Markdown document translated from Chinese

Recently, the internet celebrity in the auto industry, Great Wall Motors is no inferior to Tesla, and Jack Wey has surpassed Elon Musk.

On July 16th, Great Wall Motors officially released Wei Jianjun’s open letter on WeChat: How will Great Wall Motors survive next year? In the letter, Wei Jianjun did not spare himself by saying that “although others see the past thirty years of Great Wall Motors as a successful thirty years, in my opinion, the dividends will be exhausted, the global economy is declining, foreign brands and new carmakers are encircling us, and our future may be ‘hanging by a thread'”.

In just a few hours, this open letter went viral on WeChat Moments.

This is not the first time it has gone viral. In less than a month, Great Wall Motors has repeatedly become the center of attention through Wei Jianjun’s adversity thesis in the “Thirty Years of Insightful Films” and two controversial product names – “Haval Big Dog” and “ORA White Cat”, demonstrating its strength in generating traffic.

Behind this reflects the user’s understanding, thinking and action logic, and even subtle language context, which are worth savoring.

Internet Celebrity Great Wall Motors

Being an internet celebrity is not easy, some people praise you, while others criticize you.

After the name “Haval Big Dog” was officially released, there were two completely different voices in the industry. In addition to affirmation, there are also doubts: It is believed that the word “Dog” in many contexts is not so “proper”, with negative connotations, this name not only lacks taste, but also damages the brand. It is even said that some 4S dealers’ investors want to complain to the marketing team after hearing this name.

Because there is no sales data yet, it is impossible to verify the market’s feedback. But what we can be sure of is that this name has quickly and low-cost enabled the SUV that is not positioned as a mass-market model to become popular.

My wife’s friend, who has been mingling in the mother and baby circle for years, suddenly asked me during dinner, “Did Great Wall recently launch a car called ‘Dog’?” This is a clear indication of its popularity.

Bolstered by this momentum, the ORA White Cat arrived.

It is not known whether the name was changed after Big Dog became famous, or whether it was originally named White Cat. Judging from the heat it generated, this pure electric small car designed by Great Wall’s Japanese technology research company in Yokohama has also won on the starting line. The latest data after the product was launched on July 15th showed that in Baidu search, the search results of “ORA White Cat” exceeded 4.7 million.

The popularity of Haval Big Dog and ORA White Cat is worth mentioning for two reasons:

Superficially, Great Wall has really approached the users.

The initial naming direction of Haval Big Dog was proposed by Wei Jianjun himself. He hoped to abandon the previous H series, F series, and M series and use a name that could better resonate with young users. Later, as we all know, the Haval team launched a large-scale user naming campaign, and eventually “Big Dog” won the highest number of votes.Deep down, Great Wall truly let go of itself.

The automotive industry has always been a high-end circle, relatively stable and not so easy to let go of itself. Just like the name of the Great Wall’s new model, Dagou, although users voted for it, it’s hard to use it for fear of visible controversy compared to many other brands. As the Vice President of Sales of Great Wall Motor Company, Wen Fei realized early on the controversy and conflict of the name, but also realized that debate equals traffic, which means topics and discussions. In the end, Great Wall’s decision-making high-levels truly let go of themselves and were ready to accept different opinions. In a sense, by truly letting go of themselves, they can connect with the ground and enter into the hearts of users.

We surveyed several young people born after 1995 within the industry, and their responses were very consistent: Haval Dagou and Euler Baimao, the two names not only will not harm the brands, but will also increase their brand affinity.

Self-demotion

So why can Great Wall let go of itself?

This is a very interesting topic. Letting go of oneself sometimes means self-demotion, like Wei Jianjun questioned in an open letter: can Great Wall survive until next year?

Have you heard of this tone somewhere before? Yes, Elon Musk is fond of saying things like this, like sometimes mocking the Tesla stock price being too high, and now everyone can see that its market value has overtaken the second-place Toyota by several positions. Last year, he was lying next to his car and said he might go bankrupt, but this year, in the first half of the year, he delivered nearly 180,000 vehicles, far exceeding the industry’s expectations under the global pandemic.

The truth is so “cruel.” People or companies who dare to self-demote have reached a certain level.

Just like the “loser” culture that was popular on the internet many years ago, people who self-deprecate as losers are definitely not inadequate failures. They may live more comfortably than most people. The “losers” in the real sense of the mass definition are definitely not those who call themselves “losers.”

In June just passed, Great Wall’s sales volume was 82,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 30%, and it continued to grow for four consecutive months. The cumulative sales volume in the first half of this year reached 395,000 units. This is the confidence and foundation for Great Wall and Wei Jianjun to dare to self-demote.

More importantly, young people also need companies to self-demote in many cases.

Under the trend of gradually solidifying social class, they often live a real life, neither pessimistic nor blindly optimistic, but need something relatively simple to match the mentality of “self-demotion.” Especially in the context of mobile internet, self-promotion and self-righteousness will be blacklisted by users directly.

Therefore, no one who finishes reading the open letter will think that Great Wall is really not good. On the contrary, an enterprise and entrepreneur who has both hard power and calm thinking and contemplation, and who can both take a long-term perspective and think about dangers lurking behind safety, who wouldn’t like it?

Traffic Change

Finally, let’s address the statement in the headline, that taste is the enemy of traffic.The earliest saying of “if you want to find a job, talk to the boss” in the advertising industry was from the guru Yue Huaping, whose team was also responsible for the viral slogans “Baowo is so expensive” in the auto circle. When I talked to him about communication in May this year, he repeatedly emphasized to me that the brand is the enemy of traffic. “It’s better to keep one’s own taste in mind. If you want to pursue traffic, you must match the popular language to a certain extent and lower yourself.” This is just like the reason why arthouse films cannot beat commercial blockbusters. Although Douban is positioned as “the spiritual corner of young intellectuals”, its user attraction and coverage cannot compete with the easily understood slogan “if you want to find a job, talk to the boss” of BOSS Zhipin.

Similarly, this is also the underlying logic behind the discussion of whether Great Wall Motors can survive next year by Haval Dogs, Ola White Cat and Wei Jianjun, which swept the entire network.

Interestingly, since this year, many automakers have begun to explore related modes of communication except for Great Wall. When Geely released its Haoyue model, the “big space” tag quickly made users remember its spaciousness, while the XPeng P7 launched with the emphasis on “long range”, which, so far, many people still remember it as the longest pure electric range of production cars with more than 700 km.

Stable and peaceful, as calm as water, cannot create waves. Users need to know about you before they may understand and ultimately recognize you, of course, the product itself needs to withstand scrutiny. It’s difficult for the people who use knockoff Patek Philippe watches on a street stall to talk about success on Douyin for a long time.

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.