We talk about the Tesla, also pulled a lot of others did not ……
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “spread gymnastics” (ID: chuanboticao), Author: Zheng Zoran.
With Xiaomi’s high-profile announcement to build cars, the electric car industry should usher in another bloody storm. Whether it is Weilai, Xiaopeng, or Ideal, perhaps a new round of brand promotion will begin.
It can already be seen on social media that some electric car brand official blogs have begun to ridicule Xiaomi’s car making.
Compared with the hustle and bustle of domestic brands, Tesla on the other side of the ocean is almost quiet in marketing-you will rarely find any advertisements that Tesla has made, but it can still get excellent exposure.
This raises an interesting question in the marketing industry: Why does Tesla hardly advertise, but can create a huge user attention?
I know that some people will compare Tesla to Apple. Apple created the entire smartphone industry, and Tesla has greatly promoted the development of new energy vehicles. The two do have similarities in the industry status. Sex, even Musk is often compared to contemporary “Jobs”-extremely high social traffic, so that it does not need to advertise.
This is obviously a misunderstanding.
In fact, Apple has always been a master of traditional advertising. The product promotion film of “1984” became a classic in the history of advertising. Jobs also used Einstein, Hitchcock, Bob Dylan, Martin A large number of celebrities such as Luther King produced a “Think Different” brand advertisement and became a masterpiece of brand building.
Nowadays, Apple’s advertising has long been seen everywhere. Apple’s investment in social media and marketing in China is obvious to all. The shooting of Chinese New Year’s short films, the opening of public accounts/vibrato, and the placement of bus signs have long been The standard action of Apple brand marketing.
But these active vocal actions are very rare in Tesla’s marketing.
So we can say that the need for advertising may not be directly related to the innovation of the brand/product. In fact, in a large number of traditional industries, we can also see “no advertising” brands, such as Old godmother, fast fashion, Starbucks, etc.
Although this topic is not new, we may wish to analyze what Tesla relies on for spreading and why it has become a new energy vehicle brand.Of a clear stream?
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We now believe that all marketing strategies are dependent on their own business logic. (This is the inspiration given to me by a senior in the past two years, and it is also the way we think we can understand marketing more comprehensively.) Therefore, analysis of marketing actions cannot be one-sided, but should be cut from the macro development of the entire company and even the industry. Marketing is only one aspect of business. ring.
To analyze Tesla’s marketing, we must start with analyzing Tesla’s business model. There needs to be some digressions here.
In fact, electric vehicles and traditional gasoline vehicles are two completely different fields, but in the end they both take on the form of automobiles. The reason for saying this is that there is a huge difference in the industrial chain and value chain of the two. Oil truck experts see electric vehicles as a new species.
There is a joke that building a car is an engine plus four wheels. The core component of a traditional oil truck is the engine. The engine is a precision device. The scientific principle of manufacturing is not difficult, but the process precision is extremely high, which is a bit similar to making a chip. the meaning of. But in electric vehicles, the core components become the power supply system and the user’s intelligent interaction system. If the traditional gasoline car is in the form of Nokia, then the electric car is indeed like an Apple mobile phone with a combination of software and hardware.
Another extension, my country’s previous policy formulation of joint-venture car manufacturing was originally an attempt to quickly exchange advanced technology for European and American car manufacturing through capital opening and market capacity to promote the development of local car brands and industries. However, after several decades, domestic auto brands are still weak in brand power, and the domestic auto industry cannot be said to have reached the expectations when the policy was formulated many years ago. We can compare South Korea’s auto industry with the domestic aviation industry, and we can find the embarrassment of the local auto industry.
New energy vehicles are actually an opportunity for the development of corner overtaking in my country’s automobile industry, because new energy vehicles are a digital industry that combines software and hardware. China’s road conditions are extremely rich in data, and the battery supply chain is also very developed, so there are more Advantage. The development of the electric vehicle industry is also an energy revolution in the long run. It can promote the construction of electric energy outlets such as charging piles. Therefore, even from a national strategic point of view, it is of great significance. I think this is also one of the main reasons why Xiaomi will eventually enter the electric car market.
