Introduction: In the past year, Euler, a good cat who has achieved good results in sales, has also personally ruined his good reputation.
OTA "upgrade" lock power, chip with shoddy charge, mileage "broken fracture"... Although the sales of new energy and intelligent vehicles have soared and developed rapidly, there are more and more things that can be secretly infringed on the rights and interests of consumers, and the technology may seem very mysterious, high-tech, and it is easy for new energy owners with early adopters and high tolerance to tolerate some problems, but this is also a bottom line.
If you turn back the time to a year ago, Euler Good Cat, which has just been listed for a few months, still enjoyed a fairly good reputation and high attention at that time.
In the following year, the monthly sales of Euler Good Cat successfully exceeded 10,000, and in the annual sales of 135,000 units of the Euler brand, it accounted for 38% of the proportion at the level of 50,900 units, becoming the pillar model of Euler brand sales second only to black cats.
1) What the "solution" can solve
A brand new brand, a brand new model, coupled with good sales, good word of mouth is logical. However, unfortunately, just when Euler Good Cat was about to look forward to a good reputation with good sales, "chip reduction" was on the hot search, and this scandal even seemed to have triggered Great Wall Motors to be affected in the capital market. This matter also gives China's pure electric vehicles and smart car consumers a wake-up call, behind the electrification and intelligence, there may be many doorways, will damage the rights and interests of consumers.
Not long after the media public opinion fermented this, the A+H share price of Great Wall Motor fell back, and the cumulative market value evaporated by tens of billions of yuan.
In the blink of an eye, 3 months have passed, and in general, even if the crisis public relations is more severe at the beginning, this period of time is enough to repair the reputation to a considerable extent, and even do not have to worry too much about people's repetition of old things.
However, the two subsequent events made people realize that the problem of Euler's good cat may not be simple.
First of all, after the initial fermentation of the "chip door", Euler gave the user a solution of "ten thousand yuan of discountable rights" at the end of December, that is, the user submitted an application on the APP, you can directly discount the 10,000 yuan charging rights, and after the review is passed, you can see the money in the registered bank card account.
To put it bluntly, Euler realized at the time that users were not satisfied with the December 9 solution, so he added it.
The second thing, not long ago Euler announced that the 2022 good cat was launched on March 1, and the new model of the new year model has been upgraded in addition to the comfort configuration, and the price has also increased. This "increase in quantity and price increase" product upgrade, but by many people only interpreted as a product price increase, so that users who do not know the truth are easy to misunderstand after seeing, deepening the impression of dissatisfaction with Euler's good cat.
Smashing the good reputation and causing users to be dissatisfied is just that the solution is "not given enough"? Apparently not.
2) Is the good reputation of a good cat so important?
Structurally, crisis PR needs to address only two things: be sincere and provide a balanced solution that both parties can accept. However, in the process of "chip door", what makes users most sad is actually Euler's annoying attitude in statements again and again, and even after being named by CCTV, Dong Yudong, general manager of Euler Automobile, did not mention whether there was false content in the propaganda in his apology.
Euler describes herself as a "car brand that loves women more," and the three most frequent questions that many women ask when they get angry are "Do you know you're wrong?" "Tell me what's wrong?" "Are you lying to me?"
From Euler's previous response, he replied to the first question only in the form of an apology, and the next two questions had a "love and love" attitude.
Looking at China's auto stocks, Great Wall Motors took the lead in releasing the 2021 performance express report among many listed vehicle companies as early as January 23. Revenue increased by more than 31% year-on-year and net profit attributable to shareholders of up to 6.782 billion yuan, making Great Wall Motors rank second in the "China Auto Stocks 2021 Performance Forecast List" released by Auto K Line, second only to CATL times, and slightly ahead of GAC Group.
In this performance report, in the explanation of operating results and financial conditions, the increase in vehicle sales is the most critical growth factor. At the same time, electrification and intelligence are also the keys to the transformation of the company mentioned by Great Wall Motors.
For now, in addition to the Wei brand, which is adjusting its positioning and brand, it is Euler who can carry the above mission. The good cat car, although the sales volume is still ranked after the black cat, its brand strategic significance is by no means limited to this.
Remember when Euler launched the black cat, people will also mention it and the white cat, and the connection between the previous R1 and R2, the latter two cars, once a considerable part of the dependence on large customers procurement, official cars. Until the good cat is listed, combined with the white cat and black cat in front, finally brings the euler brand a real sense of "personal" color, coupled with a large number of marketing activities in the same period, the three "cats" led by the good cat have enabled Euler to quickly realize the brand transformation from to B to to C, and it is also the outstanding performance of Great Wall Motors in 2021.
Moreover, in the January sales of Great Wall Motors, which fell in the same period- and month-on-month, the Euler brand and the tank brand were the only two sectors that could achieve growth.
Remember how the "chip gate" was first discovered? Flipping through the performance forecasts and performance express reports released by many listed companies in china's automotive industry so far, all of them mention the challenges brought about by the shortage of chips, some have found a "flat replacement" solution in time, and some have prepared goods in advance, adjusted the product structure, and minimized the impact on user experience and business performance as much as possible in a way that is not perceived by users.
With the continuous popularization of intelligence, for ordinary users, the problems in future products will become more and more difficult to find, which also makes the brand's user reputation more precious.
The ancient adage "caution can catch thousands of cicadas, be careful to sail the ship of ten thousand years", for the cloudy and treacherous network public opinion environment, a little carelessness can easily destroy the user reputation and market confidence established before.
Three months is enough for many manufacturers to handle a crisis PUBLIC RELATIONS, but it is obviously much more difficult for Euler.
On the one hand, public information from third-party auto quality complaint websites shows that during the fermentation of "chip door" in December last year, the cumulative number of complaints was 883, and three months later, this number increased sharply to 1591.
On the other hand, with the black cat, white cat to stop taking orders, as well as the above-mentioned 2022 good cat is giving people the impression of just a price increase, coupled with the upstream supply link such as lithium battery raw materials that now envelop the whole industry, so that users in the automotive market and investors in the capital market need to re-establish confidence in the Euler brand.
But the problem is, after three months, Euler has not been able to let people put their emotions down when they revive the crisis of good cats, and how long will investors wait?