Gushcloud vs Xiaxue: in the court of public opinion

Hello everyone. I hope you have had a lovely Christmas day. It is Boxing day today and oh my, I have experienced a huge spike in traffic since my Christmas day blog post on the Gushcloud vs Xiaxue saga, so I definitely have to do a follow up now. So what other pearls of wisdom can Limpeh offer you that is not already out there in blogosphere? Actually I have quite a few for those of you who are very interested in this saga, so read on for Limpeh's insights.

Xiaxue on the warpath!

1. Do not underestimate the power of Gushcloud's influencers. 

Now as I look at the huge spike in traffic to my blog within the last 24 hours since I've posted the article, most of the traffic had been directed via one website: http://ohsofickle.blogspot.sg/ and that is Tammy Tay. Now I've never heard of her before given that we move in completely different social circles (she is 23, female and in Singapore; I'm 38, male and in London) but a quick scroll through her site makes me think that she is a Xiaxue clone complete with plastic surgery enhanced Barbie-doll wide eyes and super sharp noses that East Asians just don't have. Look, I'm Eurasian, I've done the official DNA test and all that, I have a naturally sharp nose but I just don't quite have her kind of Barbie-doll wide eyes: it is just amazing the lengths these Asians will go to in their quest to look white these days. Hey, that's like so super common in South Korea these days, so that's not me passing any judgement. It's nice to see beautiful Singaporean women like her take such pride in their appearances because most Singaporean men look like geeks who can't get laid anyway. #sohatemehaters

Tammy is a Gushcloud influencer. I had a good look at her blog: it is mostly just photos of her looking sexy in different outfits. Clearly I'm not in her demographic as I found that totally boring (no offence Tammy) but evidently, there is a market for that kind of social media. Either from her peers who are looking to her for fashion advice, or dirty old men who are looking to gawk at just how sexy she looks in her photos. The bulk of the content is about women's fashion and there is even an online store where you can purchase some of Tammy's outfits. I'm sure Tammy has a big enough following to do very well out of it. Now in a break from all that fashion, she wrote a piece on her blog about this Xiaxue vs Gushcloud saga and despite the fact that my last post had mostly mocked Gushcloud's totally inept PR response to the situation, she has included a link to my blog post for those interested to read more about it.

Tammy's blog is mostly about fashion for young women.

So just that one hyperlink from her sent a massive spike in traffic to Limpeh's blog (thank you Tammy) - now that's pretty impressive. Now there have been a number of sources sending a lot of traffic to my blog as well (including from Singapore Daily, Twitter and Facebook) but Tammy's blog trumps them all. She wields an incredible amount of influence through her blog and her readers actually do read what she tells them to read. Gushcloud's very clumsily crafted statement had actually given us all a really terrible impression of their business but after having looked at Tammy's blog, I had changed my mind and realized that even successful businesses can make epic PR mistakes. So Gushcloud isn't as bad as I had initially imagined, they just had screwed up this PR response big time.

2. The case study of Rebekah Brooks: law vs PR

Now I know some of you may be aware of the notorious Rebekah Brooks - she was the editor of the News Of The World when illegal phone hacking was carried out by its journalists: the criminal trail led to the collapse of the News Of The World (which was at that time one of the biggest selling newspapers of the world). Brooks was charged with a long list of criminal offenses associated with the phone hacking scandal and let me jump to the punchline: she was cleared of all charges despite the fact that the vast majority of the British public were hoping for her to be sent to jail for a very long time - myself included. They were left with a big legal bill nonetheless and they hardly emerged victorious from it.

Did Brooks' lawyers do a good job? Of course, definitely! They somehow managed to keep her out of jail despite the fact that the British public were baying for her blood and the judge was under a lot of pressure to find her guilty. Did they manage to protect her reputation though? No, quite the opposite - every single minute detail of her professional and private life dragged through the tabloids (talk about poetic justice for the woman who made her money through the tabloids). There were lurid details about her six-year long affair with her fellow editor Andy Coulson (who is only slightly more good looking than Brook's husband Charlie - but let's face it, given how ugly Charlie Brooks is, this was an affair waiting to happen). Her reputation is in tatters and she has been keeping a very low profile since the end of the court case. (Heck, she is very rich anyway, but her career is over.)

