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author | li jinglin

from shedding tears at the chengdu auto show on august 28 to being in high spirits at the launch of a new car on september 10, xia yiping, ceo of jiyue auto, has experienced a great ups and downs in just half a month. the jiyue brand has been struggling for a long time this year, and has been desperate to catch up. now it finally sees the light. tears often fall only when you look back on the hardships.

"many colleagues cried in the video we shot internally for the third anniversary of our founding of the company." this feeling of rekindled hope after surviving a disaster may be the collective emotion of all jiyue auto employees at the moment.

although backed by two giants, geely and baidu, jiyue is by no means a new force born with a silver spoon in its mouth. the initial founding team consisted of only two people, and it was not directly derived from geely like its "cousin" zeekr; it changed its name in the middle, completely demolishing and rebuilding the brand assets it had accumulated; it chose the most difficult and radical technology route, which is still not understood by many people today...

falling on numbers,from january to april this year, the cumulative sales of jiyue 01 were only 1,238 units. it was not until may that it started to see a slight improvement, with sales of 1,001 units, 461 units, and 1,143 units. in august, it finally saw substantial growth, with jiyue announcing its first monthly delivery data, reaching 2,117 units. it is reported that the number of locked orders in august also exceeded 3,000 units.the name of jiyue appeared on various new energy vehicle sales lists for the first time.in a group interview after the press conference, xia yiping said that a large number of users posted orders on his douyin account to urge delivery, and he experienced "happy troubles".

of course, it is difficult to say that jiyue has completely reached a sales inflection point, and the difficulties ahead are still obvious:brand recognition and brand trust issues, it was very difficult to go from 0 to 1, but there is still a long way to gounlike xiaomi and huawei, which are born with traffic, jiyue can only make every step with greater diligence.

"at least now we know very clearly how to do it," xia yiping's confidence comes from the product strength and the team's gradual feeling in marketing.

at this point in time, the launch of the gy07 was like a shot in the arm. at the launch event, robin li and li bin came to the stage, li shufu sent a video blessing, and zeng yuqun became the number one car owner. many people in the car industry said that the launch of the gy07 was much more mature than that of the gy01, and xia yiping himself was obviously more comfortable. in particular, the enthusiastic feedback on the scene after the price was announced seemed to make people have more expectations for the prospects of the gy07.

it was tiktok that pulled ji yue back from the hands of death.

at first, robin li suggested that xia yiping should be the "dong yuhui of the automotive field". he not only listened to it, but also had deeper thoughts and actions. "only if i stand up can i solve more problems. just writing articles, holding press conferences, and doing reviews is not enough." in april this year, china business news reported that jiyue made a drastic change in its marketing team.the previous head of the marketing department was dismissed and xia yiping took over personallythe head of the uo-user operation department on the sales side was also replaced by andy gao from tesla instead of luo gang, the original head of operations.

lei jun started the trend of car company leaders doing douyin, and xia yiping is definitely the most diligent one among his followers. he does a live broadcast every week, a short video every day, and sometimes he can post four or five short videos a day. in a group interview, xia yiping revealed,last month, jiyue released 13,000 videos with over 100 million views.。

diligence is a word that xia yiping always mentions. he has slept only five hours a day for many years. starting late and having a low starting point are not terrible. "if you use one day to do the work that others do in several days, you can always catch up."

on march 25, xia yiping released his first video. from the end of may, he started to update more frequently, almost every day. in june alone, he updated 80 videos. it was also at this time that jiyue's sales began to climb. on september 10, the press conference and media interviews ended after 10 pm, and xia yiping did another hour of live broadcast, which ended after midnight.

xia yiping's video style is not fancy, even a bit hardcore, a typical technical personality. douyin mainly tests product performance and intelligent driving capabilities. especially before the release of jiyue 07, xia yiping preheated the product on douyin for several months. obviously, he realized the importance of marketing volume. in the interview, xia yiping said:"every live broadcast and every video is planned and executed by a professional team."

new car marketing is no longer just a press conference. it requires multiple rounds of information delivery with different focuses, from the first appearance display to the interior release, and then to the performance display item by item. often, the final press conference only leaves the price suspense. the ceo's personal account was used to display almost all the content before the price of the new car, and the second model was extremely catching up with the mainstream marketing trend.

so far, the video with the best data is the "-18 degrees ice test". a jiyue 07 was completely covered with 4-5 mm ice in the severe cold, and the car card key without door handles was still able to break the ice successfully. this test content also appeared at the press conference on september 10. the number of likes for this video is nearly 5,000. in addition, the data of the 20-meter high slope rollover experiment and the collision test related videos are all good.

safety is the lifeline of automotive products. xia yiping mentioned many times at the press conference: safety is the greatest luxury.the real, intuitive and violent test videos directly hit the user's pain points. ji yue used this seemingly clumsy way to demonstrate its product capabilities and achieved results.

intelligent driving is the biggest selling point of jiyuexia yiping has done more live broadcasts on intelligent driving. after the jiyue intelligent driving technology conference in august, the team went to chongqing, which is famous for its 8d magic, to test jiyue's intelligent driving level. earlier in april, xia yiping and robin li did a live broadcast of intelligent driving together, driving 60 kilometers with almost zero takeover. at the conference, xia yiping revealed that he would drive jiyue 07 to do a night live broadcast next to show the product's intelligent driving capabilities.

