Scandal in Wildberries: who is to blame?

Last week, the media space was full of reports about the scandalous situation that has developed in the relationship between the Wildberries marketplace and employees of the pickup points. The conflict eventually attracted the attention of the highest authorities of the state. Why the event received such a response, Moskovskaya Pravda was told by Yulia Zagitova, media researcher, secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia, founder of the Breaking Trends communication agency.

The scandal began to flare up in early March, when Wildberries introduced tough penalties for employees of pick-up points (POIs) for defective or replaced goods. By the middle of the month, outraged by the situation when, in fact, they have to work only for fines, some employees and owners of the pickup point went on strike and went on storm the Wildberries offices to resolve contentious issues. However, the company was in no hurry to make contact. On the other hand, the federal and regional mass media became interested in the scandal, and the media space was filled with publications about the “draconian” methods of doing business, the most popular marketplace in Russia.

According to the Medialogy company, only on March 14 and 15, Wildberries was mentioned in the media more than 4 thousand times in connection with the conflict with the pickup point, and about 35.4 thousand times in social networks. And in this case, the postulate “anti-advertising is also advertising” is hardly applicable. The company does not really need to advertise its trading platform, but negative publications have had a bad effect on its reputation. At the very least, it will definitely be more difficult to find new managers in the Wildberries pickup point.

Widespread coverage of the conflict led to the reaction of state authorities. The Prosecutor General’s Office became interested in the situation, promising to check the data on the violation of the labor rights of employees of the PVZ, and reacted to the scandal in the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Digital Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and Rospotrebnadzor. The State Duma of the Russian Federation promised to deal with the problem of interaction between marketplaces and employees and owners of pickup points. In general, an essentially private history has acquired a federal scale.

As a result, Wildberries canceled more than 10,000 accrued fines, restored interrupted relationships with some pickup points and announced an update to the feedback system with employees and partners of the company.

The company said that it was subjected to an information attack.

“We received an analysis of the information field from the largest PR agencies in Russia. Professionals in the field of PR agreed that the company was subjected to an information attack with a budget of several tens of millions of rubles. The main part of the attack is carried out by telegram channels – the gray zone of the media space, which is not regulated and is not subject to the legislation of the Russian Federation, – quotes words of the representative of Wildberries RBC.

Meanwhile, even if this is true, the blame for such an “anti-advertising” campaign lies with Wildberries itself, says Yulia Zagitova, secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia.

“The scandalous case of Wildberries showed not the marketing policy and not the company’s brand, but rather their absence,” the expert notes. — Yes, there is a well-known trademark, but we do not see the company’s brand in the mass media. If the closest competitors – Ozon and Aliexpress – had stellar faces with which these companies were associated, then Wildberries has only its founder and owner Tatyana Bakalchuk. Full-fledged communications were not built with the owners of distribution points, as well as with the media. Attempts to protest by the owners of the pickup points led to disconnection of dissatisfied participants from the system. And then some sellers left without business remembered that their activity was very similar to labor, and filed applications with the prosecutor’s office. Ordinary buyers observed all this and drew conclusions: since the prosecutor’s office was involved, it means that the company is violating the law; deceived sellers – deceived buyers; There is no guarantee that the purchased item will be picked up.

According to Yulia Zagitova, the point of view of Wildberries in the media space was not expressed in a timely manner, most likely due to the lack of a communication strategy. As a result, only negative reviews and scandalous facts got into the information space at the height of the conflict.

– The problem would not have arisen so acutely if the company maintained contact with partners and the media. This requires a communication strategy and a policy of interaction both with branches and with an external information space in which Wildberries representatives could broadcast their point of view and close the objections that have arisen.

Well, perhaps the company will reconsider its communication strategy. But time cannot be turned back, and what happened has already happened. So now let’s see how the scandal will affect Wildberries’ revenue, as well as the work of marketplaces and Russian legislation in general.

Alena Bodrienko.

Photo by Denis Voronin / Moskva agency