Thinking and transforming an automotive media person
Author | Ge Bangning
Edit | Jane
Produced by | Bangning Studio (gbngzs)
You think it's just an ordinary highway service area, and that's wrong. Entering the main building of the Yangcheng Lake Service Area in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, a kind of dream water town poetry painting Jiangnan breath comes to the face - the white wall of the cornice dewa reflects the water surface, the giant artificial canopy has a unique style, and the physical landscape garden overlooks the pavilion and the water pavilion.
With a construction area of 30,000 square meters and a length of 260 meters, the building will be 140 meters long and 8 meters wide landscape river channel, 3,000 square meters of science and technology experience hall, 3,000 square meters of intangible cultural heritage exhibition hall and 400 square meters of crab culture museum.
How hot is it? It is known as "the most beautiful service area, internet celebrity punch card", and the number of articles related to it on the Internet has accumulated to hundreds of millions. It has even attracted professionals from Japan, the Philippines and other countries and regions to learn from it.
Now, it's filling the automotive world with imagination. On January 15, 2022, more than 100 people from the political, automotive and media circles gathered here to witness the 2021 Global Automotive Annual Ceremony.
This is the first time since the annual ceremony of Huanqiu Automobile was held in 2014 that it has gone out of Beijing, and it is also the first time that it has been broadcast in the form of live broadcast in the form of 100 pairs of service areas in 71 cities in Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Guangzhou and other places, covering the national backbone high-speed networks such as Beijing-Shanghai Expressway, Beijing-Kunming Expressway, Ninghu Expressway, Ninghang Expressway, And Qinglan Expressway.
According to the data, about 30 million people watched the festival online and offline, setting a new high for the exposure, traffic and influence of the previous annual festivals.
This scenario and traffic data is obviously the result that Wu Yingqiu, chairman and CEO of Huanqiu Automobile Group, is happy to see. Shortly after the opening ceremony, in the spotlight, he said in his speech: "What the annual car festival of Huanqiu should do is to discover new and valuable phenomena on the new car track, including characteristic enterprises, thoughtful entrepreneurs, and innovative product technology routes. ”
He did it. Among the five special awards of The Annual Ceremony of Huanqiu Automobile, 3 of them were awarded to Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Automobile, who won the Annual Automotive Person of the Year Award; Ding Lei, founder, chairman and CEO of Gaohe Automobile, and Zhu Jiangming, founder and chairman of Zero-Run Automobile, won the Annual Automotive Innovation Figure Award. The other two awards were awarded to two enterprises, Changan Automobile won the annual China Automotive Technology Contribution Enterprise, and DPCA Automobile won the annual China Automobile Development Contribution Enterprise.
The intensity of the on-site competition for the Car of the Year award is beyond expectations. In the preliminary evaluation, after static and dynamic measurement, the Huanqiu Annual Car Jury selected 12 candidate models from 63 representative new cars in 2021.
In the public voting witnessed by the notary at the Beijing Oriental Notary Office, through 3 rounds of competition such as 12 into 7, 7 into 3, 3 into 1, Gaohe HiPhi X passed the hurdle, and finally won the 2021 Huanqiu Annual Car Award with only one vote leading edge.
If the gaohe victory is a footnote that new cars are sweeping at a speed that people can't imagine, then another action at the annual car festival of the world - the unveiling of the new energy vehicle super experience center - is more symbolic.
As the grand finale, at the "Highway New Energy Vehicle Super Experience Center - Yangcheng Lake Service Area Project Signing Ceremony", Shen Jianqiang, chairman of Guoyuan Zhixing (Zhejiang Guoyuan Zhixing Commercial Management Co., Ltd.), signed a contract with 10 new energy vehicles stationed in the super experience center - Extreme Krypton Automobile, Gaohe Automobile, Zero-run Car, Geometric Car, Electric House, Nezha Automobile, Chery QQ Ice Cream, Roewe Automobile, Jihu Automobile, and Feifan Automobile. They agreed that they would take the expressway new energy vehicle super experience center as the starting point to provide consumers with a rich and novel marketing experience.
