The ideal MEGA who was "cyberbullied", can you still save it?

The rivers and lakes are not fighting and killing, but another kind of human sophistication. At every turn, it is better to calm down and re-examine your product strength and marketing methods, and try to save the scarred brand image.

Author | Forrest

Edit | Anfield

Title Picture | Photo by Forrest

Title Picture | Li Auto's official blog

The most popular fried chicken in the car circle, if the Xiaomi SU7 released today ranks first, then the ideal MEGA will definitely be able to compete with it for the top spot in the traffic list in March.

On March 1 this year, Ideal MEGA was officially announced, and it immediately set off a whole month of heated discussions. But from the market performance of "light thunder but not rain", to the verbal criticism on the Internet, this pure electric MPV - and the ideal CEO Li Xiang himself have once again become the focus of controversy.

The roof leak happened to rain overnight. On the afternoon of March 21, an internal letter from Li Auto was exposed on the Internet, and then spread along the network cable, adding a little more firewood to the ideal on the fire.

In this internal letter entitled "How to solve the problems faced by Li Auto at the moment", Li Xiang "reviewed" the essential reasons for the public opinion turmoil in the past month, admitted that the product had errors in judgment in terms of rhythm and goals, and gave specific solutions.

"How to solve the ideal car now" on the Internet

Problems Faced".

(Photo/Network)

Contrary to expectations, this seemingly conclusive "internal review letter" does not seem to have the effect of cooling down public opinion.

Li Xiang's personal Weibo, which has been suspended for more than 20 days, is still full of various rumors related to the ideal MEGA, as well as criticism of the old car owners who are quite dissatisfied with the ideal, and even accuses the ideal of a series of marketing actions since this year of "defenseless backstabbing the old car owner", so that the ideal that is trying to get out of the whirlpool of public opinion is in an embattled predicament.

01

The response to MEGA was not as expected

For more than half a month after the high-profile debut, the cold sales data also poured a basin of cold water on the ideal MEGA. According to the Financial Associated Press, within 72 hours of MEGA's listing, there were about 3,218 large orders nationwide and about 10,297 unsubscribes, which was completely different from the previous "big sales as soon as it was released" of the L series.

Even in offline stores, people's enthusiasm for MEGA is only at the level of watching the excitement.

Many ideal store sales revealed to the media that people who came to see the car surrounded the show car three layers inside and three layers outside, but there were very few fans who actually placed orders.

This madness even affected the sales of the main model. According to the statistics of the New Weekly reporter, more than one ideal store complained to the media that after the launch of MEGA, "the main model L8 was squeezed out".

The highly-anticipated ideal MEGA was not well received as expected.

(Photo/Screenshot of the 2024 Li Auto Spring Conference)

It wasn't until half a month after the official release that the hidden ideal official officially announced the sales data of MEGA: after the start of delivery on March 11, the first full delivery week delivery exceeded 1,000. And this short sentence seems to have shown that this MEGA, which has high hopes, is not far from "only thunder and no rain".

What's even more interesting is that after the all-staff internal letter circulated on the Internet, Ideal submitted a new announcement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, announcing that it would lower its delivery outlook for the first quarter of 2024 from the original 100,000~103,000 vehicles to 76,000~78,000 vehicles.

As the number one player of the new car-making force, this action of the ideal is obviously very abnormal.

It's hard to say what really caused the MEGA horses to stumble. Maybe it's the "pursuit of desire" that Li Xiang admitted in his internal letter, maybe it's the price that's a cut higher than the popular model, maybe the new car is a "big toy" that only burns electricity, or maybe it's a pure electric MPV car that is incompatible with other ideal products.

You must know that choosing the ideal consumer has more or less anxiety about the energy supplement of pure electric vehicles.

Many consumers who choose to buy an ideal car,

More or less anxious about the energy replenishment of pure electric vehicles.

