Lei Jun’s god-level marketing has driven the price of a Porsche down to RMB 400,000!

Why is Xiaomi SU7 so successful? Why is Xiaomi still so popular? It is all thanks to Lei Jun's god-level marketing. In this article, we will see how Lei Jun does marketing and how to achieve the ultimate marketing. I hope his case can give you some inspiration and is recommended to friends who are engaged in marketing.

Porsche, an elegant luxury car brand that has always enjoyed good recognition and reputation in China, was recently exposed to have failed to reach an agreement with dealers over sales targets and subsidies. As a result, domestic dealers publicly "forced" the German headquarters to refuse to sign the sales target plan and stop importing cars.

The root cause of this conflict is that Porsche's performance in China is not satisfactory and its sales are continuing to decline; some dealers have even raised the price of Porsche's entry-level models to 400,000 yuan, but they are still not selling well.

Porsche's sales have been sluggish, in stark contrast to the hot-selling Xiaomi SU7, which was dubbed "Porsche-Mi" by netizens a while ago. Since the appearance design of Xiaomi SU7 is similar to Porsche's Taycan, but the prices of the two cars differ by several times, people can't help but wonder: Did the customers who originally planned to buy Porsche really go to buy Xiaomi SU7?

If we go back in time, we will find that the relationship between Porsche's sluggish sales and the sudden appearance of Xiaomi SU7 may not be very large; because Porsche's weak sales in the domestic market have been revealed since last year:

"In 2023, Porsche delivered 79,283 new cars in China, a year-on-year decline of 15%. Its largest sales market has also changed from China to North America. The downward trend has not stopped since 2024. In the first quarter of 2024, 16,340 vehicles were delivered to the Chinese market, a year-on-year decline of 24%."

Of course, as a marketer, Lao Pao’s article is not intended to discredit Porsche, nor does it contain any insights or constructive suggestions that can save Porsche’s performance from the dire straits.

What I want to talk about here is that in the fiercely competitive automobile market, many traditional car manufacturers are struggling. Why can Xiaomi SU7, as a rising star, be a hit and successfully achieve both fame and sales?

I believe that when it comes to the core elements of Xiaomi SU7's success, everyone has a common answer in their hearts, that is, because of the existence of Lei Jun!

Lei Jun's superior resources and forward-looking strategic vision make Xiaomi SU7 no weaker than the leading car-making forces in terms of product research and development and design; and in terms of marketing and promotion, Lei Jun stands out from the crowd. At a glance, there is no opponent and he directly beats everyone!

After Xiaomi SU7 became an overnight sensation, many reports and articles emerged online, introducing Lei Jun’s legendary experience, summarizing Xiaomi SU7’s marketing methods, and analyzing how Lei Jun created momentum and dominated the screen.

But I found that most articles are still at the level of introducing the marketing and communication tactics of Xiaomi SU7, or recording the entire marketing process of Xiaomi SU7. As a result, the content of most articles and reports are monotonous and lack some more basic and in-depth research.

Therefore, in this article, Lao Pao hopes to take everyone to analyze Lei Jun’s marketing strategy layer by layer and to peek into Lei Jun’s marketing methods; so that we can learn the real logic and ideas behind it, rather than learning some superficial tactical means, so that we can put what we have learned into practice in actual combat.

Let me first state my conclusion. I think the great success of Lei Jun’s marketing method can be distilled into “three ultimate tricks” :

The first trick: Make the most of personal and company IP!

The second trick: maximize the product’s cost-effectiveness!

The third trick: hype up the topic and traffic to the extreme!

Next, Lao Pao will introduce in detail one by one, how should we understand the so-called "ultimate three axes"? And how to use and implement them in actual combat?

1. Make the most of personal and company IP!

1. Leverage personal IP and company labels

As a phenomenal entrepreneurial IP, Lei Jun has always presented a positive image in the public mind as "down-to-earth, friendly, cherishing users, grateful, reliable, and hardworking." The deep-rooted cognitive image is the result of Lei Jun's years of hard work.

This means that every time Lei Jun launches a new product or invests in a new business, it will attract spontaneous attention from the public and proactive coverage from the media; even more impressive is the success of Lei Jun's persona, which makes the public have a natural sense of trust in everything related to him. This sense of trust at the mental level of the public and the traffic that is actively attracted are more effective than any amount of advertising or promotion.

The new car SU7 uses the parent brand Xiaomi, with the aim of grafting Xiaomi's brand label of "easy-to-use products at affordable prices" onto SU7, thereby greatly reducing the public's cognitive cost of SU7 and enhancing psychological trust in SU7: Xiaomi's digital home appliances are all high-configuration and cost-effective, so the quality of the car will naturally be very good.

2. Turn feelings and experiences into stories

After the Xiaomi SU7 launch conference was forwarded crazily and 50,000 orders were generated within half an hour after the conference, I thought the climax of Lei Jun's car-making event had come to an end.

Little did they know that the legendary story of "Lei Jun as the male protagonist of 10 episodes of cool novels" suddenly emerged, and was wildly pursued and discussed by netizens on social platforms. Its popularity was even no less than that of the SU7 press conference:

Episode 1: Accidentally Passed the College Entrance Examination

Episode 2: Wuhan University Courses Are Just So So

Episode 3: Earning the First Bucket of Gold in College

Episode 4: The boss of a listed company invited me to be the general manager

Episode 5: Confused Life after Financial Freedom

Episode 6: "I'll Go It Alone the Next Day"

Episode 7: An Exciting 100,000 RMB Investment

Episode 8 "Indian Fan Meeting Single Are You Ok"

Episode 9: "Complete IPO in Eight Years and Enter the Fortune Global 500"

Episode 10: "I Bought 348,000 Square Meters in Nine Years in Beijing"

Lei Jun's extremely rich and wonderful personal experience is difficult to sort out in just a few sentences. Therefore, the use of multiple story episodes can not only clearly depict the context of Lei Jun's resume, but also improve readability to facilitate the public to quickly understand and spread.

