Wuling Plans To Change Wuzhen Press Conference

Hongguang Mini EV is on fire, Wuling is also popular.

On September 16, Wuling held a brand conference in Wuzhen. Inside and outside the venue, colorful spheres, grasslands and light curtains could be seen everywhere. The new car "Star" was shrouded in a warm sense of science and technology.

On that night, actor Zhou Xun also came to the scene to show the features of Ling OS Lingxi system with Zhou Zhen, deputy general manager of Wuling Business Department of SAIC GM Wuling Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "SAIC GM Wuling").

Zhou Xun is the spokesperson of Wuling global brand, and Wuling just announced the news in early September. At that time, the outside response is not small: "thick eyebrows big eyes" Wuling how also invited a spokesperson? What's more, it's still a goddess who doesn't seem to be grounded at all?

Wuling is no longer what the people think of Wuling.

In the past, Wuling Hongguang, which is rich in "shenche", used to sell about 50000 Wuling Hongguang, but now it has quietly become Hongguang Mini eV of 30000 or so. Despite the cheaper price, Hongguang Mini EV gives people a totally different feeling. The former represents new fashion and convenience, while the latter interprets practicality and massiveness.

Wuling's slogan has always been "Wuling will make whatever the people need". In the wave of automobile electrification, Hongguang Mini EV has delivered a quite brilliant answer for Wuling. Since its launch in the second half of last year, the car ranked first in the domestic new energy vehicle sales list for many consecutive months.

Wuling has also renewed its brand image with Hongguang Mini ev. Before Zhou Xun, Wuling has signed Ren Min, a young actor, as the spokesperson of Hongguang Mini ev. At the end of August this year, kiwi EV built on the same platform with Hongguang Mini EV came into the market, and Song Xi, an actor, was invited to be the spokesperson. It should be pointed out that the kiwi EV is a model of Baojun, another brand of SAIC GM Wuling, and its price is about 70000 yuan higher than Hongguang Mini ev.

Within the system of SAIC GM Wuling, Baojun is a brand with a higher positioning. However, with Wuling issuing the silver standard and inviting Zhou Xun to speak for it, Wuling brand itself is also striving to improve. The silver standard model star, released on September 16, has a top price of nearly 100000. Although it is not high in the independent brand camp, it is already a breakthrough of Wuling.

Great changes are taking place in China's automobile market. For Wuling, brand upgrading is "a matter of life and death". Whether Wuling can upgrade its brand through these measures remains to be voted on by the market. But there are many challenges ahead.

Goodbye to "double label"

Wuling Xingchen is already the second model under Wuling silver standard.

At the end of May last year, SAIC GM Wuling issued the global silver standard, aiming to make Wuling brand "go to the world, to the high end". At that time, Wuling launched a MPV model, Wuling Kaijie, and pushed it to overseas markets.

The main reason why MPV is the traditional strength of Wuling is that MPV is more likely to enter the market and become popular. The new car logo and new positioning will be able to stand up.

Wuling Kaijie did well. In the first few months of its listing, it once sold nearly 10000 vehicles a month. According to the data, the cumulative sales volume of Capgemini has exceeded 80000 in 10 months. However, in recent months, Capgemini's sales level has declined slightly.

Under this background, the importance of Wuling star is self-evident. This is an SUV, which is more popular in the category. Wuling also put the latest Ling OS rhino system on the model for the first time, and invited Zhou Xun, the brand spokesman, to the launch conference.

Ling OS Lingxi system is an open intelligent car ecosystem, hoping to get through the ecology of the whole scene of cars, people and life. One of the highlights of Zhou Zhen's on-site display is that its intelligent voice platform can realize simultaneous interaction of single sentence and multiple instructions.

The cooperation between SAIC GM Wuling and Zhou Xun also started before the launch of star. On September 6, the company's official announced the news and said that Zhou Xun was invited to be the spokesperson of the global brand based on the high consistency of the two sides' values of "doing things seriously".

