Text/Wang Xinxi
Source/Hotspot Micro-Review
In the automotive industry before Yu Chengdong came in to stir up trouble, it is difficult for us to see the grand situation of the automotive industry today that is different from each other, arguing and noisy.
Following the high theory that "fuel vehicles are functional machines", not long ago at the 14th China Automotive Blue Book Forum, Yu Chengdong said at the conference: Zengcheng as the first car in the family is very suitable, it is recommended to eliminate pure fuel vehicles as soon as possible, and said that the gasoline power generation of extended range vehicles is more fuel-efficient than fuel vehicles, which can save about half of the fuel and truly bring about the improvement of energy efficiency.
This triggered the opposition of Weipai CEO Li Ruifeng on Weibo: the backwardness of the extender hybrid technology is the consensus of the industry, and no matter how big the mouth is, it cannot be a big word. After that, Li Ruifeng posted again to reiterate his point of view: "The extender is backward, interlaced like a mountain, don't take casualness as a personality." ”
As a result, the entire industry quarreled, triggering a round of discussion among a large number of onlookers on whether the extender technology is advanced or backward, and sent the extender technology to the hot search.
The evolution of the marketing model: Lei Jun is 1.0, Yu Chengdong is 2.0
If Lei Jun is one of the leaders of the Internet marketing 1.0 era, Yu Chengdong is actually the play of the Internet marketing 2.0 era.
Lei Jun used to build mobile phones, talking about the importance of seizing the outlet, talking about cost performance, talking about "the artistic journey of a steel plate", talking about marketing methodology, fan management, and talking about the ultimate user experience.
In the early stage of the mobile Internet, mobile phone products are in the stage of development and iteration, the function and experience are not perfect, from the software field to the hardware industry, everyone is more concerned about how to make a good product, for consumers, the tendency of product first is also very obvious. Therefore, Lei Jun's extreme product concept meets the needs of consumers, and Xiaomi has become a pig on the outlet.
However, with the development of the industry, the product gap between various manufacturers has gradually been filled, and the stage of product firstity has passed. Yu Chengdong and Huawei stood on the cusp.
Yu Chengdong only talks about technology - whether it is making mobile phones or building cars, only talking about technology.
With the development of the economy, the maturity of mobile phones and the automotive industry, the Chinese people are paying more and more attention to technological innovation, especially with the rise of the national mentality of the great powers, the importance of technological innovation is infinitely magnified, technology is the burning point that makes people's blood boil, and it is the G-spot that impresses consumers.
Yu Chengdong knows this well.
Yu Chengdong is good at packaging a certain technology and setting up a controversial topic agenda.
When the mobile phone industry developed to a mature stage, he enlarged the core point of the self-developed chip, and later moved the knife from the underlying system, put forward the "scary technology", and suppressed all domestic manufacturers from the system technology level.
With the advent of the 5G era, a large number of manufacturers have begun to market 5G mobile phones. In 2019, in order to emphasize his own unique 5G technology advantages, Yu Chengdong began to stand for his own technology through the comparison of technical routes, when he sent a circle of friends and said: "Domestic counterparts refuel, I hope everyone can provide real 5G mobile phones, NSA will soon be eliminated, SA is the real 5G." At that time, it triggered a round of "true and false 5G" topic dispute.
For industry route platforms to for technical route platforms
In the automotive industry, in April 2021, Huawei reached an in-depth cooperation with Xilisi, a new energy brand under Xiaokang Co., Ltd. According to the division of labor, Huawei provides technology, marketing, channels, etc., and Xilix is responsible for vehicle manufacturing.
And Yu Chengdong is to combine technology and marketing, using the old routine, the first step out of the circle is to pull the contrast, and make a big statement. Yu Chengdong said, "The M7 is the world's first model that makes leaders very comfortable, surpassing luxury cars such as Alpha and Lexus LM", which provoked He Xiaopeng to bluntly say that he wanted to throw shoes.
But this is not enough, since it is technical marketing, it is necessary to refine the highlights that can be played, especially the technical winning point.
Yu Chengdong's idea is to first stand for the industry route. Extracting the saying that "fuel vehicles are functional machines, electric vehicles are intelligent machines", the original words are: "Today, everyone still buys a fuel vehicle, just like buying a functional machine in the era of smart phones." I think the era of feature phones will end quickly."
