On February 18, chengdu was lightly raining, and the "spring cold" after the Spring Festival did not stop the crowds of Chengdu MixC on the weekend. As far as I know, at the end of 2020, Chengdu MixC ushered in the opening of B, C and D halls, and the overall sales increased by 85% from 2.7 billion yuan in 2020 to 5.5 billion yuan in 2021, ranking firmly in the TOP3 of Chengdu shopping malls.
The choice of SAIC Audi's first "Audi City" in the southwest region and the second in the country to open in Chengdu MixC is very natural: compared with the Taikoo Li occupied by Tesla, the atmosphere of life in mixc is more intense; compared with the Yintai in99 selected by Weilai Center, the MixC is more prosperous.
The huge logo of Chengdu's largest Apple flagship store (also the first apple direct store in southwest China) has always been my most direct impression of the MixC.
Now, SAIC Audi has lit up the four-ring LOGO on the intersection not far from Apple's flagship store.
Times have changed, for example, SAIC Audi no longer mentions 4S stores. Instead, the "Audi City" such as the MixC, as well as 300-400 square meters of urban stores (150 will be built in 2022), will take a similar approach: built in urban living circles, shopping malls, and places with enough traffic. In addition, in the bustling area where there is no permanent store, there will also be "pop-up stores" with different lengths of time - such a general idea of focusing on forming high-density contacts with the target group is similar to many new power brands at present.
On the first day of 2022, the Audi "Enterprise Hub" located in Shanghai and the world's largest has officially opened, as the brand flagship center, Audi's first "Enterprise Hub" is located in Tokyo, and there is no branch in China except Shanghai.
After understanding saicus Audi's current sales channel structure, we can clearly see the mission of this "most familiar new brand":
Inject enough freshness into the Audi brand to seek to create more possibilities in the new era.
I appreciate Audi's enterprising and courage to change, all of which is even more vividly displayed in the interview. This is the first time in my career that I have interviewed Dr. Jia Mingdi, General Manager of SAIC Audi Marketing, and Gao Dele, General Manager of SAIC Audi's Marketing Business, but they are excellent interviewees that I have rarely encountered in recent years.
▲Dr. Jia Mingdi, general manager of SAIC Audi marketing business, and Gao Dele, general manager of SAIC Audi marketing business
Straightforward and sincere, dare to ask and dare to answer, and have a professional demeanor.
For example, the title of this article comes from Jia Mingdi's answer to brand positioning, the original words are "SAIC Audi brand is higher than Mercedes-Benz BMW" - my first reaction is a big question mark, but this sentence is not completely correct after scrutiny, but it is not completely wrong.
Considering the subject of "SAIC Audi" as a joint venture brand, then the complete expression of Jia Mingdi's sentence should be "SAIC Audi brand positioning is higher than Beijing Mercedes-Benz and BMW Brilliance" - from the pricing range of the first domestic model, from the product line to cover traditional fuel and new energy, or from the process level and equipment advanced degree of the new factory - whether it is comparing the model route of Mercedes-Benz and BMW initially entering China, or comparing the hardware strength of the current new factory, SAIC Audi is positioned high To say that it is "half a body" higher than the joint ventures of old rivals is not wrong.
That is to say, the positioning of SAIC Audi, from the "domestic Audi ceiling" that I knew before, was further defined as "the ceiling of domestic luxury" - in this way, SAIC Audi is another good move.
Audi is a brand that everyone is familiar with, but SAIC Audi, which has just begun to enter the road of channel and product construction, may not be.
The most important thing to solve the problem of "who am I" is to tell everyone "how I am different". Obviously, labels such as "higher than Mercedes-Benz BMW" and "domestic luxury ceiling" are the easiest positioning keywords for people to remember. The ultimate purpose of brand building is nothing more than to occupy people's minds. Jia Mingdi's answer is easier to remember than the "luxury" and "trend" that have been flat and stable and have long been flooded - don't be afraid of controversy, the greater the controversy, the stronger the spread.
In addition, Jia Mingdi also listed a set of data, which is also worth playing:
Among the customers who choose SAIC Audi, 32% have compared BMW, 28% have compared Mercedes-Benz, and "only 14% of consumers have compared FAW-Volkswagen Audi". It very directly answered the question raised by the media about how to view the competition between the two Audi joint ventures in the terminal.
This answer is actually not difficult to explain, because based on the distinct differentiation of products, SAIC Audi currently priced from more than 400,000-500,000 product lines, greater intra-brand competition, should appear on imported Audi products. In addition, it is important to note that:
If SAIC Audi starts to clearly divert customers from this time, it will not be a good start.
Because Audi's competitors should always be BMW Mercedes-Benz.
Judging from the development process of China's luxury brand market in the past ten years, we can draw some empirical summaries:
For example, the localization of luxury brands is not a curse, the reason why for some luxury brands, "domestic production has become the beginning of the dusk of sales" is because the same brand began to make different voices;
Those brands that can continue to expand their brand influence and make end consumers almost indifferent to "joint ventures or imports" can instead usher in a rapid development path of entering the "fast lane" through localization.
There was Cadillac in the front and Lincoln in the back. Only brands that can export consistent values and implement consistent strategic steps to consumers, no matter which factory they come from, can they be invincible when they attack the city and seize the land.
The same is true for Audi. Audi's competitor should always be BMW Mercedes-Benz. Whether it is FAW-Volkswagen Audi or SAIC Audi.
It is precisely because it is not easy to do this that I will appreciate Audi's courage to forge ahead and change. "Aggressive" shouldn't just be written in slogan.
Jia Mingdi also said something that impressed me, almost stabbing the new forces.
He said that "there is a boundary between expensive and luxurious". In my understanding, it is difficult to define the consumer in terms of boundaries, as I have written: the choice criteria of consumers are moving from "brand value" to "experience itself". Then, in addition to the inherent emotional value and inner experience, how SAIC Audi can provide consumers with "subverting the previous experience" has become very important.
From this level, and back to the structure of the sales channel at the beginning, we can logically straighten out the good intentions of SAIC Audi: as a "most familiar stranger", they are not engaged in a smooth competition, they are rebuilding a new system, providing new experiences, in order to achieve a new understanding of "Audi" in the Chinese market.
The difficulty of doing this is no easier than making a brand new luxury brand in the Chinese market.
So, although I think that SAIC Audi's digital virtual collection and "meta-universe" are very mysterious (they even settled in the digital virtual world of Tencent's illusion, "Mirage", thus becoming the first car brand in Mirage, and opening a digital pavilion in Mirage), although I think that the name "Black Samurai, White Mage" is not very advanced.
But I can't help but be impressed by the courage and strength of SAIC Audi. The birth of SAIC Audi itself is the embodiment of Audi's enterprising. As with each of us, don't just shout to be aggressive,
Rather, live a truly enterprising life.
In the new year of 2022, this courage to know that it is difficult but to do it hard, this kind of enterprising based on the background of rebirth and reconstruction, is worthy of our encouragement.
Wen | Zhao Xiaocha
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