Around 2016, Luo Zhenyu invested 12 million yuan in the top Internet celebrity papi sauce that year, and auctioned the "papi sauce's video patch advertising resources" at a price of 22 million.
At that time, Luo Zhenyu said proudly that this is the highest price of a single video advertisement in human history, not in the history of new media.
Although the beauty makeup that spent a huge amount of money to buy the advertising space of papi sauce did not achieve the expected results later, the topic at that time was full, and the advertisement was worth it before it was played.
It was also since then that I saw for the first time that an Internet celebrity has the influence and commercial value of a first-line star.
Later, the development of the Internet celebrity economy has indeed exceeded the imagination of too many people, and to this day, the top Internet celebrities are still creating miracles.
In the past two days, while BAIC Blue Valley and Huawei's new car Xiangjie S9 is competing with Xiaomi at the Beijing Auto Show, Dong Yuhui's cooperation with "Huawei's son" Jihu Automobile has also given Xiaomi SU7 a surprise attack.
Source: JiHu press conference
However, what struck me even more was how influential a super influencer can be on a brand.
Compared with Zhou Hongyi's hesitation to replace the new energy car, Jihu became Dong Yuhui's exclusive car much smoother.
On April 25, when he traveled to Henan with Hui, Dong Yuhui said in the live broadcast that in order to solve the problem of difficulty in using cars, Jihu Automobile provided a full car, and officially announced the news that Jihu had become a sponsor of "Reading Mountains and Rivers" with Hui.
Before last night's live broadcast in Henan, Dong Yuhui specially prepared a brilliant "small composition" for Jihu.
Source: Walking with Hui
So much so that the news of Dong Yuhui's endorsement of Jihu Motors spread on the Internet.
At the same time, the recent press conference of Jihu Motors confirmed Dong Yuhui's statement.
Maybe many people don't know much about Jihu Motors.
Let's put it this way, the parent company of Jihu, BAIC, was a god-like existence in the ancient days of new energy, and BYD and Tesla were younger brothers.
In 2018, it became the first stock of new energy vehicles in China.
In 2019, we began to cooperate with Huawei to build cars, three years before today's well-known new energy circle.
Back to the topic of Jihu cooperating with Dong Yuhui, careful friends should have found that this cooperation has already been hinted at, in fact, as early as March with Hui on the Hubei trip, Jihu is Dong Yuhui's exclusive car.
Although the final result is not an "endorsement" in the traditional sense, such a cooperation method is obviously enough to arouse the favorability of many mothers-in-law to Jihu Motors.
Source: Weibo
In addition to praising BAIC Jihu's advertising value and vision everywhere on the Internet, even some mothers-in-law have included Jihu in the choice of family car purchases, and they have snatched business from Xiaomi, the king of traffic.
Source: Weibo
There is no doubt that JiHu's sponsorship of the marketing of Hui's peers this time is very successful.
I think that compared with Lei Jun's "persecution" of many car circle bigwigs to personally go out to promote their own brands, Jihu's approach is much wiser.
Because not all brand leaders have the personality charm of Lei Jun, they are suitable to stand in the foreground.
It turns out that this is indeed the case, just like Nezha CEO Daniel Zhang recruited the brand during the live broadcast is obviously not a problem that brand public relations can solve.
Compared with Zhang Jianyong, chairman of Beiqi Jihu, who is extremely well-known in the public circle, Dong Yuhui, who has a very high national popularity, is obviously much more suitable.
This is not only reflected in the brand breakthrough power that Dong Yuhui brought to Jihu, after all, before Dong Yuhui, there are indeed many people who have never heard of the Jihu brand.
Source: Jihu Motors
More importantly, Dong Yuhui's mother-in-law is also a key vote in Jihu's sales.
How to understand this?
As we all know, the price of a car is often hundreds of thousands, and it is a large item of family joint decision-making in family consumption.
For family cars, I don't have to repeat how much the hostess has to say.
To a large extent, JiHu's choice of Dong Yuhui to cooperate is basically to accurately grasp the "key decision-maker" of the "mother-in-law" in family car consumption.
In my opinion, unlike Weilai's appearance in Luo Yonghao's live broadcast room in order to stay in consultation and bring goods, Jihu Motors chose Dong Yuhui more to enhance the brand's favorability.
I think there are two points in this, and JiHu has done a very good job.
The first is to step on the sensationality of Dong Yuhui's "endorsement" first-cause effect.
This involves a sensational effect similar to the auction of the first advertising space of papi sauce that I mentioned earlier.
As far as I know, this should also be the first time that the live broadcast room with Hui has opened the brand sponsorship model.
Judging from the current results, the identity of ARCFOX Motors as the "first sponsor of the company with Hui" has obviously achieved a similar effect.
This is obviously a communication effect that a certain star, even a top star, does not have.
The second is that he did not choose to let Dong Yuhui bring products, but to play the brand effect.
