In 2021, the communication ecology will further evolve rapidly, and the communication of automobile brands will also be wrapped up in a new era. Auto companies are overwhelmed and trying to adapt to information expression in the context of digital media. But how effective are these brand communications and campaigns? What kind of automotive brand information and corporate and product cognition are heard, seen and received by the audience? Recently, Chewen Network and the Four Degrees Of Communication Research Institute, through the data scanning of the whole network, used the algorithm to summarize the 9 major events with the highest communication index in 2021 according to the weight, which basically represents -
2021 everyone really sees the car circle
Chinese University of Communication, Ph.D. Xiu Yu
Xiu Yu
01 2021 is a very lively year in the automotive circle, and a lot has happened. Behind the complexity and noisiness, which events have left a deep impression on everyone?
2021 is a year of dramatic change in the automotive industry. This year, automobile sales finally stopped the decline for three consecutive years; new energy vehicles rode the dust, and sales increased by 1.6 times year-on-year; Chinese brand cars reversed strongly, with a share of nearly half. Of course, the bad side is that the shortage of chips still plagues the entire automotive industry, and the quality of some brands of cars is still unsatisfactory. Whether it is joy or sorrow, these are the true portrayals of the automotive industry.
Specific to automobile companies, it is even more different. Recently, the Four Degrees Communication Research Institute summarized the 9 things with the highest communication index in 2021 through the data scanning of the whole network and the use of algorithms according to the weight algorithm, which can be said to basically represent the automotive circle in the eyes of the audience.
02 Although these 9 major events seem to be all-encompassing, they can actually find a certain pattern in the internal factors of these events.
If we analyze it carefully, we can see something regular in these events. For example, among these hot events, there are many events involving the quality of automobile products: including Tesla owners' auto show rights protection, Euler's "core change" anger, and the mystery of "mercury" in the ideal car seat, all of which are events strongly related to the quality of the car, accounting for 67% of the overall communication index.
There is also a more common type of event related to corporate branding. For example, Wang Lihong endorsed Infiniti's "overturning", Nezha Automobile asked Wu Yifan to endorse the farce, and Huawei, which "does not build cars", began to build cars, which accounted for 21% of the entire communication index.
Then there are the communication events caused by the views, including the "soul theory" of CHEN Hong, chairman of SAIC, which has attracted heated discussion, and Weilai Li Bin's public intimidation of the whole network of fuel vehicles, etc., which are all enterprise bosses who have spoken out in public and have been concerned by the media, which has triggered communication incidents. This category accounts for 9% of the communication index.
Another category that involves the business leaders themselves is that Qi Yumin, the former chairman of Brilliance Auto, was expelled from the party, accounting for 2% of the communication index.
03 It can be seen that public opinion on automobile quality is still a hot spot for the audience. At the same time, consumers' behavior because of the quality of the car will trigger secondary transmission, causing a huge impact.
First look at the incident about the quality of the car, the so-called Tesla auto show rights protection incident here, that is, on the opening day of the Shanghai auto show last year, a woman wearing a T-shirt printed with the "brake failure" and Tesla logo stood at the Tesla auto booth to defend her rights, thus making Tesla fall into a public opinion storm, which is still continuing to ferment. The total number of voices on the Internet reached 570,000, of which more than 110,000 on April 20, 2021, and the spread index was close to the terrifying 1500. And it quickly "broke the circle", from the news of the automotive industry to a social event. Therefore, the transmission cycle is long, and the sound volume is spread across major media platforms.
In addition to this event, the mystery of Euler's "core change" and the ideal car seat "mercury", these events account for a relatively large proportion of the transmission index, are all events strongly related to the quality of the car. This shows that car quality is still the most concerned topic for consumers, and often related topics can trigger a lot of attention and interaction.
China has been the world's largest auto market for more than a decade, but the quality of cars is still relatively prominent. In 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued a total of 159 automotive-related recalls, involving more than 8.7 million vehicles, and the total number of recalls increased by nearly 30% over 2020, and the number remained high.
At the same time, it can be seen that in the face of these car quality problems, consumers often adopt a relatively fierce way of rights protection, such as through confrontation at the auto show, such as through lawyer litigation and media exposure, etc., which also shows that the awareness of rights protection is not on the right track. There are actually many other effective and gentle ways to defend your rights.
