"The Great Wall Cannon" is all over the internet, Zhou Hongyi changed his car, who is the king of traffic in the automotive industry?

Xiaomi's car may not have expected that just as it was being taken off by its boss Lei Jun, it was suddenly "fired" by a little girl.

Recently, the TikTok blogger "Dalilun loves to eat vegetables" (hereinafter referred to as "Dalilun") with the magical phrase "Great Wall~Cannon~", not only gained 3.01 million followers in 30 days, but also successfully ignited the pickup truck brand Great Wall Cannon under the Great Wall Motors, causing the stock price of Great Wall to soar by 18 billion yuan.

The content war in the automotive industry is sometimes so plain and unadorned. From Lei Jun's "cool male lead" to Great Wall Motors' "Great Wall Cannon," and most recently Zhou Hongyi's car sales recruitment campaign, each one is full of traffic and topics.

How did the "Great Wall Cannon" take off with a single word from "Daliren"? What is the current situation of the traffic war in the automotive industry? By observing the recent marketing actions and brand official accounts of major automotive brands, we may be able to answer the above questions.

Dali Lun's "Great Wall Cannon" caused the stock price of Great Wall to soar by 18 billion yuan.

On March 17th, "Dali Lun" was riding a small electric scooter and passed by a pickup truck. Suddenly, he stopped and said, "Hey! This is the car. Wow, my dream car!"

On one side is the petite and lovely "Dali Lun," and on the other side is the fierce-looking, taller pickup truck. The extreme contrast, combined with Dali Lun's deep and powerful "Great Wall~Cannon~," ultimately created a wonderful chemical reaction.

But at the beginning, this video didn't go viral until April 9th, when the gears of fate began to turn.

First, "Great Wall Cannon" posted a video mentioning "@DaliLun": "Pick any cannon you like!" and showcased multiple pickup trucks. The next day, "@DaliLun" responded from afar: "Can we discuss the advertising fee? I've already prepared the bank card overnight." "Great Wall Cannon" quickly replied in the comments: "Your 300,000 dream car (Shanhai Cannon) is ready!"

This back and forth has made netizens realize that "Great Wall Cannon" may really be giving "Dalen" a customized pickup truck worth 300,000 yuan.

On April 15, the story reached its climax, with "Great Wall Cannon" once again posting a video mentioning "Dalen," stating that a customized three-piece set of "Dalen Cannon" has been prepared for her, and she can pick it up at any time.

With envy and curiosity, a large number of netizens eagerly gathered to find out who "Dalen" is and why she is so lucky. According to the latest Douyin data, the original video posted by "Dalen" on Great Wall Cannon saw a net increase of nearly 3 million interactions in a single day on April 15.

Unexpected stories always attract extra attention, and the luck of "Daliren making a car with one sentence" has aroused the interest of netizens.

Hands behind, belly forward, full of breath, loud voice, accompanied by the "Great Wall Cannon March", and then shout "Lamborghini~" "Tom Ford~" "Dilraba~" facing the sky... Recently, imitating "Daliren" to make a wish has become one of the most popular content online.

Almost at the same time as the "Great Wall Cannon" exploded, official accounts such as "Chongqing Communist Youth League," "North Sea Fleet," and "CCTV Military" also began to follow suit and brought the "Great Wall Cannon March" to a height that did not originally belong to it.

The background music remains the same, but the video shows tanks, artillery, missiles, warships, and other heavy weaponry. The contrast between the little girl and the large cannon, as well as the contrast between internet memes and heavy weaponry, further ignited the enthusiasm of netizens.

According to the latest Douyin data, the cumulative number of views for the past half month for hashtags such as #GreatWallCannon#, #DaluLunGreatWallCannonRelocation#, and #GreatWallCannonMemeStillNeedsToBeHardcoreVersion# has exceeded 4 billion.

During this period, the lucky story of "Great Wall Cannon" and "DaluLun" has evolved from official accounts to a large number of netizens' imitations, with interesting stories, extreme contrasts, and low-cost replicas, all contributing to the birth of another internet meme.