We all know what happened next. As the legendary story of the protagonist of the cool novel spread by word of mouth, topics related to Lei Jun and Xiaomi SU7 continued to dominate the hot search and topic lists of major social platforms for a long time, ushering in another climax of topics and traffic.

2. Maximize product cost-effectiveness!

When talking about the word "value for money", many people will subconsciously equate it with low price, but they don't realize that this is a big distortion and misunderstanding of the term "value for money"; in many real-life scenarios, the value for money that consumers truly recognize is often not the same as the value for money they say.

Taking a specific shopping scenario as an example, the price of a Xiaomi power bank with a capacity of 10,000 mAh is about 99 yuan, but on Pinduoduo, a power bank with the same capacity may only cost 9.9 yuan. Can we conclude that Pinduoduo’s 9.9 yuan power bank is more cost-effective than the Xiaomi power bank?

The answer is obvious. Although Pinduoduo's 9.9 yuan power bank is cheap, consumers' expectations and requirements for the performance of this power bank will be very low. Even if it has shortcomings such as large size, short service life, and ugly appearance, consumers can usually accept it. After all, the price is there.

Since Xiaomi's power bank costs 99 yuan, consumers will have certain requirements for its service life, appearance, charging speed, volume and weight, and other aspects of its usage experience. Consumers will only be satisfied when these conditions are met.

Therefore, the former can only be called a low price, while the latter is the real cost-effectiveness; there is an essential difference between the two, because cost-effectiveness is to reduce costs and lower profit margins as much as possible while ensuring the quality of the goods, so that consumers can buy goods of good quality and reasonable prices.

Looking back at the launch process of Xiaomi SU7, Lei Jun has always claimed that it is the best-looking, best-driving and most intelligent car under 500,000 yuan; and when the announced price was just over 200,000 yuan, it naturally gave consumers a feeling of extremely high cost-effectiveness: the performance/driving experience/appearance are comparable to a 500,000 yuan luxury car, but the price is just over 200,000 yuan.

In addition to its appearance comparable to Porsche and configuration better than Tesla model 3, Lei Jun also specially emphasized many thoughtful design details at the press conference, such as one-piece die-casting, 8-layer painting, water drop headlights, sun-proof windows, semi-hidden door handles, 3 mobile phone storage slots, 2 water cup placement areas, etc.

In addition, if you place a large order within a limited time, you can also receive a free in-car smart refrigerator and other configurations. This combination of measures fully demonstrates the cost-effectiveness of the Xiaomi SU7.

3. Maximize the topic and traffic!

Of course, personal IP stories and product cost-effectiveness alone are not enough to make Lei Jun a god in the marketing world; personal IP and products can be understood as weapons with great deterrent power, but the weapons must be successfully launched and hit accurately to truly achieve lethality and destructive power; therefore, the continuous hype of topics and traffic has become the catalyst for Xiaomi SU7 to continue to break out of the circle and dominate the screen.

Let's review how Lei Jun maintained the topic and popularity along the way of announcing the car-making project:

The hype about Xiaomi SU7 can be traced back to the press conference in 2021 when Lei Jun announced the car-making project. He choked up and said, "This is the last major entrepreneurial project in my life. I am willing to bet my entire reputation in life, lead the team personally, and fight for Xiaomi Auto." As a result, the public and the media have been actively concerned about Xiaomi's car-making progress in recent years.

At the end of 2023, Xiaomi held a SU7 technology launch conference, contracting landmark buildings in first-tier cities to pay tribute to the pioneers of Chinese electric vehicles; at the same time, the suspense of Xiaomi SU7's price was left to the end, and finally the question "How much will SU7 sell for?" turned into a topic of conversation and guessing game for all the people.

This was followed by a series of operations to increase the company's presence, such as having the Xiaomi car mold appear on the Spring Festival Gala, Lei Jun updating the product details of Xiaomi SU7 on his own media every day, and during the Two Sessions, Lei Jun, as a National People's Congress representative, did not forget to promote Xiaomi Car and released a video leading a tour of the Xiaomi Car Super Factory.

Until the day of the press conference, many electric vehicle competitors’ bigwigs were invited to attend (Zhang Jianyong, Chairman of BAIC Group, Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motors, Li Bin, Chairman of NIO, He Xiaopeng, Chairman of Xpeng Motors, Li Xiang, Chairman of Li Auto, etc.); as the press conference progressed, netizens made a series of emoticons of the changes in the psychological states of the competitors’ bigwigs, which earned wave after wave of hot searches.

The last step is the routine operation after the press conference, which is to repackage and hype Lei Jun’s golden sentences at the press conference and maximize the emotions, such as "Making cars is hard, but success must be cool", "There is fire in the heart, light in the eyes, and the whole body is shining with the light of optimism and confidence". These sentences resonated with countless people in the circle of friends and were forwarded crazily.

Lei Jun's strategy of creating hot topics and attracting attention is carried out in an orderly manner step by step, and each move can hit the key points and trigger discussion or resonance.
In the actual marketing process, we can directly learn and imitate these tactics; however, it is based on certain prerequisites, such as you have an influential IP to support it, and you can coordinate enough resources and a large enough lineup.

Every time Lei Jun’s god-level marketing seems to be an overnight success on the surface, it is actually a concentrated display of factors such as influence, personality, resources, connections, and experience that have been accumulated over time. This is the true meaning of Lei Jun’s “three ultimate marketing axes”!

Author: Lao Pao

Source: WeChat official account: "LaopaOG (ID: laopaostrategy)"