Mangzhongyun Talk is a character interview program launched by Tencent Media Research Institute, which breaks down classic cases, shares creative rules, and inspires creators through dialogue with content industry practitioners.
Wu Pei is a veteran automotive media person and racing driver. He once served as the editor-in-chief of "AutoMotive Herald", the editor-in-chief of "Automotive Magazine", and transformed into self-media in 2015 to create "Wu Pei Channel".
In this issue of Mangzhongyun Talk, Tencent Media Research Institute talked to Wu Pei, the director of the automotive self-media "Wu Pei Channel", and in the interview, Wu Pei shared the survival of the self-media under the inner volume. For details, please click on the video link below.
△ Transcript of the 15th issue of the complete dialogue
Author | Zhu Zijie
Referring to the feelings of doing content recently, Wu Pei's answer is "tired".
As a veteran automotive media person and racing driver, competition and involution have become commonplace:
When he was in the "Auto Herald", he experienced the competition of traditional media; because he was not willing to be just a "good reporter who drove a car", Wu Pei became a racing driver and competed in the track; 7 years ago, when new media emerged, the "Wu Pei Channel" created by Wu Pei logged on to the whole platform and continued to compete in the second half of the self-media circle.
In Wu Pei's view, the inner volume cannot be avoided, and the self-media should establish a set of survival methods from mentality to method in response to the inner volume.
Refuse to lie flat and don't earn the last copper plate
In 2015, Wu Pei created the self-media IP column "Wu Pei Channel", which is an automotive content platform designed for people who deeply understand cars, play cars and opinion leaders.
At that time, when the auto self-media track was still growing barbarically, the reporters and editors of the auto media circle had also turned into this track, and each family was running a horse enclosure, plus the content support of each platform, and it was not difficult to obtain traffic. But nowadays, there are more and more self-media on the same track, and everyone is trying their best to get a piece of the pie. In Wu Pei's words, in the past, everyone hunted with a stick, but now everyone has upgraded, and when you are still holding a stick, the opponent has been upgraded to a pistol.
Wu Pei analyzed that the epidemic is a watershed in the automotive media circle into the second half of the era, and the second half model also concentrates on 3 characteristics.
First of all, in the past, the Studio (studio) model, which was based on a few or a dozen teams, was instantly replaced by enterprise operation. If a self-media does not complete the transformation of a studio model to an enterprise, it may be more difficult to participate in the next stage of competition.
Secondly, in the process of enterprise operation of self-media, it is more and more important to maintain the basic disk of content, and if there is no basic disk product that can be played enough, it will also face the risk of being eliminated.
Finally, in the new environment, the state of the past car self-media people who can still divert each other has become a state of competition between you and me, and the difference between the head, mid-waist and tail is becoming more and more obvious. Wu Pei believes that this differentiation is concentrated in the fact that the creators of the head group may fall down, but it is difficult for the creators of the tail group to break through the bottleneck and rush into the head group.
In such a model, some people continue to harvest in the head, and some people can't stand to quit the competition. In the eyes of many people, the inner volume is not a good competitive ecology. But in Wu Pei's view, the inner volume not only shows that the track is fiercely competitive, but also reflects that there are still opportunities in this industry. Once everyone is no longer rolled in, the industry will lose the room to rise, and this track will lose the value of gold panning. He also remembers that in the last few years of the magazine, the original competitors suddenly became brothers, and everyone often gathered, ate together, complained, and hugged for warmth, behind the carnival at the end of the industry, and the comfort of not wanting the industry to sink rapidly.
In response to the inner volume, Wu Pei believes that you can't choose to lie flat, but don't "earn the last copper plate". He hopes that under the internal volume, each competitor also needs to leave some measures, so that the industry can find a balance point, so that the industry will continue to rise.
Wu Pei when racing
Rejecting homogenization is actually the mentality of the weak
To get rid of the inner volume, you must rely on a solid content moat. According to the usual idea, avoiding homogenization and seeking innovation and difference is the only way to create self-IP, but in Wu Pei's view, this is actually a weak mentality.
"Why should I get rid of homogenization? If I can achieve the most efficient homogenization, am I going to get the head effect of the Matthew effect in homogenization? Wu Pei said.
Wu Pei believes that today's increasingly fierce competition, the essence of which is because its Matthew effect is getting bigger and bigger, and if you want to bypass what everyone is doing and seek success through another way in content, it is not practical from the mentality to admit it, and it is not practical from the law of content production.
He takes instant noodles as an example, he believes that many people buy braised beef noodles, has proved that the taste of braised beef noodles is the most accepted by users, if you categorically create a new flavor is likely to fail, the wise approach should be to enter the "braised beef noodles" track and make the taste good.
"Essentially, what you do is to see if you can get a good job."
Wu Pei interviewed Chen Anning, president and CEO of Ford China.
Wu Pei feels that after many traditional media people transformed into self-media, the content production thinking has not changed, and they always want to subvert the "braised beef noodles" to create new flavors. However, creation means subversion and negation, and the essence of creation is constant self-denial, enjoying the process itself. However, as a self-media company, the thing to do is to produce content, which also means that a whole set of processes needs to be built to make content producible and replicable.
Compared with whether the content can leave an impression on the user, Wu Pei is more concerned about whether the content can meet the needs of the vast majority of users. He cites the Toyota product line as an example, and while Toyota produces sports cars like the Supra, the greater part of Toyota is that it has a Camry and Corolla that satisfies users.