Just imagine, let an anchor bring countless products and brands to bring goods, you can imagine how difficult it is for a brand to stand out from the crowd.
But when Jihu "alternatively" appeared in Dong Yuhui's live broadcast room as a sponsor, it had the difference of being remembered by the mother-in-law and consumers.
Of course, the possibility of Dong Yuhui bringing goods to Jihu Motors is not ruled out in the future, but as far as the current choice is concerned, Jihu has undoubtedly found the best solution.
However, if you know the past resume of BAIC Jihu, you will find that it has always been known for marketing, but it has also fallen into a quagmire due to excessive marketing.
Before the rise of new forces, BAIC ranked first in the country in terms of pure electric passenger car sales in 2013, and in the following six years, it continued to lead far and won the first place in China's pure electric vehicle sales for seven consecutive years.
In 2017, it pulled down Tesla, which had been at the top of the list for 5 months, and won the first place in global sales.
But since then, BAIC, under the leadership of Wang Qiufeng, a media person, has played the trick of "marketing is king", and she believes that the biggest problem of Jihu Automobile is still the lack of brand awareness.
But at that time, Wei Xiaoli was engaged in intelligent driving and playing technology.
As everyone knows, the gears of fate began to turn.
Although JiHu has achieved great success in marketing during the epidemic in 2022, it has won a huge amount of voice for the brand through the online concerts of many stars such as Cui Jian and Luo Dayou.
Source: BAIC Jihu official
But the direct consequence of this is the lack of R&D funding, which also allows latecomers to find opportunities to surpass.
When a salesperson introduced the core competitiveness of JiHu products, he said:
Magna manufactures our vehicles, and Huawei's HI version of the model system. We took the central control layout design from Beijing Benz, and it is convenient for everyone to be familiar with it.
The technical take-or-or-it-and-so-marketing supremacy is the root cause of BAIC New Energy's fall from the altar.
In 2022, with the resignation of Wang Qiufeng, president of Jihu Motors, the news of Jihu's huge loss of 15 billion yuan in three years has been noisy, which has also attracted a lot of criticism for the brand.
In the next 2 years, BAIC Polar Fox was much more low-key, until this sponsorship of the live broadcast room with Hui entered the public eye again, which also made its latest release of Polar Fox Alpha S5 win the favor of many people.
It's just that the difference is that compared with the criticism brought about by marketing in the Wang Qiufeng era, the public is much more tolerant of its cooperation with Dong Yuhui this time.
The magnitude of the change is astonishing.
I can only sigh that time is really a good thing on the Internet, and it has the magic power to change everything.
Dai Kangwei, general manager of BAIC New Energy, said: We do more and say less. In the past few years, users' perception and emotional resonance of JiHu products have been ignored. We are slow to respond, and we have too little perceptual interaction with users on the product and technology.
Holding hands with Dong Yuhui may be Jihu's explanation of the past two years.
If you don't know about the Polar Fox of the past, it is difficult to connect with the Polar Fox that is praised today.
From the level of the Jihu brand itself, although today's sales are still not optimistic.
In 2023, the sales volume of Jihu will only be more than 30,000 units, while the ideal sales of the first echelon in the same period will reach 370,000 units, a difference of more than 10 times.
But through this turnaround battle with Dong Yuhui, it can be seen that Jihu is hurrying to tell a new story, and it has made a good start.
From a macro industry level, what I can see is the cruelty of this industry.
How to understand it?
The once glorious BAIC New Energy (Extreme Fox) dazzled again with the help of Dong Yuhui's light, which made me think more of the dark side that was blocked under the dazzling sun.
The new energy in full swing has never been limited to Xiaomi, Huawei and Wei Xiaoli, which have always stood in the spotlight, and more than 100 brands, including Jihu.
Just like yesterday's Beijing Auto Show, the besieged Xiaomi booth was next to the lonely Jiyue car occupied by rice noodles.
Source: Weibo netizens
It's like BYD, which no one cared about back then.
They don't have a CEO with their own traffic like Lei Jun, nor do they have the "luck" of binding Huawei with their left hand and Dong Yuhui with their right hand like Jihu.
Smart electric vehicles, like the software industry, take all the winners, and may not survive if they don't reach the top five in global sales.
Lei Jun's words are by no means alarmist, we can still sigh for the failure of Weima and Ziyoujia, but the collapse of many brands such as Bojun, Changwei, Guoji Zhijun, and Red Star is silent.
This is the cruelty of the business world, but it is also the most overlooked side of the new energy in full swing.
Of course, we have to sing a hymn to the success of BYD and Xiaomi, but we must also be the most tolerant of those who lose.
Because from a small industry to the whole society, the core of the innovation atmosphere has always been tolerance and tolerance for failure.
The story of a successful achievement may be cruel, but it is a solid foundation for innovation.
After all, who can be sure that today's Jihu will not reproduce the glory of yesterday?