Text: Zheng driving @ Tan Qing said AI
At the end of 2019, Ford made a bold decision: to make its high-end brand Lincoln domestic.
At that time, Ford had just suffered three consecutive years of sales decline, and sales in the Chinese market had reached a trough, and Ford's high-end brand was no longer held from that moment on.
Then, first adventurers, to aviators, to a new generation of navigators, sales climbed, and Lincoln seemed to find a sense of good luck.
Last year's Lincoln "Three Musketeers" riveted out 7 new cars, sales also surpassed the US domestic market, Ford China seems to see the hope of revitalizing the "light of domestic goods" in the United States.
For the rise in sales of Lincoln's "Three Musketeers", Mao Jingbo boiled down to three creeds: "brand positioning of American luxury", "customer experience of 'Lincoln's Way'", and "sales management of value marketing".
Admittedly, in terms of sales, the localization of Lincoln has become a key player in driving Ford China to turn a profit. However, the Lincoln Z, which was built for Z generation users, has not even announced the official sales in the past month or so since it was just listed, and there are more voices on the Internet that question this car.
Since the launch of Changan Lincoln Adventurer, the Lincoln brand has gradually become bigger. But why was the Lincoln Z questioned? Is it that domestic users change their minds too quickly, or lincoln does not understand Chinese users?
Lincoln Z: Luxury brands ruined by Chinese specials?
What about the sales of the Lincoln Z?
Although the sales of the Lincoln Z in March were not announced, it can still be calculated from the sales data of Lincoln's total sales and other models.
Lincoln Motors reported sales of 19,471 units in the first quarter of this year, and sales of other models were 18,020 units, which can be derived from wholesale sales of 1451 units. Retail sales are even less, according to the statistics of a certain easy platform, the national insurance data is only a few hundred.
If you consider that Lincoln Z has been pre-sold for nearly two months before the listing, and there is an initial marketing campaign and the blessing of the young traffic of Station B, such an opening result can already be described by the word "dismal".
Why can't Lincoln Z catch the hearts of young people? Why did Mao Jingbo's "three creeds" not work? Intuitively, there are probably two reasons:
First of all, lincoln Z is different from the previous "Three Musketeers", is an authentic "Chinese special car", which has brought some controversy to Lincoln Z.
Users in each market have different demands on models, and localization is actually more popular. The first to play special cars in China and eat this wave of dividends is the volkswagen that "understands Chinese users the most". Seeing that Langyi and Bora have been selling well for many years, other car companies can't help but follow suit.
However, China's special supply cars have been criticized by users, mainly because the current dividend period of special supply cars has passed.
On the one hand, once the method of attracting domestic car users is too easy, the phenomenon of large-scale reduction and cutting corners of special supply cars will inevitably occur. On the other hand, local car companies without brand power must give users enough sincerity in terms of cost performance and product strength. In this contrast, the further the time goes, the worse the wind rating of the special car.
Among the American cars, the first to launch a special car is not Ford, but GM. From the low-end Chevrolet to the more high-end Buick, GM has launched no less than ten special cars for the Chinese market, and Buick's dependence on the Chinese market even far exceeds volkswagen, but in order to maintain the brand potential, its luxury brand Cadillac still adheres to the last stubbornness.
Compared with GM, Ford has made its Lincoln go to localization, in fact, it has broken through the bottom line of "luxury brands adhere to global cars". The market area that Lincoln Z focuses on is very clear, that is, based on the scale of the Chinese market and the preferences of Chinese consumers, a local "special edition" model developed in a targeted manner, as to whether it is a noble "global car" has been difficult to take into account.
On the other hand, as a luxury brand, Lincoln dared to put down its psychological baggage to launch the Lincoln Z for the Chinese market, because it saw that Chinese users have a higher demand for intelligence.
