It was the fifth day when the association's chairman, making a rare appearance at work, was contemplating where to go fishing that afternoon. Upon seeing the chairman finally present, the secretary immediately and sternly reminded him to check Weibo.
"I don't have a Weibo account; that's all garbage culture!" the chairman declared dismissively. This chairman was not an employee of any member company of the association but rather a very senior industry veteran. Otherwise, if the chairman position were held by someone from any given company, other companies would not have felt secure.
However, the primary responsibility of the association's chairman, for the most part, was simply to sit in the office daily, show his face, and sometimes not even that, just to maintain a presence.
After all, the association itself mostly just needed to maintain its existence and handle some routine work. Unless the association had work that involved the entire industry, they were generally quite idle, as the vast majority of operators did not wish for the association to be busy.
"Sir, then please take a look at this!" The secretary then placed a large stack of newspapers in front of the association chairman, compelling him to glance at them.
After just a few glances, the chairman was stunned. He then angrily slammed his hand on the desk and exclaimed, "This scoundrel, how could they do such a thing? Do they understand the rules? How can such matters be brought out into the open!"
"You immediately contact these people and tell them they must retract the announcement and apologize to our association, stating that all of this is fabricated nonsense. Otherwise, we will make them pay, and our entire association will blacklist them!!" The old chairman was indeed extremely angry because he saw his name in the newspaper. A reporter had sarcastically written, "I hear Chairman is having trouble catching fish every day; perhaps he's venting his anger on Tianxing 5?" xxs壹贰
Good heavens, was this person spying on him? The fact that he couldn't catch fish was known to everyone. Damn it, his reputation was completely ruined!
No, he absolutely could not let this situation fester any longer.
"Mr. Chairman, we are already in the process of blacklisting Tianxing 5 phones," the secretary reminded him helplessly.
"..." The chairman fell silent for quite a while before saying with resignation, "If that's the case, then we can sue this company for defamation!"
"Sir, our legal team has carefully reviewed the entire announcement. All the content within it is factual and contains no fabricated material. Only the parts pertaining to Motorola have uncertain content, but the other party has already stated in the article that this content is uncertain, so this does not constitute defamation," the secretary reminded him. "If we insist on suing them, then according to the principle that the accuser must prove, we need to find evidence that they are lying. Are you sure we want to take this to court?"
"Let's forget it then..." The chairman began to rub his temples. "Then we can also issue an announcement stating that this is all fabricated and defend ourselves!"
"Such an announcement was already issued two days ago, but the other party quickly responded with their own announcement, stating that if the association does not obstruct their network access, then the association should approve their network access application now. They are willing to publicly admit to defamation and apologize!" the secretary said softly. "Mr. Chairman, do you think we should approve their network access?"
"..." The chairman was completely dumbfounded. He realized he had fallen into a deadlock, unable to think of any way to break it. Finally, he said, "This wasn't our business to begin with; it was caused by those fellows at Motorola. You go find Edward Zamp and tell him that he must resolve this matter. If he can't handle Tianxing 5, then once our association's decision is solidified, we will approve Tianxing 5's network access application!"
"Damn it, why are they cursing me for not catching fish when you're the ones who stirred this up!" the chairman grumbled, then began packing his things. He was just making a temporary appearance at the company; he still had to go fishing that afternoon!
Edward Zamp, who had been handed the blame, found himself in a similar predicament. In fact, Motorola was being attacked even more fiercely.
According to Tianxing 5's announcement, Motorola had directly become the mastermind behind all of this, and there was ample evidence to prove it.
Therefore, even though all this evidence was stated as uncertain, and Tianxing 5 had even thoughtfully repeated three times in their announcement that this evidence was mere speculation, only possibly true, the netizens didn't care. They simply believed that Motorola was undoubtedly the mastermind.
If it were just that, it would have been one thing. But what was more terrifying was that within this topic, many netizens began directly and furiously criticizing Motorola itself.
Ever since Motorola launched the Iridium satellite project, all of the company's resources and funds had been channeled into it. This led to a continuous decline in Motorola's craftsmanship and technical capabilities, with various problems emerging one after another.