Promote the "Toyota Experience" and build a content standardization process
As mentioned above in the case of Toyota's product line, Wu Pei's inspiration for daring to be tough also comes from Toyota's proud production model TPS (Toyota Production System).
For a long time, people have a subtle interpretation of this Kanban model that guides various companies - "let everyone who goes to the night market can eat hot, fresh food; customers can wait two minutes and never let him wait for three minutes; do not produce any food that cannot be sold; use the money earned now to purchase the ingredients needed in the future; always pay attention to changes in the tastes of diners and improve in time." ”
Naichi Ohno founded the famous Toyota production method and became the management bible of major companies.
Specific to the production of self-media, "Wu Pei Channel" will divide all the content into several modules, one of which is creative content and the other is standardized production content. In this part, Wu Pei split it into 4 layers for management.
The first layer is the value level, which topics can be selected, which topics cannot be done, which have done something, which have not done, these conceptual things are all unified at this level;
The second layer is the methodology layer, in which the "Wu Pei Channel" will begin to summarize a set of methodologies according to each project. For example, how to find the incision of the project, what should be done at the key nodes, how to plan the topic selection, these things involving content methods are all solved at this level.
The third layer is the training and empowerment of talents, which is also the most difficult part to achieve. In Wu Pei's experience, almost all young people who enter the company have endless ideas and their own set of theoretical methods, but as a self-media company, if you want to make the territory bigger and bigger, you need everyone to retain their talents while accepting themselves as an indispensable piece of the puzzle. Training and empowerment are therefore particularly important.
The final layer is to establish the process. Planning, researching, executing, filming, and publicizing are like an industrial assembly line. Parallel to the assembly line, it is to give full play to the enthusiasm of people, full-time, and each process also has special people to check.
Wu Pei admits that this "content standardization" theory may be spurned by many content creators, and this theory is not universal, but he has been groping along this line of thinking. "We often say in the company that all the mistakes are a management problem, all the management problems are a process problem, and all the process problems are a gatekeeper's problem in the end."
Keep your content rational and don't make decisions for your users
Looking at the programs of the "Wu Pei Channel", in addition to the car evaluation programs, Wu Pei also extended the perspective to places outside the car. In the "Life on Wheels" column, he visited the upcoming Chentian Auto Parts City in Guangzhou; experienced the sales of 4S stores and the work of engineers at the China Academy of Automotive Engineering; and recorded the story of Xie Chao, a racing driver who lost both hands. The netizens who commented most on the "Wu Pei Channel" are "feelings".
Unlike the comments of netizens, Wu Pei does not think that the content is deliberately expressing a certain feeling. He considered himself a rational man, and what he did was simply to follow the logic of "discovering the essence through phenomena."
Back in time, in high school, Wu Pei's dream was to become the editor-in-chief of the "Automotive Herald", and following this ideal he chose to major in vehicle engineering. Since his sophomore year, Wu Pei has written for the Automotive Herald, and after graduation, he also stayed in the magazine, becoming an automotive reporter, editor, and later became an editor-in-chief.
Wu Pei visited the China Vehicle Engineering Research Institute in the "Life on Wheels" column and interviewed engineer Yang Bo.
The experience of traditional media has brought Wu Pei the biggest change in content thinking. If the entry point of college manuscripts is often caused by interest, then the idea of becoming a professional journalist and editor is more to discover the essence of things. Wu Pei explains this idea in an extreme case - when your mother says "I love you", you should try to find several reasons to prove that your mother loves you.
Wu Pei said that this news-like operation has always existed in his mind and has never changed.
In the Spring Festival of 2022, a large media invited the "Wu Pei Channel" to evaluate an electric vehicle brand. Wu Pei got the platform book but was confused, the desk only asked him to say "good" to the car in front of the car, in the car and other scenes, once said bad, can be said twice. Wu Pei wondered, "Am I a mascot?" ”
Wu Pei said that he is not opposed to saying good to something that is originally very good, but this requires a process of argumentation - "all things are obtained by one argument." The mileage is good because of what kind of technology he uses; or the car feels good to drive, because of what kind of materials are used, what kind of tires are used, and how we get a good test in the procedures. ”
In this era when opinions can be expressed at will, Wu Pei feels that he is out of place with the times. Even if he has multiple identities such as traditional media people, drivers, Internet celebrities, and owners of self-media companies, he believes that he does not belong to any circle. Wu Pei believes that even if he is a literary and artistic youth in life, it is a respect for users to restrain their self-emotions in a relatively vigilant state.
Taking car reviews as an example, KOLs under the wave of short videos often express their preferences in the process of creating personal IP. Wu Pei believes that at the content level, each user has his own judgment and aesthetics, and all he does is present this thing to the audience, without making any decisions for the user.
"Feelings should not be too close to work, the reason why many people do self-media deviations is that his decision-making system makes decisions here, it is not a rational thinking, it is an overly emotional thinking attitude."
epilogue
In the past two years, Wu Pei has withdrawn from various groups and pushed many industry summits and social gatherings. In his view, only by listening less and seeing less will we not let ourselves be wild, and we will make ourselves more determined.
He feels that only when the self-media focuses, will it know what it can do and what step it can do, and it will maximize its advantages and radiate outward from a focused point.
"I only do some of the things I think I can do, and it's actually painful to think about it too much."
Topic interaction
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END