Car company bosses compete to become Internet celebrities

Lei Jun alone is as good as ten 4A advertising companies. This statement is not an exaggeration. In just two months after the release of Xiaomi SU7, Lei Jun has become the top star in the car circle. Its popularity is not only reflected in the fact that it is on the hot search every day, but also in the influence on the heads of traditional car companies, which can better prove Lei Jun's influence in the car circle. In the past month, stimulated by the "stimulation" of Xiaomi SU7, Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Group, and Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, have become "car bloggers", hoping to learn Xiaomi's marketing tactics by imitating Lei Jun's personal IP and bringing new growth to their own brand's volume and sales. From behind the scenes to the front stage, the heads of traditional car companies have begun to play live broadcasts, short videos, and Weibo... This is undoubtedly an important change in the marketing level of the automotive industry. However, from the current point of view, compared with the bosses of new car companies born in the Internet, the "net sense" of the heads of traditional car companies still needs to be improved. How to be both real and down-to-earth, both professional and able to create topics, and both obtain traffic and increase sales, this is a big challenge for the heads of traditional car companies.

The big guys in the car circle are striving to be "Internet celebrities". With Lei Jun as the core of marketing, Xiaomi Motors has achieved great success. The number of viewers of the technical conference reached 4.8 million; the number of viewers of the launch conference exceeded 100 million; it was on Weibo hot search more than 30 times after the launch; the number of units sold one day after the launch was 88,898... This set of data deeply stimulated a number of traditional car companies, and also made the latter salivate, and began to really pay attention to online traffic marketing. It can be seen that after Lei Jun released Xiaomi SU7, many heads of traditional car companies came to the screen to call for their own products. On April 15, Wei Jianjun, chairman and executive director of Great Wall Motors, known as the "Baoding Car God", started live broadcasting for the first time and personally challenged to test the urban NOA function of Great Wall Motors in the downtown area of ​​Baoding. At the scene, Wei Jianjun also set the flag of "Great Wall's intelligent driving will enter the first echelon this year". In addition, Wei Jianjun also said that he would be active on major social media in the future.

Picture: Screenshot of Wei Jianjun’s live broadcast

Interestingly, after Wei Jianjun opened his Weibo account, his first three blog posts were all related to Xiaomi Motors and Lei Jun. Not only that, a few days later, Wei Jianjun appeared on Douyin again to interact with Lei Jun online. Of course, Wei Jianjun is not the only head of a traditional car company that has recently "connected to the Internet." On April 14, the day before Wei Jianjun's live broadcast, Yin Tongyue, the 62-year-old chairman of Chery Holding Group, also did a live broadcast to test the long-distance and high-speed high-level intelligent driving capabilities of the upcoming Xingtu Auto Star Era ET. The live broadcast also invited Luo Zhenyu, the founder of the Get App, and Wu Pei, a media person, to participate. During the live broadcast, Yin Tongyue said frankly: "To learn from Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun, to explain and introduce in person, this is also forcing me, an old man in his sixties, to come out." In addition to Yin Tongyue, on March 28, the day of the Xiaomi Automobile launch conference, 61-year-old Geely Holding Group Chairman Li Shufu and New Oriental founder and Oriental Selection CEO Yu Minhong also launched a three-hour live broadcast, leading the audience to visit the Geely Satellite Super Factory in depth.

Picture: Yu Minhong and Li Shufu

Including Changan Automobile Chairman Zhu Huarong, who was previously active on social media platforms such as Weibo, recently frequently posted personal videos on WeChat Moments to promote brands such as Changan Deep Blue and Avita. It is not difficult to see that under the influence of Lei Jun, the heads of traditional car companies have seen a new possibility. They are accelerating the creation of personal IP as the heads of car companies, constantly trying new online marketing and communication methods for car companies, and trying to bring their own car companies the same results as Xiaomi Auto.

The top leaders are the best spokespersons. The top leaders of traditional auto companies are competing to become "Internet celebrities". Behind this phenomenon is a revolution in the marketing of the auto industry. In the past, traditional auto companies rarely had direct contact with consumers. They basically sold vehicles through 4S stores and second-tier dealers in auto cities. Especially in the marketing aspect, most of them were contracted out to third-party public relations companies.

