Guangming commentator: in the past two days, time-honored Zhang Xiaoquan has been continuously roasted on the social network topic list, and has been repeatedly crushed by public opinion. The origin of the matter is not complicated. In fact, it is a dialogue between Zhang Xiaoquan's consumers and customer service. In the screenshot of the online conversation, consumers were puzzled by the fact that the garlic knife was broken, especially the time-honored brand that has been wandering the Jianghu for nearly 400 years. The customer service calmly replied that it was not recommended to shoot garlic with a kitchen knife. For a Chinese who has a kitchen knife all over the world, this answer obviously impacts common sense, but it is not far fetched to regard it as an improper response from customer service. However, to the surprise of many people, Zhang Xiaoquan almost led the tide of public opinion to himself "on his own". First, the person in charge explained the truth that "not all knives are suitable for shooting garlic" with eloquence and professionalism, and then his video comments such as "consumer education" and "the wrong way Chinese cut vegetables" were carried to the public opinion field by netizens. So far, the public opinion about Zhang Xiaoquan has exploded. Despite the public relations measures of apologizing and replacing the knife with a new one, the ridicule and dissatisfaction of netizens have not subsided. Some people believe that Zhang Koizumi's reputation management is almost interesting, and the performance of crisis public relations is also poor, which is backed by the arrogance of "old roots". For consumers, hundreds of years of brand precipitation and the status blessing of "China Time-honored Brand", aside from cultural filters such as feelings, are at least equivalent to a qualified quality assurance certificate, which means that they can buy with confidence. However, when consumers find that the goods are not in the right edition and do not live up to the name, time-honored brands will also suffer reputation backfire. How high they were praised before, how miserable they fell. Zhang Xiaoquan's crisis seems to go beyond this. Some media "excavated" the prospectus released by Zhang Xiaoquan last year and found that Zhang Xiaoquan relied heavily on OEM in production. From 2018 to 2020, at least 3/4 of the annual output was OEM production; In addition, it also relies too much on dealers in marketing. In the past three years, the distribution model has contributed at least 60% of the annual revenue. In terms of R & D costs, which are generally concerned by the market, it is far less than the scale of marketing costs. Although in modern industrial society, division of labor and cooperation is the norm, driven by profits, this big release from production to marketing will probably weaken the brand's management and control over products, not to mention the unique cultural inheritance and development. It is not uncommon for many time-honored brands to cause food safety crisis due to the lack of supervision and control of OEM. The extreme situation may be that except for the words of brand, everything else has nothing to do with time-honored brands. Previously, Hengyuanxiang and others were criticized for selling only trademarks but not products and cheating consumers. Market economy is fair and cruel. It won't give you any preferential treatment just because you are old. For time-honored brands that have gone through the ups and downs of history, they should be more convinced of this. People's needs are changing with the changes of the times. The impulse and efforts of time-honored brands to seek innovation and change are certainly necessary, but the premise is that don't forget your old roots and don't lose your soul. In other words, don't give up the pursuit of "ingenuity" and don't degrade your respect for consumers and the market. When a time-honored brand no longer has self-evident brand value, it will also be difficult to walk in the market, and the road of transformation will be more difficult, "breaking the circle" or "cross-border" will become extravagant talk. Whether based on simple cultural emotions or rational consumer demand, people don't want to see more time-honored brands' stories of "going one after another". (outlook new era)