The Huawei $54 phone promotion last Friday (27 Jul) left many Singaporeans with a bitter taste in their mouths.
Yet 4 days later on Wednesday (31 Jul), Huawei Singapore placed a job listing for a new Director of Public Relations (PR) on its LinkedIn page.
The listing appears to be looking for someone with considerable years of experience – at least 8 – and fluent in Vietnamese.
This person will handle brand campaigns, deal with the media, and create content.
The successful applicant will be based in Ho Chi Minh City.
However, Huawei stopped accepting applications just a day after listing the role and did not mention why.
Last Friday (27 Jul), most elderly Singaporeans who turned up at Huawei stores for the $54 phone promotion found themselves going home empty-handed.
Police armed with guns had to be dispatched to Huawei stores as the assembled folk’s discontent threatened to erupt.
Huawei was forced into damage control as they had grossly underestimated the demand. They first apologised and then urged customers to not queue at their stores anymore:
On Tuesday (30 Jul), Huawei issued a statement hoping to “make it right” by offering $100 vouchers to 5,000 customers who had registered for the promotion.
However, that wasn’t enough to placate the crowd.
As of 1 Aug, there were 356 reactions and the majority of them used either the ‘angry’ or ‘laugh’ emoji to describe their feelings.
On the internet, we refer to this disproportion as being ratioed: a phenomenon where a tweet or post has more comments than reactions.
Usually, it’s because many people are angry, and this seems to be the case for this incident.
Huawei’s $54 phone promotion could definitely have been run better, but their follow-up actions seem to suggest that they are apologetic about what had happened.
Moving forward, we hope whoever lands the role would learn from this incident and ensure that there’s good communication with customers during future promotions.
Featured image via Linkedin and courtesy of an MS News reader.
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