Recently, there has been a new trend in the new energy vehicle circle: the top leaders of car companies have personally broadcast live broadcasts.
Previously, Li Bin live-streamed for more than 14 hours to test the endurance of NIO's 150kW·h battery pack, and then Nezha Automobile CEO Daniel Zhang partnered with shareholder Zhou Hongyi to test drive Nezha L live.
Then entered April, it is difficult to say whether it is because the Beijing Auto Show is about to be held and everyone has entered the rhythm of intensive publicity, in short, the live broadcast frequency of the top leaders of car companies has become dense with the naked eye.
On April 14, Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery, started the live broadcast to test the high-speed intelligent driving ability of Xingtu Star Era ET;
The next day, April 15, in the morning, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, tested the performance of Wei brand full-scene NOA in Baoding, and in the afternoon, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jiyue, partnered with Baidu Robin Li to experience the latest Jiyue 01.
Less than two days apart, on April 18th, Lei Jun also "joined the battlefield" to talk to you about the topic of Xiaomi SU7.
Good guys, the big guys in the car circle who would never show their heads easily in the past have walked into the live broadcast room like dumplings at this time. Yin Tongyue joked in the live broadcast room, "(This is) forcing my 60-year-old man to come out live broadcast." ”
However, not only Yin Tongyue, but also a few new forces in this wave of live broadcasts are slightly younger, and in general, they are all "old men" in their fifties and sixties.
These people will participate in webcasts in a way they may not have imagined in their decades-long careers.
However, considering today's fierce competitive situation, it seems that it is not a fatal thing for the marketing departments of various car companies to "embarras" their own leaders.
After all, the world is big, how can it be important to sell a car?
01. “六旬老汉”被迫直播
Although the bigwigs in the car circle have been broadcast live one after another recently, they have attracted a lot of traffic, but everyone did not come "because he is old".
In the live broadcast room of various car companies on weekdays, it is also necessary to pick the appearance of the anchor or the store with outstanding eloquence to sell the car, and the reason why the top leader of the car company can harvest a large wave of traffic is still the word fresh.
Don't care about the front and back of the stage, the top leaders of the car companies have come out to "show their art" in order to buy a car for me, which is really rare!
The most typical one has to be said to be Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors.
This 60-year-old "Baoding car god" used to be quite low-key in the automobile circle.
Since he took over Great Wall Motors in 1990, Great Wall Motors, headquartered in Baoding, Hebei Province, has basically been a model of "male protagonist inside, female protagonist outside" for more than 20 years:
At that time, Wang Fengying, who was still the second-in-command of Great Wall Motors, was in charge of marketing outside, and Wei Jianjun, the number one leader, was in charge of internal products.
Regardless of whether the two will also slap each other's tables during discussions internally, at least from the perspective of Great Wall Motor's performance and product competitiveness over the years, the pair still cooperate very tacitly.
In this mode, Wei Jianjun must be a leader who has strict internal management but rarely speaks out externally, and rarely participates in the company's or product marketing activities.
The turning point of things came in 2020. Wei Jianjun rarely appeared in the promotional video of the 30th anniversary of Great Wall Motors as the protagonist, and also raised a deafening question - "Will Great Wall Motors survive next year?"
At that time, I also wrote an article analysis. Friends who haven't seen it yet poke here: fate hangs by a thread! Wei Jianjun, the boss of the Great Wall, revealed himself: Can you survive next year?
How to interpret this sentence is not the focus of our discussion today. The key is that we can see through post-mortem review today that the time of 2020 actually happens to be the time when the original second-in-command Wang Fengying faded out and the first-in-command Wei Jianjun gradually stood in front of the stage and spoke out on behalf of the entire Great Wall Motor.
That video is undoubtedly a key marketing event planned by Great Wall Motors. Since then, Wei Jianjun has made more and more frequent appearances, appearing on many occasions that he would not have attended before.
For example, at the press conference of Xiaomi SU7 not long ago, he was in the same frame with Wei Xiaoli's boss:
And Wei Jianjun's faceless style in the past is actually a common feature of most car company leaders.
There is such a big company to manage, R&D to watch, product quality to manage, personnel issues to be seen, so many things to be pressed every day, whose CEO has the leisure to guide the country every day?
Even Musk, a high-intensity surfing enthusiast, had to sleep in the factory and worry about production when Tesla encountered production hell.
So Wei Jianjun inevitably seemed a little upright in the recent short video and the live broadcast debut on April 15, talking and acting like a big boss, only when talking about product-related topics can he seem more and more natural.
But this is not only him, but also the leaders of a group of car companies who take the initiative or "catch ducks on the shelves" also have very different performances.