If Nokia was a brick that could be used to smash nails and still function normally afterward,
Then Motorola was the wooden board being hammered by the nails; even without anyone hammering, it would split in half within a short time.
This resulted in many Motorola customers having an extremely poor user experience. Seizing this trending topic, they began to vent their grievances frantically.
Consequently, as the situation progressed, the people who genuinely accused Motorola of predatory clauses and advocated for Tianxing 5 became very scarce in the trending topics. Instead, there were countless people angrily denouncing Motorola's phone quality issues, with some even creating jokes to mock them.
For example, why was Motorola's operating speed so slow? Because the motor was broken, and it needed to be pulled by mules.
Similar jokes abounded. The American people fully unleashed their sense of humor, resulting in Motorola being so heavily criticized that they could barely hold their heads up.
If it were merely a matter of being unable to hold their heads up, that would have been one thing. But the problem was that these negative consequences were fully reflected in Motorola's sales. According to sales frontline data statistics, Motorola's sales had decreased by an average of over 20% after the incident.
This was a terrifying fact. For a large corporation like Motorola, it meant the loss of tens of millions of dollars in huge profits.
And this was only over three to four days. If this continued long-term, Motorola's losses would surely be calculated in the billions.
Edward Zamp had just received a warning from the board of directors, demanding that he immediately find a way to suppress the situation. Otherwise, they would not hesitate to replace Motorola's CEO again.
However, Edward Zamp remained composed, believing this was not a major issue. After all, he had weathered much greater storms; how could he be intimidated by such a trivial matter?
It was just a public opinion problem, and there were already very mature public relations firms to manage such issues. Professional matters should be handled by professional people.
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Billy Howard was the CEO of the American Blue Sky Public Relations Company and a partner of Motorola. He had previously helped Motorola successfully resolve several public opinion crises, which was why he was invited to Edward Zamp's office this time.
The latter then very casually handed over the matter and asked indifferently, "I need to resolve this problem; do you have a solution?"
"Of course, there are no problems. Please trust us; we are professionals," Billy Howard said with a smile. In his view, this was indeed not a major issue.
He then stated, "These are very common, old problems. Public relations crises like these erupt frequently, and our company has very mature solutions. We have two options, Plan A and Plan B. Which one would you prefer?"
"What are the differences between these two plans?" Edward Zamp asked curiously.
"Yes, Plan A is the most traditional and the cheapest plan," Billy Howard said with a smile. "The core solution of Plan A lies in using time to resolve the issue!"
"Human beings have a limited attention span for any given issue; their focus cannot be sustained for long periods. Generally speaking, any matter will gradually lose attention after more than a week."
"And in the internet age, this focus becomes even harder to maintain. So, we simply need to refrain from any direct response, delete some influential comments, communicate with certain individuals to prevent more related posts from appearing online, and then suppress the heat of the matter. By maintaining relative silence and preventing the situation from escalating, the audience will completely forget about this matter within a maximum of two weeks."
"Two weeks?" Edward Zamp felt this timeframe was a bit too long, so he asked, "What about Plan B?"
"Plan B is relatively more aggressive. We can leverage the situation to our advantage, claiming that this was a planned smear campaign against Motorola, and Tianxing is merely a tool used by our opponents to attack us!"
"Next, we can find ways to create some non-evidence evidence, find some influential figures to endorse us, and if we can even use legal means to arrest some people, and then hire a large number of people to promote us, thereby forming a huge force across the entire network."
"This will not only easily whitewash our issues but also allow us to counterattack our opponents, completely crushing them so they have no power to resist. It will also serve as a warning to others, deterring other competitors from using the same tactics against us!"
"However, this will make things more complicated, requiring a lot of funds and connections, and it will also involve some potentially illegal activities, so..."
"Just tell me, how much will Plan B cost!" Edward Zamp waved his hand dismissively.
"Two million dollars!" Billy Howard said boldly.
"You can get the money from finance this afternoon!" Edward Zamp said very decisively. He really liked the phrase "kill one to warn a hundred."