Author: Nie Yiyao

The “Sound of Life•Hong Kong Music Season” that plays the emotional card has become popular.

In the current difficult market environment for variety shows, “Sound of Life•Hong Kong Music Season” has achieved good ratings.

According to Maoyan App, on the day of the premiere of “Sound of Life” on April 24, it ranked third in online popularity within 6 hours, and the cumulative number of views on the first day reached 203 million.

Data from Cool Cloud shows that the live broadcast of the premiere of “Sound of Life” has the highest attention rate among TV station golden time varieties, and the online popularity has exceeded 20,000. On Weibo, the video of female singers singing “Beyond the Sea” at the end of the first episode has been reposted more than 40,000 times.

Of course, the reason why this music program has become popular is also due to its mission of promoting Hong Kong music culture, as well as its excellent production team.

However, the real key to its popularity lies in the nostalgia that “Sound of Life” evokes from beginning to end. Becoming a hit is also because of the stable performance and impressive performances of the new and old singers, which collide to create the characteristics of the Hong Kong music revival trend.

When 74-year-old George Lam sings “I’ll accompany you along the long road, with courage and passion…”, his singing skills are still powerful. 61-year-old Sally Yeh sings “Blessing”, washing away the greenness of 36 years ago and singing out the release and magnificence of life experience, igniting memories of a generation.

Thanks to the great IP traffic bonus of “Sound of Life,” classic Cantonese songs that are popular again and sponsors including Voyah Cars, JD.com, Junlebao Jianchun, Mead Johnson Bluefin have also benefited.

Among them, Voyah Cars sponsored the episode and provided the model of the car used in “Sound of Life”, its second model that has not yet been officially launched: the Voyah Dreamer. In the shots of the Voyah Dreamer appearing on the show, the program team gave sufficient close-ups of the car as the designated car for “Sound of Life”.

Obviously, Voyah Cars’ sponsorship fee for “Sound of Life” was well-spent. Looking at the timing of the Voyah Dreamer’s upcoming official launch, this money was well spent: binding a great IP, betting on a hit, harvesting emotion and fan attention; the title of “Designated Car for Sound of Life” strengthens the brand and product audience level, and does enough groundwork for the consumer portrait and product price of the Voyah Dreamer.

Overall, this is a successful crossover marketing campaign for a car. Voyah Dreamer’s marketing has had a good start, and its success can be anticipated.However, from many cases of automotive crossover marketing, hitting the jackpot and embracing a big IP does not necessarily lead to brand connection and audience conversion, and even achieving audience conversion cannot guarantee a one-time success. In the brutal market competition, automotive crossover marketing, which is currently popular, has too many pros and cons.

Why Can’t Cui Jian Carry Jixue?

Not long before Voyah Automotive hit the jackpot with “Unending Melody”, Jixue Automotive had already hit the jackpot with Cui Jian.

The reason why it is mentioned here is because compared with Voyah and “Unending Melody”, Jixue and Cui Jian’s cross-border marketing can be called a phenomenon.

On April 15th, a Cui Jian online concert called “Continue to Be Wild” lasted nearly 3 hours on Tencent Video.

During these three hours, Cui Jian sang a total of 20 songs, attracting nearly 46 million viewers, with over 110 million likes and more than 2 million comments. The exposure within the WeChat ecosystem exceeded 1.2 billion, and there were over 12 billion cheers. The live broadcast was shared 2.7 million times.

This is undoubtedly a hit online concert. Cui Jian himself is a kind of sentiment. He defines and records a rock era, which is the memory of more than one generation.

And this online concert happened to be broadcasted when the epidemic prevention and control situation was severe. Countless souls and emotions that needed to be released found an outlet and resonance in Cui Jian’s old and new songs.

The collision of nostalgia and reality perfectly created this hit. Cui Jian made Tencent Video hit a new high after “West City Boys”, Mayday, and Leslie Cheung.

At the same time, Jixue Automotive also hit a new high.

As the exclusive title sponsor of this online concert, Jixue obtained an unprecedented brand exposure opportunity. Jixue’s logo and advertisement were very eye-catching at the bottom of the concert program list and on the WeChat Moments forwarding page. The gift that live audience sent to Cui Jian was a red Jixue car model, which also showed the Jixue brand.

In just three hours of the concert, Jixue’s advertisement directly reached 46 million viewers. When the audience sent “Jixue car” gifts 1.04 million times, the Jixue brand achieved strengthened recognition again.

However, did this precise crossover marketing riding the hit help Jixue achieve brand recognition or sales conversion? Or will it do it in the future?

The answer is not necessarily.

According to the results of the investigation conducted afterwards, many viewers did not pay attention to Jixue during the concert on April 15th, saying “Jixue? I didn’t notice it. What is it? If it were Mercedes-Benz or BMW, I would have noticed”.After the concert on April 15th, Ji Hu, a car company, did not see much foot traffic at their offline store in Beijing. Furthermore, due to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 in Beijing and strict epidemic prevention and control measures, it is estimated that it will be difficult for Ji Hu’s offline store to gain traction with the help of Cui Jian.

