Welcome to the WeChat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina
Text / Jia Haonan and Chu Wanbo
Source: Smart Car Reference (ID: AI4Auto)
Last night, Luo Dayou killed a wave of feelings, have you seen it?
When you reminisce about your youth, have you noticed this big logo that runs through the audience:
Luo Dayou’s concerts, including Cui Jian’s online concert not long ago, are all brought to you by the exclusive title of Jihu Auto with real money.
Who is Jihu Automobile, you ask? Netizens may not be able to answer you, because almost no one cares about the gold master behind this live broadcast interaction or replay of messages, which is a little embarrassing…
Does this scene seem familiar? Before Cui Jian’s concert, the excitement also did not belong to Jihu Automobile.
In fact, Jihu Automobile is a high-end brand that the underperforming BAIC Group is striving to bet on the intelligent transformation of new energy.
Jihu is also an in-depth partner of Huawei’s entry into the automotive business and the launch of its intelligent driving solution, and one of the partners of Baidu Apollo’s fifth-generation Robotaxi.
However, the halo blessing of the two major technology giants has not been able to drive the brand that BAIC has high hopes for, and sales have been bleak.
Turning to Cui Jian and Luo Dayou’s traffic self-help, the trick of Jihu Automobile has won the feelings, can it still be converted into sales?
What did the fox do?
Luo Dayou’s online concert was exclusively titled and sponsored by Jihu Motors. As early as 4 days before the concert started, Jihu’s official channels continued to release relevant warm-up videos, which shows how hard Jihu was in this marketing operation.
A series of classic masterpieces such as “Childhood” and “Story of Time” have played the word “feeling” to the extreme. Luo Dayou, who has been dubbed the “Godfather of Music”, has an appeal that can be seen with the naked eye.
Shown in the live broadcast data of the concert, in the warm-up stage before the concert officially started, Luo Dayou’s video account has had 5.918 million views, and when it ended at 22:10, the number of viewers reached 35.662 million.
According to the data mechanism of the video account “Counting Heads”, with the help of Luo Dayou’s signboard, the exposure of an online concert exceeded 30 million.
This kind of marketing strategy relying on feelings, Jihu has played once in Cui Jian’s online concert before, and the effect is also very impressive in terms of exposure.
According to public data, Cui Jian’s online concert last month once raised the ceiling of the live concert viewing record on the video account. At this concert, Jihu accumulated a total of 90 million user contacts.
From the perspective of exposure alone, the marketing of playful feelings is really good, but on the other hand, the interaction at the concert site seems to be nothing.
The key words discussed by the audience are more “Ye Qing Hui” or the star himself.
Is the money spent?
To say whether it is worth it, you have to find the answer from the data.
Official information shows that since the beginning of this year, BAIC Polar Fox has begun to exert its efforts in marketing, which is reflected in the financial report, that is, the sales expenses for marketing and promotion have increased significantly.
In the first quarter of this year, the sales expenses of BAIC Blue Valley, the parent company of Extreme Fox, were 309 million yuan, an increase of 63% over the same period last year. Compared with the R&D cost of 203 million yuan, it was only less than 20 million yuan over the same period last year.
If calculated according to the time period of commercial sponsorship, the planning and capital delivery of the last two online concerts should have been completed in the first quarter. The increase in marketing expenses of BAIC Blue Valley was largely used for this series of advertisements. Launch and sponsor events.
The money is spent, does it work?
In the short term, the effect is obvious.
Baidu search shows that since the beginning of this year, the search index on the Baidu platform for “Jihu Auto” has experienced two peaks:
The first time was from April 11th to April 17th, with a search index of 1404, which corresponds to the warm-up and post-exposure time of Cui Jian’s concert; the other time was the warm-up exposure period of Luo Dayou’s concert in the last week. Index 2162.
In contrast, the last time the search index of Jihu Automobile exploded was at the Shanghai Auto Show in April last year, when it teamed up with Huawei to launch the Jihu Alpha HI version, but that time, the search index was only 1005.
That is to say, in terms of the intensity of active searches by users, Cui Jian and Luo Dayou are indeed more fragrant than hugging the thighs of tech giants.
But in the long run, traffic comes and goes quickly.
The data shows that the popularity of Cui Jian’s online concerts only lasted for 3 days. The Baidu search index fell sharply on April 18, and then basically fell to the previous trough level.
The search index is only one aspect. To measure whether the marketing method is effective, the final standard depends on whether the car sells well or not.
According to the data of the passenger car sales query website, the number of insurance vehicles of the Jihu brand in April this year was 889, and the cumulative number of insurance vehicles from January to April this year was 2,871.
This level of sales has indeed increased compared to last year when the monthly sales of Jihu were less than 500 units, but the growth was limited. Jihu Motors did not get rid of the sluggish performance of less than 1,000 monthly sales.
In other words, the money was spent, and the two concerts also showed their faces, but the final sales increase, compared with the exposure on paper, the “meaning” is a bit worse.