04 Car brands need to be very cautious when choosing a spokesperson, although it is possible to increase the visibility in a short period of time, but once negative public opinion appears, the damage to the brand is often long-term and difficult to recover.
Last year, there was also a lot of public opinion in terms of auto brand endorsement, including Wang Lihong's endorsement of Infiniti's "overturning", Nezha Automobile asking Wu Yifan to endorse the farce, accounting for 20% of the total communication index, and the proportion was very large.
Although these two events are related to the spokesperson, they are not the same.
Wang Lihong's endorsement of Infiniti to the termination of cooperation took only 35 hours, known as "daily throw endorsement", because Wang Lihong's personnel collapsed. The event spread index was as high as more than 600, which is also relatively rare, with more than 160,000 voices on the whole network. Originally, Infiniti's listing was mediocre, but it took advantage of the situation to catch fire, and the single-day sound volume on Weibo alone was as high as more than 80,000. The spread of this event is characterized by short duration and rapid regression.
The cause and effect of Nezha's car is that a screenshot of Nezha's work group chat spread on the Internet broke out that Wu Yifan, who wanted to have a low moral standard, endorse Nezha Car. Of course this is not possible. Therefore, many people deeply suspect that Nezha Car is touching porcelain marketing.
This is also a typical case of marketing by taking advantage of the situation, but Nezha wants to use negative information to achieve the purpose of expanding publicity, which is a mistake in itself. And this "melon" is obviously a little big, and Nezha is a bit overwhelmed.
In these two events, although the car brand has indeed increased its popularity, in fact, in the long run, the impact on the car brand is mostly negative.
05 These public opinion events, which have generated a huge volume, have brought enlightenment to automobile companies and the dissemination of brands.
Judging from these 9 events, we found that they were all negative information, which was in line with the law of dissemination. Just as the so-called "good things don't go out, bad things spread thousands of miles", the definition of news itself is also "dog bites people is not news, but people bite dogs." "In fact, the changes in the communication situation have further stimulated people's curiosity instincts."
This is obviously contrary to the communication of corporate brands, and what brands want to spread is definitely good and positive.
However, analyzing the communication data of these 9 major events, the communication of automobile brands can still be followed by regularities. For example, from the perspective of the platform for information dissemination, the voice volume of the client and Weibo accounts for more than 60%. Therefore, when doing communication, these need to be paid attention to.
Of course, short video platforms such as Douyin and WeChat Video cannot be ignored, because many events are detonated through short videos.
We have noticed that many people are confused about TikTok and Kuaishou, as well as the difference between WeChat and Weibo. In fact, what Douyin does is content, and what Kuaishou does is relationship. Similarly, Weibo emphasizes content, although it is a "weak relationship", but it has formed a strong ability to attract attention and set topics; WeChat, with a very strong relationship, has become an important position for the dissemination of social values based on strong relationships. When brand communication, the characteristics of these new media can be treated differently.
From the perspective of the regional distribution of information dissemination, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are still the largest, and the audiences in these areas also need to pay attention to.
06 In this period of time, the entire media situation has undergone a particularly big change, in this situation, how should auto companies do communication?
The recent media communication situation has changed very much: first of all, in the era of new media, individual voice has increased, they are no longer just listeners, they can also observe and discuss the brand. In fact, the information itself, coupled with the audience's feedback on the information, forms the so-called "post-truth era".
In such a situation, the traditional preaching style of dissemination has lost its meaning. Brands should achieve emotional resonance and relationship identification with the audience in terms of position, attitude and emotion, which is the way to communicate communication.
Another point is that the most typical communication mode in the traditional media era is the "one-to-many" and "point-to-point" mass communication mode; the biggest communication feature of the Internet era is "one-to-one" and "point-to-point" scene-based communication. It is impossible for people to accept all the massive amounts of information, but it has led to the emergence of information cocoons and information islands. People have a large number of circles because of hobbies, interests and other reasons.
The communication of the brand must break through these circles in order to be effectively reached. In the face of the circle layer, good content should start from the essence of the circle layer, based on the characteristics of the brand, the goal is to affect the circle culture and spread the positive voice of the brand. How does the brand image spread? Circle culture offers more possibilities for brand building. Brands should make the image more three-dimensional by spreading different content in different circles.
(This article is based on the audio recording of Dr. Xiu Yu's interview with CCTV as a guest on "Dialogue Car Life", and some of the articles have been adapted.) ）