Wuling took advantage of this opportunity to announce that Wuling silver standard "has officially entered the 2.0 full link ecological era", and the significance of the silver standard to Wuling is further highlighted. Zhou admitted at the press conference that the theme of the evening was "brand upgrading".

In Wuling's plan, the silver standard will be adopted for the future models with relatively high configuration. The 21st century economic reporter learned that the new Hongguang Mini EV, which is being declared, will also be put on the silver label. According to public information, the car's battery capacity has been improved and its service life may reach 300 km.

SAIC GM Wuling has had similar experience by changing the standard and trying to upgrade the brand. Previously, Baojun has launched the "new Baojun" brand, and launched a new diamond logo on the car logo. Although the "new Baojun" is in the form of a new brand rather than a new logo, there is no essential difference between the two from the perspective of the vast majority of consumers.

It is worth mentioning that in the past many years, SAIC GM Wuling has taken Baojun as the carrier of brand promotion. Wuling's positioning has always been on the low side. Why does it suddenly need to upgrade now? Some people familiar with Wuling told the 21st century economic report that the upgrading of automobile consumption is the general trend. Originally Wuling wanted to make Baojun a potential consumer choice, but now the two brands have not got through, Wuling has to upgrade itself.

Wuling has been facing a lot of transformation pressure. From the overall sales data, SAIC GM Wuling performed fairly well, but the crisis was hidden under the halo of Hongguang Mini ev. In the first eight months of this year, SAIC GM Wuling sold 692000 vehicles, up 38% year-on-year, according to the passenger Association. But excluding the part of Hongguang Mini EV, the company's cumulative sales in the first eight months decreased by 4% year-on-year.

Among them, Wuling's traditional "God car" Wuling Hongguang is no longer the scene. Although it is still the MPV sales champion, the average monthly sales volume has dropped to less than 20000, and "monthly sales of 70000" has become the past style. Wuling Hongguang no longer has the momentum of "looking at all the small mountains".

The automobile consumption market is developing and upgrading is booming. According to the "2020 China auto consumption guide" released by auto home, with the continuous increase of residents' disposable income, the market below RMB 100000 is gradually shrinking, the market of RMB 100000-200000 is gradually growing, and the market of RMB 200000 is expanding obviously.

Speed up systematic construction

Of course, not only Wuling brand, but also SAIC GM Wuling needs to upgrade, and the company's systematic construction is also speeding up.

According to Zhou Zhen, the Ling OS Lingxi system released this time will be applied to all series of SAIC GM Wuling models and more terminal equipment in the future.

It is reported that Ling OS Lingxi system is mainly developed by SAIC GM Wuling, and integrates high-quality resources in the industry such as Botai, sipic and iFLYTEK, hoping to provide Wuling users with humanized, social and intelligent travel ecological experience. Zhou told reporters, "in the past, Wuling mainly focused on the hardware and functions of its products. Next, it will focus on users' demand for travel quality and travel ecology."

Although the current Ling OS rhino system seems to be just a voice interaction system, and there is a slight lack of highlights, Zhou said that it will continue to evolve and integrate intelligent network connection, intelligent driving and intelligent terminal. "From October, intelligent driving function will be added to Ling OS rhino system."

In terms of intelligent driving, SAIC GM Wuling also announced that on September 1, the company was awarded the first "high speed scene intelligent connected vehicle test license plate" in Southwest China. When the relevant environment is mature, it will further carry out the actual road test of automatic driving under 5g + vehicle road collaborative environment.

In terms of electric vehicles, SAIC-GM Wuling also "quietly" developed the power exchange technology. At the 2021 world new energy vehicle conference held recently, the company released the new technology of "intelligent micro power station for new energy vehicles". The power station is specially used for micro vehicles. The parking space is very small and can be moved. It can be replaced on the ground without changing the electric vehicle.

