Xiaomi Auto has recently faced many challenges, from the Anhui SU7 accident to the public opinion turmoil caused by the inconsistency between product promotion and reality, Xiaomi’s public image and business promotion have been affected to a certain extent. This article provides an in-depth analysis of Xiaomi Auto’s problems in product promotion, public opinion response, and founder Lei Jun’s public image management, discusses the potential impact of these problems on Xiaomi’s brand and business, and puts forward corresponding improvement suggestions.
It has been more than a month since Xiaomi Mercury retrograde. Since the Anhui SU7 accident at the end of March, Xiaomi Auto has been on the cusp and has also affected other businesses. Including self-developed chips, a series of product and technology conferences have been postponed indefinitely. Xiaomi’s fifteenth anniversary is not celebrated publicly. The YU7 car is also overdue, and at the Shanghai Auto Show at the end of April, YU7 and Lei Jun were absent together.
Lei Jun’s social media reduced the frequency of posting in April, with no daily sharing, only some tool people’s activity notifications. Unexpectedly, the SU7 Ultra stabbed two hornet’s nests in May.
After the OTA in early May, the track results were needed to unlock 1548 horsepower, and the owner scolded it on the hot search, and had to urgently withdraw the limit; The “track-level aerodynamic design” carbon fiber double air duct front hatch advertised at the press conference needs to be installed at 42,000 yuan, and the pick-up of the car will be postponed for at least one month. As a result, some car owners found that the hatch had neither a deflector design nor was connected to any heat dissipation system, and it did not have the functions related to the internal structure such as “completely replicating the prototype of the New North Circuit”, “realizing efficient air diversion in the front”, and “exclusive heat dissipation channel for the brake system”, which belonged to the decorative parts.
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In a subsequent apology statement, Xiaomi Auto explained that “the message was not clearly expressed”. Hundreds of angry car owners organized to demand the return of the car, and some car owners demanded a refund of one and three compensation according to the law according to consumer fraud. This wave of I stand on Xiaomi. Neither of these is a problem. You know, at the SU7 Ultra press conference, Mr. Lei said that unlocking the maximum horsepower of this car requires “special training and unlocking process”. Now that the unlocking process is here, the owner is not happy again? Then the owners who choose the carbon fiber hatch cover, a few of them really want to get off the track, isn’t it to distinguish the regular version of the SU7 at a glance, to put it bluntly, everyone spends 40,000 to buy two holes.
As for air diversion and heat dissipation, the tram does not have an engine, so what heat dissipation do you want? Some car owners claimed to have read the review, and their hearts were cold, so you said that there was no heat dissipation, right? Therefore, the car mainly hopes that Mr. Lei will count when he speaks, so he resolutely supports the unlocking of horsepower assessment; If you accept that Mr. Lei’s words don’t count, don’t hold on to the engine cover. Some industry insiders analyzed that the cost of this carbon fiber hatch cover is more than 3,000, and the price is 42,000 yuan, which is unkind. You don’t understand this, Porsche selects a leather interior from 40,000 to 50,000 yuan, everyone buys a luxury car to look like buying a luxury car, and it’s over.
Since Xiaomi made cars, it has touched Tesla to cross the river, first the coupe and then the SUV, and released the rhythm and temperament, including the founder’s social media activity, which is also a deep tribute to Musk, and almost bought Weibo + Douyin + Bilibili. On the other side of the sea, Musk’s energy is too scattered, busy building big rockets, busy helping elections, falling in love and having children, and busy helping the government reduce staff and increase efficiency, but he doesn’t focus on building cars. Where people’s energy is placed, the results will come from. I suspect that Tesla is no longer the business that Musk cares about the most, he probably thinks that only having children + building rockets can save mankind.
Moreover, compared to the speed of product iteration, we Chinese companies are not afraid at all. Stop Musk, there are all Lei Jun outside. But I still want to criticize Xiaomi today. Not because SU7 has these messy public opinions, but because these public opinions are predictable and avoidable. Xiaomi and Mr. Lei may have been too smooth in the past year, and they did not notice the accumulation of two obvious risks, and there was no plan for this. One is the thunderstorm of Internet celebrities, and the other is the accident of performance cars, which are expected and sooner or later. I wrote in 2019 that Xiaomi has the “gene to spend a little money to do big things”, which can be summed up as over-reliance on social media marketing and exaggerated publicity strategies. As a result, Xiaomi not only did not change after that, but also added a little risk: over-reliance on the founder’s IP.
