Text | Yu Fei
There is a hot post on the Little Red Book, and the title is straightforward: "From Porsche to Wuling, what have I experienced?" 》。 In more than 12 minutes of video, a lifestyle blogger details his journey of replacing the Porsche 911 with The Wuling Hongguang MINIEV.
The core theme is nothing more than the establishment of self-confidence - the Porsche 911 was originally purchased for the so-called face, and when self-confidence grew in the heart, the blogger decisively replaced the Porsche 911 with the Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, which sold less than a fraction of the former. Such a strong sense of contrast makes this video harvest nearly ten times the traffic of its daily video.
The blogger's previous videos have nothing to do with cars, not even "just the right meal" videos. This is interesting, the classic luxury car Porsche 911 and the new "net red" Hongguang MINIEV, seemingly unrelated, but there is a different story.
Looking back at Wuling's market performance in the past year, its total sales reached 1.76 million vehicles, an increase of 13.5% year-on-year, and it easily outperformed the market. Its various models have performed well, such as the "big four-seat family car" Wuling Capgemini ranked first in the same level of MPV sales, Wuling Xingchen achieved impressive results in 70,000 years of sales of "super SUV within 100,000 yuan", and the cumulative sales of Hongguang MINIEV exceeded 590,000 units, ranking first in China's new energy vehicle sales for 17 consecutive months.
In addition, Wuling has also covered more than 40 countries and regions in Central and South America, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions with vehicle exports, ship borrowing and fully independent diversified overseas business development model. Oh the light of proper domestic products. Many people are curious about how Wuling has achieved today's results, in fact, the success of Hongguang MINIEV is quite representative. In 2021, the car sold 426,000 units, of which, in January, April, July, August and October, Hongguang MINEV surpassed Tesla to become the world's first sales volume in five months.
Four words to sum up: sales are superb. But in the final analysis, the sales code of the product stems from the company's accurate grasp of the needs of the target user group.
Wuling brand in the understanding of users, has its own set of methodology, such as R & D personnel will personally visit the market, in order to exercise their own judgment of the market; engineers will also go to the front line to sell cars, in the expectation of consumer recognition of the psychology, engineers will pay more attention to the consumer experience and feelings; after collecting a large number of user feedback information, Wuling will also stand at the strategic height of the overall situation to analyze and judge this information.
When defining the product of Hongguang MINIEV, Wuling engineers observed the vehicles driving on the roadside one by one and found that there was only one person in 80% of the private cars, so they determined the four-seat layout of 2+2, and set the mileage at 150 kilometers at the boundary of the subsidy at that time, which minimized the cost. The car was hugely popular as soon as it was launched.
But for Wuling, this is not the most important role.
Before Hongguang MINIEV, Wuling left the image of "obsolete" and "van" to the outside world. The silver pickup truck with the red wing logo on its butt exists in many childhood memories of the post-90s. After the Hongguang MINIEV, Wuling seemed to have changed overnight.
Who can say no to a cheap and good-looking car? Similarly, the Wuling brand also follows the direction of young trends in marketing, and the official launches various modified versions while collaborating with Xicha, Hema, Perfect Diary, YOHO! And other tide brand joint name.
As a result, on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, b station, and Douyin, there have been a variety of Hongguang MINIEV modified versions, which have single-handedly reversed the stereotype of Wuling in the outside world.
At this point, the doubts about whether we can build a good passenger car that lingered around Wuling disappeared.
At the same time, Wuling is also the only car company to receive the commendation of "National Advanced Collective in Fighting the New Crown Epidemic". The honor was awarded by the Party Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Commission in recognition of Wuling's contributions during the epidemic. Up to now, Wuling brand masks have produced a total of 200 million and donated more than 40 million.
In 2020, Wuling brand announced a new strategy and launched a silver label brand. After determining the development path of "diversification, rejuvenation and globalization", Wuling built a "big four-seater family car" Wuling Capgemini with this as the core. In its first month of launch, it achieved sales of 5,511 units, ranking third in the MPV sales list in November, and in the following months, the sales of the car steadily increased to nearly 9,000 units. Capgemini combines the advantages of MPV + SUV in the design, the sense of business is weakened, it looks more sporty, and the design characteristics of the large space also hit the pain points of many consumers.
Subsequently, The national popularity of Wuling rose rapidly, and the slogan of "what the people need, Wuling will build" was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In 2021, Wuling announced that Zhou Xun became the global spokesperson of the Wuling brand. The subsequent launch of Wuling Star also achieved good sales.
To some extent, Wuling has quickly entered the young user group. On February 22, 2022, the Wuling brand hit the iron while it was hot, announced a new round of brand renewal strategy, and put forward the brand strategy of "China Wuling, two wings flying together", while further deepening the national popularity, hoping to take users and technology as the two wings and drive the upward development of the entire brand.
