"The best car within 5 million", "far ahead"...... With the intensification of competition in the new energy vehicle industry, how to occupy the attention of users is becoming more and more important in enterprise marketing, and entertainment publicity methods are gradually replacing serious parameter explanations.
But the public opinion boom can quickly achieve a car, and it can also quickly eat a car. Models such as the M9, Ideal ONE, and Xiaomi SU7 have taken advantage of the traffic and their sales have risen all the way; On the contrary, the ideal MEGA, which was once pinned on high hopes, was sold coldly due to a network P map.
In addition, the carnival of public opinion has also given birth to phenomena such as online trolls and online rumors. In this context, the legal departments of many car companies have not yet become popular, and they must first "fight black".
The legal departments of a number of car companies stepped forward
Looking back on the past month, many car companies have publicly spread rumors due to online smears.
First of all, Xiaomi Automobile, which has been standing on the cusp of the storm, was rumored to want to acquire 58.5% of Evergrande Automobile's shares in mid-to-late May. On May 30, the official account of "Xiaomi Spokesperson" refuted rumors: Xiaomi Auto has never had plans and moves to acquire or control Evergrande Automobile.
At the beginning of June, a screenshot of the Internet said that Xiaomi SU7 has a great discount, with a direct subsidy of 20,000 yuan. Wang Hua, general manager of the public relations department of Xiaomi Group, refuted the rumors through his personal account on June 10: "I just saw this screenshot in some groups, and it is ridiculous. A little confirmation shows that there is neither such a policy nor such a contract. ”
There is also an ideal car that has just gotten rid of the cloud of "Ideal MEGA being maliciously P-map", and it has been falsified by rumors and data. On June 4, the legal department of Li Auto responded to public opinion such as false business orders and falsification of sales data: some Internet users uploaded photos of Li Auto's vehicles stored in large parking lots on social media, and spread news such as "Li Auto's new cars will be used for export as second-hand cars after centralized license plates" and "Li Auto's sales data is falsified".
Li Auto said that after verification, the picture shows Li Auto's vehicle distribution center in Chengdu, in which the licensed vehicles are the 2023 model that has been retired and the 2024 Ideal L series test drive to be transferred, and there is no situation where the new car is sold or exported as a second-hand car after being centrally licensed.
For Xiaopeng Motors, the Internet water army chose the "way to attack the heart", and spread rumors that its president Wang Fengying took the initiative to resign because of his lack of power. Since then, Wang Fengying responded through her personal circle of friends, "China's automobile industry is becoming more and more volatile, from volume technology, volume configuration, volume price, until today's 'volume of public opinion', all kinds of chaos, all kinds of rumors, as a 30-year old car man, I feel particularly sad", indirectly denied the resignation rumors.
Whether it is rumors about prices, counterfeiting or personnel turmoil, it will have a certain negative impact on car companies.
Under this influence, the legal departments of many car companies such as Ideal and GAC Aion came to the stage and officially declared war on negative public opinion in the form of "one hand with a stick and one hand with sweet dates".
Taking the GAC Aion Network Reporting Center established on June 14 as an example, it will accept complaints and reports from netizens, collect clues and evidence of violations of laws and regulations such as insults, defamation, rumors and slander against GAC Aion, and severely crack down on online infringement. For the clues or evidence that have been verified by the online reporting center to be true, valid, and from legitimate sources and recognized by the judicial authorities, GAC Aion will give a reward of up to RMB 1 million according to the value of the clues or evidence.
Traffic carnival, public opinion has become a double-edged sword for enterprise development
Relevant data show that the market size of China's Internet celebrity economy will exceed 500 billion yuan in 2023, an increase of nearly 30% over 2022. Models such as online celebrity live streaming, endorsement advertising, and IP monetization are becoming important economic growth points.
In the emerging wave, the automotive market has also ushered in new changes. Judging from the development of the auto market in recent years, various brands have first renovated their sales channels and gradually opened online live broadcast rooms, constantly changing the habits of traditional audiences to receive information; and then to the creation of personal IP, during the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, the "red-clothed leader" Zhou Hongyi, the founder of Xiaomi Auto Lei Jun and others were crowded everywhere, and the limelight once overshadowed the blockbuster new cars of various brands.
At present, it has become a common phenomenon in the automobile market for entrepreneurs to create personal IP. Some industry insiders believe that the current automotive Internet celebrity has come from the 1.0 era to the 2.0 era.
In the 1.0 era, the first new energy entrepreneurs to build cross-border cars, such as Li Xiang, founder of Li Auto, Li Bin, founder of Weilai Automobile, He Xiaopeng, founder of Xiaopeng Motors, etc., compared with the helmsman of traditional car manufacturing companies, Li Xiang and others have more exposure on the Internet and began to promote product sales as "opinion leaders".
Since then, entrepreneurs such as Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun, Chairman of Huawei Device BG, have better achieved cross-border breakthroughs and are known to the whole people, driving the sales growth of brands such as Wenjie and Xiaomi, and pushing Internet celebrity entrepreneurs to the 2.0 era.
In order to seize the "splashing traffic", many car company executives have opened their own social accounts, such as Daniel Zhang, chairman of Nezha Automobile, Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, etc., have deepened the image of Internet celebrity entrepreneurs to drive brand sales.
But every sentence amplified in the network does not necessarily lead to good results.
On January 12, 2023, Shen Hui, the founder of WM Motor, posted a classic clip of the movie "Furong Town" on social networks, in which the line is "Live, live like an animal", but since then, WM has not come back to life, and the original ambition has become the last joke.
On May 19, 2023, Li Xiang responded to netizens' speculation about MEGA on social platforms, "If it is really designed like this bird, I will kill the design team and jump off the building by the way." But since then, the production model of MEGA has been highly similar to what netizens speculated, and Li Xiang was ridiculed by the audience for this.
On April 8 this year, Zhiji "rubbed the heat" at the new car launch conference and mistakenly mentioned the Xiaomi SU7 configuration, and finally had to apologize publicly......
has not become popular yet, first of all, it is necessary to "anti-black", or even "self-black".
"Whether it is breaking the circle of communication or entrepreneurs coming to the stage, it has promoted the communication and interaction with consumers to a certain extent, and better promoted the product communication of car companies. However, at the same time, it also makes it gradually more difficult to manage corporate public opinion. In this regard, some industry analysts said that amazing words can bring temporary popularity, but the real "long red" still depends on the product.