according to chanmama data, xia yiping has done three live broadcasts since september, and the tumbling challenge has attracted more than 6 million viewers, which is the highest number. the other broadcasts have attracted millions or hundreds of thousands of viewers.

the ceo not only fights himself, but also leads the team to "fight" together.he required all jiyue stores to use douyin and to turn 300 accounts into blue v within a month."other companies might think this is too difficult, but our team worked hard with passion to solve the difficulties and finally achieved the goal." store accounts are more responsible for collecting clues, and user retention is completed during live broadcasts through the built-in components of douyin.

jiyue’s account matrix released 8,000 videos in july and 13,000 in august.it was revealed at the press conference that the number of leads for jiyue has tripled compared to before.although it did not disclose how much specific sales douyin live broadcast brought, everyone at jiyue recognized the efforts of short videos and live broadcasts.

in the past, the jiyue was too "low-key". in 2024, the jiyue 01 received a five-star rating from the automobile evaluation management center of the china automotive technology and research center, and won the first place in the lap time list and the endurance achievement rate list in the summer test of the automotive emperor, but these achievements were not publicized by the jiyue team. in this era, people who only work hard but don't shout will not be rewarded.

tutorials on douyin were the beginning of jiyue’s rebirth.

but building a brand is not something that can be achieved overnight, and douyin is not the only lifeline for car companies.the key to the problem is to go back to the underlying logic - how should brands tell stories?。

in an interview after the launch, xia yiping frankly explained the earlier marketing decision mistakes: when we launched the jiyue 01, we believed that intelligence was the core selling point, so we focused on promoting intelligence and ignored product advantages such as control and space. this time, when launching the jiyue 07, we not only continued to strengthen intelligence, but also focused on many aspects such as control, battery life, and space. although more and more consumers come for smart driving, we must fully demonstrate the strength of the product and penetrate all selling points.

this involves an iron rule of automobile marketing:it is the barrel theory, not the long board theory, that governs automobile marketing.

he xiaopeng was the first to discover this rule. coming from the internet industry, he was used to the long board theory, that as long as an internet product excels in one area, it has a chance to stand out; but making cars is different, "a few boards in the barrel are getting longer and longer, but without the support of other boards, they still can't be sold."

buying a car is the result of weighing various factors.safety and endurance are the foundation, while appearance, cabin comfort and luxury directly hit the preferences of chinese consumers.the increasing number of "refrigerators, color tvs, and large sofas" is enough to illustrate the problem. moreover, jiyue has chosen an angle that is the most difficult to penetrate the user's mind - intelligent driving.

xia yiping frankly said that many consumers who come to the store for consultation do not know what "end-to-end" means, and will not ask about intelligent driving. an automotive analyst said in an interview,consumers are generally more willing to pay for brands, such as tesla and huawei. as for which technical route is adopted, consumers don’t really care. therefore, if jiyue automobile wants to polish its smart driving brand, it should use a universal visual and easy-to-understand way to let consumers understand the advantages of "end-to-end" technology.

even if xia yiping predicted,the earliest time for consumers to form a mindset about smart driving is in the first quarter of next year.. "there won't be many brands that can achieve nationwide intelligent driving by the end of this year, but once this goal is achieved, it will become the strongest core selling point of these brands." tesla's fsd is expected to enter china in the spring of next year. huawei, which has always insisted on laser radar solutions, has also listed "end-to-end" as an important strategic plan in the second half of this year; and domestic "end-to-end" first-tier members such as xiaopeng are constantly iterating their capabilities...

"we judge that in the fourth quarter of this year, there will be several capable brands that will implement intelligent driving across the country." the level of intelligent driving will become a bridgehead for competition in the new energy vehicle industry in the future, and will even gradually eliminate some brands.

the judgment is already clear and direct, but everything still needs time.

so at this press conference, jiyue put the intelligent driving last, and spent more time talking about safety, control, battery and endurance. interestingly, there was a purple egg among the souvenirs on site, which was sprayed with the same bulletproof coating as the battery pack. it is said that the egg will not break if dropped from the tenth floor. after taking it back, doujiao did various heavy impact tests, and the egg was indeed intact.

the jiyue 07 is called the "hexagonal warrior". it has the same vast platform as volvo to provide a high-quality driving experience; it also has a 100-degree battery developed in cooperation with catl, and the battery pack is bulletproof; in extreme environments, even if it rolls down from a high place, the handleless doors can still be opened smoothly; the 3-meter-long wheelbase, the queen's car, and the whole car are equipped with heated and ventilated seats as standard... of course, baidu's apollo intelligent driving is still the main selling point -in 19 years, baidu invested 170 billion in research and development to make the "cousin" of jiyue, luobo kuaipao, reach the level of l4 intelligent driving.。

more importantly, a c-class car that competes with the bmw 5 series has a standard price of only 200,000 yuan.jiyue’s market ambition is huge. he wants to meet the vast majority of consumers’ needs.

of course, it will take time to test whether the jiyue, which has found its marketing rhythm, can really reach the sales inflection point. after all, the new jiyue 07 is in the most competitive and crowded 200,000 yuan price range, where tesla, xiaomi su7, zeekr, and byd are competing fiercely.

but at least, ji yue is on the right track.