The Philharmonic is on the verge of crisis and needs making choices

Over the past dozens of days, as investors have intervened, the company has undergone major surgical layoffs. It's not a rumor, it's a fact. The company's employees have shrunk from the top four hundred or five hundred to the current 150来, business, content, sales department of nearly half of the downsizing, the channel department overall cut, the product, technical department almost lost, the staff in a single digit calculation; the company stopped year-end award, morale, all are looking forward to be laid off. Under such conditions, whether the Philharmonic can maintain its normal business, this is a problem.

Fu second Generation Philharmonic live, the official venture less than 1 years, how has become this appearance?

As part of Baidu's middle page strategy, the Philharmonic has a very good blueprint for the parent company and the investor, and they describe themselves as: Philharmonic is a city of good discovery and sharing, but also a consumer guide to urban Quality, dedicated to the development of a localized life platform and O2O e-business. It looks beautiful, and it is a pity that the Philharmonic has made many mistakes in its execution.

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I think at least the following points:

Strategy not clear: this year, Philharmonic live product is strange and changeable, social direction is very fire, so imitation timeline did the time axis, Pinterest very tide, so the page became a waterfall flow, then, E-commerce can not be lost, then do do group buying mode of the mall, the micro-magazine seems to be good oh, So there is a happy blog, launched the company must write a few of each person, localized businesses do not buy, and began to do Taobao merchants Shopping Guide ... It's hard to believe that this series of actions is done in just a few months. O2O in the field of everyone in the fog, the product repeated trial and error is no problem, but did not want to clear strategic direction, spend a lot of money blindfolded head around, fell into the abyss of the risk is quite high. False action too much, the unpredictable, not only the user looked at the eye, the internal team also overwhelmed.

Self-hypnosis false entrepreneurship: All along, the Philharmonic is declared to be a start-up company, to eliminate the disease of large companies, internal is also so. Self-hypnosis for too long, even I believe. But in fact, most of the staff are from the Baidu place, let them from the atmosphere, quickly add "Wolf" aura, which is very difficult. O2O industries are dirty live dirty, the company from top to bottom, it is difficult to easily put down their posture. No molding products will get tens of millions of dollars in investment, in the vicinity of the bird's Nest rented luxury office, do not worry about livelihood, such a rich second generation, will produce a wolf?

Product operation thinking behind: Philharmonic live definition of their own for the quality of life consumption guide, when users visit the site, see more is by the people to share a variety of raiders, guide users to jump to other merchant pages to buy. And a lot of people enjoy this not to publish a share of the power of the sun from doing community activities to earn gold coins prizes, a large number of repetitive meaningless word-of-mouth content flooded in the meantime, such a pattern and 55bbs, broadband mountain, beautiful said almost. It seems that the Philharmonic live the local consumption guide as a word of mouth content, these are public relations companies, Community forum webmaster Play Rotten Things, seems to be here makeover, glow of the second spring. Similar to the operation of the BBS mode, can support Baidu Middle page strategy big dream?

An obsession with products that disregard the needs of users: undeniably, Philharmonic live product design is very beautiful, a variety of dazzling pictures and texts to share, from the visual let people "unknown", but there is no access to the absolute advantages of channels, the pure fresh product style in the public comments, micro-life, Taobao crevice want to survive, this is not easy? O2O originally is to need grounding gas things, users do not care about your page beautiful or not, can be concise and clear, fast and efficient solution to consumer spending decisions, and complete the transaction is the core appeal. But now the product, in addition to increase the user's decision-making difficulty, but also extended the user's consumption path. It is difficult for users to tell whether these are real people or the Navy, users can comment on the public and net easy to fix the demand, here become extremely cumbersome.

Marketing is not a system, the flow of hematopoietic insufficiency: In the previous article mentioned a netizen said: "I have never in the know and you are not outside the place to see this dongdong information." "This is really the impression that the Philharmonic has left most observers. In fact, during the year, the Philharmonic spent a short period of time in the subway, video, nets and other large number of ads, the CEO made the appearance of "You", incidentally in London before the Olympic Games also sponsored a convoy ride to London activities. Market direction of investment can not say little, it is difficult to believe that the impression left to the target user is still vague, the target user group exposure rate is not enough, directly resulting in the user spontaneous real traffic access and new active users less to the poor. Market level of scattered spread, and other departments to fight, each other, never formed a strong synergistic effect. Transmission channel Choice is very random and unreasonable, many times and the target user group does not match. It's full of doubt, where does a lot of the market cost go?

Dyspepsia。 Since the external flow of the lack of access, Baidu's parent company's flow of blood transfusion becomes particularly important. But the messy strategy and weak products, resulting in a very high user turnover rate, wasted Baidu to provide it with the commercial value of nuggets ads. Can you count on a newborn baby to eat the whole family barrel? Product weakness leads to a high rate of user churn, and in the end, the most active every day is the company's employees and hired talent, we closed the door to entertain themselves. This time the Philharmonic live, like a big toy.