In this process, "Great Wall Cannon" has become one of the biggest winners, not only gaining a lot of exposure and favorable impressions from netizens, but also experiencing a continuous four-day surge in the stock price of Great Wall Motors from April 8th to April 11th. Based on the total share capital of Great Wall Motors of 8.544 billion, the market value increased by over 18 billion yuan.

Recently, the delivery of "DaluLun" has brought a new wave of traffic to the Great Wall Cannon. Not only the official account of Great Wall Cannon, but many netizens have also started to track and report on it.

A netizen commented: "The river flows east for thirty years, and then it flows west for thirty years. A few days ago, Wei Jianjun, the chairman of Great Wall Motors, made the first Douyin review of Xiaomi SU7 to gain attention. Now the situation has probably reversed."

From the "competition" with Zhou Hongyi to the layout of Matrix Number, how do automotive brands leverage new media?

The interaction between "Great Wall Cannon" and "Dali Lun" represents an important change in the automotive industry: the new generation of car companies are exploring new ways of marketing through new media.

Recently, due to the car-selling call initiated by Zhou Hongyi, the official accounts of automotive brands have started a "competition for attention". The official accounts of major automotive brands have shown astonishing response speed, unwilling to miss any hot topics.

On April 18th, Zhou Hongyi released a video stating that he was planning to sell his Maybach and switch to a domestically produced new energy intelligent connected vehicle. He also mentioned that if domestic car manufacturers could provide a test drive vehicle, he would "not refuse".

This caused a great stir. Not only did automotive bigwigs such as Li Bin and Yu Chengdong extend their greetings, but official accounts of automotive brands such as "Xiaopeng Motors" and "Avita" also posted to express that they had already brought cars to the 360 building and welcomed Zhou Hongyi to experience them.

Because Zhou Hongyi refused Wuling Motors with the reason "the space is too small," "Wuling Motors" specifically forwarded a video of Wuling Motors overloading to refute and stated that "Wuling Hongguang is already on the way to 360 headquarters."

As the popularity of the car selling call-to-action continues to rise, the square below the 360 building has even become a small car exhibition. Some netizens have found that the square is now filled with cars from more than a dozen different brands, waiting for Zhou Hongyi's "favor".

In addition to response speed, the online presence of car brand official accounts is also getting better and better, and they are increasingly able to tap into current hot topics and produce more internet-savvy content.

NIO has launched a program for car owners' dialogue, which has now been updated to the 43rd issue; Tesla has created a video collection called "Tesla Time," hoping to leverage the personal charm of CEO Musk; Lantu has produced micro-variety shows and micro-movies; Wuling has initiated the "Challenge to Sell Cars in 100 Cities" activity... With the rise of live streaming, live car sales, live test drives, and live product launches have also become standard for major car companies.

As a complex industrial product, cars have almost endless topics to discuss. How to leverage appropriate content to stimulate topics with traffic and discussion has also become a research topic for car brands.

According to "Marketing News", after the technical release conference at the end of last year, Xiaomi Motors conducted an analysis of users' hot discussion points in cooperation with Weibo, predicting possible hot topics.

On the day of the press conference on March 28th, Xiaomi Motors also quickly adjusted the hot topic direction based on real-time tracking of hot discussions on Weibo. In the end, with keen user insights and strong execution, Xiaomi Motors' press conference became one of the most influential car press conferences in the industry.

Analyzing the layout of major automobile brands on various platforms, it can be found that their layout on various platforms has become more mature.

The "2024 New Media Matrix Research Report for Car Companies" released by XINBANG shows that based on the audience characteristics and marketing advantages of different platforms, automobile brands are forming different platform combinations.

On Weibo, most official accounts of car brands are quite active, and the content they post is quite diverse. In addition to interacting with their bosses and automotive bloggers, they also undertake multiple tasks such as crisis public relations.

