Zhang Yiming Feishu, TikTok fired global executives

Produced by｜Huxiu Business, Consumption and Mobility Group

Author｜Huang Qingchun

Title and Picture｜Visual China

Last Friday , a piece of news that TikTok’s global marketing director Nick Tran was fired for planning false marketing spread like wildfire on the Internet.

First, the American technology media The Information reported that two people familiar with the matter revealed that TikTok’s global marketing director Nick Tran had resigned; later, the New York Post reported that TikTok’s former marketing director Nick Tran was responsible for planning TikTok’s entry into catering and other false claims. Marketing and fired.

NickTran picture source LinkedIn

Last night, Huxiu learned from Pandaily’s exclusive report that Nick Tran’s dismissal may be related to the TikTok Kitchen series of marketing activities launched at the end of December 2021 - Zhang Yiming It even stated internally that these activities not only hurt the brand by becoming negative and joke news, but also caused serious damage to the business.

Pandaily confirmed to Huxiu that at the beginning of this month, Zhang Yiming discussed on Feishu with ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo and TikTok’s current CEO Zhou Shouzi, saying,

I recently said in the media I saw it and was asked by my friends what was going on. I was very depressed, didn’t want to answer, and didn’t know how to answer. This wasn’t the first, second, or third time. I believe the management team has also concluded and emphasized that this cannot be done. I don’t know why we continue to engage in superficial gimmick marketing again and again.

These activities not only hurt the brand by causing negative and joke news, but also caused serious damage to the business. This type of marketing is usually done by narcissistic dinosaur companies who ‘pretend’ to be innovative, which is what we’re almost becoming. I think this is completely contrary to the principle of "being user-centered, focusing on business, being sincere and natural to the public".

Shortly afterwards, the news of Nick Tran's dismissal broke out in the media. In response, a TikTok spokesperson recently publicly stated that Nick Tran no longer works at TikTok and sincerely wishes him all the best in the future.

It can be seen that even though Zhang Yiming has withdrawn from the Bytedance board of directors in 2021 and handed over the Bytedance CEO position to Liang Rubo, his will still plays a vital role in the development of Bytedance. crucial role.

The picture shows Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo

In fact, in the past few years, Zhang Yiming led ByteDance into the hunting forbidden areas of BAT and Google/Meta/Amazon, and still remained unstoppable after encountering heavy firepower. Inadvertently rewriting the global short video landscape and giving birth to a universal entertainment platform. However, now that ByteDance has more than 110,000 employees worldwide and its business covers more than 150 countries and regions, the company's organizational capabilities and corporate culture construction will undoubtedly become the biggest problems it will face next.

As early as 2016, Zhang Yiming publicly expressed his views on the management of large companies. As the company grows, the business becomes more and more complex. When the scale of personnel is expanded, the talent team will inevitably be diluted.

LinkedIn China information shows that Nick Tran previously served as vice president of brand marketing and culture for Hulu and worked for companies such as Samsung, Taco Bell and StanceSocks.

According to informed sources, Nick Tran joined TikTok from Hulu in April 2020. In less than two years of his tenure, he led the launch of a series of topical marketing plans, including TikTok’s entry into catering, TikTok switches to food delivery, TikTok deploys NFT, etc. In addition, NickTran has also taken the lead in launching a project that supports sending video resumes for job applications, encouraging users to find jobs through short video resumes and use TikTok as a recruitment channel.

As for the TikTok Kitchen marketing campaign mentioned earlier, it only took less than a month to promote - back to December 2021, foreign media reported that TikTok would open more than 1,000 virtual kitchens by the end of 2022. restaurant and create food based on the most popular recipes on TikTok. Nick Tran even planned to cooperate with Virtual Dining Concepts to launch TikTok Kitchen across the United States that only provides delivery services.

In this regard, the person in charge of TikTok made it clear at the press conference that TikTok Kitchen is more of a marketing effort to bring the platform’s popular food to fans, rather than the company’s official foray into catering Industry.

As of press time, multiple marketing projects led by Nick Tran within TikTok have been suspended, and TikTok global chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas will temporarily take over global marketing responsibilities.

In fact, TikTok has become an overseas product with obvious global exports. Its expansion map includes local offices all over the country. It not only absorbs executives from Disney, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Sony, but also hires a large number of local employees and international students. In this regard, Zhang Yiming said in an interview with Qian Yingyi, Dean of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, that our strategy is to globalize products and localize content.

Chart statistics as of June 2021, Kevin Mayer has resigned in August

It means that remote collaboration, office systems, management systems, and even many underlying basic capabilities are being built simultaneously. In addition, The acquisition of local teams and localized operations enabled TikTok to create a huge synergy with the support of algorithms, organization, and operations.

Thanks to this, according to AppAnnie’s research data, in 2020, TikTok has become the App that American users have used the longest on average. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger owned by Meta can only rank 2~5. Bit.

It can be seen that TikTok’s growth rate is significantly faster than that of star products such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, and it has grown into a behemoth under Meta’s nose.

Moreover, TikTok has great potential to compete in the global short video social landscape - according to SensorTower data, in July 2021, TikTok’s total downloads in the global App Store and Google Play exceeded 3 billion times; according to US technology companies Cloudflare reported on December 20, 2021 that TikTok has surpassed Google to become the most visited Internet website in the world.

#I am Huang Qingchun, deputy leader of Huxiu’s business, consumption and mobility group. I focus on entertainment, social networking, games, audio and video and other fields. To communicate with industry professionals, add WeChat: 724051399. For news clues, you can also email huangqingchun @huxiu.com.