Sentiments are fleeting, while web traffic ebbs and flows. If missed, it will be missed.

However, this is still a very successful and worthy crossover marketing campaign for the automotive industry. “46 million people saw it, and if 1% of them can remember Ji Hu, then we can say that this is a very impressive effect”, some say.

Cui Jian cannot carry Ji Hu, it has nothing to do with Cui Jian or even the sentiment and popular product. It is because Ji Hu’s presence on the market is too weak.

In 2021, Ji Hu sold 4,993 cars throughout the year; this is more than a star and a half away from NIO, XPeng, Li Xiang, and GAC Aion, which were established around the same period.

Sales are the direct reflection of a brand’s presence, Ji Hu has strong products and reputation, however, it is too unknown. Ji Hu’s brand positioning is not low, and the two models currently being sold are priced from ¥250,000 to ¥350,000 in the segmented market. If Ji Hu wants to capture users with this pricing, it needs a distinctive core competency and product characteristics to empower the brand; it needs to let users find their own lifestyle or even spiritual resonance from the brand’s core.

In short, Ji Hu lacks the brand value and user recognition that can make consumers willing to pay. Improvements are not achieved in a day or two and not just by riding on Cui Jian’s hot promotion.

In addition to marketing, these are even more important

Automotive crossover marketing has been particularly popular in recent years.

When the traditional “good wine needs no bush” theory no longer works today, any excellent product needs to increase its efforts in marketing to be successful. Cross-border marketing is one of the best “borrowing-audience” methods.

By gaining more web traffic, allowing products or brands to appear more in the public’s view, and letting more people recognize and remember the brand, it makes it easier for consumers to recall it when they have the need to purchase. Alternatively, find a new breakthrough in marketing to achieve a younger brand image or attract market buzz and go beyond web traffic scenes. This is the goal of cross-border marketing.

Thus, automotive crossover marketing has emerged, and there are various forms of “partnerships”. The most common forms in recent years are: cross-border film and television works, variety shows, popular games, cultural and creative products, and domestic goods, or other related products.

Domestic independent automotive brands are considered high-level players in crossover marketing. For example, in 2020, the Wuling Hong Guang MINIEV made a debut during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been dubbed the “cross-border marketing wizard”.”What people need, Wuling builds”，Wuling has fulfilled this promise with its cross-border marketing. It has collaborated with Hema Fresh to launch snail rice noodle and rice dumplings, and with Heytea to set up “Heytea Mini Beverage Factory” mobile stalls. During the epidemic, Wuling produced 1 million masks under the Wuling brand and delivered them to the front line…

On April 12, Wuling Hong Guang once again collaborated with 100 brands to promote the Hong Guang MINIEV GAMEBOY launch. Wuling gained 15,000 reposts on Weibo for this cross-border marketing campaign. The 100 brands also joined in the fun on this Weibo post to enhance their own brand image.

Everyone marvels at Wuling Hong Guang’s successful cross-border marketing, but if you look closely, marketing is ultimately just icing on the cake for a brand or product, and it is based on the principle that the sum of the brand and product is greater than their individual parts.

Ultimately, a brand and its product are the key to the success of Wuling Hong Guang’s MINIEV.

Before the launch of the Hong Guang MINIEV, Wuling Hong Guang already had the nickname of “God car of Autumn Mountain” and had good brand awareness and reputation. The launch of the Hong Guang MINIEV accurately hit the trend, understood what consumers needed and had a competitive price. Additionally, the MINIEV had unique design and marketing strategies that made it more personalized, youthful, and fashionable than its competitors.

The Hong Guang MINIEV redefines micro electric vehicles as being strictly different from the “old man’s car”. In the end, the success of the Hong Guang MINIEV is a classic operation of “amplifying strengths and minimizing weaknesses” for an automotive brand.

This is a universal business theory that never goes out of style. Rather than simply marketing, digging, shaping, showcasing and highlighting the strengths of a brand and its product, especially their core strengths, is the most lasting and effective strategy in modern business competition.

Just like the handling of BMW and the luxury of Mercedes-Benz, which have been built up over a long period of time and have endured. Meanwhile, new players in the market such as Tesla lead in intelligence, NIO excels in high-end models, XPeng focuses on technology, and LI is famous for its elite dad cars without range anxiety.

Returning to the question of JEHUAI, as a high-end brand for new energy, JEHUAI’s lack of core strengths is the fundamental reason why it is not popular. A brand without a core advantage has a blurry image. Similarly, as a new energy high-end brand incubated by a traditional automaker, what is the core advantage of Voyah? What is the core advantage of Dreamer, an expensive high-end electric MPV? These advantages need to be continuously explored, formed, refined, and promoted.

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.