On January 26, Brand Finance, an international authoritative brand value appraisal agency, officially released the list of "2022 Global Brand Value Top 500", and Great Wall Motor's Haval brand was selected for the first time, ranking 372nd with a brand value of US$6.1 billion. It became the only three Chinese car companies to enter the list (the other two are BYD and Geely).
In addition to the celebration, what is even more amazing is that in the "2022 Global CEO Brand Guardian Index List" released by the agency at the same time, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor, ranked third in the world and first in China. Before Wei Jianjun, they were Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
On the road of internationalization of Chinese car-making enterprises, entrepreneurs will inevitably have global influence, and there is no doubt that Wei Jianjun of Great Wall Motors is once again at the forefront.
What did Wei Jianjun do right? Stand out from many Chinese entrepreneurs. Become a question worth exploring.
If the weight is light, it will be reduced to zero
From a macro level, especially in the past two years, under the leadership of Wei Jianjun, Great Wall Motors has carried out changes related to "life and death" in the dimensions of organizational mechanism, talent system, cultural renewal, and scientific and technological innovation.
For example, it has created a 3.0 version of the organizational structure of "strong back office, large middle office, and small front desk", established a new business model of "product + software + service"; adhered to the employment strategy of "eclecticism and giving full play to its talents", encouraged employees to change to the role of "partner" through a wide coverage of equity incentive models, and advocated an open and inclusive corporate atmosphere to achieve the transformation from "position" to "role".
From the perspective of practical results, in the past 2021, Great Wall Motor's new car sales exceeded 1.28 million units, an increase of 15.2% year-on-year, and the total operating income was 136.3 billion yuan, an increase of 32% year-on-year, and the end market heat and brand value continued to grow.
Benefiting from this, Great Wall Motors has been under the leadership of Wei Jianjun for 30 years, and its enterprise development has far exceeded the industry. This opened a new journey for Great Wall Motors to transform into a global intelligent technology company.
As a strategic decision-maker, Wei Jianjun brought a small vehicle modification factory with a loss of 2 million yuan to a global car-making entity with a market value of more than 300 billion yuan. Using the simplest and most direct result-oriented theory has proved Wei Jianjun's success and the correctness of past decisions.
However, under the premise of switching tracks and facing major changes in the industry, which of all the independent traditional car companies that have stepped into the list of success is not undergoing changes? Changan, SAIC, Geely, Dongfeng... They can all be described as frequent actions, and they also have their own effects.
Obviously, the reason why Wei Jianjun can win the favor of third-party international evaluation agencies for Great Wall Motors must have something special beyond the conventional actions. And this may be where a top global CEO guards the brand to grow more brilliantly.
Strike with precision and plan ahead
Great Wall Motors under the leadership of Wei Jianjun is like a sniper. Its strategic significance lies in anticipation, completion of presets, realization of precision strikes, and acquisition of the greatest value target at the lowest cost. As a result, Great Wall Motors has achieved rapid growth.
In fact, the recent occurrence of two traffic incidents associated with Great Wall Motors is enough to prove the above characterization.
There has been confirmed by accurate information that the former Zotye Linyi Car Manufacturing Base was acquired by Great Wall Motors, and before that, Great Wall Motors also took down the Hanteng Automobile Factory in Shangrao and the Hanlong Automobile Factory in Daye, Hubei Province. In the feast of "dividing up" the Zotye system, Great Wall Motors has become the biggest winner.
Great Wall Motors' purpose is well known to the world, and it has been reserved for the production capacity of 4 million units in 2025. However, Great Wall Motor's "takeover" of Zotye only involves production bases, factories and production equipment, not the entire enterprise, so it does not have to bear other responsibilities such as debt.
Great Wall Motors' move is extremely costly and profitable, paving a 5-year growth path for this.
Coincidentally.
Recently, the 2021 global power battery installed capacity ranking was freshly released.
It is conceivable that traditional battery tycoons such as Ningde Era, LG New Energy, Panasonic, and BYD will inevitably occupy the highest positions in the list. Surprisingly, Great Wall Motor's Hive Energy entered the top ten for the first time. Its installed capacity reached 3.1GWh, an increase of 416.6% year-on-year.
Therefore, Great Wall Motors and BYD are the only two car-making entities and power battery manufacturers in the top 10 of the list. Even more special is that BYD started as a battery manufacturer, while Great Wall Motors completely relied on a keen sense of market smell to complete the layout ahead of schedule.