What year is 2019? The rise of video platforms. In addition to playing Weibo, Mr. Lei began to appear in real life, opening up new battlefields such as Douyin and Channels. Not to mention Station B, Mr. Lei is a well-known singer who started at Station B. From Xiaoai speakers to Xiaomi cars, and even Xiaomi offline stores, Mr. Lei’s title song is floating everywhere, and the atmosphere is very happy. Mr. Lei no longer talks about offending people, all the dirty work of offending people is done by other executives of Xiaomi’s IP matrix, and Mr. Lei is only responsible for being kind, decent, bringing goods, opening the door, and providing emotional value. Mr. Lei is Xiaomi, and Xiaomi is Mr. Lei.
Mr. Lei waved his arm, and Xiaomi stole goods from hundreds of thousands of cars to dozens of yuan. Then as soon as the Anhui SU7 accident came out, Mr. Lei was silent for three days, and finally came out to express his position, and many Lei fans and rice fans did not understand and began to feel sorry for their brother. They say that all kinds of cars have accidents, why should Mr. Lei make a statement when SU7 has an accident? To put it bluntly, the brains of these fans basically said goodbye to driving before the popularization of L5 autonomous driving.
BMW, Mercedes-Benz Audi, Volkswagen…… These cars have a large number of cars and an absolute number of accidents, which is true. But the bosses and heads of these car companies in China, everyone doesn’t use search engines, who knows what their names are and what they look like? Xiaomi chose to use Mr. Lei as an endorsement, or Mr. Lei chose to show up for Xiaomi, out of the limelight, fully enjoy the dividends of traffic, and stand on the high ground of values. Now that there is a vicious accident, two people were burned to death on the spot, and one was sent to the hospital for treatment, do you think Mr. Lei doesn’t need to express his position? It seems that Mr. Lei has done nothing wrong, but his influence is here, and companies and products benefit from his influence.
Now that there is an accident, it cannot be said that all the positive good things are accepted, and the bad things, you say that it has nothing to do with him, which is impossible. The so-called profit and loss are the same, I think this is fair to Internet celebrities, entrepreneurs, or celebrities. Since they enjoy certain advantages, they have to pay a higher price than ordinary people. Then let’s talk about the SU7 series cars, and vicious accidents are also foreseeable, because this is the first mass delivery of a higher-performance car at the same price, and it is also equipped with intelligent driving for free compared to Tesla. SU7 users are likely to have a higher degree of trust in the so-called intelligent driving, because they believe in Mr. Lei and Xiaomi.
As an enterprise, you should know better than anyone what kind of tone your publicity is, what level of users it is, and what performance your product is. I wrote when the SU7 was launched last year that the car is not a mobile phone, and the safety of buying a car is the first priority, because driving problems will kill people. Companies that make mobile phones make performance cars for the first time, do they have the consciousness to put safety first?
Before the results of the investigation of the Anhui accident came out, there were many remarks that no car could afford to crash like this. Indeed, the car cannot afford to crash like this, and the vehicle is completely burned down, and it may be difficult to have evidence to prove that there are other responsible parties other than the driver. Any model will have an accident from the probability, and what car companies have to do is to make every effort to reduce this probability, and foresee that there will still be a certain probability of malignant accidents, at least there must be a public opinion plan, rather than passively responding and disrupting all subsequent work arrangements. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology required that assisted driving should not be exaggerated and falsely publicized, and the Ministry of Public Security reiterated that assisted driving is not the same as autonomous driving, which also illustrates the influence of this accident.
As soon as SU7 collided, it collapsed the public image of Xiaomi and Mr. Lei, and I can’t help but ask, didn’t they think about what to do if something like this happened before? As I wrote in my last article, novice drivers should not use assisted driving for the first three years.
Today I want to say that buy a car from a new car company with caution in the first three years, especially when you are a novice driver. This is not for a certain car company, this is determined by the laws of the manufacturing and automotive industries. The century-old history of the automotive industry, the development history of any car company is piled up by the lives of drivers, which is cruel, but also very real. Specific to Xiaomi’s car manufacturing, the wave of public opinion of SU7 Ultra will eventually pass, users will be appeased, refund should be refunded, should compensate points and compensate points, as if nothing has happened, except that there will be more and more high-horsepower cars with more than 1,500 horsepower on the road.
YU7 will most likely still be a best-selling car, of course, production capacity will still be a bottleneck. Mr. Lei will gradually make a comeback, resuming social media updates and activities. The press conference in the first half of the year was backlogged to the second half, and the media teachers ran around the venues to cheer for Mr. Lei. Until the next public opinion crisis, everyone starts over again, and so on.
