The Naming of “Shen Shou” and Haval’s Understanding of Customers
Author: Mr. Yu
When we were writing about the Haval Chitu, we felt that the Haval brand understood its customers as a daring and courageous image. Mr. Yu then quoted the words of modern marketing master Scott Robinette: “Only by constantly producing products that customers truly need can a company receive good customer feedback.”
Recently, Haval has brought a new car called “Shen Shou,” a compact SUV for young people and city families in various scenarios.
The first public appearance of Haval Shen Shou at the 2021 Chengdu Auto Show convinced Mr. Yu even more that he was not wrong.
At the same time, Mr. Yu believes that a car is only part of the story, and Haval also has its own plan for user operation and other aspects beyond the car itself.
The Thought Behind the Name “Shen Shou”
The naming of the Haval product line has always been a topic of great interest among the media. This time, Haval seems to have no intention of continuing the route of the animal family photo album.
Compared with the four famous sacred beasts of the Qinglong, Baihu, Zhuque and Xuanwu, which are highly acclaimed in the East Asian cultural circle, the image of the “Shen Shou” white ze in the ancient book “Baopuzi” of the Jin Dynasty seems to better suit the characteristics of the “Shen Shou” car model created by the Haval brand: like a kirin and capable of speaking human language; knowledgeable about all things.
Do you remember that in early August this year, Haval announced on its official Weibo account that the Haval Shen Shou will be equipped with the Snapdragon 8155 flagship car chip from Qualcomm?
Fortunately, car manufacturers and users are not as passionate about the difference in SoCs in cars as they are with mobile phones, otherwise the Snapdragon 820A would not have held its position as the mainstream high-performance car SoC since 2016.
As the world’s first mass-produced 7nm process vehicle chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 has a smaller size, higher bandwidth, lower power consumption, and of course, stronger performance. According to publicly available information, its CPU performance is roughly twice that of the 820A, its GPU performance is two to three times that of the latter, and its WiFi bandwidth reaches three times that of the latter.
At the same time, as the automotive packaging version of the Snapdragon 855, the Snapdragon 8155 also includes mainstream connectivity standards such as Bluetooth 5.0 and WiFi 6.Nouns and data are not as practical as experience. Let’s use a simple example:
You connect to the Haval Magic Star cockpit via the car network and Bluetooth in the car, and start a game of Honor of Kings on your phone. At this time, the entire car’s audio system will completely envelop you, and the surging multi-channel sound field will take you directly into the Valley of Kings. Bluetooth 5.0 achieves lower audio transmission latency, minimizes the awkwardness of audio-video offset. Wi-Fi 6 provides faster wireless network transmission speed and lower operation delay response, becoming a solid guarantee for battling four corners.
At this moment, the entire intelligent cabin of the vehicle becomes a strong entertainment space, and “the third space” is not just talking about it.
Of course, how to realize more uses still depends on product planning and joint development by users. However, hardware is the lowest piece of wood in the bucket effect, and is an important basis for higher-level driving assistance technology, more convenient intelligent AI voice, etc.
Since Haval Magic Star’s target positioning is very clear, it is up to the soft and hard strengths to impress users next.
With the technical support of the Great Wall Lemon platform, Haval Magic Star is equipped with a 1.5GDIT high-power engine and a 2.0T new high-efficiency engine, matched with Great Wall’s third-generation wet clutch 7-speed transmission. On the software side, Great Wall’s Coffee Intelligent Platform provides the foundation for smart-assisted driving + multi-scene intelligent cockpit experience for the magic beast.
As the intelligent flagship model that targets young user groups, functionality is not only visible and touchable, but also “usable”. Great Wall’s product managers obviously understand this well.
Haval Magic Star’s parking function uses 5G T-BOX + front-facing camera + automatic driving field controller + brake redundancy system + parking redundancy system, which can realize AVP customer parking, point-to-point memory parking, explore forward and fully automatic fusion parking function.
Haval Magic Star’s memory parking function allows the vehicle to automatically complete the learning of the parking environment for the inherent parking space. All the user needs to do is tell the vehicle “help me park” at the entrance of the parking lot, and the rest of the parking movements will be handled by the vehicle itself. It is understood that this function can store 10 routes, identify line-marked parking spaces and parking spaces, and achieve obstacle avoidance and parking waiting at <10km/h low-speed memory parking with 17 radars and 9 cameras.
When the user needs to use the car, they can also remotely summon it through the car owner App.We can see that even if it’s not like giving charcoal in the snow to solve the so-called pain points, the deepening attention to details can also be reflected in the improvement of product strength.
The Haval Monster with High Expectations, Perhaps the Beginning of Brand Transformation
There is something interesting about the Haval Monster that catches Mr. Yu’s attention, but it has little to do with the vehicle itself.
Based on the concept of co-creation and co-construction with users, Haval has created an exclusive “small circle,” the Beastmaster Base, for “Beastmaster Youth” – the official term for Haval’s Beastmaster model users. According to reports, the Haval brand has already begun to recruit “Beastmasters.” According to Haval officials, every Beastmaster who joins can truly participate in the product development process, helping to upgrade and evolve the product.
The emergence of Internet-connected services and OTA has transformed cars from transportation tools on the industrial assembly line to a space where people and scenarios, needs, services, and experiences are continuously integrated.
On this point, Haval believes that traditional car owner marketing can no longer meet the needs of young users. Therefore, Haval has created the Haval Monster “Beastmaster Base.” By gathering Beastmaster car owners in this way, everyone can get involved, enhancing their sense of participation and belonging.
Believing in a product is not difficult because it only stays at the consumer level. The difficulty lies in believing in a set of ideas and the values it represents.
You may have never heard of Lei Wanqiang, the former senior vice president of Xiaomi nicknamed “A Li,” nor seen his book “Participation: Xiaomi’s Word-of-Mouth Marketing Internal Manual” hailed by marketers as a classic. But under A Li’s leadership, the new marketing of China’s Internet has already become normalized and deeply influencing all aspects of people’s online lives.
Internet people like to talk about big data, conversion, and growth. But just as each number represents a different user individual, there is no standard answer to how to strengthen people’s sense of participation and how to create a core circle.
Haval’s approach is to develop products while implementing its “C2B” operation mode: relying on industrial Internet, continuously optimizing resource allocation, establishing a “product + software + service” commercial ecology, covering the entire life of eating, drinking, lodging, and transportation. Instead of front-end delivery, it promotes the value chain of the auto industry to move to the back-end.
On the Haval Smart Home platform, car owners can not only buy, use, and maintain a car as a user, but also share their good business under the help of the commercial resource sharing plan to achieve real benefit conversion.By binding, co-creating, sharing, and winning with users through operations and other means, both parties’ bonds are constantly strengthened. In this process, Great Wall’s corporate role will gradually shift from a traditional automaker to a user-service-oriented enterprise.
For this era, emphasizing services unilaterally seems increasingly weak compared to creating and managing a sense of participation.
Finally, Mr. Yu suddenly wanted to use a historical allusion.
Just like Liu Xiu during the Eastern Han dynasty, he had a group of companions, including Liu Xiu’s classmates from the Tai Xue in Luo Yang and young generals who came to his aid when he suffered defeat. Later, this group of people became the founding meritocrats who followed Han Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu to establish the Eastern Han dynasty, known as the “Twenty-eight Constellations of Yuntai”.
Lastly, sincerity and diligence are the foundation of mutual recognition. We hope that Haval’s co-creation and co-construction will not just be empty words.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.