Great Wall, still unable to understand the internet

The changes made by Great Wall in marketing are holistic. We are all striving towards the direction of internetization, internet popularity, youthfulness, and feminization. Many comments have indeed gone viral, but they are also easily controversial.

Author | Yang Zhichao

Edit | Wilderness

The market presence of the Great Wall is no longer as strong as before, but there is more and more news.

This time, Great Wall made a big news by reporting environmental issues with the fuel tanks of two hybrid models of BYD to relevant departments, which caused a hot search.

Reporting is not a new incident. This report was submitted to relevant departments by Great Wall Motor as early as April 11. It wasn't until a month and a half later that the Great Wall dug up the report again and made it public, igniting public opinion.

The time chosen by the Great Wall is very delicate.Four hours after the release of this statement, BYD held a launch event for the Song ProDM-i Champions Edition. The Champions Edition is BYD's flagship this year, and the Song is one of BYD's most popular models. This press conference is undoubtedly very important. On the day of the press conference, a report statement was issued stating that Great Wall had given BYD a big gift.

Just 10 days ago, Great Wall also held a press conference and released the Haval Owl Dragon series. The pricing of Haval Owl Dragon is similar to that of BYD Song Plus, and both are plug-in hybrid, with a direct competitive relationship between the two.

What exactly is BYD's environmental protection issue? It will be left to time and regulatory authorities to judge.But the behavior of Great Wall as a host factory reporting another host factory and spreading it widely is worth considering.

In fact, in the past few years, there have been more and more similar big movements on the Great Wall.

The original style of Great Wall was very traditional, and compared to some big mouth entrepreneurs, Wei Jianjun and his executives rarely appeared in front of the media. The public only knows about the Great Wall, not Wei Jianjun. Many people only learned about this figure after Wei Jianjun became the richest man in the automotive industry.

However, since the sales of Great Wall Motor declined in 2017-2020, when Wei Jianjun asked, "Can Great Wall Motors survive next year?", changes have gradually occurred.The Great Wall has become increasingly high-profile and has begun to make some internet celebrity moves.

Firstly, executives began to make frequent speeches and learn from internet companies' chatter. CEO Wang Fengying hinted that BYD is better at managing stock prices. Wei Pai CEO and Yu Chengdong had a heated argument over whether adding programs was outdated technology.

The latest spat occurred this year when Great Wall fired directly at Ideal at the Blue Mountain brand launch, claiming to be "a better SUV than the best SUV within 5 million. Wei Pai CEO Chen Siying even harshly said, "A beginner who has practiced martial arts for 7 years is called a beginner, and a master who has practiced martial arts for 32 years is called a master. The depth of martial arts is the biggest difference between the 'car making faction' and the 'capital faction'." He also said, "Blue Mountain is the vanguard of the 'car making faction' in a comprehensive counterattack against the 'capital faction'

The implication is that the new forces of ideals are capitalists, and the Great Wall is the one who builds cars well, which is quite similar to Wang Fengying's insinuation at the time that BYD would "raise the stock price, while the Great Wall builds cars steadfastly". Of course, the ideal side is also unwilling to suffer losses. Founder Li Xiang frequently disrupts Blue Mountain on Weibo. But this also brought discussion to Blue Mountain, and many ideal fans learned about the Blue Mountain brand through this argument.

The current press conference style of Great Wall is very similar to that of past mobile phone manufacturers, often benchmarking themselves with their friends. It's hard to say how useful these comments are, but they have really raised the topic of Great Wall Motor.

The second change of Great Wall Motor is the "little red book" of its products and marketing.It is reported that Wei Zihan, the daughter of Wei Jianjun, has joined Great Wall Motor in the job rotation, which seems to have been trained as a successor. It is rumoured that the princess who returned from studying abroad has brought fresh ideas to this traditional car company, and many changes after Great Wall Motor are related to her.

After 2020, many products and marketing of Great Wall began to shift from the "middle-aged man" style to the "little red book fairy" style.

For example, Haval's entry-level product has been renamed First Love, and its exterior design has become more youthful. Wei's digital series has been redesigned into a coffee series: mocha, latte, and macchiato. In addition, there is the Great Wall Euler, which almost exclusively features women's cars throughout the brand.

In terms of marketing, Great Wall is also moving towards the direction of "doing something big".

After 2020, the painting style of the spokesperson hired by the Great Wall has changed significantly. In 2021, Yao Anna, the second princess of Huawei, was hired as the spokesperson for the "independent woman". In promoting the high-end SUV Tank 300, Great Wall hired talk show actor Yang Li - which quickly sparked controversy. The Tank 300 is a hardcore high-end SUV, with a significant gap between its target audience and Yang Li's fan base. Moreover, due to Yang Li's "ordinary man" joke, many male users are disgusted with her. At this time, a male car brand inviting Yang Li is just as controversial as a beauty brand inviting Jiang Jinfu.

But Great Wall seems not afraid to offend male users. At the press conference of Euler's Lightning Cat, Great Wall openly used the PPT saying 'Men have less spending power than dogs'.

It can be seen that the changes made by Great Wall in marketing are holistic.We are all striving towards the direction of internetization, internet popularity, youthfulness, and feminization. Many comments can easily cause controversy, but they have indeed gone viral.

So far, the reported incident has not brought any sweetness to the Great Wall. After reporting the BYD incident, the "plaintiff" Great Wall was not sought after by the outside world like the "Justice Messenger", and its stock price fell even more fiercely than the reported BYD. At the close on the 25th, BYD fell 2.41% and Great Wall Motor fell 6.17%.

The performance of the two stock prices was somewhat unexpected, but it is understandable.

Firstly, there is a suspicion of firing shots at regulatory authorities to report the incident, which could have a negative impact on the Great Wall.

Secondly, environmental issues are not a pain point for consumers in the Chinese automotive market. Compared to environmental protection, consumers are more concerned about whether BYD's engines are fuel-efficient or not. Great Wall only reported environmental issues and indirectly stated that it did not discover any quality issues with BYD.

However, Great Wall cannot produce products with sufficient strength and can only rely on reporting and cracking down on its friends, which can easily raise doubts about its strength from the outside world.

Even if BYD is seriously affected by the reported incident, Great Wall may find it difficult to directly benefit. Despite the long-standing grudges between the two car companies, they are hardly rivals of the same size in today's new energy market. At least 3-5 of BYD's competitors are more challenging than Great Wall. Even in the A-class SUV market where Great Wall excels, the latest sales of Zero Run and Aian are better than Great Wall.

After 2020, Great Wall made a series of marketing changes, but they did not receive very good returns. The behavior of earning enough attention time and time again only leads to a decrease in sales or a decrease in stock prices.Great Wall is a car company that relies on its products for success, and marketing is not its specialty. Perhaps by focusing less on news and focusing more on products, we can truly maintain competitiveness.