What lesson can Gushcloud learn from Rebekah Brooks then? There is a time and place for lawyers - that is when either you are being charged with a crime or when someone has committed a criminal offence against you and you need to file an official complaint with the authorities in order to bring charges against the offending party. Now in this case, we don't dispute the fact that Xiaxue had used entrapment in order to procure evidence against Gushcloud - that was certainly unethical, but was it illegal? Now that is something only a Singaporean lawyer can tell you, but judging from Gushcloud's response so far, the verdict seems to be, "unethical but not illegal." That is probably by they have backed off from their initial threat to sue Xiaxue despite the fact that there may have been a case of defamation there.

Xiaxue: unethical but still completely legal?

Gushcloud have far more to lose if they pursued Xiaxue through legal means: ethical or not, Xiaxue has raised some very awkward questions for Gushcloud. If they pursued this, Xiaxue could lawyer up and who knows what else Xiaxue's team could dig up? Xiaxue has already proven that she has plenty of resources to throw at this fight against Gushcloud and is extremely well prepared - she does have a reputation in not backing down from a fight. According to an influential local blogger who wishes to remain anonymous, "Whilst Xiaxue did lay out a very strong and convincing case, she did get some of her facts wrong in the process. So there is the issue of defamation in this case when Gushcloud can prove that Xiaxue did make some claims which they can easily prove are false. But then it is a question of what they can gain by pursuing a defamation case against Xiaxue. Thus for Gushcloud, suing Xiaxue has become more a case of 'if I'm going down, I'm taking you with me.'  Unfortunately, it is a lose-lose situation and for Gushcloud to back down at this stage does appear to hand victory to Xiaxue."

3. Engaging with the enemy: just speak to Xiaxue

So Limpeh, you may ask me, what is the best PR solution you can suggest in the face of such a crisis then? Look, there's no easy way to clean up a mess like that - you have to be very realistic about what you can realistically achieve given the constraints of the situation. We are talking about damage limitation here, making the best of a bad situation and within that context, I actually do have some pragmatic steps that Gushcloud can do to deescalate the situation.

Surely there is some room for negotiation?

Now I would suggest that Gushcloud should take a deep breath and calm the fuck down - yes I know they are angry (and quite naturally so) but if just have a read Althea Lim's post to Xiaxue, good grief. That was so antagonistic.  There was a lot of name calling and it got really personal - I feel like stepping in as a primary school teacher and telling Althea, "I don't care who started the fight, I want the both of you to stop behaving like this right now." Why? Because this war of words only escalates the situation and it is dragging Gushcloud further and further into a fight that they are already losing in the court of public opinion. Going a step further, I would suggest direct engagement with Xiaxue. They know where to find her, why not just reach out and ask her, "what do you want? What are you trying to proof? Can we talk about resolving this amicably? Let's not make this ugly." If direct contact is just too difficult at this stage, how about using an intermediary, an independent third party to open some kind of channel for dialogue between the two parties where they can speak to each other in a bid to resolve the situation.

Whilst this may sound unacceptable to Gushcloud at this stage: what? Making peace with the person who attacked us in the first place, are you mad? Why on earth would I want to do something like that?  Sometimes in life, you simply have to swallow your pride and consider your priorities: your pride or your business interests? Lashing out at Xiaxue may be their first instinct when being insulted like that, but would this serve Gushcloud's business interests any good? Clearly not - the longer this fight goes on, the more Gushcloud will suffer in the process. Let's face it, any business would suffer when you have someone like Xiaxue willing to invest great time, effort and resources into derailing you. 

Would it serve Gushcloud to pursue this grudge with Xiaxue?

Judging from the way Xiaxue has very cleverly crafted her attack (singling Yan KayKay out for example), the attack does come across as a very personal one and the company Gushcloud has simply become a convenient target for Xiaxue to attack since such an attack would not only have the maximum impact but also Gushcloud has a lot more to lose than any single individual involved, so it is a far more vindictive attack because it causes far more damage. My guess is that the people at Gushcloud probably know exactly whom the individual(s) is/are on Xiaxue's hit list: so there comes a point where you can quite heartlessly say, "I know it is _________ you are after, what can we offer you in return so you will focus your attack on her and leave Gushcloud alone? It is really her you want to destroy, not us."

