Who would have thought that the head independent car company boss, who has always given people a sense of mystery and rarely shows his face, suddenly poured into the live broadcast room recently, causing many netizens to cry out for surprise.
First, on March 28, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, and Yu Minhong, chairman and CEO of Dongfang Selection, conducted a live broadcast for more than 3 hours to talk about Geely's original intention of making cars.
Then on April 14, Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Automobile, started a nearly 4-hour live broadcast to personally test the long-distance high-speed high-end intelligent driving ability of Star Era ET.
Even Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, who has always been low-key, also walked to the front of the stage. On April 15, Wei Jianjun for the first time in Baoding, Hebei Province, comprehensively demonstrated the full scene NOA of Great Wall Motors without high-precision maps to the majority of netizens through live broadcast. As of 5 hours after the live broadcast, the live broadcast attracted more than 10 million views on Weibo.
In the past, if you wanted to see these bigwigs, you could only use news, talk shows, etc., but now you can interact with them in this way, especially considering that Wei Jianjun, Li Shufu and Yin Tongyue, the three heads of car companies, are all over sixty years old, and they are still working so hard at the age of retirement, which undoubtedly arouses heated discussions.
From the past volume technology, volume quality, volume service, volume marketing, to now the major bosses are personally on the live broadcast, which has to make people sigh that the competition in China's auto market is becoming more and more fierce.
In the era of consumer electronics, we look at the people behind the products
In the view of Wang Xin, the founder of the automotive industry KOL and the founder of the 13th line of automobiles, compared with automobiles, consumer electronics from the very beginning, is to mingle with the masses, and today we see the "Xiaomi and Huawei fever" in the automotive industry, which is essentially the way that Xiaomi created back then. The antagonism in the era of consumer electronics is manifested in the fact that everyone does not look at the product itself, but at the character behind the product, and Lei Jun is the most successful representative of this era.
Zhong Shi, an analyst in the automotive industry, told the new media of automobile intelligence that the heads of traditional car companies collectively went live broadcast, and the flashpoint was Lei Jun's Xiaomi SU7 press conference, and the birth of Xiaomi cars played a catfish role in the new energy vehicle market. Infected by Xiaomi's SU7 phenomenal traffic, everyone flocked to do live broadcasts, emulating Lei Jun's personal IP marketing, and learning a series of marketing tactics from Xiaomi.
Just like the 62-year-old Chery Chairman Yin Tongyue said in the live broadcast room, "Learn from Yu Chengdong, learn from Lei Jun, explain and introduce in person, this is also forcing me, an old man in his sixties, to come out."
It is worth mentioning that just before the Xiaomi press conference, Wei Jianjun issued the first Weibo without warning, which touched people's hearts, "Coming to Weibo, I am very much looking forward to seeing everyone's sharing, and the voice of users is always the driving force for us to move forward." ”
"Technology companies like Xiaomi know how to communicate with their target customers, and executives, including Lei Jun, are often active on social media and short video platforms, and they have the ability to communicate with the public for a decade or two. However, the CEOs of traditional car companies usually do not communicate directly with consumers, at most they only speak at industry forums, and lack the experience of talking about cars with ordinary consumers. However, to make changes and put down your posture to communicate with consumers, the attitude is worthy of affirmation, and it is necessary to stick to it for a long time. Master Zhong further said.
It is true that from the perspective of these three car company heads, Li Shufu had broadcast live a few years ago, when the CCTV Times Review also published the article "Li Shufu's "Live Broadcast Debut" Why Only Talk About Education and Not Selling Cars" in August 2020, and Li Shufu also appeared in the Taobao live broadcast room in January last year for his first e-commerce live broadcast.
As Yang Xueliang, senior vice president of Geely Holding Group, told Auto Intelligence New Media, as early as September last year, they were actually preparing for the live broadcast of Mr. Yu and the chairman, but later due to various reasons, they have not been implemented until now. Because they are old friends and familiar with each other, I took Mr. Yu to visit Geely's new quality productivity super satellite factory.
Intuitively, from the past only speaking in the internal "stratosphere" and a small circle, to facing the majority of netizens and consumers now, this is a major change for traditional car companies. There is a saying that only change can make progress and become better, and after the subsequent continuous accumulation of quantitative changes, it will eventually usher in qualitative changes.
If you master social media, you will master your own public opinion field?
When it comes to mingling with netizens, Musk is the originator. Musk has been a veteran Twitter user for the past few years, having grown to more than 80 million followers since joining Twitter in 2009. He tweeted surprising words from time to time, earning him enough eyeballs for his Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, etc.
In April 2022, Musk spent more than 280 billion yuan to successfully buy Twitter (X platform), making Twitter completely Musk's private property. At that time, many media commented on this, mastered social media, and then mastered their own public opinion field, which is a great differentiating advantage between Musk and Tesla.
Just like Sina Finance's comments on this, Musk's acquisition of Twitter has been called "another copy of a familiar story": many super-rich people have bought large media companies in the past to build their own public opinion field.
Most of the bosses of the major new car-making forces in China are fans of Musk, and they have also learned the advantages of Musk, that is, to grasp the direction of public opinion. For example, setting up personas and hashtags on social media, and then frantically attracting the attention of fans, and even bringing the trend on social media, adding countless exposure opportunities for the brand. And the boss personally posted Weibo to interact with netizens, which created a people-friendly image for the brand, which is completely different from the previous traditional car companies.
Comparatively speaking, these are what the current traditional car companies lack, or they have suffered in this area over the years, because they do not have their own advantages on social media, resulting in the public opinion field being occupied by others.
If I remember correctly, as early as the beginning of 2022, Auto Sankei reported what Wei Jianjun said at a small-scale media dinner, and he believed that Wei brand's products had no problems at all, and all technologies were leveraged. Wei brand did not sell well after the transformation, just because the ability to engage in marketing and the whole concept was not as good as "Wei Xiaoli".
Indeed, in the current era of mobile Internet, where all people are self-media, the wind and grass of public opinion will indeed affect the impression of products in the minds of consumers, and even brands will leave some imprints and labels. It is precisely for this reason that traditional car companies must keep up with the trend of the times and establish their own "positions" in the field of public opinion.
However, Zhong Shi talked about the success of Xiaomi SU7, which is based on the careful foreshadowing and hype that he has done for a long time, and it is difficult for other car companies to achieve this effect. This is all because you have to learn again when you get involved in a new field, and it is not a simple live broadcast that can bring traffic. And it is also very important to do a good job in planning and image packaging, summarize what is not done well in the live broadcast process, and make subsequent improvements, which need to be paid attention to.
【Conclusion】In terms of car-making time and experience, there is no doubt that these traditional car company bigwigs are the masters of Lei Jun and Yu Chengdong. But when it comes to marketing and online campaigning, these masters have to learn from their apprentices. It is gratifying that these traditional car company bosses have made changes to communicate with consumers in a more Internet-based way and communicate with them openly, which makes the value of traditional car companies recognized by more consumers.