来源 | 伯虎财经（bohuFN）
Author | Li Mumu
The automotive industry suddenly set off a "stormy" live broadcast boom.
In the past, Li Bin, CEO of Weilai Automobile, live-streamed the test of 150-degree battery pack battery life and drove 1,000 kilometers in one go, and then Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor, the "God of Baoding Cars", live-streamed to test Great Wall Motor's latest generation of intelligent driving system Coffee Pilot Ultra.
According to incomplete statistics from Bohu Finance, the top leaders of car companies who recently went live in person also include Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Automobile, Xia Yiping, CEO of Jiyue Automobile, and Li Yanhong, CEO of Baidu, Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360, and Daniel Zhang, CEO of Nezha Automobile, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, and Yu Minhong, chairman of Oriental Selection.
The No. 1 position has personally gone down the live broadcast, and the primary reason is, of course, the impact from Xiaomi and Huawei. Needless to say, Xiaomi taught a lesson to its friends with a press conference with the participation of the whole network. Although Huawei does not sell cars, it will also hold press conferences for Wenjie and Zhijie in the smart selection mode. Under the tsunami-like volume of these two national brands, the actions of friends and businessmen were buried under the turbulent sea.
Of course, the deeper reason is that the competition of new energy vehicles has become more intense. The head of more than one car company has stated that the knockout round has begun. Even Tesla can't avoid the dilemma of a decline. A few days ago, Tesla announced a 10% global layoff, and in the secondary market, Tesla fell by as much as 29% in the first quarter of this year.
How to establish a closer connection with consumers and cultivate consumer mentality is a problem that every car company needs to work hard to solve. But can live streaming really become the new normal for car companies' marketing, and can some traditional car companies take advantage of this to successfully transform and establish closer ties with consumers in the new era?
01 "New Battlefield" under the Temptation of Traffic
It has to be mentioned that in the past, the top leaders of car companies were often more calm and introverted, and they did not easily appear on the front line. The marketing methods of car companies are also relatively simple and closed.
In 2023, Nezha's auto sales will decline, and the company will attribute the reason to poor marketing, and as a result, the head of the marketing department will be dismissed.
CEO Daniel Zhang lamented on Weibo that "the marketing system is sorry for the efforts of the R&D team" and decided to personally grasp the marketing work. At this time, it also opens a "new era" in which the heads of car companies must personally participate in marketing activities.
On the one hand, with the entry of Xiaomi and Huawei, the rules of marketing have changed. Compared with cars, the unit price of mobile phones is lower and covers a wider range of people, and mobile phone manufacturers of Xiaomi's level ship tens of millions of mobile phones every quarter. This also means that Xiaomi owners have a wider coverage than car companies.
Since the launch of the Xiaomi SU7, it has set off an unprecedented craze in the car rim. In just a few minutes, the order volume exceeded 10,000 units, and the large order within 24 hours was close to 90,000 units.
On March 28, on the occasion of the grand release of Xiaomi SU7, Lei Jun's Weibo live broadcast attracted the eager attention of up to 5 million people, and the Douyin live broadcast page received 5.6 million likes and support. When the press conference went on for 100 minutes and the moment the price was revealed, the number of viewers of the Weibo live broadcast soared to 37 million in an instant, and the Douyin platform reached 4.4 million views, and on the WeChat side, there were also 30 million people paying attention to the results of these three live broadcasts. This afternoon, Lei Jun also opened the Douyin live broadcast and connected with Mai Wei Jianjun, and more than 100,000 people poured in before the live broadcast room was opened.
On the other hand, under the dual role of industrial policy guidance and domestic manufacturers' own efforts, from April 1 to 14 this year, the retail penetration rate of new energy has exceeded 50%, which means that in addition to its own growth, trams have also grabbed a large share of oil vehicles. Due to the redefinition of electric and intelligent electric vehicles, whoever can take the lead in reaching as wide a range of users as possible at the marketing level will be able to quickly establish brand awareness in new areas.
The most typical example is Huawei. Now intelligent driving has become the exclusive label of Huawei's intelligent selection model brand. The Great Wall, which has invested in intelligent driving technology for more than 10 years and incubated an independent autonomous driving company, was advised by netizens to "buy Huawei's technology directly".
Therefore, both traditional car companies and new forces need founders to stand up for brand influence and cognition.
On April 15, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, personally tested and live-streamed the full-scene NOA function of Great Wall Motors. The 60-year-old industry giant said that this was his first live broadcast of intelligent driving, and he was "very excited".
The day before, Yin Tongyue, the 62-year-old chairman of Chery Holding Group, also sat on the Xingtu Star Era ET and started the live broadcast to test the waters. He smiled and admitted that he wanted to use some new Internet thinking, and this was the first time he used Internet thinking to promote products.