What’s the significance of the new attempt of extreme fox marketing?
According to the Beijing News, citing the official caliber of Jihu:
In 2021, Jihu has completed more than 120 authorized construction sites, and has authorized 73 authorized service centers, covering 54 cities across the country.
In order to realize the transformation of products to high-end products, BAIC has increased its brand communication efforts, and increased sales expenses such as advertising and operation.
In fact, regardless of channels or marketing, Jihu’s efforts are still there.
It’s just that the car circle often expresses its regret for a certain car by “applauding but not getting a seat”, but it seems that Jihu Automobile has not even achieved the influence of being evaluated as “applaud or popular”.
The time to market is not short, and the marketing expenses are higher than the research and development expenses. Why is the brand building and publicity of Jihu not ideal?
BAIC knows that its user reputation is not good enough, and never mentions the word “BAIC” in any announcements about Jihu, so as not to add historical burden to the new brand.
So how did the fox itself do it?
At the beginning of the listing, the pole fox tried its best to bind the foundry Magna (the pole fox is not produced independently by BAIC, but produced, calibrated and debugged by Magna, the North American foundry of Mercedes-Benz and BMW).
The focus of propaganda naturally falls on “German tuning” and “the same chassis for luxury cars”.
This was before the αS in partnership with Huawei came out.
After the announcement of the cooperation with Huawei, Jihu tightly bound Huawei’s traffic halo. In fact, the αS is indeed the production car with the highest “Chinese content”, which is enough to attract attention.
It’s just that the Huawei version of αS has not been listed for a long time, which has slowly exhausted everyone’s patience and expectations.
The marketing of Jihu’s “holding the thighs” is not the original sin.
In the early stage, the status of partners is used to indirectly demonstrate strength, which is a strategy used by most brands.
It’s just that partners can only decide the lower limit of the brand. As for the upper limit, they must be calibrated with their own strength and products.
This may be one of the reasons why Jihu is always stealing the limelight by Huawei, Cui Jian, and Luo Dayou.
Before the titled Cui Jian Luo Dayou concert, Jihu preferred to place advertisements on traditional portal websites and official media, and new media such as live broadcast, Douyin and WeChat have gradually entered the right track this year.
And in the exploration of new media in the face of users, Jihu Auto has often appeared astonishing marketing “interludes”.
For example, Yu Liguo, the former president of Jihu, was accused of “intimidating and threatening” users in the official app community.
At the beginning of this year, an official account of Douyin Blue V certified as the “Jihu Expo Source Center” posted a video that publicly diss Tesla’s brake failure, in order to promote the “Jihu brake industry ceiling”, causing controversy:
But even with such extraordinary measures, Jihu’s popularity is still not high.
Therefore, switching marketing ideas has become the road that Jihu has to take.
The titled traffic star concert, but not a popular fresh meat, but a sentimental rock giant, shows that the official fox believes that its model positioning should be aimed at the urban white-collar people who are over 40 years old and have a certain economic foundation.
Judging from the distribution of users who are drained by Jihu after the titled concert, it is indeed in the 40-year-old range.
△ TGI index refers to the level of attention in this range
However, among the “middle-aged rockers” who entered the live broadcast of the concert, do they love Cui Jian Luo Dayou or Jihu Automobile?
It is too early to say whether the marketing of Jihu’s titled concert is accurate delivery or “one person’s intoxication”.
The answer seems to be settled only if Jihu comes up with sales and delivery figures.
However, under the influence of the epidemic, the business of all car companies is not good. Even if Jihu’s move is effective, it is not sure how long it will take to see the results.
However, Jihu’s new attempt in marketing also has irreplaceable significance.
First of all, it is the first time that a WeChat video account has attempted an exclusive live broadcast of a titled concert (Cui Jian’s concert), which is a landmark event that creates a new track and new species.
At the level of advertising and marketing, it has caused debate and thinking in the industry.
Some people think that the marketing of Jihu is successful. Regardless of the attention of breaking the circle or social media, the overall data of Weibo, video account, and Douyin are all very good.
Similar to Jihu, it is a very good exploration and attempt to form the relationship between product traffic and sales through high-quality national-level and phenomenon-level IP.
But there are also objections that traffic alone is not enough to indicate that this is a successful marketing. Cars are not fast-moving goods, and it is difficult to convert traffic quickly. Consumers need to have a deep understanding and recognition of brands and products before purchasing.
And Jihu’s sponsorship cannot be said to be successful. The secondary communication of marketing activities, the scale of user self-communication is limited, and the matching degree between the brand audience and the brand audience is also somewhat deviated; the concert audience is converted into a brand audience, and even potential In this regard, customers have not taken effective measures.
As for the automotive industry, Jihu’s move is the first. Whether the effect is good or not is destined to be an industry textbook.
However, these discussions focus on new media, focus on marketing techniques, and even focus on behavioral psychology…
But no one came out to say whether Jihu’s car was worth buying.
This article is reproduced from: http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-05-28/doc-imizirau5283627.shtml
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.