CEOs who are accustomed to showing people internally as leaders always have to try before they can gradually touch the string of external dialogue with the public. Just like the first generation of Internet celebrities who were groping for a way out before the live broadcast became popular.
It doesn't matter how you find it, whether you realize it yourself, or if the PR team finds the right packaging method, it is important to establish a useful persona and help the company market.
Chery Chairman Yin Tongyue made this very clear, he frankly admitted in his personal live broadcast debut that he was inferior to many new power leaders in terms of external marketing, and he wanted to "learn from Yu Chengdong, learn from Lei Jun, and personally explain and introduce (products)".
02. "Polytechnic man" learns to fight Internet verbal warfare
Since the performance is still green, it is obvious that the recent wave of attention won by the car company bigwigs is not so much due to their personal charm, but because everyone is curious about what signal the car company wants to send through its own leaders.
As for the effect of the show, everyone doesn't expect it in the preset, and the bigwigs just have a good chat.
And this is the material that the rim boss was pushed out to do-
What good technology and good products do we have, and what do we need to let users know, you have to introduce them well!
Theoretically speaking, large enterprises do not need big leaders to speak out to the outside world, introduce details to users one by one, and make special cameos to sell.
Wang Jianlin and Xu Jiayin didn't go into battle to sell the house in person! Aren't these things all the marketing department or public relations company worry about?
In the past, all car companies had to do was to package and sort out the product points that needed to be emphasized, throw them at the press conference to show them to the media for dissemination, and at the same time pass on the selling points to the front-line sales through internal training.
As for whether the user can really understand the product, it doesn't really matter. Everyone is doing this, as long as your product is better than that of your friends, you will naturally be able to sell the car after the reputation is established.
Anyway, ordinary consumers will not pay special attention to the news or new car press conference when buying a car, and the car selection is either through the introduction of acquaintances and word of mouth, or after arriving at the store, it is sold by the mouth (make) the can (strength) lotus (suddenly) flower (leisure).
To put it bluntly, the cost performance of painstaking marketing is far less expensive than spending money on developing products.
But this is no longer the case, and there are two major changes in today's automotive market.
First, the arrival of new energy vehicles has changed many functions and configurations of cars.
In the era of fuel vehicles, buying a car focuses on three major parts, which one is upgraded every year, and the facelift is replaced with a new one, which one is upgraded every year?
Not to mention that a Mitsubishi engine is equipped with many domestic cars after authorization, let's just say that a classic model of a joint venture car company is replaced every six to eight years, and users really don't need to make up for it in advance when they buy a car.
On the other hand, the current new energy vehicles, power, battery life, and intelligent refurbishment, almost every car brand has a press conference, and there are more or less new technologies and new highlights to be introduced.
The speed of the facelift is almost every year like a rocket - a change every two years and a change every four years, which was unimaginable before.
Therefore, in order to buy a car without being cheated, users must learn as much as possible about the various details of the intended model. When to buy a car, what version to buy, how to choose, no one wants to lose their hard-earned money due to poor decision-making.
Second, with the advent of the Internet era, the threshold for the public to obtain information has been greatly lowered (to a certain extent, it can also be said that the threshold for obtaining effective information has been greatly increased).
In the past, even if users wanted to do their homework before buying a car, reliable channels and information were rare. Good products are like gold, which can naturally be revealed after the big waves wash away the sand.
Nowadays, there is an overflow of information, and there are many good products, and they don't want to find a way to surface, even if it is gold, it has to sink with the sand, and there will never be a day.
(Gaohe, who was said by his own car owner to be unable to publicize, has broken the capital chain and relied on live broadcast to "support his family")
Therefore, the two phases are combined, and every car company is trying to improve its exposure and let users see themselves as much as possible.
As a result, there are more and more press conferences, and the communication rhythm of car companies is getting longer and longer, and there is a situation where many users complain that "the press conference does not even give a price".
Nowadays, a new car is on the market, it is no longer the rhythm of the opening launch conference, before the official launch conference, there may be early warm-up, appearance exposure, interior exposure, pre-sale conference, media test drive publicity and other stages...... The battle line is extremely long, all for the heat and traffic.
(Zhiji L6 This kind of technology at the pre-sale price at the conference can be regarded as conscientious)
If you want to deal with each of the above compact and dense communication points, you really need to use marketing skills.
Even the founder, who is also from the Internet transformation "Wei Xiaoli", can distinguish between the superior in marketing effect, and Xiaopeng, who is slightly inferior in marketing rhythm, can only humble himself as a "science and engineering man" to show that he is not without strength, but he is not good at words.