There is no profit model. This is an industry common problem, needless to say. But hand in hand Baidu to provide Baidu Nuggets advertising and auction ranking services, can be used as a value-added service for merchants, but do not know how to realize, we can say?

Rhythm out of control. This is a problem that has to be said in addition to the product. As the key project of Baidu Middle page strategy, it is necessarily facing the national market, which needs to be in the north of Guang plowing, the product matures, rapidly in the national market scale development. Unfortunately, the Philharmonic has implemented the opposite strategy. Entrepreneurship at the beginning of the period, the product has not yet matured, synchronized the expansion of a wide range of channels to seek agents cooperation. Has opened a number of Shanghai, Fuzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan, Nanjing, more than a separate station. Xi ' An, Chengdu, Shenyang and other land are also in the establishment of cooperation channels. Affected by the strategic and product constraints, these stations are particularly difficult to carry out the business, too early to start the commercialization process, from the beginning to lose the support of local businesses in cities. With the current Philharmonic, the impact of the overall contraction, agents have no one to ask, Wuhan, Nanjing and other branches are also facing the abolition of the problem, Fuzhou, Tianjin and other agents to put the funds thoroughly hit the water drift, deep mire. The current Philharmonic live, basically only left Beijing and Shanghai are still operating (in comparison, Shanghai's team more grounded gas a point) even so, the Philharmonic live in the Beijing-Shanghai market share compared with their peers, is still at a disadvantage. Baidu and investors invested 50 million of dollars, not to go with 55bbs and broadband mountain to rob jobs.

Perhaps more than that, the various blunders of the Philharmonic's life. In the last article "Why Fu second generation Philharmonic live so tangled?" summed up in place, in addition to the team's own genes, the company's top strategic mistakes more critical. CEO Cai past career background is very bright, but there is no experience in the operation of products and electric operators, the work experience in the Baidu Alliance is more sales and marketing business, as the sales and market-born professional managers, the lack of disregard of entrepreneurial spirit, too many idealism, do not understand products, do not pay attention to products, Philharmonic Live now the problem , leaders have to blame. In the process of the author's interview with the Philharmonic's living staff, the whole company carried out all the projects, ignoring the needs of the users, with the high level preference as the driving force, the greatness working atmosphere was the most criticized. In the context of Robin Li's call for Wolf's return, these problems seem to be a lot more abrupt.

Not long ago, Philharmonic CEO Cai in the internal summary to reflect on their own: dormant in the winter, to zero entrepreneurship, focus on the only, waiting for the move, the remainder of the king.

The question is: from have ah close to now, repeatedly return to zero, Philharmonic live still can withstand toss?

How does the Philharmonic deserve to move forward in the new year?

Philharmonic live out of the way, many people in the industry to discuss a lot, in the previous article "Why the rich second-generation Philharmonic live so tangled?", the author said: "The Philharmonic has been working in seven fields for a year, and it is entirely possible to pick a real field to do something about it." I disagree. In this year, the Philharmonic has made a choice, from the current home can be seen. Food, marriage, beauty has become a priority of navigation items. Philharmonic live Cong Gold City digging to senior executives responsible for the food sector has been for several months, many constraints to make it impossible; the marriage industry is supported by individual backbone alone. This does not mean that the Philharmonic is living in the fine classification of the special essence, how many with a point of saving straws. The large company's platform thinking will restrict the input of the subdivision content, the dirty live dirty of the subdivision field is more suitable for a small start-up company. Besides, it's their original goal to do a life-like, electronic platform with a precise flow distribution platform.

The author believes that, under the premise that the strategy is clear for three years, the way of the Philharmonic's life may be as follows:

1, merged to Baidu lbs division. The Philharmonic is not worthless, and business operations are worth continuing. Abolish technology and product department, enlarge content and channel Department, and merge into lbs division. The original LBS division is responsible for products and technology, Philharmonic live in charge of industry operations, the formation of a similar micro-letter + micro-life mode of cooperation, combined with the product advantage of Baidu Map, to maximize the interception of users, the content and flow are left in Baidu Station, to achieve maximum commercial value.

2, the big shareholder Baidu buys the market, 58, Bai one of them, merges with it. Throw away the thinking of selling things, return to the local Life Service Platform essence (focus on service), to exchange money for time, grafting Philharmonic live original content construction, the introduction of credit and payment system, using Baidu huge flow support, will have the opportunity to overtake in the corner, become the new king of O2O electric business.

3, continue to burn money to death or close stops. There is nothing to be ashamed of admitting a mistake.

Now, the Philharmonic needs to make a tough decision!