Produced 丨Tiger Sniff Car Group
Author 丨 thoughtful
Editor丨Zhang Bowen
Head picture丨Visual China
"I would say that advertising is really great and everyone needs advertising."
When asked by investors if Tesla could advertise, the company's CEO Elon Musk said. In his view, Tesla can help people understand what features Tesla has that were not widely known in the past through advertising. "We'll try some ads and see how it goes."
Obviously, this is Musk, who has always been very strategic, and is once again adjusting his views. You know, just a month ago, on April 9, Musk responded to a fund manager's question about Tesla's lack of advertising: "Tesla's products have a lot of demand, but if the price exceeds people's affordability, then the demand is meaningless."
In other words, Musk's Tesla is using the money used by other brands to advertise to reduce the cost and selling price of vehicles so that more people can afford electric cars. But now it seems that Musk, such an "American male bodhisattva", is "rebelling against the revolution" and beginning to follow the old path of traditional car companies.
For this matter, some people in the outside world have put forward the theory that "the butt determines the brain". In their view, Musk, who is also serving as Twitter's CEO, must recognize the value of advertising to the company. After all, Twitter's main revenue comes from corporate advertising. In fact, in February this year, Musk also expressed gratitude at the event to Apple and Disney, the two giant groups, for continuing to advertise on Twitter.
Of course, the author also admits that this analysis is reasonable. But if you just attribute Tesla to start advertising, Musk's teacher also has to "pick up Hiroshi", it is inevitable to think too shallowly.
After all, advertising is really important for car companies.
10 million advertising films used to be the norm for car companies
For automobile companies, the big money of advertising, I believe that readers from all walks of life have heard about specific cases and companies. In the prime time, location or location of TV, APP opening, WeChat moments, outdoor screens and billboards, we can often see the figure of car companies.
The content of these advertisements includes, but is not limited to, vehicle product styling, core selling points, technical advantages, and user positioning. When it comes to a video and commercial, half of it is a car running around the streets, highways and fields, "as if nothing new or important."
A typical and brainwashed car advertisement
But if we analyze it from an insider's point of view, we will find that this is obviously not the case. Lattelin, who used to be the head of the marketing department of a joint venture brand and is currently the manager of the business podcast "BB Business and Brand", told the author: "Traditional car companies sell cars, mainly relying on advertising. In the past, more than half of a car company's marketing expenses may have been spent on this matter.
According to Lattelin, the advertisements launched by traditional car companies are mainly divided into two categories: long-term brand building and short-term sales achievement. The purpose of production, the method of dissemination and the measurement of effectiveness of the two are very different, and it is worth analyzing in detail.
The first is brand advertising, whose content is mostly around the brand concept or the positioning of a new product, using stories, spokespersons and other ways to interpret. The selling point of the product is often not the protagonist, but presented in an implicit lens language. These advertisements often invest a lot of money, and are more displayed in offline advertising spaces such as radio and television, billboards, and movie theaters, as well as online advertising spaces such as APP opening pages and WeChat moments. In this regard, luxury brands have done particularly well in the past.
Last year, Andy Lau's Xiaoman solar term advertisement shot by Audi was a typical brand advertisement, but it eventually overturned
The indicator that measures all this is "brand health". Latteline told me that the system consists of multiple dimensions, one of which is "unaided-brand-awareness". "For example, we regularly ask users through research companies, if you want to buy a 150,000-200,000 car, which three brands do you think of first?" "We're tracking trends in this metric, and if it goes down, it's a sign that something is wrong with brand health." ”
The second is sales advertising. This type of advertising is often directly linked to product selling points, offers and other information, and the content contains much more direct information than more "metaphysical" brand advertising. In terms of delivery channels, in addition to the online and offline modes mentioned above, it also includes elevator room screens, projections and major vertical car websites, aiming to enhance the presence of a model in the near stage of considering car buyers.
For the measurement of the effect of this type of advertising, it is directly related to the flow of customers entering the store in the regional 4S store or showroom. "The flow of customers in the showroom is directly related to our order volume and sales, so I have monthly meetings with the sales director to communicate with the sales director about the rhythm of sales advertising." Latteline told me, "Relatively speaking, if this month's sales policy is more aggressive, then the sales conversion rate will be higher, and under the same sales target, the pressure on my side will be less." ”
For quite some time, this kind of advertising has been a standard marketing action for car companies. And Tesla's birth completely subverted this "routine".
Previously, why Tesla didn't need ads
For a long time, all of Tesla's marketing department was focused on site selection, store opening, and sales training. Not only did the company have no hard launch at all, but it didn't even have a market research team. The reason lies in Tesla's pioneering role in the category of electric vehicles, as well as the particularity of the company and Musk.
In the matter of traffic, Mr. Musk is very good at it
First of all, Tesla launched the Model S in 2012 and when it released the Model 3 in 2017, the company's products were groundbreaking in the world because of its excellent product capabilities, unique leading technology and charging services.
At that time, the electric vehicle market was also in its early stages, and users who were interested in it and willing to buy were "early adopters". Compared with the public who needs market education, they tend to have a higher level of education, curiosity and ability to pay, and will actively understand the products and technologies of electric vehicles, and then become interested in Musk and Tesla.
