Live broadcast of car company bosses

This article tells the story of how car industry bosses Lei Jun and Li Bin personally "go on live broadcast" to bring traffic to their products. Interested readers can take a look.

A week ago, Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, started broadcasting on Douyin. Within just one minute, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room exceeded 100,000, and the number of likes exceeded 4.8 million. Since then, traffic has continued to flow to Xiaomi and Lei Jun, and the golden sentences during the live broadcast have frequently been listed on hot searches.

At the Beijing Auto Show, which will start on April 25, 2024, Lei Jun announced the delivery results of Xiaomi SU7 at the press conference, which became a highlight of the auto show. According to Lei Jun, as of April 24, the number of Xiaomi SU7 orders exceeded 75,723 units; 5,781 units were delivered in 28 days after the release of Xiaomi SU7. It can be said that since Lei Jun started making cars, the traffic has continued and the popularity has not diminished.

This makes it difficult for other car companies to sit still. In the past two months, both traditional car companies and new car-making forces, from Li Bin, founder of NIO, to Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, to Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Automobile... these bigwigs have frequently stepped out and entered the live broadcast room.

The latest news is that on April 20, Li Bin once again went live, challenging the Beijing evening rush hour, starting from the St. Regis Hotel, passing a series of Beijing landmarks including the CCTV Building, Sanlitun, Lama Temple, the Bird's Nest, Zhongguancun, and finally arriving at the New Century Hotel.

This seems to be a marketing idea that has to change. As Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360 Group, once said when talking about live broadcasts by car companies, "You don't talk about many things and think that users know them, which is actually wishful thinking." Yin Tongyue also said with a smile: "This is also forcing me, an old man in my sixties, to (live broadcast), and everyone came out."

However, when traffic pours into these live broadcast rooms, will sales really increase?

1. The boss’s fate: chatting, testing and apologizing

On the afternoon of April 18, Lei Jun, wearing a blue suit and a white T-shirt, drove a Xiaomi SU7 to appear in Douyin's live broadcast room. As for the theme of this live broadcast, Lei Jun said, "Not selling goods, just chatting."

From the Beijing delivery center to the experience center, Lei Jun first talked with many car owners, asking them what they thought was the most attractive aspect of Xiaomi SU7 to users. He also answered topics that many netizens were concerned about, such as "the reason for the delayed delivery cycle" and "is Xiaomi Automobile successful?"

Zinc Scale noticed that within less than 20 minutes of the broadcast, the number of likes on Lei Jun's Douyin live broadcast room exceeded 40 million, and within less than an hour of the broadcast, the number of likes exceeded 100 million.

In fact, it is nothing new for Lei Jun to enter the live broadcast room. After all, before this live broadcast, Lei Jun and Xiaomi Auto have long been masters of Internet marketing in the automotive industry. Without going back to the past glory of Lei Jun's live broadcast from 2016 to 2020, from the Xiaomi Auto launch on December 28 last year to the launch of Xiaomi SU7 on March 28, Lei Jun's personal Weibo has been hot from time to time.

As a result, other car companies finally couldn't sit still. Among them, Zhang Yong, CEO of Nezha Auto, directly said: "It's not shameful to learn marketing from Lei Jun!"

As early as March, Li Bin, CEO of NIO, conducted his first personal live broadcast on Douyin. In this live broadcast, Li Bin talked about his views on the appearance of MEGA, his wishes for HiPhi to get out of the predicament, connected with NIO sales staff to ask "how many cars were sold today", and apologized again for the "gasoline theory"...

If Li Bin has never been too far away from the Internet, then Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Automobile, seems a little unfamiliar in front of the screen. On April 14, Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Holding Group, personally tested and challenged high-level intelligent driving on long-distance highways. In this nearly 4-hour live broadcast, Yin Tongyue talked about hot topics including price wars, intelligent driving, high-end brands, going overseas, and cross-border car manufacturing. But perhaps the most attractive thing is the "revelation" that "two major European luxury brands want to buy Chery's high-end pure electric platform."

Screenshot of Wei Jianjun's live broadcast

A day later, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, also "went on stage" for the first time to live broadcast and test Great Wall Motors' full-scenario NOA. On April 18, Wei Jianjun appeared on the TikTok platform again and interacted with Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi Motors.

In addition, during this period of time, Jiyue CEO Xia Yiping also announced a live broadcast to experience the latest Jiyue 01, and invited Baidu founder Robin Li to help; 360 Group founder Zhou Hongyi and Nezha Auto CEO Zhang Yong jointly broadcast live; Geely Auto Chairman Li Shufu and New Oriental founder Yu Minhong started an online live broadcast at the Geely Satellite Super Factory.

2. Behind the traffic: watching and cheering

So, are the live broadcasts of the bigwigs in the automotive industry popular?

