Guangzhou Auto Show: Geely plays martial arts, Great Wall engages in cultural creativity

Wen?|?Jiang Xiaohua

Participated in two exclusive interviews with Geely and Great Wall at the auto show. We had a chat with Song Jun, general manager of Geely Brand Sales Company, and Li Ruifeng, senior vice president of Great Wall Motors and CMO of WEY brand.

As the two poles of China's privately owned automobile brands, neither has the strong support of new energy concepts like BYD. In the difficult 2020, the development is not bad, and the image of the independent leader continues to strengthen.

In Geely’s first product year since 2014, it has maintained its already strong fundamentals and laid the foundation for a new round of 4.0 product iterations starting from Xingrui at the end of the year.

Great Wall has launched a grand upward brand movement this year, and in the second half of the year, it has become the darling of both the auto market and the capital market.

The Geely and Great Wall cars we saw in Guangzhou seemed to have interchanged with our traditional impressions. Geely, who is better at Amway, has truly demonstrated his martial virtues, while Great Wall, which has always been practical, started cultural creation with the greatest enthusiasm.

The protagonist of Geely’s booth is the Xingrui, the first sedan under CMA Super Matrix, which was officially launched at the beginning of the month. This new car, which has only been on the market for 20 days, is said to have already received over 10,000 deposits from users. At the Guangzhou Auto Show, this new car actually launched its first large-scale OTA.

Pull down the key information. The new Geely Xingrui FOTA?GOS?01?1.0 version optimizes the NVH performance of all Xingrui models. At the same time, some models have added remote control parking functions and are equipped with a 540° panoramic blind zone transparent compensation display effect.

At the same time, Geely cooperated with ByteDance to establish Xingrui’s in-car information reception and entertainment system centered on short videos.

The core of Geely Wude is that with the Xingrui product, it breaks the conclusion that fuel vehicles cannot fully realize OTA. There are two subtexts here:

First, in terms of intelligence, the upgrade space of fuel vehicles will not be much smaller than that of electric vehicles at the current stage, as long as the electrified components in the vehicle reach a certain level. You can do it.

Secondly, for a long time, fuel vehicles will still be the main choice in the market. So if you don’t make great strides in making fuel vehicles intelligent, then you are lazy, and it is not impossible for technology to achieve it. .

The disruption that Xingrui has mentioned so far has emphasized a series of product advantages in the home sedan market, but it is obviously the most important.

Geely certainly hopes that relying on the CMA super matrix’s advantages of speed, flexibility, and broad design boundaries, it can form new crushing advantages within a certain period of time. However, it is more likely to trigger a new round of intelligent arms race for fuel vehicles among leading independent brands. The joint venture brands may not be able to keep up for a while.

Another key point is that Geely announced the price of Xingrui OTA, which is 5,777 yuan. Of course, this is a tentative announcement and the first subscribers won't have to pay the money.

I have always felt that pricing is much better than free. On the one hand, it shows that this is definitely not just a gimmick at the corporate marketing level, but is made with real money and is based on the real needs of users. Based on my understanding of Geely, they are definitely not the kind of company that dares to mark the price of traditional Chinese medicine on tree bark.

On the other hand, it shows that the company has industrialized thinking on this matter, just like Tesla's OTA, which has gradually developed into an independent value-added business. However, the normal, long-term and fast work content of OTA is basically unsustainable without industrial thinking.

Geely’s quotation this time is not so much for consumers as it is for the industry. Insiders can see that Geely has integrated factors such as cost, sustainable investment expectations, and target group consumption considerations, and can evaluate its current situation and direction accordingly. Geely seems to be saying, come on, your system can ensure long-term operation at this price, then let’s play together.

Fan Junyi, deputy general manager of Geely Brand Sales Company, said that in the future, Xingrui and related follow-up products will maintain the rhythm of achieving OTA with content once a quarter at most, which will change users' consumption of fuel vehicles. psychology.

For example, when we bought a car before, it seemed like an active choice, but in fact it was a process of accepting Amway and ultimately gambling. Manufacturers guide the market to establish automobile consumption values ​​based on the current status of their products.