Compared with the brand renewal strategy in 2020, Wuling's new brand strategy is more focused. In terms of users, Wuling plans to start from the two levels of online and offline. Online, with THE LING Club as the core, it builds a one-stop social e-commerce platform for users from car purchase and car use to social networking, shopping, and personalized customization. Offline, with wuling global brand center LING HOUSE@Shanghai as the main position, to create a variety of scenes such as personalized customization, social space, and life experience for users. At present, LING HOUSE has been completed in Liuzhou, Nanning, Zhengzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Guangzhou.
From the perspective of the action of friends and the development trend of the entire industry, these measures seem to be somewhat commonplace, and the uniqueness is that the price of the models under the Wuling brand basically does not exceed 100,000 yuan, so it has a wide user group. This is an advantage that no other brand can match.
The larger the number of users, the more capable car companies are to do more with less. For example, to investigate the degree of user preference for a new feature, enterprises with a large number of users can easily reach the sample capacity and quickly update and iterate on the function based on feedback. Once or twice, you can't see the gap effect, but in the era of smart cars, the faster the update speed and the more enterprises that can meet the needs of users, the more they can stand out.
Previously, the Wuling brand has crossed the circle many times, and the brand image is getting younger and younger. Hongguang MINIEV has been a great success, Wuling already has experience in creating explosive products, and the data shows that more than half of Wuling users have long been young after 85. These can help Wuling more accurately control user needs and create new products.
After capturing a large number of young users, Wuling further launched the LING Club APP in April 2021, which includes modules such as car purchase, car use, to social networking, shopping, and personalized customization.
Less than a year after its launch, LING Club has more than 14.5 million registered users, 1.5 million monthly active users, and 200,000 daily active users, becoming the largest online sales service platform in China.
As a position for offline communication between Wuling users, LING HOUSE Shanghai store opened in Jing'an District in November 2021. Coffee, desserts, meeting area, co-branded peripherals, new cars, whether from the perspective of store design or actual functions, LING HOUSE does not lose the user center of high-end car companies on the market. In addition to the price of the product, Wuling is moving towards the more high-end car companies in other aspects.
"User Wings" can basically be regarded as the continuation and deepening of Wuling's previous slogan of "what the people need, Wuling will create", and "Wings of Technology" is the new impression that Wuling hopes to leave to the outside world next. In this regard, Wuling has developed global small electric architecture, Wuling chip, intelligent micro-exchange system, Ling OS open intelligent ecosystem and other products. On this basis, Wuling will build Wuling Journey, Journey, Wuling Star, Wuling NanoE and other models. According to the plan, Wuling will also launch the smart power brand "LING POWER" this year.
In 2020, Wuling released its self-developed GSEV (Global Small Electric Vehicle) platform, redefining the space, safety, energy consumption, energy supply and services of small electric vehicles, forming the "Wuling Standard". Since then, Wuling has actively participated in the formulation of standards, and has led or participated in the implementation of national and industry standards such as "Measurement Method for Outside The Noise of Light Vehicle Multi-working Conditions", "Electromagnetic Compatibility Requirements and Experimental Methods for Conducted Charging of Electric Vehicles", "Technical Requirements for Hybrid Power Supplies for Electric Vehicles", etc., a total of 26 items. By the end of 2021, SAIC-GM-Wuling has led or participated in the revision of external standards at all levels and issued a total of 142 items.
A major representative of these technologies is the Ling OS Lingxi system released by Wuling in 2021, which integrates high-quality resources such as PATEO, Spichi, and iFLYTEK on the basis of Wuling's self-research.
After the first OTA upgrade at the end of 2021, Ling OS has some new tags, for example, the speech recognition technology takes 0.8 seconds, which is the fastest in the industry, and the system boot speed is increased to 28 seconds, which is the best in the industry. In addition to xingchen, Ling OS will be successively installed in the new models of Wuling, becoming another killer of these 100,000 yuan new products.
In the era of fuel vehicles, the cost performance of automobiles comes from the power performance of products, production materials, etc. In the era of intelligent electric vehicles, the cost performance includes a wider range, intelligence, user service, etc., which are the new consideration directions of consumers, which is also a new opportunity for "Wulings".
Judging from the two-step brand strategy content of Wuling in recent years, this car company seems to be a psychological specialty: first take advantage of the tide of the rise of domestic products, implant the heart anchor of "the light of domestic goods" for the majority of melon-eating masses, and then empower products through user exchanges and self-developed technology, trying to advance into the "strongest light of domestic products" in the hearts of the melon-eating masses.
The new test focuses on the Wuling Capgemini High Power Edition - the new silver label Capgemini 280T. This product was unveiled at the launch of Wuling's "China Wuling, two wings flying together", compared with the original Capgemini, Capgemini 280T has not changed much in the exterior interior, the highlight is that the new car is equipped with Wuling's self-developed Ling OS Lingxi system, and a new 1.5T turbocharged cylinder direct injection engine.
The new car released a total of 1.5T CVT automatic premium and 1.5T CVT automatic flagship 2 models, the official guidance price of 115,800-12.58 million yuan, slightly higher than the original Capgemini 8.58-11.68 million yuan price range, is a small test for Wuling upwards.
For the entire Wuling brand, the listing of Capgemini's high-power version is just a small beginning. In the future, users and technology will become new passwords to help Wuling create explosive models.