In this way, the user's mind is affected by the statement of the functional machine, and the fuel vehicle is out of the game first.
Next, since the main push of the circle of cooperation with Huawei is the extended range electric vehicle, Yu Chengdong refined the advantages of the range extender technology - PK with other hybrid route technology, which can use oil to generate electricity, save fuel, and weaken the mileage anxiety. The technology of extender electric, which was rarely paid attention to before, has become a national topic.
In the face of the question of "whether the extended range is a transition", Yu Chengdong resolutely said: "This is nonsense, take off the extended range engine, in fact, it is a pure electric vehicle." And said: "The range is very suitable as the first car in the family, and it is recommended to eliminate pure fuel vehicles as soon as possible."
The principle of range extender technology is "tandem" hybrid, which can be traced back to the early days of automobile development, porsche founder Ferdinand Porsche invented the first wheel-type electric vehicle, its working principle is to use the engine for power generation, and the power of the vehicle is completely provided by batteries and motors, and the electric motor drives the vehicle.
Electricity is used when electricity is sufficient, and oil is used to generate electricity when it is insufficient. This is a branch of plug-in hybridization and the simplest in-line mode.
The hybrid system, although there is also oil and electricity, but another mode - the entire power system according to different working conditions to choose parallel, engine direct drive, series, and pure electric mode driving.
In the view of the car companies on the hybrid route, the extended range engine is an obsolete technology, because the industry standard and enterprise standard of the extended range architecture are low and the replicability is high. The hybrid technology takes into account various working conditions, so that the engine is in the high efficiency range to the greatest extent, which is much more advanced than the extender.
From the perspective of technical principles and research and development difficulties, it is a fact that the hybrid system is superior. At present, BYD's DM-i, Geely Thor, etc. are autonomous hybrid technologies. In particular, Great Wall Motor's lemon hybrid DHT is recognized as the industry's technical strength, and Volkswagen China CEO Feng Sihan once called the increased range "the worst solution".
The hybrid side believes that the environmental protection and low cost of the direct drive of the extended-range motor, and the vibration and high pollution of the fuel vehicle, it is better to choose the fuel vehicle driven by the internal combustion engine. If Yu Chengdong's "eliminate fuel vehicles as soon as possible" is based on the reason of high vibration pollution, range extender technology also has these shortcomings. Whether it is energy saving and emission reduction or power performance, the increase range is not enough to see.
Therefore, Li Ruifeng pointed out in Weibo that car companies that take the extended range hybrid route are cutting leeks with backward technology.
Range-extended electric vehicles can solve the range anxiety, plug-in hybrid models can also solve. The biggest advantage of the extender is that it gives itself the name of "pure electric drive" in the concept, which strengthens the fuel saving, weakens the "mileage anxiety", and directly hits the user's pain points.
From the current point of view, it is difficult to have a clear conclusion to the current debate, but it is this kind of technical debate that is difficult to conclude, in order to maintain the popularity of the topic and out of the circle, triggering more insiders to participate, so that, not surprisingly, the popularity of the circle will soon open.
This is only the first stage, because from the perspective of Yu Chengdong's technical marketing characteristics, each stage has a new technical solution for each stage, and through the intensive attack of "advancedness" at multiple stages and multiple technical levels, it will eventually trigger sustained attention from the industry end to the consumer end, and then occupy the user's mind in technology and gradually increase the brand premium.
At present, Yu Chengdong has tried a small knife, and the entire industry can't sit still and start to take over, but Yu Chengdong's hard-core marketing may still be behind.
The success of the topic agenda determines how likely it is to go out of the circle
At present, there are three models for cooperation between Huawei and car companies, namely Tire1, HuaweiInside (HI), and Huawei Smart Select.
Tire1 is Huawei's only supplier.
HuaweiInside (HI) is Huawei's full-stack solution for software and hardware such as smart cockpit and automatic driving; In addition to huawei intelligent car solutions, Huawei will also participate in the pre-planning, design, and research and development of vehicles.
Judging from the cooperation model between Huawei and car companies, the future intelligent cockpit, car machine system, car chip, etc. may be Yu Chengdong's technical killing move, and the real marketing war is still to come.