Now, as long as you like Xingrui’s internal and external design and basic performance, your choice becomes simple. You don’t have to worry about buying a car that will be outdated when you first buy it, and you don’t have to envy the new electronic functions of cars that come out later. You don’t even have to worry about bugs in non-core components of the new car, as these can be kept up to date through later OTAs. You even have a great chance to turn your needs into OTA content through "complaints" through multiple channels.

Song Jun, a sales veteran of Geely, is obviously very excited about Xingrui’s realization of vehicle OTA. He said that Geely has just welcomed its 10 millionth brand car owner, and Geely will definitely be able to reach the next 10 million users in the future. Intelligent technology establishes a more direct communication channel with every user. The new relationship between users and enterprises thus established will inevitably give birth to unimaginable new industry formats.

In the past, Geely worked hard to collect user needs through various channels and turned them into product improvement plans, but it still inevitably encountered a situation where the product was not marketable. After the implementation of OTA, user demand expression can completely become user innovation, and the integration of enterprise research, production and sales will naturally be opened up.

Many traditional companies are thinking and trying, in terms of management, to learn from the Internet genes of outstanding new forces building cars, so as to avoid being eliminated in the obviously irreversible industry transformation. However, scale, structure and decision-making efficiency have always caused various attempts by large companies to either end in vain or become mere formalities.

Judging from Geely's approach, the transformation of the so-called tradition is not achieved through the coordination of management and personnel, or by frequently challenging the company's core financial and human resources rules. At least these are not the key. The key is how to use the leap forward of new technologies to open a crack, so as to directly force and transform enterprise processes starting from the user end.

From this perspective, the martial ethics Geely showed in Guangzhou this time is not only external, but also profound internally.

The Great Wall’s Yangcheng year-end show is full of cultural and creative elements. Since the boss Wei Jianjun, with his tough and tender image superimposed on slim formal suits and racing suits, has pondered whether Great Wall can survive next year, this car company with the image of a technical geek like a military academy has been on the road to cultural creation. Packed up.

I have to say that a science student from Great Wall has done really well in the cultural and creative industries in the past two years in the independent brand. From the effect point of view, so many people are holding back hundreds of millions to achieve the brand level. Among the car companies that have made breakthroughs or turned around, almost no one has achieved higher results than Great Wall.

From sponsoring the first sea-based satellite launch, to Wei Jianjun’s series of communications, to the naming revolution, gathering the power of Big Dog and Black Cat Coffee, Great Wall’s cultural and creative style works well together. The core behind it is Wei Jianjun's thinking about the future Great Wall and his determination to transform it.

Let’s take a small example. At this Guangzhou Auto Show, WEY brand prepared several theme day activities for their brand name Poseidon-class product Tank 300. The first one was a women-only event with great contrast.

Tank 300 and women seem to be particularly incompatible. However, do you know what the proportion of female owners of a big man’s car like the Ideal ONE is? Ideal has not announced this data, but what surprised me was that among the seven or eight Ideal ONEs I met on the road in Beijing, all the people in the driver's seat looked like they were petite and exquisite girls wearing oversize clothes.

It can be seen that putting the goddess special in the first place shows that Great Wall Cultural and Creative Group now has a meticulous and keen understanding of the market.

While chatting with Li Ruifeng, the main marketing and sales manager of the WEY brand, I set a trap for this old man from Great Wall. WEY's main cultural and creative theme at the Guangzhou Auto Show is innovation. From product design to sales services, WEY has proposed the concept of innovation in the entire chain.

Compared with Geely’s technology-driven innovation, Great Wall’s innovation approach is based on the fact that its base users are more familiar with vehicles and more rational, and they are more direct Put forward your own ideas and demands. However, this kind of innovation also requires more realistic investment, both in energy and financial resources.

I asked Mr. Li Ruifeng whether there might be some problems in such a wide-ranging innovation. For example, if a service initiative is a good suggestion for enterprises and customers, but dealers resist it because it is laborious to implement and there is no direct benefit, what will WEY choose?

For another example, for a product innovation, the assessment of technology and market demand is fine, but it requires the company to invest unexpected costs, so how should it choose?

Li Ruifeng also expressed it very honestly. As the high-end brand of Great Wall, the WEY brand is Great Wall's strategic investment for the future. Now that it has made innovation, the brand will spare no effort to invest and establish new user relationships in line with future trends through innovation.