In 2020, the penetration rate of Intelligent Connected Vehicles in China has reached about 15%, and according to relevant agencies, this figure is expected to exceed 75% in 2025, higher than the global market average. Considering the scale of the Chinese market, Ford China simply moved its intelligent research and development institutions to China.
However, from the perspective of the tired sales of Lincoln Z at the beginning, the "brand positioning of American luxury" is obviously not able to capture the minds of young people, and it is inevitable to be accused of "special supply is not luxury" at this time.
In addition, another slot point that makes lincoln Z bargain is "shell Mondeo".
Netizens' doubts are actually not unreasonable. From the appearance point of view, lincoln Z and Mondeo are very similar in the overall shape, waist line, A/B column and other designs. In terms of engine configuration, although the engine models on both vehicles are CAF488WQC with a horizontal layout, the displacement is also 1999mL.
But the Lincoln Z is a luxury car after all, and in order to "despise" Mondeo in product positioning, there must be a more convincing difference.
So the amazing operation happened — lincoln Z had to add no. 95 gasoline, and Mondeo only had no. 92. Whether this is an IQ tax or not, perhaps many people already have the answer in their minds.
Product positioning: "Random guns and birds" is difficult to defeat big data dimensionality reduction
At the product level, the slot has led to long-term poor sales of many cars. However, if it is cold at the beginning, either the brand power is not enough, or the initial marketing momentum does not work.
From the perspective of brand power, the reputation of the American official car in China is still good, coupled with the preparation of the "Three Musketeers" 7 models of cars before, Lincoln's brand awareness in China has gradually heated up, so brand power should not be the main reason for Lincoln Z's coldness.
So is Lincoln Z's situation of "listing cold" related to marketing?
At the new car launch at last year's Guangzhou Auto Show, Ford China President Chen Anning and Lincoln China President Mao Jingbo jointly helped introduce the highlights of the car, which shows that Ford Motor has attached special importance to this model that has its own landmark significance.
At the listing conference on March 12, the new Lincoln Z joined hands with the B station where a large number of young people gathered to show a meta-universe live broadcast, which showed that Lincoln really wanted to build the Lincoln Z into a blockbuster car that catered to the electrification era.
However, since everything that should be done has been done, why is the feedback from the market still not ideal?
In tan qing said AI view, in terms of marketing, Lincoln as a traditional car company, and the new forces have the most fundamental difference, may be the main reason for "re-injecting a car but the response is mediocre".
An interesting phenomenon is that there is a huge difference between the traditional car companies and new forces in the new energy transformation in the speed of launching new models. Toyota, the most successful of the traditional car companies, even though the market size is deservedly the first place, released 16 electric vehicles in one go at the end of last year, and the ideal of the new forces "three fools" can become a blockbuster model by launching only one car.
Usually many people think that this is because the new forces are in the early stage of entrepreneurship, the market volume of new energy is not large enough, and it seems more secure to take the route of less and fine explosive models.
However, it ignores the fact that the new forces with Internet genes do not seem to need the tactics of the sea of cars to trial and error, but use the big data capabilities of the Internet platform to calculate the greatest common divisor of users' preferences for various product details.
For example, The ideal only launched the ideal ONE car, and it is also equipped with a three-cylinder machine with mixed reputations, but it does not affect the sales of this car Changhong. With the accurate pulse of the user's mind by the Internet platform of Autohome, the user's "seven inches" are hit with a shot, which is a bit scary in the product positioning link.
Compared with the new forces, the marketing of Lincoln Z is actually a bit itchy, and it does not really grasp the most pressing demands of users. For example, Lincoln Z seems to have ulterior motives when taking the name, and the Z in the car name represents the dual meaning of MKZ and Zephyr's inheritance and embracing the "Z generation" young people, but in fact, how many points can domestic young users realize?
As another example, Netflix analyzed the preferences of 33 million viewers based on the streaming activity records of its subscribers, and thus made a bold judgment: "House of Cards", co-produced by actor Kevin Spacey and director David Finch, will be a success. As a result, "House of Cards" by Netflix was indeed very popular, and then through this data prediction, Netflix created a series of popular episodes.