In 2009, the "Ten Cities and Thousand Vehicles" project jointly initiated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology was launched. Wei Jianjun immediately realized that The development of New Energy Vehicles in China was about to enter the fast lane. The following year, a power battery project group dedicated to research and development was established internally.
In 2018, backed by Great Wall Motors, coupled with capital assistance, the hive energy independent of the internal project team quickly made efforts. Not only the production capacity layout of the country, and in the technology is completely at the tip of the industry, in addition to the cobalt-free battery we are familiar with, its mastery of cationic hybrid technology, single crystal technology, nano network coating, etc. completely belongs to the black technology segment.
In 2025, Hive Energy's global capacity planning target is 600GWh. It is worth mentioning that CATL expects that the production capacity by the end of 2025 is also expected to be 600GWh. This shows Wei Jianjun's wild hopes in the field of power batteries.
Ten years of lurking, waiting for opportunities, Wei Jianjun has both wisdom, patience and ambition, which is the perfect quality of a high-quality business leader.
Kill and decide, seek advantages and avoid harms
On February 10, Great Wall Motor issued a tender announcement entitled "BC Brand 2022 Regional Activity Execution Company Bidding Project". This means that a new "BC" brand will be unveiled during the year. For a time, speculation about what BC pointed to, arose inside and outside the circle.
At present, it is certain that BC has nothing to do with the beam car of the Great Wall and BMW joint venture, because BC is listed as one of the six major brands under the Great Wall, and it is obvious that the beam of the joint venture cannot be classified; at the same time, BC has nothing to do with Sharon Automobile, and Wen Fei, CEO of Sharon Zhixing, has made it clear that Sharon Zhixing will become the world's first hydrogen electric dual-energy luxury brand. Moreover, its product Mech Dragon has been unveiled. More importantly, at the beginning, Great Wall Motors did not want to confuse the products of the holding company Sharon Zhixing with The future high-end brands of Great Wall Motors.
Through the exclusion method, BC is getting closer and closer to Great Wall Motor's high-end car brand.
As we all know, Great Wall Motors is still a specialized SUV car manufacturer.
Focus on the SUV category, suspend the development of car products, concentrate resources to obtain local competitive advantages, and adopt a point-by-point approach to become stronger and then bigger. It was Wei Jianjun's final decision in 2014.
Today, Wei Jianjun recalls the decision at that time, still with a little reluctance: those who make cars should have had such an experience, the last product is very simple, it is very difficult to take away a product, not to mention that the Great Wall takes away almost a whole product line.
In fact, the global economic crisis that began in 2008 made the future uncontrollable, and the three major automakers of Ford, GM and Chrysler faced bankruptcy. In the domestic market, the joint venture brand has the crushing advantage of its own brand in the car market, so that Great Wall Motors, which is not as strong as today, has an absolute grasp of the whole line of combat and wins.
In the end, his decisive temperament overcame cowardice and entanglement. Great Wall Motors sought advantages and avoided harms, and made the most correct choice at that time.
In 2011, the Haval H6 was launched, taking the lead in opening the blue ocean market for SUVs, becoming the first SUV brand in China to sell 1 million vehicles. Between 2009 and 2013, Great Wall Motors achieved explosive growth under the premise of continuously improving the layout of SUV products, and its net profit increased by 7 times in 5 years.
Seven years later, Great Wall Motors is once again facing the huge challenge of the strategic goal of 4 million vehicles worldwide by 2025. The global influence of SUV + pickup trucks has been formed. Great Wall Motors has every reason to fully return to the car market.
A new brewing is underway, and BC's brand positioning, product positioning, technical route determination, category characteristic innovation, etc., have been studied and judged many times inside Great Wall Motors.
A return, a feeling, a wonderful performance to prove yourself, when will it be revealed to the world? Wei Jianjun was completing the final consideration before finalizing the final word.
Write at the end
Half a lifetime after leaving, Wei Jianjun's personal achievements have proved all. In fact, as early as 2003, Great Wall Motors was listed on the Hong Kong stock market, and Wei Jianjun and his family became the richest automobile in China with a value of more than 3.5 billion.
Fame and fortune are all in the past, only under its leadership, Great Wall Motors, under the big era, under the big change, can become the forerunner and success of China's auto industry high-end and globalization, is the ultimate idea of its career.
Wei Jianjun's role in Great Wall Motors continues to be guarded, just like every important choice in the past 30 years.
May his return remain a teenager.