会直面新媒体，而不是通过agency来传达。
最后一个大的环节就是执行（delivery）。对于传统媒体的执行是非常简单的，画一个图案，或者拍一段tvc，直接投放即可。之后的数据监控工 作是由agency来完成的。但新媒体完全不同。由于需要用户互动，因此会产生很多事先并不可知的UGC（用户贡献内容）。通常一个策划案中会包括一个危 机管理预案（也就是所谓的议题管理issue management）：如果用户产生的内容与事先的策略对立怎么办？比如说，写了一些组织不愿意看到的负面评价。
执行环节更体现了新媒体和传统媒体的不同。新媒体需要不断地根据实际效果进行修正。这在过去的媒体广告模式中是不可想象的：播出去的tvc怎么进行修正？卖出去的报纸怎么回收？
于是，第三个角度诞生了，也就是本文的标题：广告业产生了变局，新媒体已经不再象过去的媒体那样，主要靠agency去代表他们和广告商对话。越是强势的新媒体，直接面对广告商的机率就更大，agency能起到的作用就越小。
网络广告业的变局就是：当新媒体不再仅仅是媒体后，它们，悄然开始向agency转型，而且是，握有媒体的agency。这种变局并不是大规模的， 但却隐隐显现。从门户网站开始向策划销售中就能看出来。因为，纯卖位置（banner和button），它们已经很难和搜索引擎竞争。
最后一个小小的问题是，新媒体这种类型的agency，究竟是广告型的，还是公关型的？因为众所周知的是，在市场上，与传播或宣传有关的，主要是两类agency：广告公司，或者公关公司。
我个人的倾向是，新媒体更象是公关公司，而不是广告公司。作为广告公司，核心关键指标是"到达率"（reach），让消费者接受组织的"洗脑"式宣 传，并不是广告公司的责任。虽然广告公司也需要考虑传播的内容如何让消费者更信服，但他们更多考虑的是，是什么样类型的受众在哪里接受了多少传播内容。广 告公司更愿意向组织炫耀的是：我们试图传播的内容（文字、图像或者视频）有多炫目，意境有多深远，投放了多少媒体，形成多少到达率。
相对来说，公关公司则更"软"一些，他们喜欢炮制新闻。所谓好的公关，就是炮制出最象新闻的新闻，吸引更多的媒体加入进来一起宣传。策划活动是公关 公司的强项。而新媒体所谓的"互动营销"，非常类似于一种线上的"活动"。新媒体的活动，和传统媒体更多的是合作关系，而不是竞争。新媒体也非常希望自己 策划的活动不仅能够吸引到更多的人参与，也能吸引到其它各路媒体来广泛报道这场活动。这是活脱脱的公关路数。
这就是重在对话的互动营销模式，所带来的一个变局：网络广告不仅在变，网络广告业也在变。公关的比重在上升，而媒体，也在慢慢地开始成为公关公司。