Author | Yu Liangliang
The new energy automobile industry ushered in the last finale of the Internet entrepreneur - Lei Jun, the first car he built won praise in the industry, and even let Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, who has been building cars for 30 years, personally lead a team to review Xiaomi SU7.
Xiaomi SU7 is on the market, completing a phenomenal new car pursuit boom, making Lei Jun from a big king in the field of smart phones, and becoming a non-negligible existence in the field of smart cars overnight. In particular, Lei Jun's marketing ability has become the ceiling of the automobile marketing industry, bringing a new climax to the intelligent automotive industry.
Today (April 3), Lei Jun personally delivered the new car to the first batch of owners, which once again became a hot topic in the news
At the Xiaomi car press conference on the evening of March 28, the leaders of "Wei Xiaoli", Great Wall Motors, and Beijing Automobile sat in the front row and applauded the latest car manufacturers.
Maybe Musk saw the marketing of Xiaomi cars, and he couldn't help but sigh that the technique was not as good. Before the Xiaomi SU7 press conference, Lei Jun was called "Reske" to indicate Lei Jun's tribute to Musk.
Also making a hole in auto marketing and willing to keep up with Musk is Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, especially in terms of outrageous and unruly, Li Xiang seems to have more Musk's characteristics. Furthermore, as Li Xiang said, Li Auto has the lowest marketing expense ratio among Chinese auto companies, ranking second only to Tesla in the world. "Pick the factory" Li Auto will spend a small amount of money on marketing to do big things.
Lei Jun, the king of marketing, and Li Xiang, the "king of Weibo", are the entrepreneurs who are most proficient in Internet marketing among new car companies. If you want to talk about your personal influence on the marketing of the car rim that can be compared to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Lei Jun and Li must be in the front row. So, in the field of auto marketing and public opinion, who is more like Musk, Lei Jun or Li Xiang?
Xiaomi is recognized as the best Internet marketing company in the industry, and it is Lei Jun who has created the river of Internet marketing. At the beginning of the rise of the mobile Internet, Lei Jun summed up the well-known seven-character formula of Internet thinking: "focus, extreme, word-of-mouth, fast", and even before 2016, Xiaomi insisted on only Internet marketing and sales channels.
Liu Qiangdong used a frank and straightforward sentence to praise Lei Jun's marketing ability: "Don't compare marketing with Lei Jun, you can sell Xiaomi mobile phones for tens of billions, which is definitely not an ordinary person." Zhou Hongyi also competed with Xiaomi in marketing copywriting, and personally guided the advertising copy, which must be a little better than Xiaomi.
With the changes and growth in the past ten years, Lei Jun's Internet marketing has become familiar with every move. After setting foot in car manufacturing, Lei Jun brought his marketing capabilities to the smart car circle. Xiaomi Auto has experienced two press conferences, each of which has formed a phenomenal heat.
Before the first technology conference, the outdoor advertisements paying tribute to various traffic car companies were widely swiped, forming a big party for new energy vehicle companies. The second press conference is to make a lot of friends, at the long-awaited press conference on March 28, the bosses of Wei Xiaoli, Great Wall, and BAIC attended the first row, and the topic was full, and various versions of Wei Xiaoli's boss in the same frame of dramatic stalks were circulated on the Internet.
Rather than saying that Xiaomi Auto benchmarks Tesla and Porsche, its direct competitor is actually Wei Xiaoli under the stage, only Lei Jun can gather Wei Xiaoli's boss to talk happily and have fun, and only Lei Jun can make the conference a carnival in the circle of friends, so it has created a phenomenal new car launch event of Xiaomi Automobile.
After the press conference, the news about Xiaomi cars dominated the hot search, and Xiaomi cars also continued to release a large amount of hot sales, and the outside world exclaimed: one day sold a year's sales. Lei Jun is updated daily on Weibo, and the answers to netizens' questions about Xiaomi cars are released one by one, and the popularity of Xiaomi cars for several days in a row is Xiaomi cars.