Just like Weilai, it took Li Bin one year to go from the worst person to the happiest person. Their previous investment in users resulted in some losses, but now the effects are showing. WEY is not afraid of losses when it comes to building user relationships. The key is to set the tone of a Chinese luxury brand and truly build a deep relationship with users.

Well, this is a very good statement. It breaks through the boundaries of traditional car companies that retreat as soon as they touch finance and systems and mechanisms in the movement to learn from new forces. This is also the basis for Great Wall's new cultural and creative movement to achieve better results than other car companies.

To say a few more words, brand building is originally an examination of the company itself, and it is the reflection of the corporate vision on the current status of the company. Both the vision and the current situation must be true before we can talk about brand building and have the foundation to engage in cultural creativity. It is not in line with market sales demand, although it will definitely support sales strongly if done well.

Seeing that the autonomous car companies at the head are getting better and better, looking back, we see that the autonomy at the rear is getting narrower and narrower.

On the media day of the auto show, news came out that Brilliance Automobile had entered bankruptcy and reorganization. At around 13:50, China Business News released the news that Brilliance denied bankruptcy and reorganization; then Xinhua News Agency made the final decision, turning it into bankruptcy and reorganization; then Brilliance's stock price stretched by nearly 8 points.

Taking a literal look at it, Brilliance is not lying if it says there is no reorganization. After all, the official label is reorganization.

Disregarding the fact that BMW Brilliance contributed 7.6 billion yuan in net profit, which still cannot prevent Brilliance from losing net profit attributable to its parent company, let’s look at the structural design of Brilliance Group.

According to relevant reports, in September, Brilliance established Liaoning Xinrui Automobile Industry Development Co., Ltd. between the group and Brilliance Automobile, with a registered capital of 10 million yuan. Using this shell company avoids the possibility of investors preserving their interests by freezing Brilliance China's equity. Freezing can only freeze the empty shell of Xinrui.

On October 17, Brilliance changed the registration location of another listed company, Shenhua Holdings, from Shanghai to Shenyang. Future debt litigation can only be in Shenyang. What's the benefit of this? It was probably sung by the first generation of Internet celebrities. After all, we are all our own. But the law is fair.

Compared with these emergency measures, the protection of the joint venture project of BMW Brilliance Gold Mine is thorough and foresighted. The Chinese shares in the joint venture are owned by Jinbei Automobile, another subsidiary of Brilliance Group, and have nothing to do with Brilliance Automobile. In Brilliance's game, even if you go around eight times, you can't get around BMW Brilliance.

From a current perspective, BMW’s implicit joy at the establishment of a firewall with Brilliance Auto was really prescient. Everyone has prepared for this day in advance.

The details of the entire Brilliance incident have even affected my personal view on stock investment. If you only look at BMW Brilliance, this company is worth holding in full for the long term.

If a car company does not build a single car, it can make more than 6 billion a year. After building cars for more than ten years, it still loses hundreds of millions a year, and has been losing money for N consecutive years. . Dear friends, as far as the Chinese market is concerned, this is not an easy thing.

Just a month ago, when Shenhua Holdings quietly changed its registration location, Brilliance also let out the news, saying that the company would reach an annual production and sales volume of one million within three to five years. The future-oriented automobile travel industry.

I was still wondering for a long time, was this the Brilliance I knew?

Of course, at a time when the automobile industry as a whole is facing structural adjustments, some seemingly strange, inexplicable, and challenging business ethics behaviors, as well as some incomprehensible high debts, losses, and misfortunes, are very important. There may be some performance elements mixed in.

It’s just that the acting skills and script integrity of each family are different. From the perspective of the industry and the actual assets of the company, Brilliance is far from having no way out. Coupled with the establishment of multiple firewalls, all high-quality assets of the company are protected. So far, all parties involved have shown that they have Have to be calmer. At most, it's a chrysanthemum stump, far from being covered in wounds.

Perhaps, by overcoming this hurdle smoothly and efficiently, Brilliance will not only be able to divest its non-performing assets, but also complete the restructuring along the way. Maybe it will not be able to embark on the prosperous road of one million in five years. .

However, compared to Chery, JAC, GAC Changan, etc., we can see too few optimistic clues from the current situation of Brilliance.

2020 is coming to an end, and we will all miss this year when all kinds of wonderful flowers bloomed. The difference may be that some bloom in the future born of difficult times, while others bloom in the past and present that cannot be contained.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.