Dong Mingzhu's "successor" Meng Yutong is undoubtedly one of the hottest Internet celebrities in recent times. She was first hand-picked by Dong Mingzhu as a female secretary, and then registered Douyin to start bringing goods for Gree, and then recently was exposed to sign an MCN agency when she was exposed to college, and she has long planned to take the road of Internet celebrity. Behind the marketing of Internet celebrities, there is a key background: Gree's product diversification strategy does not work, and the air conditioning business is declining. Since last year, Gree's market value has evaporated by 200 billion. The fault of the enterprise is the founder's pot. Dong Mingzhu began a series of new operations. In fact, from the perspective of various event marketing, popular people, and rapid opening of stores with goods, Gree's recent series of actions have revealed the urgency of wanting to transform and break the situation. A marketing expert told Pencil Road that these measures can more or less reflect Gree's anxiety and uneasiness about the current situation. After product diversification, Gree's performance in life appliances is not outstanding, and it cannot make up for the gap caused by the downturn in the air conditioning business. The domestic air conditioning market is gradually saturated, the competition is fierce, and Gree even lost its former sales champion treasure. In addition, the past channel advantages have become today's burdens, and online marketing such as live streaming with goods is also one of the solutions to Dong Mingzhu's bets. Can influencer marketing and Kol anchors improve gree's business status? It is difficult to say, but Gree needs not only Internet celebrities, but also should control the "core technology" again like the original advertising slogan, and become a "new Gree" that conforms to the current consumer trend.
Create Gree's "Li Jiaqi"
"This look is hype, the purpose is to live stream the goods, to incubate the Internet celebrities themselves." Li Guoqing is worthy of being an old jianghu, and his words are a slur.
Li Guoqing was talking about Gree, Dong Mingzhu and Meng Yutong, who were on the cusp of the storm recently.
"We must cultivate Meng Yutong to become the second Dong Mingzhu." Not long ago, a sentence from Dong Mingzhu, chairman of Gree Electric Appliances, made her secretary Meng Yutong completely popular.
The 22-year-old college student who just graduated, Dong Mingzhu's female secretary, and Gree's successor, combining this element together will undoubtedly attract a high degree of attention.
And that's true. Meng Yutong's personal Douyin account "Meng Yutong Morita" rose by more than 900,000 fans a week, and as of press time, the number of "Meng Yutong Morita" Douyin fans reached 1.191 million, the number of Weibo fans was 174,000, and the number of Xiaohongshu fans was 450,000.
However, as the events fermented, more and more details and truths surfaced.
On November 29, Meng Yutong was on the hot search again, and "Dong Mingzhu's 22-year-old secretary was once an MCN contracted celebrity" once ranked first in Weibo's hot search.
In response to the question, Meng Yutong quickly responded on Weibo: "I have never participated in any incubation, operation and transformation of the institution, let alone the so-called MCN contract celebrity, it is really a pure vegan female college student on the program." At present, he has long since withdrawn from the Worry-Free Media Association. ”
Meng Yutong posted clarifications on Weibo
Although Meng Yutong debunked the identity of "MCN contracted celebrity", the work she is doing now is not much different from it. It's just that the MCN behind this has changed from worry-free to Gree.
A month ago, on November 3, before being advertised as a "future successor", Meng Yutong appeared in Gree's live broadcast room, listing a total of 24 products in the four-hour live broadcast, with a total of 113,000 viewers and a single sales of about 620,000 yuan.
At the same time as Meng Yutong's personal Weibo account rose sharply, a Douyin account nicknamed "Pearl Yutong Selection" was quietly registered, and the number of fans reached 110,000 in just a few days. In the first video, Meng Yutong said, "I will share the products of Gree Electric Appliances on this account." ”
The account is certified as "Gree E-commerce Co., Ltd.", and the bound store is "GREE Small Household Appliances Flagship Store", which includes 61 products including sterilization small square tubes, ultrasonic humidifiers, air purifiers, rice cookers and so on. At present, the store has sold 864 pieces.