4. Case study: Korean air nut rage

Another important step that Gushcloud has to do is to take ownership for the mistakes they have made so far - something they have failed to do properly. Allow me to refer you to the Korean Air nut-rage case involving VP Heather Cho which I am sure many of you are familiar with already. On the 5th December 2014, after a Korean Air flight had left the terminal at New York JFK airport, Cho had ordered the plane to turn around after a flight attendant had served her macadamia nuts in a bag rather than a bowl. She basically threw a tantrum like a spoilt brat: she forced him to kneel before him, physically abused him, made the plane turn around so he could be removed from the flight not before firing him on the spot. It seems it is not the first time this has happened - in 2013, she threw a similar tantrum after she was served improperly cooked ramen on a flight. This crazy woman is a major liability to Korean Air.

It beggars belief that someone so incompetent and childish could rise to such a senior position within Korean Air - this makes me rather nervous about using them as an airline because it means that senior executives are appointed through nepotism rather than merit. The fall out from the macadamia nut-rage case has been spectecular: first Korean Air tried very hard to cover up the incident. They lied about the way the air steward was treated, they tried to pass the blame for the poor decision to return to the terminal to the pilot, then in the days after, Korean Air executives visited the air steward many times and tried to persuade him through a combination of pressure and intimidation to change his story, to try to put Cho in a better light. It all back fired, of course. As the story broke, Cho and her father issued groveling apologies, Cho was forced to resign from all her roles within the Hanjin group (including Korean Airlines). It has just emerged today (26 December) that Cho has been arrested and will face criminal charges over her actions. 

Now what can we learn from the nut rage case? Korean Air made a bad decision in trying to cover up Cho's actions in the first place - the cover up became as much of a story as Cho's initial tantrum: it was pouring oil on the fire in terms of making a PR disaster worse. It is bad enough that you have this psycho bitch of a VP who throws tantrums like that - it is far worse when you try to cover up the story because it makes the public think: okay, if you have tried to cover this story up, what other stories have you successfully covered up? How many skeletons in the closets do Korean Air have - what else are they hiding? We're talking about a year with two major airline-related disasters, everyone is so concerned about the safety records of the airlines they are flying with. This was a relatively minor incident which resulted in the New York to Seoul flight being delayed just 11 minutes (which is a very minor inconvenience, nobody got hurt, 11 minutes is barely noticeable), they should have come clean in the first place and nip the story in the bud.

If a major international airline can Korean Air can fuck up this badly over the nut rage incident, it is understandable that a smaller company like Gushcloud can make the same mistake. After Xiaxue made her allegations, Gushcloud did the following steps (and I list them chronologically):

1. They released a statement threatening to sue Xiaxue
2. Even when given the chance to offer their side of the story with TechAsia, they were extremely vague issuing statements like “The article is inaccurate”. “The Blog Post was calculated to disparage and injure our reputation”. “The timing of the release of the Blog Post also speaks for itself.”
3. They asked their supporters to have #faithingushcloud without offering any other explanations about Xiaxue's allegation
4. They then issued a super long statement (which required 37 'Pagedowns' on my laptop) which mostly bragged about all the things that Gushcloud have done well as a business but avoids directly dealing with a lot of Xiaxue's allegations (especially ref: Doug Chu SL).
5. From a very antagonistic stance, Gushcloud then change their tune, back down and want to make peace? "Mr Ha ended the post with "live and let live". Speaking to The Straits Times, Mr Ha said that Gushcloud will not be pursuing the matter further. "It's the holiday season, and we have no intention of making this matter into more than it is," he said. "At the end of the day, we just want to make peace." Woah, what happened then, why the change of heart?

Now step 5 is a huge U-turn (and a very hasty one if I may add) after the first 4 steps - to call it a sudden change of mind is an understatement. Did their lawyers advice them to take this step? Clearly someone told Gushcloud to step away from the fight and by default, hand victory to Xiaxue. Now what they could have done was nip this all in the bud by jumping to step 5 - that would have reduced a lot of the bad publicity associated with this "fight". Such as the accusation about inflated earnings: by Vincent Ha's own admission, this was a mistake on his part. So if that is the case, just admit, "okay, that was our error, my bad, we are sorry and will issue a clarification. No ifs, no buts, no excuses." Owning up to your mistake is probably the best and most effective way to deal with such an allegation as you nip it in the bud: trying to argue your way out of it is merely going to prolong your agony. Now what they can do at least at this stage, is to issue a very short response to Xiaxue and explain your side of the story with regards to the Doug Chu SL debacle as those questions are still waiting to be answered.

So there you go - those are four points for you to ponder in this continuing Xiaxue vs Gushcloud saga. Do let me know your thoughts on this please - feel free to leave me a comment below. Thank you very much for reading!