In the past ten years, domestic brands have been labeled as "old and broken", which is the object of the majority of consumers' talk, although many independent brands have tried to get rid of such an embarrassing situation, but they have not succeeded before.
Until five years ago, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, single-handedly created the high-end brand WEY (now Wei Brand) under the Great Wall under the name of his surname Wei, and the new brand successfully surprised the audience as soon as it appeared.
With a well-designed VV7, Great Wall WEY has received a good market response in the early stage, even if there are many suspicions of "borrowing" in the design of the vehicle's appearance and interior, it has also been criticized by many people, but VV7 has still successfully achieved sales of more than 10,000 in 2018, which is a milestone in the high-end road of independent brands.
After the success of VV7, WEY hit the iron while it was hot, launched VV5, VV6 and other models, when other independent brands were still worried about what kind of road they should take, WEY has run out on the track for a long time, and quickly reached the cumulative sales of 200,000 brands, which is really impressive.
However, just when everyone thought that WEY would continue to rise as the leader of its own luxury brand, reality gave everyone a fierce slap. Since the beginning of 2019, WEY has slowly lost its past glory, and the sales of VV series models have continued to decline after several rebrandings, and then WEY simply stopped the update of VV series models and announced the suspension of production, and the VV series models have become a "flash of ephemerals" and remained in the long river of history.
Since last year, WEY has launched the new brand name of Wei brand, and changed its positioning to "high-end new energy brand", and pushed the new coffee series models, although the new car mocha has the official momentum of Wei brand, but in the end it is also flat sales, so far it has not reached the height of the VV series model, and it is difficult to reshape the glory of the brand that year, why is it?
First of all, the WEY brand was not in place in the early stage of marketing and publicity, but simply publicized to consumers and emphasized that it was a domestic luxury brand, and the actual experience of feedback to vehicle products was very small. That is to say, although the VV series models with a good appearance, interior design and good product strength, and their own Haval series SUV to open the gap, but did not reach the level of luxury brands, over time naturally can not leave a deep impression in the hearts of consumers, especially in the later stage of the vehicle fuel consumption, small problems frequently, but also affected the reputation in the old user group.
At the same time, the lack of inheritance of brand products is also the reason why WEY has been criticized and weakened step by step. Friends who know a little about cars must know that which long-established joint venture and luxury brand does not have its own iconic model? For example, Toyota's Corolla, Camry, etc., generally have decades of model history. Even in the trough of sales, the brand will not easily give up these models, just like Volkswagen's Golf, although the current sales are far from the peak, but still maintain a normal rhythm of rebranding/replacement.
Besides, BMW's 3 Series, Mercedes-Benz's S-Class, Porsche's 911, etc., as the totem and symbol of the brand, when people talk about this brand, the first thing that comes to mind will be these cars. As a pioneer model that paved the way for WEY, the VV series has evolved into a brand totem in the hearts of the audience of the WEY brand. Therefore, when the sales of VV series models are not good, WEY should find out the reasons to improve the product, rather than choosing to escape and directly stop the production of the model, such an behavior not only makes WEY lose the credibility of the brand, but also makes the original accumulated audience all chilled, and the decline in reputation is inevitable.
Of course, in the past two years, WEY actually has the opportunity to turn over, but it has been given up by itself. Tank 300 was first attributed to the WEY brand, and once released, whether it is the popularity of the model or the market sales, all of them have soared, and they have been in a difficult situation for a long time. Looking at the entire Great Wall Motors, the product performance can beat the tank 300, and at present, there is only the top beam pillar Haval H6, right? But then you all know that the tank series models were independent from WEY and established a tank brand, and now the monthly sales of tank 300 cars alone (6468 units sold in February) have exceeded the monthly sales of the entire Wei brand (4432 units in February).
The main reason why the Great Wall has separated the tank series models is estimated to be its potential to impact the high-end market, and the deeper reason may be that it wants to normalize the current coffee series and transform into a new energy vehicle brand. But in fact, the performance of the coffee series models is far less than that of tanks, the sales volume is mediocre, the user reputation is also a new low, many VV series old car owners came out to complain "as a domestic high-end brand, how do you think about using coffee to name the new car", "The original VV series of digital serial numbers to divide the model positioning is very recognizable, but now what is the ghost of mocha and latte? ”
Write at the end
In addition to the above points, in fact, there are many reasons that have led to the embarrassing situation of Weipai today, such as the encirclement and suppression of other independent luxury brands, the internal volume of the entire domestic car market and so on. However, in retrospect, the biggest reason for Weipai's failure is its haste and overconfidence, and its failure to formulate a sound brand strategy.
In fact, the Great Wall Motors in the eyes of many Chinese people have full weight, the same is true of the former Wei brand, but to this step can only be said to be its own fault, I hope that in the future, the Great Wall official can spend more thought on the Wei brand, formulate a better strategy to come up with better products, and let it recast the former majestic style.