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Speaking of returning to Tesla, the difference in logic between petrol cars and electric cars has given birth to completely different business models. The sales of petrol trucks are a one-time sale, so the key link is the delivery of the product, and all brand marketing actions need to be ultimately oriented towards sales. Therefore, automobile manufacturers have gradually built a car sales model with 4S stores as the link. Users need to go to the 4S store for transactions, maintenance, etc., and the configuration and management of automobile brand salespersons are also constructed based on the 4S store model.
But smartElectric vehicles are quite different. Similar to Apple mobile phones, although hardware sales are important, they are not the only way to make money. The construction of interactive systems and subsequent services still have room for profitability. For example, in addition to Apple’s mobile phone sales, the icloud space, Apple Music membership, and the app store’s rake… can all become commercial profit support.
This has also led to a change in brand operation thinking. What is important is not only the moment when the sale is completed, but the user is no longer a user who disappears after the transaction, but also needs to provide long-term high-quality ecological services and constantly interact with users Associated with. In this way, the focus of corporate business has shifted from sales to a single link to a certain extent. In this context, the importance of the sales system of 4S stores has been reduced.
Generally speaking, 4S stores are connected or managed by the sales companies of automobile manufacturers. Many 4S stores are also established through franchising. Obviously, traditional 4S stores have strong sales attributes and weak service attributes, and electric vehicle services are involved. The combination of hardware and software makes it difficult to manage brand quality control. In addition, the overall market for electric vehicles is still immature and Tesla has limited funds, so the direct store model was finally adopted.
This choice, even if it is a strategic decision, is an optimal solution under realistic conditions, and it can be said to be inevitable.
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The 4S shop model needs to balance the interests of OEMs, dealers, and consumers. According to our understanding of auto brand management, the dealer management section of auto OEMs is extremely important, and the marketing actions are more for dealers. Empowerment helps dealers to acquire customers more efficiently and attract customers to 4S stores.
Tesla’s direct management model actually disassembles the traditional 4S store into three parts: the first is a direct experience store, which is responsible for pre-sales consultation and test drive; the second is the service center, which is responsible for delivery, After-sales; the third is the official website, responsible for sales, transaction and order placement. It can be seen that this completely breaks through the traditional marketing model.
In addition, because Tesla is a combination of hardware and software, theoretically, the price of host hardware can continue to drop, so that through future software charges, the directly-operated system can also be free from the restrictions of the traditional dealer system when the price is reduced. However, it seems that users are a little dissatisfied with the frequent price cuts of products.
It is also worth mentioning that, due to its pre-sales consulting properties, most of the Tesla experience stores are opened in shopping malls with dense traffic, which itself has brought huge offline traffic exposure to Tesla. Don’t make the mistake of causality here. It’s not that it’s opened in a shopping mall so it has a big exposure, but it needs a large exposure and it needs to be opened in a shopping mall. The two are essentially different in strategy. Of course, there is another point that shopping malls can improve the high-end brand. Sense, this is also a kind of brand image shaping.
To put it simply, Tesla’s store strategy and business strategy are integrated with the marketing strategy.
itsIn fact, we can also see many similar phenomena. For example, the same is true for fast fashion brands such as ZARA. With dense offline store layout, every store recruitment can be regarded as advertising exposure, which promotes brand awareness; and Lao Gan Ma The same holds true for preempting display spaces on supermarket shelves, but in recent years, Laoganma has also made efforts to promote it on social media.
And different from online social media advertising, this offline store advertising is more compulsive and is in a traffic entry position that people cannot avoid, while online advertising users can easily choose to block or jump out, and the efficiency may be inferior. Offline stores.
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So the question is, it seems very simple, why do other brands rarely do it?
Actually, according to our somewhat fatalistic view, this has something to do with the genes of the brand and it has a lot to do with organization and management.
In traditional brands, the expansion of channels is more about selling products, so the sales department is often responsible for the channels, and the evaluation management indicators of the sales department do not have the consideration of communication and exposure, which creates a fragmentation. Therefore, it is a very ideal idea if we think that the expansion of channels can satisfy both sales and brand.
Brands need exposure and dissemination, sales need efficiency and precision. The two are often difficult to integrate in traditional organizational structures. The key is to see which department is leading, the marketing department or the sales department. The consequences are very different. of.
The marketing of high-value products such as automobiles and real estate is a relatively closed and independent marketing section, but it can also be found from Tesla’s practice that this traditional marketing model is gradually being broken by digital and Internet methods. .