Regarding the selling point of the product, Lei Jun's interpretation is nuanced: good-looking, not sunburning. As for "no sun", 38 degrees Celsius exposure for 90 minutes, the temperature in Xiaomi cars is 12 °C lower than that of the hot-selling model Tesla Model 3, how to do it? Lei Jun's interaction on Weibo, with a humble posture, asked netizens for suggestions for improvement, and also increased the sense of participation of fans.
In addition to interacting with 23 million Weibo fans, Lei Jun is also keen to appear in short videos, such as the car manufacturing process of automobile factories, daily meeting work, and social activities. The following comments are also a variety of jokes about teaching Lei Jun to make cars, asking tricky questions about products, which is interesting and fun.
It is worth noting that Lei Jun's exclusive red envelope covers and exclusive emojis have also been widely disseminated. It was revealed that Lei Jun also specially filmed his own emojis, and posed in the studio like an entertainment star. In other words, Lei Jun, who is so busy that he eats and goes to the toilet every day, will also devote time to the creation of personal IP.
As some people say, there are very few entrepreneurs who are still active in the front line, and Lei Jun is one of the few. Not only working on the front line, Lei Jun is also the chief marketing officer of Xiaomi. There is a lot of content about Lei Jun on social media and it is very textured, which is obviously arranged and produced by a professional team, which is enough to show that Lei Jun and Xiaomi attach great importance to the operation of social media.
There are many popular people, and under the heat, all kinds of controversial news about Xiaomi cars will also be amplified by public opinion. For example, new cars have flat tires, test drives have accidents one after another, and even some voices have expressed the safety hazards of Xiaomi cars, and some self-media have expressed the controversy over the pixel-level imitation of Porsche's appearance design of Xiaomi cars, and bluntly said: "The hot sales of Xiaomi cars are the sadness of China's automobile industry."
Among Wei Xiaolihua, the representative of the new car-making forces, Li Xiang is the boss of the car company who likes to speak on public social media and continues to generate stalks and heated discussions. Of course, Yu Chengdong often likes to talk big and love people, known as "Yu Dazui", but his performance is more about press conferences and WeChat circle of friends, and he posts relatively little on Weibo.
The widely circulated stalks of "the best SUV within 5 million" and "stinky technology" in the car circle are all from Li Xiang's mouth. Secondly, Li Xiang often relies on counter-remarks and irony to appear on hot searches, all of which are intentionally marketing momentum. Last year, with the help of the company's smooth business, Li Xiang continued to export the company's mission, vision and values to the outside world, aiming directly at Huawei and Apple, which greatly improved the brand image of Li Auto and increased user trust.
However, the recent turmoil caused by the listing of Ideal MEGA is almost the biggest public opinion crisis encountered by Ideal Auto since its establishment. Due to Li Xiang's long-term accumulated popularity, the outside world is full of onlookers about how Li Xiang responds to negativity. In the end, Li Xiang successively cracked down on "crime" and admitted business mistakes with a tough attitude, showing Li Xiang's learning and growth.
Regarding Li Xiang's open-mouthed, trouble-making, and hard-line attitude to deal with the crisis, it has indeed attracted a lot of attention, accumulated more popularity, and brought zero-cost exposure to the product. However, the outside world has been criticizing Li Xiang endlessly, and how to win the image and brand reputation needs to make up for it. Originally, the ideal MEGA and Xiaomi SU7 were called the hottest models that attracted the most attention this year by the media, but now the ideal MEGA is high and low, and it has temporarily stopped.
Li Xiang's speech on Weibo is very personal, eclectic, and open-mouthed, quite a bit of Musk's style. At the same time, through Li Xiang's many historical videos, it can be seen that Li Xiang is a person who speaks straight, speaks impulsively, speaks amazingly, loves to lose his temper, and is used to saying dirty words, which is consistent with the style on Weibo. It is precisely because of this that Li Xiang has a high degree of topicality, and netizens have mixed reviews.
