Can "user co-creation" really build a good car?

Source: WeChat public account "Autostinger", author: Peng Fei

Success is also Xiao He, and defeat is also Xiao He?

"I feel that I have been insulted in the year of life, which is scolding my king ba."

Every year to the end of the year, Weilai will launch a mascot of the zodiac series, in order to integrate the brand logo element, the tiger's beard and the "king" word on the head after combining, it triggered the above users to complain and complain.

Before (left) VS After modification (right)

The incident occurred on December 1, just four days later, WEILAI announced that all "mascot" orders accepted unconditional refunds and returns, and within 24 hours, tiger brother "shaved" his beard and re-handed over to the factory for order.

"It's hard to say who's right and who's wrong, users are not satisfied, we can afford to change it!" For this very small matter, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of Weilai Automobile, is a bit crying and laughing, but it is also an understatement, after all, the hundreds of thousands of people who have changed the mascot are not much compared to the tens of millions of charters of machine wine that spent tens of millions of packages of wine to invite intended users to participate in the conference.

Many people have sneered at this set of "kneeling licks" operated by Weilai users, but now, almost all car companies are busy copying homework and want to make friends with users.

In the past year, becoming a "user co-creation" enterprise, more and more car companies have been highly proposed, from new forces to independent brands to independent brand incubation of emerging sub-brands, as if not mentioning this model, is not up to the times, or even the enemy of the times.

Is user co-creation a story that car companies must tell at present? Are users really participating in "co-creation"? Can this road be opened? I am afraid that most car companies have not found the answer to these mysteries themselves.

#01用户共创成车企第二战场?

In the past, traditional car companies sold cars, one relied on product strength, and the other relied on advertising. Most brands are high in the eyes of users, until now, there are many luxury brands, users still need to "look up".

In fact, the entire automotive circle has not lacked fans and fan groups, and the establishment of car clubs and clubs by enterprises can be regarded as an early state of user operation, which is essentially directly connected with users and enhances relationships.

Nowadays, the new car-making forces represented by Weilai are more intimate with users, interacting with users at high frequency every day, and moving the Internet's user-first culture, that is, the set of "pet fans", so that the original loose user group is twisted into a "rice circle".

The enthusiasm of Weilai users to participate in the company's business is so high that outsiders can hardly imagine, from designing peripherals to operating conferences, from product improvement programs to out-of-pocket advertising, and even thousands of volunteers volunteer to go to Weilai stores every day to introduce and recommend products, and Weilai's transaction orders were once nearly 70% recommended from old users.

This set of user-created experiences and methodologies is not easy to replicate. However, everyone seems to have reached a consensus that simply emphasizing the value of products is not enough to stimulate consumer demand, so that users can directly participate in the whole process of product definition, design, research and development and landing, and become the owner and co-builder of the brand, so as to have the opportunity to make truly popular products.

In the field of the Internet, Xiaomi's rise by relying on "enthusiasts" is a successful model. At the beginning of its establishment, Xiaomi first cultivated a group of seed users, paid great attention to their feedback, and encouraged users to participate in xiaomi's mobile phone research and development.

As Lei Jun often said: "Xiaomi's product attitude is the ultimate pursuit of details, and it is willing to tire of changing it." We Xiaomi do not have KPIs. If there is, there are only two: first, whether the user screams after using our product; second, whether the user will recommend it to his friends after using our product. ”

This also corresponds to the concept of the "consumerizer" proposed by Alvin Toffler, author of The Third Wave, that is, the fusion of producers and consumers.

Around the co-creation of users, each car company shows different ways. The name of the Great Wall "Haval Big Dog" is selected by user voting, and the Great Wall brands have successively released a number of user co-creation plans such as "Create Ha Together" and "Ark Pilot"; Geely Automobile launched the user co-creation brand "We"; Zhiji Automobile held a user product co-creation activity IM TECH DAY offline salon; SAIC MG launched a co-creation platform MG Cyber Cube, and the mass production method and results will be determined by the user.

For a time, every car company has become a user-oriented enterprise that has transformed into "opening doors and building cars". From the naming of the model, the color of the body, to the design of the appearance, the configuration of the cockpit, you can give the decision to the user, and then the car company attracted a wave of fans, and then put into the next "user co-creation" project.

#02用户真能 "co-creation" freedom?

In the early days, due to technical constraints and consumers' incomplete understanding of automotive products, the interaction between car companies and users was mostly limited to the marketing level.

Now that it has entered the era of intelligent cars, car companies hope to turn marketing to a Lego-style operation model when doing user co-creation, that is, the brand provides users with a semi-finished product, and the brand and the user need to work together to complete a "work".

Why "Wei Xiaoli" head car-making new forces, according to the needs of users, and constantly refine products, on the one hand, the new forces are good at collecting user feedback, can modify the product from the flat decision-making process; on the other hand, from the advancement of technology, full-stack self-developed electronic and electrical architecture, can more easily implement customized requirements. All of this makes the opportunity for user dominance mature.

Shen Hui, the founder of WM Motor, said bluntly, "Now users can define software, which can be defined before the product is formed, can be defined after buying a car, changed, and can be defined when using a car." ”

These technological advances have made it possible for users to participate in the entire life cycle of the vehicle, including personalization from software to hardware. In recent years, the transformation of traditional car companies has also accelerated the spread of the concept of user co-creation.

Before the production of the vehicle, Geely will invite some users to the Shanghai Styling Center to give users advice on the appearance and interior. Geely said, "SEA Haohan architecture and CMA architecture, in the electronic and electrical and power and other aspects of open advantages, can also support users to create more creative landing." ”

Coincidentally, when creating the MG Cyberster supercar, mg brands position users as participants, decision makers and beneficiaries of the product, and can participate in co-creation from the level of modeling and design, performance and driving control and the intelligent cockpit of e-sports.