This is the result of wu Yingqiu's leadership of Huanqiu Automobile Group. "From the media to the marketing communication service platform, from all-media, new media, to trying to integrate deeper into the field of automotive marketing, we have been trying to redefine ourselves." He explained Huanqiu Automobile's thinking in this way, "Today, the new energy vehicle super experience center that we are about to release here, jointly built with Kaitong and Yangcheng Lake Service Area, is a redefinition. ”
As he spoke, the red background plate behind him, which represented peace and festivities, was rightly focused on the theme of the annual festival, "Carrying the New Car to the End"— in just the spotlight.
01.
May 2021
One day in May 2021, Wu Yingqiu received a phone call from Hangzhou. The other party is the head of a government department in Zhejiang Province, who is responsible for promoting the industrial alliance in the national strategy of "regional integration in the Yangtze River Delta". In this strategy, according to the division of labor, Zhejiang Province focuses on the development of new energy vehicles. The person in charge's initial idea is that in the new energy automobile industry alliance, some are responsible for batteries, some are responsible for electronic control, and some are responsible for motors.
After hearing this idea, Wu Yingqiu, who has more than 30 years of experience in the automotive industry, believes that this method will definitely not work, because "no one is willing to put their fate in the hands of others." He suggested that you should try something that you haven't done yet, but there will be ways to collaborate in the future, or study cases that have been done before but have not succeeded, and find new directions from it.
Soon, he went to Hangzhou to discuss with the heads of relevant departments and enterprises in Zhejiang Province. The idea of the highway service area suddenly jumped out of my mind during this communication journey. This idea has a long history. Previously, he had many exchanges with several fellow villagers in Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province, the contract operator of the highway service area.
Zhejiang people have two musts: one is the founder of the "three links and one reach" (Zhongtong, Shentong, Yuantong and Yunda) express delivery company, which occupies most of the market share of China's express delivery market, all from Tonglu; the other is the actual business owner of nearly half of the China Expressway service area, who is a Tongxiang national.
Media reports show that as of the end of 2019, the total mileage of mainland expressways reached 149,600 kilometers, if there is an average of one pair of service areas in both directions per 50 kilometers, rough statistics, there are about 3,000 pairs of service areas in the country. Among them, there are more than 1,200 pairs of service areas operated by Tongxiang enterprises or Tongxiang people, and of the more than 1,200 pairs of service areas, a considerable number of service areas are concentrated in the hands of 4 Tongxiang bosses.
"I've had a lot of communication with the owners of these service areas over the past few years. I think their networked services are very valuable, and auto companies can cooperate with them to do things, but it was just an idea at the time, after all, it needs opportunities to do things together. On the afternoon of January 20, 2021, when the snow was falling in Beijing, sitting in the conference room of Huanqiu Automobile Group on the 14th floor of Block C, China Railway Construction Plaza, Wu Yingqiu told the Bangning Studio that came to the door for interview.
The Yangtze River Delta New Energy Automobile Industry Alliance provides this opportunity. On that trip to Hangzhou, Wu Yingqiu met Shen Jianqiang, the actual operator of the Yangcheng Lake Service Area, the chairman of Jiaxing Kaitong Investment Co., Ltd. (referred to as Kaitong Investment), and the impression left on him by the other party was, "I didn't talk much, I chatted for a while, left my phone number and left." But he did not expect that within two days of returning to Beijing, Shen Jianqiang made a special trip to Beijing to discuss cooperation with him.