Meng Yutong's Douyin account released a video with goods
At the same time, Gree also opened a new action. It is understood that Zhuhai Gree Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. recently applied for the registration of a number of "Pearl Yu tong", "Meng Yu Tong" and "Yu Tong" trademarks, the international classification includes advertising sales, scientific instruments, convenience foods, etc., the current trademark status is in the application.
Perhaps in order to make the public's image of "Dong Mingzhu's successor" more profound, Meng Yutong also gave up his youthful and beautiful high ponytail style, cut off his long hair, and reproduced a young version of Dong Mingzhu's short hair.
Slowly, the outside world found that the so-called successor is purely marketing and rhythm, "heir" becomes "cargo carrier", "the second Dong Mingzhu" is not equal to "Gree successor". Just like L'Oréal hatched Li Jiaqi that year, what Dong Mingzhu wants to cultivate is actually Li Jiaqi who belongs to Gree.
In the latest response, Dong Mingzhu also said: "To train Meng Yutong into the second Dong Mingzhu, everyone seems to think that the future is the chairman and president, in fact, it is not, Gree needs countless Dong Mingzhu to establish such a culture." ”
Why choose Meng Yutong? Dong Mingzhu once explained that Meng Yutong's biggest competitiveness is to suffer more than others, has a very active personality, has a strong ability to learn and respond, and is suitable for marketing and marketing.
Marketing and marketing need to be focused.
The championship was lost, and Gree was in a slump
"Good air conditioning, Gree made." With this slogan, Gree ranked first in the domestic market share for 18 consecutive years from 2003 to 2020.
However, in the past two years, Gree's original advantage is no longer there, and even the champion position has been lost, and it has been left behind by the old rival Midea Group. Looking back at the annual report data of previous years, before 2020, Gree Electric Appliances has obvious advantages in net profit, ranking first in the three giants of Midea, Gree and Haier home appliances. However, affected by the epidemic in 2020, Gree's air-conditioning business was frustrated, which caused the company's net profit to fall sharply.
When the semi-annual report was issued this year, Haier had surpassed Gree and become the second largest electrical appliance company in China. The latest third quarter financial reports released by the three companies show that from Q1 to Q3 this year, the revenue of Midea Group was 461.342 billion yuan, an increase of 20.57% year-on-year; Haier Zhijia was 169.964 billion yuan, an increase of 20.4% year-on-year; Gree Group revenue was 138.13 billion yuan, an increase of 9.73% year-on-year.
As a result, in the capital market, the stock price of Gree Electric Appliances has continued to be sluggish since 2020, and the stock price is close to the waist within one year. As of press time, Gree's market value is only 208.4 billion yuan, less than half of midea group.
Gree's market value is only 208.4 billion yuan, less than half of the Midea Group
Even at the end of 2020, Dong Mingzhu admitted that Gree Electric Appliances encountered unprecedented difficulties under the epidemic.
For the loss of Gree's champion, market experts have given explanations: Cheng also "focused", defeat also "focused", that year, Gree focused on the air conditioning market, defeated many opponents, and became the first in the industry. Later, the air conditioning market gradually saturated, fierce competition, slow growth, one-legged walking Gree, began to become difficult.
In fact, in the context of the slowdown in the growth of the air conditioning market, Gree has been trying to diversify its business, exploring areas spanning mobile phones, medical equipment and new energy.
"Take the Gree mobile phone to direct the electrical appliances at home, enjoy the temperature brought by Gree at home, eat the rice cooked by Gree electrical appliances, and drive our electric car." Dong Mingzhu painted a picture of such a Gree strategic layout.
However, a marketing expert analyzed the pencil road, and these measures can more or less reflect Gree's anxiety and uneasiness about the current situation.
Crucially, Gree's diversification strategy has not worked.
According to the 2020 financial report of Gree Electric Appliances, its air-conditioning business revenue accounted for 60%, while the proportion of living appliances and intelligent equipment was only 3% and 0.3%.
When the air conditioning business is firmly in the position of big brother, the profit margin far exceeding that of its peers can make up for the drawbacks of a single business structure, but when the myth of the air conditioning business is ended, Gree's failure in the diversification of home appliances is particularly prominent. For example, The Gree small household appliances such as humidifiers, purifiers, and rice cookers brought by Meng Yutong are not very competitive in the market compared with other similar brands.