We are all talking about the “integration of product and efficiency”. In fact, the source of solving this problem may lie in the need to integrate brand thinking and sales thinking in the internal organization of the company. This is a digital upgrade in the management system. In fact, Apple has already given a better model. It is said that Apple store employees did not have a sales commission, but every time Apple releases new products, offline stores will still queue up for purchase. .
Of course, we don’t know much about the organization and management of enterprises. We also believe that different organizations need different management models that are most suitable for them. This also requires each brand to do more exploration and experimentation on its own, and don’t be afraid to change. A company as big as Ali will adjust its organizational structure almost every year, but all Internet observers we meet all agree that Ali’s The organization and management ability is extremely strong.
In short, we believe that the adaptation of the organizational form will determine the overall marketing efficiency of the company, and this is a lesson that a large number of traditional companies need to make up.
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With the disappearance of the mobile Internet demographic dividend, socialIn fact, the overall online delivery efficiency in the media era is slowly declining. In social media, the autonomy of users has been amplified unprecedentedly, and users have even become vocal and fermenting nodes for marketing.
So from the perspective of communication, the most effective marketing method is not to spend large budgets on hard advertising, but how to get users to forward and discuss, which also derives a set of digital marketing strategies different from the past.
I don’t know if you have noticed such an interesting phenomenon. In the past, the heads of the marketing department of traditional brands were often born in branding and marketing campaigns, and were very good at user research and brand positioning; but now, The marketing department heads of a large number of brands have a background in public relations. This phenomenon is especially the case in Internet companies, because Internet products do not have a high demand for brands. Products are brands, and public relations people are often concerned about topics, public opinion, events, and media. These aspects are more relevant.
This interesting difference can also be seen in the current changes in the brand’s communication focus.
For example, nowadays women’s topics and feminist content have always been controversial, but brands that touch this type of topic have a chance to get a large topic exposure and discussion. We even suspect that many brands get it through controversial topics such as malicious touch porcelain. Social fever. Of course, this kind of tactics has great harm to brand favorability and brand building, but it can indeed quickly arouse discussions on the whole network. In the era of information overload, the idea of “not afraid of being notorious, but not famous” is quite common for many brands. This is actually a typical public relations thinking (but not necessarily worth learning).
It can be seen that the purpose of advertising marketing has changed from outputting brand positioning, expressing brand stories, and occupying users’ minds to an event marketing method and topic discussion method. This is the biggest difference between current marketing and traditional marketing— —All marketing methods are event marketing.
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Now let’s look back at Tesla. Tesla’s topical enthusiasm is supported by two aspects. The first is product communication marked by product launches, and the second is the communication of entrepreneur IP represented by Musk. This also constitutes the main vocal point in its social network. From the perspective of communication layout, the product launch conference is a centralized detonation, and Musk’s Twitter speech fills the daily communication gap.
Tesla’s products are indeed quite revolutionary and have become a benchmark in the electric car industry. Therefore, Tesla’s every move has been widely followed by the industry, which has also brought a lot of natural media exposure to Tesla. Whenever the Tesla press conference, the technology media, automotive media, and financial media will pay attention to, comment and analyze.
And Elon Musk’s character IP is very successful, and his growth also has a legendary experience. Under the PayPal gang, live marijuana smoking, Martian immigration plan, advocacy of Bitcoin, and other behaviors are triggering public discussion, and it is precisely because of this.This unique personality charm has brought a lot of attention to Tesla. Of course, Musk himself has a lot of labels, and there are many rumors about him, and he even used his own power to lead the clubhouse and Dogecoin…
In fact, we have reason to believe that the reason why Musk frequently speaks on Twitter is because of lack of marketing expenses (as Luo Yonghao later admitted, the reason for doing things on Weibo is because of the lack of Hammer’s mobile marketing budget) . But don’t get me wrong. What I think is that Musk probably thinks that marketing expenses are not cost-effective by themselves, not a “smart money”, and they cannot get more returns, so maybe they will be forever when they are CEOs. Lack of this money… This is a different way of thinking.
It can be said that Tesla and Musk are a typical anti-traditional marketing. Based on the digital communication environment, they have found a marketing method that is easier to stimulate topics, and this marketing method is naturally combined with the entrepreneurial personality. .