In addition to software and hardware, in the era of intelligent electric vehicles, user behavior data can also be used as an important basis for product improvement. Based on SAIC's "atomized" structure, Zhiji Automobile has launched a more pioneering form of co-creation , the "Rough Stone Project". Zhiji will issue 300 million "rough stones" based on 4.9% equity to create a CSOP user data rights plan.

At present, it is obviously the best era for car companies to open "user co-creation", but this road is "one foot high, the magic is one foot high", and while car companies continue to polish their products, many troubles will also come to them.

At the Cyber modeling co-creation session held by MG a few days ago, when Shao Jingfeng, director of the design department of the technical center of SAIC Passenger Car Company, came up with a painstaking exterior design and put it on the table for users to propose modifications, the whole process was like the pain of "ten thousand arrows piercing the heart" for him.

"There are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people", consumers do not think too much about brand elements, but only want to look good and stunning. When the user's inspiration blossoms and rejects the original professional aesthetic, how do car companies make a choice? Is it to retain the brand elements and inherit the century-old historical precipitation, or to throw away the historical baggage and cater to the preferences of consumers? These are the biggest annoyances that car companies have to face.

A new car is released, which is different from the launch of new products in the surrounding area. NIO can shave off the "beard", the mascot of the Year of the Tiger, which represents the brand element, and will never make hasty decisions on the design of a model. After all, any company or brand has its own brand GENES.

For example, lamp design, enterprises have been involved in the early stage of product development. If the consumer is not satisfied and changes again, then the entire new car delivery time needs to be delayed by at least half a year, and consumers who have not participated in the review are willing to accept this fact? Who should pay for the cost lost by car companies in the 6-month empty window period?

As the two sides of supply and demand, car companies and users have a natural difference in appeal, automotive products from research and development to delivery is a complex process, users and manufacturers of professional cognition of this is not completely symmetrical, to let all users participate and satisfied, itself is a super difficult proposition.

The above troubles are only a part of the styling design, and the more the car companies let users participate in the decision-making, the more the troubles will increase exponentially, which is the "law of complexity".

#03车企会被用户 "kidnapping"?

At present, all kinds of "user co-creation" of car companies, from shallow to deep, have indeed subverted the most traditional car-making model. But on closer inspection, it is not so pure and extreme.

Industry insiders believe that at present, user co-creation is still an idealized existence, which looks beautiful, but subject to the professional attributes of the automobile research and development and manufacturing end, it is impossible to include all the wild ideas proposed by users, and can only adopt some personalized suggestions. Car companies grasp the scale, "Am I spoiling the user? Or do you work with users as colleagues? "These are new topics.

At present, the co-creation of most car companies is that engineers and product managers listen to the voice of users, and limitedly adopt the opinions of some users, whether it is live discussion, or online voting, this co-creation can be understood as another form of user research. Whether it can be successfully and persistently operated as a model has yet to be explored and tested in practice.

Extreme Krypton "played" in front of the user once. In March this year, Geely launched the high-end electric brand Extreme Krypton, which "insists on co-creation with users". The first product, ZEEKR 001, received a large number of orders as soon as it was released, but with the delivery of the vehicle, user complaints followed.

Because the product has not been finalized and began to accept orders, a large number of car owners questioned the misleading krypton marketing and the routine of "cutting leeks". From "disguised price increases" to "passenger seat ventilation, gradient canopy and other standard configuration variations", and then to "800V charging to 400V charging", frequent rollover events, it can be seen that the scale of user expectations is not easy to grasp.

If enterprises cannot grasp the sense of boundaries in publicity, and lack performance in terms of organizational ability and coping experience, then when the massive personalized demands of users pour in, contradictions and conflicts will inevitably wander between car companies and users.

In the matter of user co-creation, An Conghui, CEO of Extreme Kr Automobile, also bluntly said, "There is no standard answer to this question." Only the most suitable, there is no best solution. It can be seen that Extreme Krypton only puts the consumer demand of "co-creation" on the table, to what extent it is satisfied, presumably Extreme Krypton is also feeling the stones to cross the river, taking a step to see a step.

Even Weilai, which is a benchmark enterprise in user operation, is gradually showing its two-sidedness as the user group gradually expands.

A few months ago, the Weilai vehicle seat design incident, so that many so-called similar experience of car owners, have complained to Weilai, pressure to improve the comfort of the seat as soon as possible; another Weilai ES8 owner self-driving car accident death incident, when some car owners jointly issued support for Weilai, but other owners opposed "being represented".

For a time, the user "moat" that Weilai was proud of became a sharp blade against Weilai.

"It's the biggest test for the team in the next few years, not one of them." In the face of the decline in user experience, Qin Lihong frankly said that all Weilai can do at present is "anti-aging", from the initial 100% will gradually drop to 30%, hoping that it will stay longer in the 60% stage.

Being repulsed by users is not a case encountered by Weilai or Extreme Krypton single enterprises, and in recent years, whether it is Ideal, Xiaopeng, or Tesla, they cannot escape friction with users. The reason behind this is related to the high expectations of car companies to raise users.

When car companies hold high the banner of "user co-creation", it will lead to a sharp increase in user pickiness. And this high expectation is not raised by the users themselves, but is pulled up by the new brand's personality, publicity and new retail model.

"Every gift of fate is secretly marked with a price tag." Since the car company has set up a "user co-creation" design from the beginning, it has gained the trust of users in the early stage, and relied on core users to accumulate word of mouth, making it a super communicator. Then, car companies should be prepared to accept the user's pickiness and reaction.