With the high development of social media, individuals can achieve unprecedented and huge exposure. Entrepreneurs with vivid personalities naturally have attention, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is an extreme example. Learning from Musk and becoming an interesting, informative and outspoken founder has almost become a compulsory course for the head of a new domestic car company.
In the current price war and highly involuted automotive industry, product homogenization competition is serious, and each brand is looking for accurate market positioning, relying on surprisingly winning marketing to shape its own product value and brand power.
The founder's brand image is a valuable asset for car companies. When Lei Jun, as a representative of the National People's Congress, confidently said that "we must do a good job of Xiaomi Auto!", and when Lei Jun personally opened the car door for the first batch of car owners and delivered new cars, such energy can be enough to inspire the Xiaomi car supply chain and the hearts of Xiaomi fans.
There is no doubt that Lei Jun is Xiaomi's most important IP asset. It is hard to imagine what an incredible scene it would be to launch the first smart electric car at such a late time node in 2024 without Lei Jun as the first leader and responsible person of Xiaomi Auto.
It is precisely because of Lei Jun's participation that the launch of Xiaomi SU7 has introduced another catfish to the pure electric C-class car track, which has put huge pressure on friends. When the product configuration and quality are comparable, the brand blessing of Lei Jun and Xiaomi is a favorable weapon to win sales.
Lei Jun, who is over half a hundred years old and has staked his life's achievements and honors to fight for Xiaomi Automobile, has a heroic entrepreneurial story model in his own right, attracting many entrepreneurs in the business circle, and these people are potential consumers with purchasing power. In public, Lei Jun's words and deeds show confidence in victory.
After Lei Jun's crisp photos were exposed, netizens commented that "making a car is too hard", "making a car is like a knife, and the knife urges people to grow old", these public opinions all show Lei Jun's image of a conscientious and serious boss who makes cars. Lei Jun's positive image in front of the public is enhancing the popularity of Xiaomi cars.
Li Auto's record allowed Li Xiang to prove his strength as the No. 1 product manager. Based on the accurate grasp of user needs, Li Xiang chose to focus only on "family users", dared to go against the trend to create extended-range cars to open up the market, and launched a niche but focused on family users of pure electric MPV when the conditions were ripe.
The outside world knows that Li Xiang will personally inquire and control every detail of the product.
According to reports, in mid-2022, before the release of the Ideal L9, Li Xiang asked the team to lower the front bumper by 1 cm because the shadow of the star ring light was too large. At that time, everyone in the team persuaded him not to change, not only to spend 50 million yuan to change the production line, abrasives, and publicity materials, but in the end, no one could convince Li Xiang, and everyone could only work overtime.
In the face of unsatisfactory work results, Li Xiang will be anxious and angry on the spot, and he must adhere to the principle of user needs, so some media have summarized Li Xiang as a "product tyrant", which is a bit like Musk and Jobs's strength in their entrepreneurship. For the first generation of startups, the courage, judgment and personality of the founders deeply affect the company's temperament and determine the direction of the product.
Since last year, taking advantage of the limelight, Li Xiang has begun to publicize the strategy and vision of Li Auto, review the development of the industry, and often emphasize the organizational mission of Li Auto in public: to control its own destiny and challenge the limits of growth.
Based on his huge influence, Li Xiang is the first spokesperson of Ideal Company. In the face of the ideal MEGA public opinion turmoil, every day when Li Xiang did not speak out, some netizens expected Li Xiang to speak out. In the end, relying on the response of Li Xiang's circle of friends and the external disclosure of the company's internal letter, the public relations response of Li Auto to deal with public opinion was completed.
