The wave of layoffs, price wars, and press conferences tore each other apart, suing friends and sailors for compensation of 500w at every turn......
In the world's most volatile, one of the most volatile, most car manufacturers lose money and make money, and the pants are to be rolled up in China's new energy vehicle market, Dongfeng Honda Hunter Light Co-branded Ultraman is listed, sticking to the original heart of "believing in light"! Do you believe in light? It is believed that good will eventually triumph over evil, and good money will eventually drive out bad money.
"Why is there Ultraman here?" "This is a new car launch, Dad was going to take you there"......
The night before yesterday, Dongfeng Honda's annual strategic model, which is also the first of Dongfeng Honda's "three bombs of electric cars" in 2024, the Lieguang e:NS2, was launched on the banks of the Huangpu River.
The price is 159,800-179,800 yuan for a limited time.
To be more accurate and rigorous, the full name of this car should be, Dongfeng Honda e:NS2 Hunting Light, Dongfeng Honda is the name of the enterprise, e:NS2 is the name of the model, Hunting Light is a model Chinese name for easy to remember......
Yang Zhonghua, deputy director of Dongfeng Honda's sales department, announced the price
I dropped a mother, the little brother of the post-00s who went to Shanghai from Wuhan to attend the press conference that day, and the first feedback I gave after coming back was that the name of this car was too awkward and difficult to remember, which was completely inconsistent with the habits of Chinese consumers.
I explained to him that Honda Dafa is super awesome, even if it comes to the Chinese market to do business with Chinese consumers, whether it is Dongben or Guangben, in the official press release and official corporate title, it has always insisted on Dongfeng Honda, GAC Honda, in short, Honda.
It doesn't matter if you remember it or not, whether you can read it or not.
The world's well-known multinational car companies, pay attention! As for this e:NS2, there is also a reason and inheritance.
e:N is an electrified brand specially launched by Honda in 2022 (or it is more appropriate to call it a brand sequence), Dongfeng Honda's first e:N sequence product is called e:NS1, Guangqi Honda corresponds to e:NP1, and now the second bullet of the e:N sequence is coming, Dongben is called e:NS2, and Guangben's is called e:NP2.
With all due respect, I don't know if the Japanese team, especially the person who made the decision, was kicked in the head by a donkey, and even if Honda is not localized, the naming of this e:N brand sequence is also complicated.
The lowercase letter e + the uppercase letter N is not enough, and you have to give you a whole one in the middle: number, anyway, the main one is not easy to remember + not easy to write, and it's over!
Perhaps it was seeing this huge "failure" that Guangqi Honda, which has always been "very daring", deliberately took a good-sounding and easy-to-remember Chinese name - Jipao when it launched the e:N brand sequence.
Then the next e:NP1 and e:NP2 can be called Pole 1 and Pole 2 more simply and crudely.
There is one thing to say, Dongfeng Honda's handling and practice on this "little thing" is relatively clumsy and dull, without taking a simple and easy-to-remember Chinese brand serial name, the previous e:NS1 is called e:NS1, and now e:NS2 has taken a separate Chinese name of the model "Lieguang".
Speaking of hunting light, let's focus on talking about this electric car player in the name of "Ultraman", how is the cross-border attack, and whether the product and pricing are competitive?
When new cars are put into China's new energy vehicle market, where the bayonet is red and the pants are almost gone, can it emit a light?
First, before talking about the product, let's briefly talk about its naming and the thinking logic of the co-branded Ultraman.
According to the understanding of our post-00s friends, hunting light, one is because the modeling design of the vehicle is cross-border and belongs to a category of the more popular "hunting car", and then "light" is the most representative IP in Ultraman, "Do you believe in light" is also a "mantra" that countless children often ask adults.
So needless to say, just from the name Hunting, the meaning is good and easy to remember, it is really good!
It's just a little confusing that Dongfeng Honda e:NS2 Lieguang, a pure electric crossover, has an intrinsic connection with Ultraman? Is it its core user group and target audience, do you generally like Ultraman?
You know, those who know and like Ultraman are basically children, and we are thirty or forty-year-old fritters, although we also know and have seen Ultraman, but that was how many years ago, and now Tiga and Sero are standing in front of you, and they are all stupid and can't tell the difference.
This also explains why at the Dongfeng Honda Hunter launch conference that night, when the four Ultraman gathered on the stage, many media teachers, including Letu's classmates, needed to send it to the children at home to see and distinguish it for the first time, so that they could tell us what Ultraman was from left to right......
From this point of view, Dongfeng Honda's marketing and planning team, since they have chosen to bind and strongly correlate the marketing communication between Hunter Light and Ultraman from beginning to end, then at such an important and rare launch conference, it is actually possible and appropriate to take unconventional innovative operations——
In the form of adult + child family interaction and participation! (Follow-up national listing press conferences can be referenced)
Let's ask, instead of letting a group of big men and aunts and sisters sit in the audience, stupidly unable to distinguish and can't get the point of Ultraman's marketing IP, why don't you choose to invite and attack in a group? Not to mention one big and one small, even if it is two large and one small, how much more can the marketing cost be?