But then again, using the self-ridicule of "science and engineering men" as a way to hedge is itself a rather good marketing tool.
After all, if you bind it like this, everyone has the impression that "Xiaopeng is technically very NB", even if Xiaopeng has a slight deviation in marketing, it is easier to gain the public's understanding.
(This also extends the new label of "stinky technology")
In the follow-up, more and more car companies also used the term "science and engineering man" in their publicity, which obviously proves the ingenuity of this statement:
Since everyone knows that I am not good at words, I will naturally be more tolerant, and although I am stupid, I have material!
Is that wrong? Absolutely.
After all, in the automotive industry, which is heavily invested in assets, who has no technical background!
As a result, self-consciously marketing can't compare with other car companies, and everyone says that they are "science and engineering men", and the term "science and engineering men" has lost its meaning-
Anyway, in the end, you still have to fight hard for technology......
In the final analysis, even if you are a "science and engineering man" label on the Internet, you are only qualified to play it if you win. If you lose, you can only end up with an ending that no one cares about, and it makes no sense to claim anything.
03. “酒香也怕巷子深”
To a certain extent, the leaders of car companies were pulled out to engage in live broadcasts, which is also a manifestation of the current auto market involved in marketing.
It's not that as long as the marketing is done well, the car will definitely sell well. It's that even if everything is done well, as long as the marketing doesn't keep up, it's just as finished.
As Nezha CEO Daniel Zhang said in the live broadcast room, "The original marketing model of the automotive industry is relatively closed, and now the situation has changed, the competition is too fierce, if you can't attract attention on the whole network and let the public understand the quality and characteristics, then basically, no matter how good the product and the best price, it may not be successful." ”
Looking at it this way, it is not difficult to understand why car companies have to embarrass their own leaders to come out and stand on the platform-
Who asks the boss to bring the goods, which is itself a matter of bringing its own traffic. The boss has many years of experience and authority in the industry, as long as they are willing to open their mouths, saying something may become a golden sentence for the whole network.
Look at the operations of Musk, Yu Chengdong, Lei Jun, Li Bin, and Li Xiang, and you will probably be able to get it.
At this time, with the previous wave of marketing operations, it is not difficult to artificially create a hot topic. The owner has bought the car, the user has eaten the melon, the boss has made money selling the car, and the KPI of the worker has also been obtained...... Four wins, win hemp!
What's more, it is impossible for the boss to bring goods to his own products, and he does not need to give a commission! This can save a lot of marketing expenses!
There are not many opportunities to do big things with such a small amount of money, even if the car companies didn't know it before, they haven't used this kind of play, so it is time to see how many waves of traffic Xiaomi cars have eaten through Lei Jun.
According to media statistics, during the launch conference of Xiaomi SU7, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, Baidu and other platforms related to hot search topics were 37, 12, 4, and 6 respectively, and in 30 days, Lei Jun's personal social account increased by 4.05 million, 200,000, and 260,000 respectively on Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Station B, and the cumulative number of fans on the whole network exceeded 4.51 million.
With Lei Jun's close marketing rhythm, coupled with the product power of Xiaomi SU7 itself, Xiaomi Auto made a beautiful start as soon as it came, and won 88898 in 24 hours on the market.
Even if Lei Jun's own IP cannot be copied, it is also excellent to "chicken" his own CEO and learn from Yu Chengdong's famous stalk similar to "far ahead".
It is better to say that for the matter of pushing the big leader to the front of the stage, if the car companies were still cautious before, then the arrival of Xiaomi Auto is undoubtedly a catalyst, urging everyone to hurry up with a response charter.
You must know that time waits for no one, opportunity waits for no one, the death note of a new round of reshuffle in the auto market is being named, the opponent has already made a move, and the action is not fast, who can guarantee that the next one to fall will not be themselves?
Write at the end
Car companies push out the top leaders for marketing, in fact, it can also be said to be a kind of conspiracy in front of everyone.
There is no patent for CEO live broadcast, there is no infringement claim, I can do it if you do a good job.
But there is no standard answer to what to do.
There are big wins like Xiaomi Lei Jun, there are also Nezha Daniel Zhang who feel embarrassed by the shareholders' "fingering", and of course, there is BYD that no longer needs Wang Chuanfu to stand up personally.
But from the user's point of view, no matter how you "use" your CEO to establish a brand image, it actually just gives me an opportunity to be "interested". Whether I can be willing to pay for it has to be the product itself.
So it's still the simple truth: marketing without technology is like water without a source, and only by forming a joint force with technology and marketing can we achieve a foundation in the fierce competition.