Wu Yingqiu believes that in doing this, we must look at it in a long-term and general direction, broaden our horizons, and stand tall. He told the other party: "First, if you want to earn a rent in front of you, or build a 4S shop model, I will not do this." Second, the 4S shop model has no chance, and I am very responsible to advise you not to do so. ”
Kaitong Investment is the design, construction and actual operator of Yangcheng Lake Service Area and another Internet celebrity punch card place- Wuxi Meicun Service Area. As the first batch of crab eaters in the highway service area, Shen Jianqiang has accumulated more than 20 years of experience in this field, as early as when the construction of the highway network was accelerated, he smelled the business opportunities - where the highway is repaired, he wants to do business wherever it is.
The turning point for his transformation and upgrading was at the end of 2015. At that time, the Jiangsu Expressway Service Area began to implement the "double upgrading" plan - to improve the social efficiency and economic benefits of the service area, and the Ninghu Expressway took the lead in launching the reform of the business model of the full-line service area. In this context, Private entrepreneur Shen Jianqiang began to deeply participate in the operation of the expressway service area.
In September 2017, after Shen Jianqiang invested 120 million yuan to renovate the Meicun service area, he began to set his sights on the adjacent Yangcheng Lake service area. In May 2018, he invested 180 million yuan in the renovation of this service area. In June 2019, the Yangcheng Lake Service Area began trial operation.
This time, he and Wu Yingqiu hit it off. Both believe that cooperation between the service area and auto companies is promising. Moreover, both of them believe that the art industry has a specialty and should do what they are good at, but it is not as simple as introducing automobile companies into the service area to sell cars.
In the matter of combining online and offline car sales, Huanqiu Automobile has paid tuition. In 2014, Huanqiu Automobile established the e-commerce platform - My Car City, with the original intention of transforming from a traditional automotive media group into a new type of automotive communication and marketing company with media + data + service + e-commerce as the structure. Huanqiu Auto's intention is to use this platform to attract cross-border talents from different fields to join and create a new automotive marketing ecosystem with auto e-commerce as the core. However, after a few years, the e-commerce operation did not meet expectations and eventually stopped operating.
This made Wu Yingqiu understand a truth: e-commerce is not what Huanqiu Automobile is good at. The things that Huanqiu Automobile is good at is that it is familiar with the industry, can see the prospects, and has a high probability that it will not be yawned; second, it can coordinate the resources of all parties. Therefore, the positioning of Huanqiu Automobile in the Yangcheng Lake Service Area Project this time is also very clear - integrating resources and exploring the transformation model of Huanqiu Automobile to a marketing communication service platform.
02.
Two or three years ago
Wu Yingqiu thought more deeply about the new car 2.0 era, which goes back to two or three years ago.
At that time, it was as if overnight, the new four transformations of the car were unstoppable. With the unprecedented major changes and modernization cycle of the industry in a hundred years, after a series of dazzling actions, the connotation and extension of the car have been continuously refreshed, and the car has been redefined. "Software-defined cars", "User-defined cars", "Internet defined cars"... Various definitions are rampant, and everyone is pushed by the huge waves to enter the new era of automobiles.
At the beginning of the new automobile era, the barbarians waiting for the opportunity at the door came with new thinking, the automobile jianghu set off thousands of waves, the pattern of "Wei Xiaoli (Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal)" began to emerge, and Chinese brands were promoted to develop to the high-end. Not to be outdone, traditional automobile companies are facing a head-on battle with profound skills and centuries-old accumulation, and the battlefield without gun smoke can be described as a beacon everywhere.
"This 'new' in the new automobile era needs to be created together, not only to respect science and respect the law, but also to have a continuous innovation, pioneering and enterprising side." Wu Yingqiu believes that the new automobile era should cover all aspects, both product characteristics and system characteristics; both technology and management. "Compared with other breakthroughs, the marketing of the new automobile era is relatively backward, and there is no valuable new marketing model, mostly new bottles of old wine."
Wu Yingqiu proposed that "we should pay attention to the new automobile 2.0 era".