(Photo/Visual China)

To be sure, in the current stage of the Chinese auto market, MPVs with the shadow of Toyota Alpha are still a niche and greasy track, and there are still very few consumers who are really interested in MPVs.

What's more, the starting price of the MEGA is more than 500,000 yuan - hearing this price, the average family may be more inclined to buy a BBA or high-end version of the SUV, and even cheaper own-brand models seem to be a more fragrant choice.

02

A terrier that has been played

However, compared with the objective factors that led to the defeat, public opinion seems to be more willing to ridicule MEGA's "eye-catching" design. Even as early as November last year, on the eve of Ideal and MEGA participating in the Guangzhou Auto Show, the Internet was already full of all kinds of ridicule about this "heterogeneous model".

After all, MEGA's styling is just too offbeat.

It must be admitted that the design of the ideal MEGA has indeed put a lot of thought into it. It's just that the streamlined front of the redesigned in order to reduce wind resistance makes the MEGA sink like a "bullet" of high-speed rail, and it also makes the whole car full of alternative technology. Some netizens "changed" MEGA with the same livery as the high-speed rail, and the nickname of "Highway High-speed Rail" spread far and wide.

During the Guangzhou Auto Show in November 2023,

MEGA at Li Auto's booth.

(Photo/Photo by New Weekly reporter Forrest)

ridicule is ridicule, and the painting style of public opinion is quite harmonious.

But after the official release of MEGA in March this year, spoof photos of MEGA being photoshopped as a "new energy funeral car" soon appeared on social platforms, and some netizens found photos of MEGA parked side by side in the underground garage, adjusted the color to a weird style, and used copywriting to guide users to associate in the direction of "funeral".

The "hearse terrier" went viral on the Internet, and the square design of MEGA seemed to have become the original sin of sales on the street, which naturally made Li Xiang himself very annoyed: "No matter how difficult it is, it can't become 'Darth Vader'." ”

It should be noted that whether MEGA, which has become the center of the whirlpool of public opinion, looks like a hearse or not is a matter of opinion. But it is also important to know that hearses are not special models that need to be specially produced, as long as they meet the conditions and can be used by the market.

And when it is used more and more times, society will form a conventional impression.

Objectively speaking, most of the common funeral cars in China are boxy and gray and black MPVs, including the "evergreen" Buick GL8 in the Chinese MPV market.

But after all, MEGA is still a new car that has just been launched, and the society has not yet established any impression of this car, and at this time, a hyped "unlucky" statement suddenly floated in, which will inevitably affect consumers' consumption decisions - rather than taking risks, it is better to avoid them completely.

Buick GL8, which is used as a funeral car by many funeral homes,

It is still the best-selling MPV market in China.

(Photo/"Sweeping the Black Storm")

From this point of view, Li Xiang's anxious and angry attitude is not difficult to understand, and it is normal for people to post a long article in the circle of friends announcing that he wants to take legal steps to solve the problem.

It is a semi-public fact that the automotive industry has been "spoofing" for a long time.

Spread rumors and open your mouth, refute rumors and break your legs. If you are targeted by competitors, invite the water army to spread rumors on social media, and the relevant rumors often ferment quickly, although the attacked car companies are tired of anger, but they have no choice but to let the legal department come to the front of the stage and try to block the mouth.

We can't judge whether the "hearse terrier" is an "organized malicious attack" as the ideal said, but it is obvious that the malicious competition of "people die for money and birds die for food" in the automobile circle not only cannot raise themselves, but only smash their own feet, and in the end only innocent ordinary car users will suffer.

03

The rivers and lakes are not smearing each other

Li Xiang and Ideal may need more attention is that when Li Xiang himself posted that long article in the circle of friends, and the subsequent internal open letter was exposed, the vast majority of netizens were unwilling to buy it.

Some people even imitated the tone of Li Xiang's previous speech, and reacted to Li Xiang in a weird way, "finally becoming the person he hates", saying that Li Xiang "was hit by the boomerang of traffic this time".

