“Can you survive next year, ” said Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor, who soon had an answer. On the 30th anniversary of Wei Jianjun’s take over, Great Wall Motor unveiled three major technology brands, Lemon, Tank and Coffee Intelligence. The three brands are “non-mainstream” in terms of naming, but the content they represent is not simple, and it is clear that Great Wall Motor is not just thinking about how to live next year, but how to live better and longer.
The Great Wall is going to be a technology company.
On July 20th, the anniversary was officially defined as Technology Brand Day, and Great Wall Motor released three major technology brands, Great Wall Lemon, WEY Tank and Coffee Intelligence, the first two for the vehicle platform and the 1st for the intelligent architecture platform. Coffee intelligence focuses primarily on intelligence, including intelligent interactive experience and intelligent driving.
The Lemon platform can be seen as a more flexible modular platform, with 438 basic modules and 113 standard modules, according to official data, which will completely push back the framework limitations of the traditional vehicle platform. On this platform, not only can the A0 to D class of different levels of models, but also for SUV, car, MPV model development of different categories. In addition, in the energy aspect is also the comer does not refuse, fuel cars, hybrid cars, pure trams, hydrogen energy vehicles, etc. , can all be built on the lemon platform. In other words, the future market needs of the model, the Great Wall’s lemon platform can basically be supported.
Unlike the all-en-inclusive lemon platform, the tank platform is more focused, to do professional off-road vehicle platform, in the future, from this platform down the model will have two standard, one is standard four-wheel drive system, the other is to use all non-carrying body. Very clear, the main tank platform will be hard off-road, but realistic to see, hard-nosed off-road vehicles in the country after all belong to the niche market, the Great Wall dedicated to the launch of such a platform is what is the purpose? Wei Jianjun gave the answer in an interview: “The original purpose and purpose of building the tank platform is mainly to prepare for Great Wall Motor’s strategic goal of “hard-drive off-road vehicles and pickups” worldwide.” “In addition to turning Haver into the world’s number one SUV brand, Great Wall Motor has a new goal of being number one in the world.
Some industry experts told Gestel Cars, to be the world’s first SUV brand, focus on the domestic market, China’s huge SUV consumer group is enough to support Haver’s ambitions to be the world’s first SUV brand. And to do off-road vehicles and pickup trucks of the world’s boss, relying only on the Chinese market is certainly a cup of water car wages, North America, Southeast Asia, Africa and other regional markets, is off-road vehicles and pickup trucks in the world. From this point of view, the Great Wall launched the purpose of the tank platform is not difficult to guess, the next step, Great Wall Motor’s internationalization road is bound to accelerate again. In fact, in 2019, Wei Jianjun in an interview with foreign media expressed Great Wall Motor’s determination to internationalize: “Great Wall Motor must go out, even if it is dead, but also to die abroad.”
Globalization, a sense of technology, is the key word of Great Wall Motor’s brand day, in fact, Great Wall Motor has announced the future task of transforming from a Chinese auto company to a global technology travel company. And to complete this task, Great Wall Motor is also a blood-sucking, just to build lemon and tank platform, Great Wall Motor in the past 5 years, has invested more than 20 billion yuan.
So the question is, why did Great Wall Motor do this?
The Great Wall needs a disruptive transformation.
Ping An Securities’ previous comments on Great Wall Motor are very representative, the company is in the annual sales from 1 million to 1.5 million or even 2 million vehicles threshold period, improve research and development investment and model platform is an inevitable choice, help to strengthen the competitiveness of its models, and to expand overseas sales base plate to help dilute research and development costs, improve profitability.
Great Wall Motor has achieved sales of more than one million for four consecutive years, simply look at this data, it is indeed quite proud, for a Chinese car company, to achieve a full-year sales of more than 1 million vehicles is not a small achievement, not to mention four consecutive years can achieve this market achievement.
But if it’s not hard to find a problem by compiling Great Wall Motor’s annual sales figures for 2016-19, Great Wall Motor’s market performance over the past four years has been largely in place. 1.0744 million units, 1.0701 million units, 1.053 million units, 1.0602 million units, this is Great Wall Motor’s sales figures for the last four years, optimistic is that the market performance is stable, but pessimistic, this is the lack of success, has not been able to achieve greater market breakthroughs.
On the other hand, Geely Automobile, the main competitor, will of course have its own development problems to solve, but only look at the market performance, these years are a step by step in the growth.
Geely Motor entered the million-car-selling club later than Great Wall Motor, which sold less than 800,000 vehicles in 2016 when it first broke the million-vehicle annual sales record, but by 2017, Geely Hadid had completed a breakthrough in annual sales of one million vehicles, with annual sales soaring directly to 1.247 million units. Geely’s growth slowed in 2018, but it still handed over a new record of selling more than 1.5m new cars a year. In 2019, geely’s annual sales also fell year-on-year, with overall sales down 9.3 percent to 1.3615 million units.
From Geely and Great Wall Motor in recent years, the market development trajectory, there will certainly be different stage problems, but the whole can draw such a conclusion, Geely Automobile has been maintaining an “offensive” posture, while Great Wall Motor is struggling to maintain positions. Great Wall Motor wants to end the current fatigue, a major strategic transformation is imperative.
On the one hand, Great Wall Motor has recently clearly been transitioning to youth in terms of marketing, as well as the signal of technological transformation that was released on the 30th anniversary.
The Great Wall has a precursor to change.
By 2020, Great Wall Motor is becoming more and more grounded.
In April hand-in-hand Luo Yonghao to do live broadcast, in June and chopsticks brothers together staged a brave “love” short video bombing, the effect is good or bad for the time being, can be seen a trend is that Great Wall Motor in marketing began to more and more close to young people.
By the time Haver’s big dog model was named, it was directly interpreted by Great Wall Motor as an entertainment event out of the ring. First launched a new model of the network name-call campaign, in some seemingly normal alternative names to add the big dog this looks casual option, and netizens are also very “cooperate” with the big dog this most “earthy” name cast as a vote king. As a result, when the attention was high enough, Great Wall Motor officially announced that Haver’s new car was named After the Big Dog. In the whole process, whether it is the voluntary participation of netizens or the media, is a rare “event” in the marketing of car companies in recent years.
Since then, Great Wall Motor has continued to fly away from naming itself, naming the third new car of the Ola brand white cat, and the three major technology brands lemon, tank, coffee and the car’s basically unsmeared name. Gestel Automotive Research Institute Lu Wei believes that through a series of recent publicity events, the industry’s inherent perception of Great Wall Motor’s conservativeness should be broken, the subsequent Great Wall publicity should update the tide will also be more in line with the trend, perhaps to Great Wall Motor to bring greater attention. “I’m not as conservative in my life as I thought I was, ” Mr. Wei said in an interview. In fact, (branding) is what I’m leading internal discussions, and there’s absolutely no psychological barrier. “From top to bottom, Great Wall Motor is seeking change, as Wei Jianjun said in the previous propaganda film, if we do not see subversive change, it is subverted, it must be us.”
From car companies to technology travel companies, from traditional marketing to ground gas pan-entertainment marketing transformation, Great Wall Motor set up a big banner of change, it seems that the preliminary preparations have been very loud, “the second half of the new speed will be accelerated, next year is our product year.” Wei Jianjun has also given the “big test” time, the next to see the actual implementation of the process of falling rain is small or large.