At the very least, the hotel does not need to open an extra room, children, especially children under the age of 12, the ticket is half price, and the high-speed rail bullet train ticket is free.
The most important thing is that in this way, not to mention the deep memory left on the children, at least Dongfeng Honda Hunting Light's listing conference will be more brilliant and even out of the circle.
Adults don't know what to care about Sero and Tiga, and the children will be very happy and excited, the best of both worlds, and the marketing effect is definitely much more than the current one.
Dongfeng Honda's marketing team needs to be deeply aware that the money of adults, especially men, is very difficult to earn these days, they are too rational and rational, and only women and children have the best money!
In the final analysis, Dongfeng Honda Hunting Light This car is not directly related to Ultraman, and borrowing the IP of Ultraman for bundled marketing is nothing more than hoping to make this car pay more attention and understand by consumers;
But obviously, the relevant team ignored a very important point in the practical operation, and without the blessing and participation of the children, the adults' interest in this was greatly reduced, and they were even indifferent.
Second, can the product of Hunting Light be beaten, and whether the pricing is sincere and market competitiveness?
For this problem, I believe that Dongfeng Honda has received full feedback and information from the outside world from the previous pre-sale to the official launch of this time, and it is indeed quite a challenge. It's not that Dongben doesn't work hard enough, it's just that the labor in the Chinese market is too cheap, and the product and price war has already been involved!
In this regard, Yang Zhonghua, deputy director of Dongfeng Honda's sales department, who took the stage to shout for the hunting light and brought salt, naturally knew it well.
Dongben "Little Sheep Brother" calls on enterprises to stick to their hearts and walk with light
Not to mention the current "limited-time surprise price" that has no surprises and concessions compared with the pre-sale price;
Even if the terminal 4S store lowers the price by 18,000 yuan, the overall price range of 15,678,000 yuan, consumers can imagine and buy new energy products, not to mention that there are as many as cows' hair, at least open their eyes are also open to choose at will.
Perhaps, in the eyes of some consumers, Changan, Geely, Great Wall, BYD, Chery and other old independent domestic cars, the brand power is still a little bit behind the first-line joint venture cars such as Honda Dafa, but such as Deep Blue, Leap, Extreme Fox, Aion and other new forces + new strength, the choice space is still quite large.
The key is that these competitors are competing products, in terms of materials, configuration, and intelligence, Honda Toyota Volkswagen is really incomparable, and what is more terrible is that in the power technology route, many of them provide different versions of pure electric and extended range/plug-in hybrid for consumers to choose!
Combined with the observation of Ledou Automobile, from last year to this year, our community has not said that Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, Tesla, Xiaomi and other brands with more expensive prices will not be mentioned, and what dark blue S7, Leap C11, Yipai 007 and other hundreds of thousands of new energy vehicles have become more and more popular choices for big guys to buy cars.
Therefore, from an objective point of view, Dongfeng Honda has invested a lot of resources and energy in Lieguang, an important new energy strategic transformation product, and the final product pricing is indeed very restrained and sincere compared with the past situation of Honda and other joint venture cars themselves.
However, looking at the overall domestic new energy vehicle market in the same price range, it can only be said that product power + comprehensive market competitiveness, and the norms cannot be excessively high sales expectations.
Tease Observation:
Out of concern and curiosity, around the launch conference of this car and the expected market prospects, the students also had some exchanges and understanding with the relevant personnel of Dongfeng Honda manufacturers.
A colleague in the industry may also be more concerned and curious about the fact that why Pan Jianxin, the Chinese leader of Dongfeng Honda, did not attend such an important strategic model launch conference, but mainly handed over to Yang Zhonghua, deputy director of the sales department, to preside over the platform?
The feedback we received on this was that there were two main reasons:
Mr. Pan had something to do, so he didn't go to the scene, Vice President Gou was born to cheer off the stage, and then Yang Zhonghua, known as "Brother Dongben Little Sheep", has a speech that is obvious to all, and his speech is not so official, more humorous and in line with the current new marketing communication model.
As for the sales target and market prospect of this car, Dongfeng Honda naturally does not expect it to be as popular as the Civic and CR-V in the era of fuel vehicles, and does its best to seize Dongben's due share in this market segment.
After all, the transformation of electrification cannot be achieved overnight for any joint venture car company, and a single model, regardless of whether it wins or small, must first dare to show its sword and play its cards, and stay on the table without being swept out, which is a must-answer question for almost all joint venture brands at present.
"Do you believe in light?" No matter how the market and consumers ultimately vote, Dongfeng Honda, which has been deeply involved in the Chinese auto market for 20 years, is proving itself again with action and strength that they can do it!