Li Xiang posted a long article in his personal circle of friends.

(Photo/Network)

Someone found out the speech of Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, at a public event on January 16 this year: "Many important people (in the automobile industry) have begun to talk nonsense. Although Zhu Huarong did not name a certain friend, he pointed out the fact that the "social media marketing" used by the new energy vehicle industry is a double-edged sword.

As the most active CEO and "Internet celebrity" in the automotive industry, Li Xiang is always good at creating traffic and has never stopped exporting views and opinions to the outside world, although most of the views and opinions are amazing, and emotional gimmicks are greater than rational and practical.

For example, when the ideal ONE was launched, Li Xiang once shouted that this was "the best SUV within a million", but he didn't know that the price of this new car was only a little over 300,000 yuan; later, after the ideal L9 was launched, Li Xiang changed his rhetoric and called the 400,000 car "the best SUV within 5 million". These remarks caused an uproar in the automotive community.

Previously, Li Xiang's remarks at the Ideal ONE listing press conference,

被舆论质疑在"碰瓷"BBA.

The "non-stop speech" style of propaganda stimulated sales to a certain extent, but it was quickly accused of being an alternative porcelain. The most obvious thing is that Li Xiang is always happy to submit monthly and even weekly reports to fans on his personal Weibo, and secretly poke and poke on sales to trample on low-key car friends.

Returning to MEGA, similar remarks from Li Auto and Li Xiang themselves are endless, not only deliberately playing the crash test of friends in a certain link at the press conference, saying that some cars are "vulnerable in the third row", and even posting a high-profile article satirizing "Don't be misled by the assumption that high-end pure electric vehicles have no sales", which was interpreted as "teaching" high-end pure electric brands to sell cars.

The Internet will not be without memory, and Li Xiang, who has been raised high by public opinion, must know how to shoot and secretly arrow after being thrown to the bottom by public opinion. If you can find a reason for him to shut up for many days, it may be that he didn't expect that the boomerang he threw out would hit his head so quickly, and finally make his head bleed.

It is worth mentioning that at the same time that MEGA was caught in the center of the whirlpool of public opinion, the new crossover MPV MIX released by ZEEKR set off a wave of anticipation inside and outside the automobile circle because of its mellow shape like a "baby bus", which was completely different from the various sarcasms when MEGA was unveiled.

The reason is self-explanatory, in the final analysis, it is related to consumers' impression of the brand and the pattern of the brand itself.

On February 22 this year, ZEEKR Motors accidentally used the NIO ET7 promotional image on its official Weibo to promote its pure electric luxury sedan ZEEKR 007. This "oolong incident" made ZEEKR rush to the hot search, and ZEEKR also generously admitted its mistakes, and resolved the embarrassment with the humor of "editing the original text by hand 10,000 times", neither replying to the lively netizens, nor covering up the mistakes by deleting them.

Shen Fei, vice president of Weilai, later reposted Weibo

responded generously to the incident, saying, "Don't worry."

(Photo/Weibo @ZEEKR)

What must be known is that the rivers and lakes are not fighting and killing, but another kind of human sophistication.

At every turn, it is better to calm down and re-examine your product strength and marketing methods, and try to save the scarred brand image.

In the increasingly volatile automotive industry, creating a fair and competitive market environment is far more important than self-resuming after failure.

Proofreading: Meet, Operation: Lu Zirui, Typesetting: Jiang Jiahong

[1] "What is Li Xiang "reflecting" again?" Electric Planet N 2024-3-21

[2] "Li Thought of the Time to Introspect", Salt Finance and Economics, 2024-3-13

[3] "MEGA Loss, Reflection Shouldn't Just Be Li Xiang" Observer.com 2024-3-22

[4] "Is the ideal car that has been "cyberbullied" deserved?" Owner's Guide 2024-3-12

[5] "ZEEKR MIX, to teach the ideal to build MPV?", Automobile Commune, 2024-3-24