After the founder is deeply bound to the company's brand, the founder's words and deeds can affect the company's image and stock price. For example, Musk talked about Tesla's imminent privatization, and Tesla's stock price skyrocketed to the target price, and Musk smoked marijuana, and the stock price plummeted. Musk was also sued by the SEC for his imprudent remarks, which is a dilemma under the deep binding of the personal and the company's image.
The uncertainty of individual behavior can lead to uncertainty about the company's brand image. Regarding Li Xiang, he commented on the Internet: "For the first time, I felt ashamed because he was the boss of Li Auto." There are also many people in the industry who say that the reason why Ideal recruits black is also due to the backlash of excessive marketing. Once the founder has too many bad reviews, it will inevitably affect the brand image building and communication effect.
A media article wrote: "54-year-old Lei Jun, looking at 42-year-old Li Xiang, may be full of what he looked like ten years ago. In comparison, Li Xiang in the field of public opinion is more "young and frivolous", without scruples, emotional, intimidating, and swearing, while Lei Jun has become mature and calm, and no longer talks big.
Of course, it is also Musk's image to be open-mouthed and cause trouble, but Musk has more jokes, and from the perspective of the majority of fan groups, the banter of the bigwigs of giant companies is more affinity and fun, and different cultural circles will have different tolerances and public opinion feedback for scolding.
Objectively speaking, at present, Li Xiang has a lot of bad reviews. After Li Xiang announced that he would use thunderous means to counter the smear, there were still negative comments on the Internet, such as "I am less of a chicken thief and yin and yang", "I don't reflect on myself, but summarize it in external public opinion".
Lei Jun has passed the stage of "young and frivolous", and he does not need to use out-of-character speeches to build momentum, and can do things as a more qualified entrepreneurial mentor. Even a few years ago, Lei Jun said that he wanted to beware of excessive marketing and needed to rein in points, that is, to use his influence carefully. On numerous occasions, he is humble, approachable, and strives to empathize with the public, which is where he surpasses Musk.
Lei Jun's marketing methods are also more mature and sophisticated, and more stylish. Whether it is the advertising screen to pay tribute to the traffic car companies, or the press conference to invite the boss of Wei Xiaoli car companies, they have done unprecedented marketing activities. Of course, such a huge activity will only be more appropriate if Lei Jun's identity is done, and only when Lei Jun does it will not feel disobedient and offended.
Lei Jun is well-known in the Internet circle and even in the business circle, and he is a well-known and well-qualified predecessor. is also the only place where Lei Jun is there, so He Xiaopeng, Li Bin, Wang Chuanfu, and Li Xiang can take a group photo on the same stage and make suggestions for Xiaomi Auto together.
In terms of good popularity, Lei Jun is too much better than Musk. Musk's love of intimidation and reckless intimidation have attracted the backlash and contempt of many Silicon Valley giants.
With the high development of social media, individuals can achieve unprecedented and huge exposure. With the advent of the short video era, the vivid image of individuals can be reproduced more realistically. Everyone must do their best, the curtain opens, the spotlight is on, every move is live, there is no decoration and no cover-up, and the personal image will be displayed in all directions without dead ends.
Some people are willing to pay for "happy home, mobile home" and buy an ideal car, and some people are willing to pay for Lei Jun's people's car and buy a Xiaomi car...... Buying a car is also buying the personality of the founder of the car company, and it is also paying for the entrepreneurial story and its own value proposition.
Some people say that Lei Jun is the biggest competitiveness of Xiaomi Auto, and a lively press conference led Lei Jun to become "Thor" overnight. A good product is the foundation, and a brand that can make users participate spontaneously and get excited is a good brand. A boss who can become a brand mascot and become the best company spokesperson is a good boss and a boss who can sell cars in the future.
Li Xiang has not spoken on Weibo for a whole month since the MEGA press conference. Speaking cautiously and being the brand image spokesperson of Li Auto may be Li Xiang's internal strength in cultivation. Li Xiang, who was silly in the audience at the Xiaomi car press conference, sold the ideal car as well as Xiaomi SU7 in his dreams!