Huawei doesn’t need the Proposal, but don’t let Yu Dazui ruin a brand.

In 2017, Huawei seems to have a bad year. This Fortune 500 company, which has always enjoyed a high reputation among Chinese people, has been criticized by the public more than once, whether it is the rumored layoff plan for employees over 34 years old or Huawei P10, which has been caught in various negative rumors recently.

If the layoff plan for 34-year-old employees is not empirical and is an accident, then the problem of Huawei P10 is self-inflicted, and in the process of continuous fermentation, some untimely and arrogant remarks made by Huawei consumer BG CEO and chairman of Huawei Terminal Company Yu Chengdong have made the problem more and more serious.

The news about Huawei’s "flash door" is no stranger to everyone. The origin of the news is that some users found that Huawei used three different flash memories on P10, namely UFS2.1, UFS2.0 and EMMC5.1. In the previously released Huawei Mate 9, Huawei once used UFS2.1 as a selling point, which made those users who bought EMMC5.1 flash memories extremely dissatisfied. Not only is it a "flash door", before that, Huawei P10 was greatly annoyed by the lack of oleophobic layer, and this time, the "flash door" is even more like adding fuel to the fire.

Since then, in response to these incidents, Yu Chengdong’s arrogant attitude and so-called "a lot of speculation by friends and businessmen" have not only failed to calm public opinion and explain the problem clearly, but have unexpectedly contributed to the uncontrollable development of the incident.

As for why Yu Chengdong’s remarks have become an accelerant for the increasingly serious incident, we have to say that there is an unwritten rule in the circle of technology products.

In this industry, it seems that the boss of every manufacturer has his own "personal design" corresponding to his own products. To outsiders, this "personal design" of the boss can almost be equated with their products.

For example, Apple and Jobs, who have been mythologized, are both representatives of perfectionism. Lei Jun and his Xiaomi strive to present an engineer temperament to their users; Lao Luo and hammer, with the word "feelings" to fight the world; Yu Chengdong, relying on Huawei’s rapid sales and brand promotion in the past two years, has made amazing remarks frequently and got the nickname of "Yu Dazui".

Yu Chengdong’s outspokenness is actually a rare quality in this industry, especially those brave words about the future development prospects of Huawei’s mobile phones, which always make people believe in him.

However, if you talk too much, you will inevitably make mistakes, especially when Huawei is negatively involved.

Seeing that things still showed no signs of calming down, Yu Chengdong spoke again. Compared with the tough and arrogant attitude before, Mr. Yu seems to have bowed his head this time, seemingly apologizing, but he still adopts the names of "internal letter" and "proposal", and has not given a solution to "flash door" from beginning to end, showing a reluctance and a peace of mind.

Looking at the whole Proposal, we can see what we want in the future everywhere. Without mentioning a word about what happened before, we stated that we would set up a "consumer listening special action group", and during May Day, Yu Chengdong would personally lead a team to retail stores, service shops and stations to communicate with consumers at close range.

But what’s the point of such a "consumer listening task force" if you can’t even listen to the problems that have been raging on the Internet? Such an initiative can only be understood as "I know I’m wrong, but I’m not going to correct it, and I’m wrong if I was wrong before, and there’s nothing you can do about it."

Such a "proposal" is really not as good as none.

Since this proposal was issued, many people have classified it as a "stupid public relations" series, and the criticism against it is still endless. If there is no accident, Huawei may continue to make more responses.

However, can consumers wait for a real apology and a solution to the problem? Who can make Huawei and Yu Chengdong lower their heads?

In fact, the life of Huawei’s consumer business is not easy at present. As the CEO of consumer business, Yu Chengdong is under great pressure.

According to the 2016 annual report data released by Huawei, the most concerned consumer business achieved sales revenue of RMB 179.8 billion in 2016, up 43.6% year-on-year, and the annual smartphone shipments reached 139 million units, up 29% year-on-year. Compared with OPPO and vivo, which are chasing after each other, this kind of data is hard to say bright, and it also fails to meet Huawei’s own expectations.

At the same time, in 2016, Huawei’s net profit was 37.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of only 0.4%. Therefore, on the one hand, the development of Huawei’s smart phone business encountered a bottleneck in the past year; on the other hand, "the profitability is still insufficient and the profit growth is too slow" became Ren Zhengfei’s biggest accusation against Yu Chengdong.

But even so, it cannot be the reason why Huawei is so arrogant to consumers, and such arrogance is likely to kill a domestic backbone brand that has been booming.

I think anyone who pays a little attention to the smart phone industry knows that Huawei’s goal is not only in the domestic market. Before, there was a slogan of "surpassing Apple in three years and surpassing Samsung in five years", but we know that this is a company with global ambitions. If you want to become a world-famous brand, you must have enough brand premium, and these brand premiums come not only from the product itself, but also from the recognition of consumers and the honest management of the enterprise itself.

However, like Huawei, frequent crises caused by consumers’ dissatisfaction with product quality are undoubtedly the most serious loss to the brand. Lessons from the past, such as Samsung Note 7, have been fully recalled, and Samsung S8 has also appeared, but until now, Samsung still can’t completely put aside the shadow of the battery explosion, and it can be expected that this topic will be a sore point for Samsung in the next year or two or even longer, and it will be repeatedly mentioned by users.

There is a well-known Tacitus trap in sociology, which means that when a government department or an organization loses its credibility, no matter telling the truth or lying, doing good or bad things, it will be considered as telling lies or doing bad things. The same is true for the brand building of enterprises. It is not easy to build a brand, but it is easy to destroy a brand. When the brand was destroyed, it was even more difficult to make a comeback.

At present, the negative effects caused by Huawei P10 are far from as serious as those caused by Samsung Note 7 at that time. However, looking back at history, those problems that were considered as major events were often ignored at the beginning, and it was not until they were finally irretrievable that they regretted not being able to contain the problems in the bud at the beginning.

The problems that Huawei is facing now may be such a bud. It is not too difficult to apologize and admit mistakes and provide some practical and reliable solutions. But why Huawei is unwilling to do so and bet on its own brand reputation is incomprehensible.

Is it really impossible for Huawei and Yu Chengdong to keep their heads down? Stubbornness and stubbornness are not the way to solve the problem. Don’t let Yu Chengdong destroy Huawei, a brand with unlimited possibilities.