"Learn from Yu Chengdong and learn from Lei Jun".
This live broadcast not only demonstrated the high-level intelligent driving ability of Xingtu Star Era ET, but also reflected Yin Tongyue's ambition for the new energy market. He made it clear that Chery's goal is to return to the top three new energy sources in the middle of the year and become the second in the industry by the end of the year. This live broadcast also attracted millions of netizens.
Before them, some new and old players stepped into the river of live streaming earlier.
On March 14, Li Bin, CEO of NIO, made his live broadcast debut on his personal account, attracting more than 10 million viewers. Since then, 360 founder Zhou Hongyi also broadcast live with Nezha Automobile CEO Daniel Zhang, although Zhou Hongyi "counted" Daniel Zhang in the process, but also showed the true character and interaction of the two entrepreneurs.
At the end of March, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, also joined the live broadcast army. Together with Yu Minhong, chairman of Dongfang Selection, he conducted a live broadcast on the Galaxy E8 at the Geely Gigafactory, showcasing Geely's latest technologies and products. The live broadcast of these car giants is different from the promotion of vehicle details by ordinary anchors, and they are more likely to throw out the strategic planning, development direction and market layout of the enterprise in the live broadcast.
Under the influence of the halo of the number one, the live broadcast has achieved good results. Wei Jianjun's live broadcast attracted more than 4 million people to watch it online in real time, and the number of viewers after the live broadcast exceeded 10 million. Yin Tongyue's 4-hour live broadcast also attracted the attention of millions of netizens.
02 "Down-to-earth" methodology
In the past three months, my peers have generally not had a good time. In the case of the price war in the industry, BYD has become the biggest winner, and its sales have exceeded 300,000 units again. In contrast, Aion's sales declined, and the ideal delivery was less than expected.
It is worth mentioning the ideal. Originally, the ideal expectation was 60,000 units, but the ideal final delivery in March was 28,984 units. The problem lies with the new model, the Ideal MEGA.
Originally, as an excellent student whose revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan, Li Auto has always given people the impression of excellent product capabilities and organizational capabilities. However, due to the fact that Li Auto is overconfident in the ideal MEGA, it is large enough in design, but it insists on the family elements that have always been in the product definition, ignoring the luxury that MPV models should have, resulting in it not receiving the expected orders after it was launched.
In this era of frantic iteration of products, in 2023 alone, there will be 788 new cars launched in the Chinese auto market, and consumers are faced with too many choices. In the pure electric MPV track, there are many competitors such as Xpeng X9, Zeekrypton 009, Wei brand Gaoshan, and VOYANT.
At the same time, the pace of new cars will also affect other models. Li Xiang said in the internal review that the chaotic rhythm of the ideal MEGA has also greatly reduced the time and energy of the sales team to serve L model users.
To a certain extent, this also confirms the view of ZEEKR CEO An Conghui: 2024 is no room for mistakes for car companies, and any mistakes may lead to irreparable results.
Marketing is only one part of the whole chain, and what car companies really need to establish is the overall ability from upstream R&D, product definition, and delivery capabilities to downstream marketing and sales.
Realizing the importance of marketing, car company bosses flocked to the live broadcast room to interact with consumers, talk about products, and share market trends, corporate strategies, and insights and thoughts in the industry, which can indeed enhance the professionalism and authority of live broadcasts, and further shorten the distance between car companies and consumers, but these require careful planning and preparation.
For example, in a live broadcast on March 29, Zhou Yu, deputy general manager of SAIC-GM-Wuling brand division, and Zhao Changjiang, general manager of DENZA Automobile Sales Division, and other bigwigs.
Zhao Changjiang also asked everyone what he should talk about at the launch of the DENZA N7.
After researching the Xiaomi press conference, Zhou Yu shared a set of formulas summarized by himself to Zhao Changjiang:
First, it is difficult to summarize the difficulty of building a car;
Second, although it was difficult, we worked hard;
third, review of technical inputs;
Fourth, tell the details of the product and the advantages of its own products;
Fifth, analyze the longboard and price of competing products, and let the audience guess the price of their new car;
Sixth, publish the price.
In the live broadcast room, Zhao Changjiang had already taken notes seriously.
At the same time, Zhiji Automobile tried to benchmark Xiaomi SU7 at the launch conference of Zhiji L6, but the effect was not satisfactory. Although Liu Tao, CEO of Zhiji, reviewed the hardships of building a car at the press conference and lamented the sacrifices made by employees to build a car, this kind of narration did not arouse the empathy of people in the automobile circle, but caused a lot of complaints.
It can be seen that live broadcast marketing needs to be carefully planned and prepared, and it is not possible to blindly follow the trend or benchmark other brands, the accumulation of traffic is only a part of brand building, and real success also depends on the comprehensive strength of technology, price, product quality and other aspects.
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