From the perspective of sales, in 2021, among the new forces, only Xiaopeng delivered nearly 100,000 vehicles (98,155 units), and Weilai (91,429 units) and Ideal (90,491 units) are still some distance from the threshold of 100,000 vehicles. From the perspective of operating indicators, coupled with Gaohe Automobile and Nezha Automobile, the gross profit margin of the new forces is improving. Despite this, however, in terms of the size of the economy, the new powers are still losing so much that they are far from profitable. "It's not the right time to define them."
Even if the annual sales reach 100,000 units, the average is only a few thousand per month - which means that in the 1.0 era, the marketing model and marketing innovation lag behind, restricting the development of new cars.
In the 1.0 era, the marketing model of new cars is nothing more than the following 3 categories.
The first category is the 4S store model that emerged with joint ventures in the 1990s. It has been instrumental in boosting sales to traditional automakers, especially joint ventures and luxury brands, but it has not been able to regain its former glory with new cars that sell less than 100,000 units a year.
The second type is the experience center model represented by Weilai Automobile and favored by the new car-making forces, which can also be called the user thinking mode. However, this model is not suitable for all new car manufacturers, because its input-output ratio is seriously unbalanced and requires a lot of investment and maintenance. This model has come step by step to the present, and everyone is constantly revising their judgments - perhaps, the mini experience center is more suitable.
Whether it is the 4S store model or the experience center model, its purpose is unique - "let users come, there must be flow". As a result, new cars began to focus on the flow of people. Some voices believe that the once popular Asian Games village model may be reproduced. Thus, a third category was born - the supermarket model.
But Wu Yingqiu believes that simply judging the flow of people will also cause problems. After investigation, he found that the supermarket is full of people, but few people actually enter the car brand store, and the cars on display also invisibly raise the rent of the supermarket - invested but ineffective, the cost and return are in stark contrast. The reason is that supermarkets are high-frequency consumer groups, but cars are low-frequency consumer groups; the former is drainage, the latter is consumer flow, and the two have no resonance.
Wu Yingqiu's judgment is that by the 2.0 era, there will be a more economical and efficient model to replace the above. The new car 1.0 era focuses on product, technology and system innovation, and these innovations will continue in the 2.0 era. But what should the 2.0 era focus more on? efficiency. "The time has come for the new automobile business to talk about efficiency. This is a characteristic of the 2.0 era. ”
His thinking is advancing layer by layer. "Wei Xiaoli" is still losing money so far, and the reason is efficiency, which is one thing. On the other hand, the era of mobile Internet is an open era, and no one can eat all over the world with one trick, or rely on a product to break through the world - the characteristic of the 1.0 era is that what you see is preemptively landed, and whoever lands first wins. But those days are gone.
In other words, in the 2.0 era, marketing needs to be more efficient. What is Marketing? It's about finding people, communicating with them in the way and language he likes, and impressing him. But this raises another question in terms of efficiency: Are these people your customers, are they your people? Can this wave of people accept the way you communicate with him, can they accept the information you provide to him? If you still can't impress him, then you can't achieve sales and you can't improve efficiency.
From this point of view, there are many people in the supermarket, but the nature of the flow is not correct. In addition, supermarkets are basically built in land where land is scarce, and it is even difficult to park, let alone the actual driving experience of new cars. "I've been thinking and looking for new models — first, to have a stream; second, to have fun; third, to have a scene. Based on these 3 characteristics, I suddenly thought of the highway service area. Wu Yingqiu said.
03.
August 2021
The Yangcheng Lake Service Area project really set sail in August 2021.
Since the phone call in May last year, the main responsible persons of several parties have had several detailed discussions, involving what model cooperation to adopt, and how to promote the first and second phases. In August, Huanqiu Automobile invited the heads of nearly 20 automobile companies, mainly new energy vehicles, including individual traditional automobile enterprises and charging and replacing enterprises, to conduct field research in the Yangcheng Lake service area in 3 batches. After each inspection, leave two or three hours to interact.