Since the automobile market was still in the incremental era in the past few years, traditional car companies were able to achieve good growth and win their own space without having to face consumers directly. However, as the automobile market entered the stock era, the reduction in demand has caused consumers to become more "picky" about cars. At the same time, the increasing number of players in the track has also provided consumers with more and more choices. This drastic change in consumer concepts has made the marketing methods of traditional car companies in their early years ineffective. Unlike traditional car companies, car manufacturers such as Huawei and Xiaomi, which came from the Internet, have accumulated rich combat experience in the previous fully competitive market, so they chose to face C-end users directly as soon as they entered the market. In this era when cars are becoming more and more like electronic consumer products, the marketing method of facing consumers directly is undoubtedly the right choice. It can be seen that new car companies not only have the ability to arouse topics and attention, but also can convert traffic into actual sales. At present, the new forces in car manufacturing represented by Huawei, Xiaomi, Wei, Xiaoli, etc. have already occupied the top of the topic, especially the Internet celebrity status of the top leaders, becoming the best spokespersons for brands and models.

This phenomenon has awakened traditional car companies: they can’t always work hard on technology, they must learn from new forces, learn their skills in attracting traffic, learn packaging marketing, especially the personal IP marketing of the top leaders of car companies. Thus, a marketing revolution in the automotive industry has begun... The top leaders of car companies stepping forward to do marketing can not only bring affinity to the audience, but also directly convey the company’s mission and commitment to the target users, and achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement by eliminating the middleman. This has far more advantages than disadvantages than the top leaders hiding behind the scenes. However, the top leaders of traditional car companies have not yet accumulated a large enough fan base in the Internet field, and it is often difficult to attract the attention of young people. Can they make changes and can they adapt to this change? This remains to be verified.

Learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses. Judging from the live broadcast communication effects of the heads of traditional car companies in this round, the performance is quite impressive. For Wei Jianjun's live broadcast activities, the preview alone attracted the attention of more than one million users, and triggered a rush of reports from tap water and many media; although there were some minor problems in the actual live broadcast, the overall effect was remarkable, attracting more than 10 million views, and the official also released the live broadcast results in a timely manner. More importantly, this live broadcast made many consumers have higher expectations for Great Wall's intelligent driving level. The heads of traditional car companies opened social media and lowered their posture to communicate with netizens, which is in line with the characteristics of decentralized communication. But how to stay active for a long time, how to learn to deal with "netizens", and whether they can really help users solve problems and bring real benefits to the brand, this is the core. Obviously, Wei Jianjun and others do not have these capabilities at present. They are generally still in the one-way output stage, only posting what they want to post, only saying what they want to say, and not caring about what consumers want to see and hear. What "interaction" with consumers is far from enough. In the comment section of Wei Jianjun's Weibo, some netizens said: "I hope Mr. Wei can often read, post and reply by himself." "I look forward to his operation. Since you come to social media, you want to hear the truth. Don't let people around you block the channel for suggestions."

Source: Wei Jianjun Sina Weibo is used as a "learning" object. Since entering Weibo in 2010, Lei Jun has posted more than 17,000 Weibo posts so far. In "Xiaomi Entrepreneurship Thinking", Lei Jun also said that all Weibo posts were posted by himself: I always feel that if I don't post Weibo posts myself, it is difficult to truly achieve the purpose of listening to users' voices and making friends with users. In addition, in Lei Jun's Weibo, you can often see him frequently sharing content related to Xiaomi products, and you can also see various texts or emoticons that interact with netizens.

Source: Lei Jun's Sina Weibo

In addition to Lei Jun, the leaders of new forces, including Li Bin of NIO, Li Xiang of Ideal, and Zhang Yong of Nezha, often summarize the lessons learned from various aspects of car manufacturing on Weibo, share them with friendly companies, and actively interact with netizens. This kind of real, opinionated, and down-to-earth personal IP image is what the leaders of traditional car companies really need to learn. Of course, no matter what kind of marketing method it is, it is only an auxiliary means. For car companies, the most important thing is the product strength of the car itself. Traditional car companies need to learn the marketing methods of new forces, and new forces must learn from traditional car companies in terms of body, chassis, power system, etc., and constantly improve their car manufacturing capabilities. Only by constantly trying to change and constantly learning from each other's strengths can the leaders be truly sought after by netizens and car companies can win the favor of consumers.