Judging from social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, many netizens took screenshots or recorded the live broadcasts of Li Bin and Lei Jun and discussed them constantly. Among them, on Weibo, topics such as "Wei Jianjun's first live broadcast", "Li Bin responded to low emotional intelligence in live broadcast", and "Yin Tongyue wants to give the intelligent driving department a bonus" frequently appeared on hot searches.

The data is more intuitive: Li Bin's first live broadcast lasted about two and a half hours, with more than 100,000 people online at the same time, and a cumulative number of viewers exceeding 10 million. The day after the live broadcast ended, Li Bin's personal account gained more than 180,000 followers; and Wei Jianjun opened a personal Weibo account before the live broadcast. As of now, Wei Jianjun's personal Weibo followers have grown to 230,000. The live broadcast set off a craze, attracting more than 4 million people to watch online in real time on Douyin. As of 5 hours after the live broadcast ended, the live broadcast attracted more than 10 million views on Weibo; Yin Tongyue's 4-hour live broadcast also attracted the attention of millions of netizens...

It is worth mentioning that some netizens even said that the first live broadcast brought Li Bin an income of about 1.3 million yuan. Li Bin therefore announced his live broadcast income. The screenshot shows that the total income of his account in the past 7 days is 33,088.5 yuan. Li Bin said: "I decided to donate this money to the Formula Student event. I will continue to accept tips in the future, and all the income will be donated."

It is undeniable that the live broadcast rooms of the big guys are not short of traffic and popularity. However, when "huge traffic" pours into these live broadcast rooms, what are netizens watching?

"Although many netizens do ask questions related to cars, such as price, delivery time, performance, etc., most of them are just watching the fun." Qiao Xing is a car enthusiast who has recently watched several live broadcasts of car industry leaders. "From the comments and barrage, you can see that many people deliberately provoke conflicts, flood the screen with requests for prize draws, or ask some difficult questions."

Image source: Live screenshot

This can be seen from Li Bin's live broadcast room. The comments in Li Bin's live broadcast room include: "Ideal's financial report is so good, what do you think?" "How to deal with Xiaomi SU7?" and other questions, as well as "You are the next Gaohe" and "garbage truck". Li Bin's responses to the above comments are: "Envy, we learn from them", "We are all friends, what are we dealing with?" "Gaohee, I hope they can get through this difficult time" and "Just scold me instead of the car"...

Nezha CEO Zhang Yong was on the hot search because of "crossing his legs live broadcast and comparing it with Lei Jun's live broadcast", and was criticized by many netizens, so much so that Zhang Yong apologized on April 21. In addition, the personalities of the bigwigs themselves are also a major traffic point. For example, Lei Jun refuted the rumor about his identity as the "first male protagonist of Shuangwen" during the live broadcast, saying that "I am at the lowest point in my life, and I don't have 4 billion cold coins in my card", "I have never been the top scorer in the college entrance examination", etc.

3. Internal competition continues: Who can turn traffic into sales?

Is traffic useful to a brand and its sales? The answer is undoubtedly yes.

If you were to look for an entrepreneur who is best at strengthening marketing through social media, it would be none other than Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Previously, Musk once became an Internet celebrity on Twitter with his sharp style, and later he showed his skills in the live broadcast room: in addition to live broadcasting playing "Diablo 4", Musk would also broadcast live to let the audience experience when his products made important progress, such as brain-computer interaction, and last year's live broadcast of the FSD Beta V12 test drive.

Screenshot of Lei Jun's live broadcast

Of course, there are also examples in China. As Zhou Hongyi, founder and chairman of 360 Group, said, "Everyone has seen the popularity of Xiaomi Auto. Lei Jun posts two short videos every day, which is very popular online and influential. He has annihilated other traditional car companies. This is the power of Internet celebrities."

The major automakers are obviously unwilling to fall behind in the traffic field. According to a report released in March 2024, nearly 200 automotive industry executives have settled in Weibo, of which 30% were added in 2023.

But as mentioned above, when netizens flock to the live broadcast room with the mentality of joining in the fun, whether the traffic can really be converted into sales is still a question mark . Especially for traditional car companies, although the market competitiveness of their new energy brands is gradually emerging, they are obviously still facing considerable pressure in the face of the aggressive new car-making forces.

Moreover, as the Economic Observer wrote, Yu Jingmin, former vice general manager of SAIC Passenger Vehicle, was once active on the Internet as "Fat Head Yu", and used personal labels such as "a joke teller who was delayed by selling cars" and "talk show sales boss", but this move had a limited effect on boosting SAIC Passenger Vehicle sales. Now, when the bigwigs are all rolling into the live broadcast room, whose traffic will eventually be a bubble, and who will eventually win the championship?

Author: Li Xuanqi Editor: Li Wenjie

WeChat public account: Zinc Scale (ID: znkedu)