On Xiaohongshu, some car brand official accounts have customized their content presentation in order to reach more female users. According to the Newrank's Xiaohongshu data tool Xinhong statistics, the proportion of female fans of Tesla, Xiaomi, and other car brand official accounts is over 60%. This is undoubtedly a breakthrough for the predominantly male car consumer market.

On Bilibili, some car brand official accounts hope to reach more young users. Among them, Avita has specially designed a two-dimensional avatar and changed its account introduction to the somewhat adolescent "My fate is determined by me, not by the heavens." Great Wall Motors, with labels such as tough and pickup, has started to dance to otaku music on its official account.

With the layout of multiple platforms, the matrix accounts of car brands have become larger.

The official brand account and the founder's IP account can serve as the traffic base and vanguard for car brands, but car brands also need matrix accounts to deal with the complexity and immediacy of social media. The "2024 New Media Matrix Research Report for Auto Companies" shows that matrix marketing is becoming the main way for car brands to break through traffic, with an average of over 1700 accounts per single brand.

When broken down, the automotive matrix accounts can be divided into three categories: executive matrix, dealer/agent matrix, and employee matrix.

Currently, most automotive brands have already equipped dealer/agent matrix, while a few brands have started to explore executive matrix and employee matrix.

The NewRank editorial team has observed that the executive teams of automotive brands such as Avita, Xpeng, Leapmotor, and Xiaomi have already established personal social media accounts on platforms such as Douyin and Weibo, and have begun operating them.

The most popular is the Xiaomi executive team that joined Douyin. Recently, "enthusiastic" netizens have been giving advice in the comments section of Xiaomi executives. Regarding Wang Teng, the general manager of the Redmi brand, a netizen said, "I think Wang Teng has the demeanor of an emperor and can definitely go solo." As for Lu Weibing, the president of Xiaomi, a netizen said, "President Lu, honestly, are you willing to always be overshadowed by CEO Lei?"

Originally a joke among netizens, Wang Teng's response immediately sparked the enthusiasm of netizens, eventually propelling #Xiaomi team collectively joining Douyin# to the top of the Douyin topic list.

Beyond the executive matrix, automotive brands such as Jike and Jiyue have also explored the employee matrix. Searching for the keyword "Jiyue" on Xiaohongshu will yield a large number of Jiyue employee accounts wearing uniform, most of which have fewer than a hundred followers, but still provide some degree of information about Jiyue. In the future, with the continuous exploration of automotive brands, there may also be high-quality employee accounts similar to "Crazy Subordinates."

It is understood that many car brands have begun to use a multi-platform new media content asset management system represented by Matrix Tong, which facilitates efficient management of matrix accounts, statistical account data, and improves operational efficiency, turning the text, images, and videos deposited on social accounts into true corporate content assets.

Unlike traditional car companies, the competition for the new generation of car companies is a super competition involving technology, marketing, content, traffic, founders, and other dimensions. Car brands not only have to compete on quality and price, but also need to tell stories, play with traffic, and manage accounts.

It is important to note that the marketing exploration of car brands is not always successful. As mentioned in the article "Lei Jun gained over 4.5 million followers in 30 days, automotive industry leaders are teaming up to become internet celebrities," although Wei Jianjun, Zhang Yong, Li Shufu, Li Bin, Yin Tongyue and other automotive bosses have all started to broadcast and learn to become internet celebrities, only the "top stream" Lei Jun has brought a large amount of traffic to Xiaomi's car.

Due to sitting cross-legged during live broadcasts and insulting netizens on Weibo, Zhang Yong has been "attacked" by some netizens; although many official accounts of car brands have started to experiment with content, the content of most official accounts is still in the traditional TVC advertising style.

Geely Holding Group President and CEO of Jikexing Intelligent Technology, An Conghui, once said, "By 2024, the entire industry will definitely undergo significant changes. The elimination round has already begun, possibly earlier than expected by everyone."

From turning the car show into a "personal press conference" by Lei Jun, to becoming the "oldest car model" by Zhou Hongyi, the just-opened Beijing Auto Show seems to be a signal, marking the official start of the traffic battle in the automotive industry.

As for who will have the last laugh? Let's wait and see.