Judging from the marketing style of other players in the automotive industry:
First of all, most players in the automotive industry, especially traditional cars, are not good at observing the industry, studying user pain points, and refining technical selling points.
From the marketing level, traditional car companies have always used the past TV brand advertising that is painless and has no feeling on the consumer side, and now it is at most the delivery platform of brand advertising to the video platform, and it is not good at using social media and content platforms to set controversial technical selling points and topic agendas.
And not good at creating a topic agenda on the social content platform, itself has already lost a chip, because the success of the topic agenda setting determines whether to launch new car products into the circle, triggering a big debate in the industry, which is the first stage of the circle.
Yu Chengdong's topic agenda setting method adopts a strong "subjective and biased" point of view to directly attack the public sentiment, which triggers most of the public sentiment is also negative and biased, and then causes controversy.
From the current manufacturers who cooperate with Huawei, most of them are second- and third-tier car companies, so they can use a sword-and-arrow style of play - relying on technical topics to continue to ferment, quickly radiating out of the circle from the small circle, becoming a topic of concern for non-insiders, and radiating to a large number of car users or car users who are holding coins to buy, guiding them to think about these topics.
This process is a process of mental change, and whether users accept it or not, this view affects their tendency to buy a car. This is also where Li Ruifeng "can't figure it out".
Bias is the driving force of the market and also the filter of the market
There was a psychological view that negative emotions would have a greater impact than positive emotions. This is also why "the more scolding the more sales" is often a strange phenomenon in the Chinese commercial market.
This is the social network communication effect played a role, social networks on people's information reception and selection has played a great role in guiding, and the public based on a topic of debate will form a strong circle of influence between the positive and negative sides, and in the business world, prejudice often has a strong market.
This coincides with a view of Soros: the so-called market is composed of the minds of all participants, the so-called mind is the emotions and prejudices of people in the market, and the seemingly rational market is essentially full of irrationality and prejudice. And prejudice is the driving force of the market.
But in the author's view, prejudice is also a market filter, from the perspective of Yu Chengdong's playing style, by refining the selling point of automotive technology, constantly amplifying the role of this point, the local advantage is magnified to the overall advantage, and then trigger a big debate, this process is a high-net-worth user screening process.
Because for the car seller, unlike selling mobile phones, which need to go in volume, often tens of millions, this requires enough fans to do it, and it is not easy to offend a certain part of the fans who have a special preference for a certain technical route and product function.
For small factories, it is already a good performance to sell 300,000 vehicles a year. Therefore, selling cars only needs to screen high-net-worth users, the screening of high-net-worth users needs to be accurately focused, accurate screening must use bias thinking, only enough prejudice and subjectivity can screen out this part of the most loyal users.
Therefore, in the marketing of the automotive industry, do not be afraid of offending users, users who do not agree with your views, and are not your precise target group.
In particular, most of the new energy brands cooperating with Huawei are second-tier edge brands, and their sales are not good, and it only needs to screen out a part of the fans who can highly agree with his technical concept. This part of the fan base that highly identifies with him is a high-net-worth user who is likely to place an order at present or in the future.
The range extender is not much different from the plug-in hybrid from the point of view of use. However, Yu Chengdong amplifies the advantages of the technical route and affects the user's mind, which can also be seen as a strategy of field horse racing - amplifying the advantages of medium horses, PK with the core advantages of superior horses, rapidly increasing the brand premium, driving sales, from the current point of view, Yu Chengdong's marketing model is achieving phased results.
epilogue
In the whole year of 2021, the total delivery volume of the Xilis SF5 is only 8,000 units, and Yu Chengdong aims to sell 300,000 M5s this year. From the first quarter, this year is still far from the target sales gap.
Under the strong marketing of Yu Chengdong, whether the extended range car is "technologically backward" is not discussed, but the 72-hour order released by the M7 has exceeded 60,000 units, which has shown that the marketing effect has been revealed. Therefore, in order to complete the next target sales, what marketing methods Yu Chengdong will take is worth looking forward to.
From the perspective of the future, from the new forces of car manufacturing to traditional car manufacturers, how to catch the next wave of marketing shock wave of Yu Chengdong may need to be planned in advance. Will the marketing model of the automotive industry be disrupted? Let's wait and see.
Author: Wang Xinxi Senior TMT Reviewer This article is not allowed to be reproduced without permission