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The former chairman of Coca-Cola once said, “If my factory is destroyed by fire, if there is a global financial storm, but as long as there is the Coca-Cola brand, I will stand up again the next day.” Later, many people said this. The sentence is regarded as the best interpretation of brand value, but there is no further step, which is a pity.
This sentence actually pointed out an insight-fans are the biggest moat of the brand. So what a good brand has to do is to turn users into fans.
In the past business model, the contact point between the brand and the user was the product in addition to the pre-sale promotion. However, the product is stable and homogeneous. After long-term use, it is difficult to create surprises for users, and it is difficult to compare and highlight advantages. Therefore, users will become brand fans only after a long period of repeated purchases and consumption.
But in the current digital age, products will continue to be renewed with the iteration of software and services, so they have the ability to continuously surprise users, and users are more likely to become fans. Of course, there are also changes in user consumption preferences. For example, the increase in user personalized needs and tiered needs has also promoted the formation of users from users to fans.
Compared with the refined fan operation of domestic new energy vehicle brands such as Weilai, Tesla seems to be more unintentional, and because electric vehicles themselves are smart devices that can serve users for a long time, it also has fans The inherent advantages of chemical operations.
According to media news reports, early Tesla did not have many marketing tools, and related new car information was limited to a limited range, and Tesla product users had nowhere to participate in the discussion. A veteran user founded the “Tesla Fahrer und Freunde” (TFF) forum, so that all Tesla owners and followers can get to know and communicate with each other in the forum. becomeA large position of Tesla’s spread.
As long as you pay attention to social networks, you can find that there are also a large number of private Tesla owners’ clubs/communities in China. The members are all Tesla brand owners. Through the links of the community, users’ The transmission energy is collectively amplified.
It is worth noting that Tesla’s fan community is not officially established by Tesla, but by its fans. Of course, behind this is the foundation of Tesla’s product power and brand appeal. If you are a brand owner, you might as well ask yourself, can you let users spontaneously build a fan community for your brand? What effort do you need to make?
In fact, Weilai’s example is worthy of everyone’s attention, although we only know a few things about it. It is said that when the stock price plummeted in the past two years, many NIO car owners spontaneously attracted customers and made publicity for NIO. This can no longer be defined by users alone. They have become super fans of the brand.
One more point here, communities (especially high-end communities) need to attach great importance to service in their operations. It cannot be said that they are operated with the mentality of attracting traffic and building fish ponds, otherwise the members of the brand community can only Call it a community user, not a brand fan.
Several friends once asked me the same question one after another-“How to run a good brand community”, my answer was only “Take community members as friends”. Of course, this answer may only be suitable for the core community. Groups, but the idea is the same in other cases, treating community members as people and users, not just traffic.
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It can be found that if we look at the traditional marketing perspective, Tesla’s brand communication is almost unqualified, but if we look at it from a new digital perspective, Tesla is one of the best “marketing” brands.
I still need to emphasize here. We believe that Tesla is first an innovation in the automotive business model, which brings about innovation in organization and management, and then in innovation in marketing models. The origin of business model innovation is actually the innovation of product form and product logic.
So, the product is the root cause, no matter how much emphasis is placed on the product, it cannot be overstated. All other external manifestations are by-products.
We have actually observed a lot of marketing cases, but every time we go up to the source and ask why, we can find some answers in the product. The reason why such a product has to be made is that all kinds of organizational, industrial, and marketing supporting actions have been derived. Of course, going back to the root of the product is the user’s needs, we don’t need to say more about this.
Finally, let’s talk about the chicken soup for the soul. Because of our marketing and self-media, we have also met a lot of “smart people”. When it comes to Tesla, they think that success cannot be replicated. The birth of Harmony, even for marketing communication, relies on the Twitter of Cosmos V MuskThe dynamics are beyond the reach of ordinary enterprises and are not of reference.
Naturally, we don’t think so. The so-called marketing methodology can never be successfully imitated mechanically. All successful marketing cases have the right time and place, but they do not mean they are meaningless to other brands. Many of these ideas and strategies are worthy of brand reference.
So, stop saying “Tesla you can’t learn”, first think about whether you are serious about learning. Being too arrogant is not good for growth. Of course, we have not been in the auto industry, but have been exposed to some auto brand marketing. Therefore, our understanding of Tesla and the auto industry is relatively shallow. The above is just to talk about some of our observations and ideas.