However, Wuling's power station is mainly used in commercial areas, and the frequency of use is relatively limited. It is said that in October 2020, the technology has been put into use on the no person flow vehicle of Baojun base, and more than 2000 power changes have been completed. Wuling is expected to promote the large-scale application of this technology in the future.

In addition, SAIC GM Wuling also announced to enter the chip field. According to relevant data, Wuling has achieved the technical level of similar products abroad by "tackling key problems through joint technology". Computing chips account for about 40% of the car chips, similar to the CPU of a computer.

The company said that it has implemented the "strong core" strategy since 2018, exploring the technology research and development of domestic chips with parts suppliers and domestic chip manufacturers. In addition to computing chips, the company also has layout in 5g communication chips, memory chips, energy chips, artificial intelligence chips and other fields.

In some cutting-edge technical fields, SAIC GM Wuling has not evaded R & D, but the achievements available at this stage are limited. From the perspective of marketing, the company actively releases these information, to a large extent, is also to create a higher positioning brand image.

Can super marketing open up a new situation?

Marketing is the strength of SAIC GM Wuling, especially Wuling brand. The popularity of Hongguang Mini EV, on the one hand, is that the product itself meets people's travel needs, on the other hand, it is also inseparable from Wuling team's efforts in marketing activities.

From self-produced masks and snail powder to the concept of "God cart of the ground stall", "people's bicycle", "Wuling makes what people need", from tea and Yoho! In music festivals, fashion week, art exhibitions, and films, Wuling's cross-border marketing has not stopped. Since this year, it has invited actors such as Zhou Xun as brand spokesmen to further move the emerging consumer groups.

On September 18, Liu Feixue, consultant of digital retail consulting business department of J.D. Power in China, told reporters of the 21st century economic report that star endorsing brands is not a new phenomenon in the auto industry, but behind this marketing model, the appeal of brands has quietly changed: from stars endorsing brands to enhancing public awareness and trust of brands, Gradually change to help a certain model under the brand to create the precipitation of the user's mind and make products break the circle.

From the practice of SAIC GM Wuling, the two demands mentioned above are both. On the one hand, Zhou Xun promoted the brand positioning and style to Wuling brand; on the other hand, Song Xi and Ren Minzhi helped the products reach the target group. However, there is no contradiction between the two. The destination of brand reconstruction is to select more user groups.

From this perspective, it remains to be seen whether Wuling's series of attempts this year will work. Liu Feixue pointed out that star endorsements promote marketing, which puts forward three dimensional ability tests for brands: first, highly condensing the product highlights and evaluating the fit with the spokesperson's label; second, creating an externalized image that can be remembered by consumers, such as a surrounding area containing product features, and third, the synergy of marketing channels, "Because of the particularity of the automobile channel, if a marketing event is just a brand level explosion, and there is no coordination of retail channels, it is easy to" only thunder, not rain. "

Wuling is not easy to subvert consumers' perception of its brand. After the launch of Wuling star star star, many voices pointed out that the price of the car was too high, although its price range was between 69800 yuan and 99800 yuan, which was in the regular price band of many independent brand SUVs.

In addition to the lack of brand accumulation, the more critical problem is that the product power of new cars is slightly inferior. A consumer told the 21st century economic report that although the price of star's top model is less than 100000 yuan, it has no significant advantage over other competitive products such as Haval M6, Chang'an Auchan X5 and BYD song, "BYD song has the same guiding price as the star, but its horsepower and power are higher than those of the star. What's more, BYD uses a wet double clutch, while the star still uses a CVT dry transmission. In addition, the rear suspension of BYD song is independently suspended, so is the star."

Consumers' complaints about stars also revealed Wuling's pain points in recent years to a certain extent. Consumers are not dissatisfied with the configuration of the model, rather, they are really disappointed that Wuling has stagnated in automobile performance in recent years. "If you want to go to the middle and high-end market, the engine gearbox has not changed, and there is no L1 auxiliary driving." another consumer pointed out.

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