"Gree's performance in life appliances is not outstanding, and it cannot make up for the gap caused by the downturn in the air conditioning business." The above experts said.
An ordinary user also said the general psychology of consumers, "If you buy air conditioners, even if it is more expensive, I may choose Gree because I feel that the quality is guaranteed; but if I buy some small household appliances, such as health pots, juicers, rice cookers and the like, I may be more inclined to other brands." Cost performance is one of the reasons, in terms of styling design is also more popular with young people. ”
Gree needs "Dong Mingzhu" or "Li Jiaqi"
A venture capital insider commented that Gree is now in the stage of "scraping bones and healing poison". "The purpose is to improve the current channel drawbacks, Gree fell behind and was overtaken by the United States, and it is also reflected in the hindsight of the transformation of online sales channels."
Dong Mingzhu is a salesman, and has single-handedly built a strong and sticky dealer network of Gree. Through strong connections with large dealers and more than 30,000 core dealers offline, Gree has dominated the air conditioning market for more than 20 years.
But the Internet has reshaped sales channels, and the huge chain of offline dealers has now become a resistance to Gree channel reform. E-commerce is a typical low-price competition, electrical appliance brands want to get involved in online, need to significantly reduce the price of air conditioning terminals, the multi-layer mark-up offline sales system to integrate. For example, Midea has cut off the sales division of 4%-5% of the channel price increase, making the terminal price much lower than Gree.
Nowadays, with the popularity of people, the creation of topics, the rapid opening of stores with goods, Gree's recent series of actions have revealed the desire to break the situation online channels. Live streaming with goods has become one of the means for Dong Mingzhu to reform Gree channels.
Before Meng Yutong, Dong Mingzhu had tried to personally engage in live streaming with goods. In April 2020, Dong Mingzhu opened the live broadcast with the debut of goods, and the continuous caton of the network caused Dong Mingzhu's dissatisfaction, and the sales were not satisfactory. According to the data, Dong Mingzhu's live broadcast debut night has accumulated 4.31 million views, the number of online people has peaked at 216,300, the sales of goods are 225,300 yuan, and the highest sales product is the new crown air purifier, with a total of 36,200 yuan sold 3 units.
Later, Dong Mingzhu has always insisted on live streaming with goods. In 2020, Gree's "Zhihui 618 • Healthy Life Home" theme live broadcast activity set a sales record of 10.27 billion yuan. At the same time, Dong Mingzhu's cumulative sales of 5 live broadcasts exceeded 17.8 billion yuan.
Data show that in 2020, Dong Mingzhu conducted 13 live broadcasts with goods, and the total sales reached 47.62 billion yuan, accounting for a quarter of the total revenue of Gree of 170.497 billion yuan in the same year.
It seems that Dong Mingzhu has found a new growth code. Gree Electric Appliances also said that the sales channels have been reformed, and the follow-up live broadcast will also add some richer content as much as possible on the basis of the existing platform to let everyone understand the products of Gree Electric Appliances. According to the content of the previous three quarterly reports of Gree Electric Appliances, Gree Electric Appliances is accelerating the channel reform, through the opening of the new retail marketing model reform of double-line integration, building a solid online and offline business layout, the two channels complement each other and deeply integrate, to create an omni-channel sales platform.
In July this year, Dong Mingzhu said when participating in a roundtable forum: "This year will still do live broadcasting, but it will not be as frequent as last year, and it will also bring a group of people." At that time, the market interpreted that Dong Mingzhu would train young people to carry out live streaming instead of himself.
Now it seems that Meng Yutong may be one of them. Because Gree needs a Li Jiaqi or Wei Ya who belongs to his own camp. A "young Dong Mingzhu" is needed to keep up with the mainstream of the market and help Gree transform to diversification more deeply, while also taking into account online and offline channels.
"Gree can't sell, not a single anchor can increase sales." After the Meng Yutong incident, a Gree dealer said so in an interview with the media.
So what does Gree need? "It is not 'Dong Mingzhu' or 'Li Jiaqi', but once again controlling the 'core technology' and becoming a 'new Gree' that conforms to the current consumers and the trend of the times." Some practitioners commented.