In this regard, Tesla's approach at this stage is to open stores to the core business areas of first-tier cities where this part of the population gathers as soon as possible, and organize car friend activities from time to time, relying on user reputation and circle to spread. At the same time, Tesla consumers at this stage are often keen to share their car experience and feelings, which in turn helps Tesla build influence in the user's private space.
Tesla's first store in China opened in Beijing's top shopping mall, Parkview Grassland
Secondly, there is the particularity of Tesla and Musk. As a serial entrepreneur born in South Africa, "settled" in Canada, made a fortune in the United States and served as the world's richest man, Musk's own experience is legendary enough. Another legendary company he founded, SpaceX (Space Exploration Company), is also a technology company at the forefront of human technology and is working to help humans return to the moon and even land on Mars.
Therefore, Musk, as the leader of these two companies and keen on tweeting, has naturally become the top of the technology industry and even the financial industry. And the tangible and intangible resources in his hands are enough to casually "live" to achieve the communication effect that other brands spend hundreds of millions of dollars on brand advertising.
In 2018, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launched Musk's Roadster into space. This is the most successful car ad in human history.
"In the early stage when joint venture brands began to enter the Chinese auto market, the global automotive industry has entered a period of technological maturity, and these foreign-funded car companies have also passed the entrepreneurial stage and become mature multinational automobile giants. And their founders are often out of the management line, or even old. This is why, when we do brand communication, we always need to combine the brand's inheritance and tonality to tell the story. Latteline said to me.
In her opinion, compared with the stories that car marketing departments and advertising companies have racked their brains, the nascent Tesla and the living Musk are more attractive to users. Tesla's methodology has also been copied to varying degrees on many new domestic car manufacturers. Geng Zhi's Li Xiang, the amazing Li Bin, the "science and engineering man" He Xiaopeng... The leaders of various start-up brands chose to come to the front of the stage and participate in the process of shaping the brand image.
It should be said that in the past few years, the new forces have indeed achieved results in "copying" Tesla. Just two days ago, Li Xiang's comment on the marketing budget of the ideal car was praised by Yang Xueliang, vice president of Geely Automobile.
Of course, we still don't know whether the brand launch budget of each team of Geely Auto will be open or not, but now the teacher of all the new forces, Tesla, has decided to do brand launch. In the view of some industry insiders, as the new energy vehicle market moves from the early stage to the replacement of traditional energy vehicles, the hard and wide investment of new forces must be done.
After all, not every entrepreneur is a traffic genius like Musk.
Dragon slayer boy, will eventually be blackened?
"Recently, I have been advising some new car companies to do some regional testing of traditional advertising." Sun Shaojun, founder of Car Fans, told me, "Traditional early adopter users have basically driven new energy vehicles. The next thing to reach is those users who have not been affected in the past. ”
In Sun Shaojun's view, this part of the user is more cold than traditional advertising. For example, he said that according to the recent statistics of car fans, Weipai Blue Mountain's customer flow is very high, and the crowd portrait and ideal users have been separated. "Obviously, users who are willing to buy a 6-seater family car like Blue Mountain should be an ideal potential customer. But according to our investigation, when these people look at the Blue Mountains, they have no contrast ideals at all, and it is obvious that the latter did not reach this part of the population. ”
This may be why Tesla chose to start advertising at this point in time. In April this year, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in mainland China reached 29.5%. In the first four months of this year, the market share of new energy vehicles also reached 27%. It can be seen that the general public has become the main group of people replacing early adopters in China's new energy vehicle market.
Compared to early adopters, the general consumer is not as interested in founders, brand values and advanced technology. Everyone is more concerned about the cost performance of the product, the cost of the car, and the advantages of other models of the same price, as well as more specific and practical issues such as the residual value of second-hand cars. For these problems, the new forces of car manufacturing in the past are often unprepared.
Especially for Tesla, which has been leading the industry for a long time, more strategies and means are needed as it begins to face more and more strong opponents. After all, Tesla can't always rely on price cuts to "backstab old owners" to harvest orders.
In fact, new automakers are already experimenting with similar "brand launches". The sales ranking of ideal cars that were "stopped" a few days ago is a very typical example. Obviously, Ideal Auto has the insight that for ordinary consumers, a car with high enough sales has a stronger appeal. This is why it has become the ideal for the sales of new SUV models, which has frequently released its own sales rankings on a weekly basis.
In contrast, Tesla has larger sales in China than ideal cars, and has a higher market share in the segment, so it faces greater pressure. In fact, due to the existence of rumors such as "brake failure" and "prohibition of entry into the compound" for a long time in the past, Tesla's brand image is not positive in the eyes of many people. Therefore, it can be speculated that if Tesla wants to advertise in China, focusing on reversing its negative brand label should be a breakthrough.
Of course, it depends on how much freedom Musk can give Tesla China and budget space. After all, compared with the price adjustment, the matter of advertising still has to be made by Tesla's Chinese colleagues to be reliable.