Netflix, which has never had experience in filming film and television dramas, just like Wei Xiaoli and Tesla, who do not have many years of experience in car building, although the cross-border is different industries, the similarities between the two are Internet genes, and both show the level of "one shot is an old driver" in the positioning of C-end products.
So we now see that although traditional car companies such as Ford and General Motors have a long history and the market volume is not small. However, in terms of product positioning, it is not as handy as the new forces that have just been established for a few years. This kind of "random gun and bird" car and sea tactics have been in sharp contrast with the product positioning methods of the new forces "where big data refers to which to fight".
From this point of view, the valuable experience of market positioning can not rely on time and market scale piled up, the era of intelligent and networked cars, how manufacturers and users use the Internet to interact frequently, always pulse the user's itch points, cool points and pain points, make good use of big data and private domain traffic, may be the ultimate way of market positioning.
If according to this logic, the "American luxury brand positioning" that Lincoln enshrines as a creed may become a "drag oil bottle" that users are tasteless and Lincoln abandons.
Taking advantage of Tesla and Rivian, Ford breathed a sigh of relief
Although the Lincoln Z car started coldly, it has to be said that this spirit of bold experimentation is beyond reproach. And more importantly, in the new energy change, how a company should maintain the overall revenue upwards is actually more important. In this regard, the century-old Ford does show a more sophisticated level.
According to Ford Motor's 2021 financial report, its full-year net income reached $17.9 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $10 billion, both of which achieved year-on-year growth. Among them, the company's fourth-quarter revenue was $37.7 billion, net income was $12.3 billion, and adjusted EBITDA was $2 billion, all higher than the same period in 2020.
It is worth noting that in terms of cash flow, Ford has made a lot of income through investment.
After Rivian's initial public offering on Nov. 10, Ford reclassified its investment income in Rivian for the first quarter of 2021 as a special item, according to the earnings report. By the end of 2021, the investment income reached $10.6 billion.
In tanqing said AI, Tesla's strong rise, for Ford, there are two levels of benefits:
On the one hand, as traditional American car companies, Ford and GM have been suppressed by Volkswagen in recent years, and the local market is shrinking day by day. After the rise of Tesla's sales, it drove away the invading Volkswagen in the US market, so that Ford also sat up straight.
Just like Wuling Hongguang is a domestic god car, Ford pickup trucks have always been the light of domestic goods in the United States, so without the suppression of German cars, Ford Motor has easily become the second largest electric vehicle seller in the United States after Tesla in 2021.
On the other hand, Tesla has opened up an electric vehicle track, allowing hairy boys like Rivian to make waves in the secondary market, according to the Tianyancha APP, Ford has made many strategic investments in Tesla competitor Rivian in recent years. With its investment in Rivian alone, Ford has reaped significant benefits.
According to Ford's earnings report, as of the fourth quarter, Ford motor vehicles held more than $36 billion in cash and $52 billion in liquidity, all of which included the income from Ford's investment in Rivian.
After the increase in cash flow, Ford repurchased and redeemed $7.6 billion in high-cost debt, further consolidating its balance sheet while also significantly reducing ongoing interest expense costs.
What's more, Ford also has more money to launch a number of new models. According to the "330" plan recently announced by Chen Anning at the Ford China 2.0 Strategy Conference, in order to reverse the decline, more than 30 new cars including domestic explorers and domestic Lincolns will be launched within three years, in addition to 10 new energy vehicles.
As a traditional car company, even if it is difficult to achieve the same level as the new forces in terms of product positioning in the short term, it can launch more models and can afford to fight a car battle, which undoubtedly makes Ford China less pressure and more calm.
The transformation of new energy is a marathon for new and old car companies, can the future Ford regain its former glory? Let's do it and see.