The results were unsurprising. Almost all enterprises have shown strong interest in the rich scene formats and service models of Yangcheng Lake. They agreed that something could be done together, but they also raised concerns: the average daily traffic in the service area is as high as 50,000 or 60,000 people, and these people have a complex structure, is it the target customer of the car? In other words, can you get them interested in cars?
There are two solutions for Huanqiu Automobile: First, to strengthen the automobile environment, there was no automobile concept in the past, and in the future, it is necessary to strengthen the relationship between the service area and the car. For example, buying a car, watching a car, understanding the car is exhausted, providing the most professional and standardized service, and also allowing people to have unexpected surprises to attract consumers. The second is to strengthen the function and gradually form a flow of people, which can be operated around the whole chain of consumption, including customer collection, display, experience and delivery.
The worries of the automobile companies were solved, and in the subsequent actual advancement, Huanqiu Automobile suffered from the troubles of happiness. According to the plan, the Yangcheng Lake service area originally had two formats - 2800 square meters of the Great World of Science and Technology and the Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition Hall, which were used to rebuild the new energy vehicle super experience center. As a result, after the removal of the pool area such as the fire passage, there are only less than 2200 square meters left, and only 8 car brands can be placed when the full count is full.
"There were 10 brands on the scene that day, and there were more than that. Now the biggest headache is that it can't be loaded, and there are too many brands that want to come in. Wu Yingqiu smiled.
This is related to the strategic layout of automotive companies. Bangning Studio learned that a Chinese brand is ready to build a manufacturing scene into the service area; another foreign brand has signed a cooperation agreement with the service area, and the two sides are in intensive business negotiations. After the annual car festival, Huanqiu Automobile has received consultations from some traditional automobile companies, and a commercial vehicle company even found Wu Yingqiu, hoping to enter the service area to display its caravan.
"I expected all of this." Wu Yingqiu said in an interview that he now wants to go all out to do a good job in the Yangcheng Lake service area project, make a template, and explore a model. Starting from April 1, 2022, this project strives to have activities every day and a theme every month, which is "completely different from the supermarket model".
In the Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition Hall, Huanqiu Automobile has reserved a place for itself to set up a center stage and use it as a venue for new car delivery events in the future. According to the plan, two delivery events are held here every day, "just like weddings, reinforcing the delivery function and sense of ceremony".
On the outside of the Crab Culture Museum, a separate plot of land is enclosed as an experience center, and various scenes can be experienced. If the user is still not satisfied, you can also drive a test drive around Yangcheng Lake.
The central square outside the main entrance is regularly used as a themed event.
For the participants in the New Energy Vehicle Super Experience Center, their goal is to jump out of the car and create a new highway commercial body. For Huanqiu Automobile, it aims to change the current embarrassing situation of automotive media through real marketing landing activities. This embarrassing situation is mainly manifested in two aspects: one is no reader flow, the other is no to C, and the Yangcheng Lake project has obvious effects on improving these two shortcomings.
On January 19, 2022, the day before the interview with Bangning Studio, at the 2022 annual work conference of Huanqiu Automobile, Wu Yingqiu stressed that all work, including videos, activities and all media, should be carried out around the Yangcheng Lake project. After the Yangcheng Lake project can be let go, the next step is to choose several other service areas to copy the Yangcheng Lake model.
His criteria for choosing service areas are: first, the market complementary efficiency is strong, to avoid too close to the production of internal volumes; second, all service areas can eventually form a large cycle, through a variety of commercial cooperation, do a good job of crowd stickiness.
This is destined to be a daunting new task. But Wu Yingqiu believes that the "new" of the new car is that no one has yet completely defined the car into a law, and this is the opportunity for the entrant.
"The new car is like a marathon that has just started. We're all on new tracks, running for the goals of new cars. He said that only those who insist on running to the finish line can really laugh to the end.