Industry Experts: Product and Marketing Should Effectively Combine the Future of Independent Brands

The gap between self-owned brands and joint ventures seems to be getting bigger and bigger, but we need to pay attention to the attitude changes made by independent brands under this gap, especially the marketing efforts.

From January to May of this year, the production and sales of passenger cars increased by 7.05% and 5.48% year-on-year, respectively, but the market share of self-owned brands dropped by 3.3%, of which, the sales volume of independent brands decreased by 8%, and that of joint ventures increased by 12%.

The gap between the previous independent brands and the joint ventures is all-round, whether it is products, manufacturing processes, or marketing and after-sales services. In the last ten years, independent brands have made great efforts in manufacturing, and the gap with joint venture brands has also narrowed, but in contrast, there is still a considerable gap in marketing. At first, independent brands that almost completely depended on price advantage to participate in competition had improved their quality. However, when the market changed from blowout, hot selling to low growth, and adjustment period, the lack of marketing of independent brands was exposed. Especially when it comes to brand building, it has encountered considerable problems. How to effectively communicate to consumers through the effective combination of products and marketing has become a difficult problem for many independent brands.

Some independent brands began to consider multi-brand strategies, splitting multiple brands in the passenger car market, and more children arguing. However, the effect is very unsatisfactory, and once it is not well-handed, it will be difficult to achieve the expected results by dispersing the limited resources in the hands. At present, Chery and Geely, which have implemented multi-brand strategies in China, are in a relatively embarrassing situation. Only a handful of models in the multi-brand are selling well, and a few models have supported the company's major sales, which is in line with the resources invested by multiple brands. Not in proportion.

Recently, many self-owned brands seem to be aware of this strategy issue, and began to organize their brands in a unified way: Although the Great Wall had previously wanted to implement multiple brands, but now it seems that whether it is independent Haval also began to hesitate; Changan Zeng Separately building high-end brands, but Xu Liuping, chairman of Changan Automobile, stated that it would take a while to understand how Chinese consumers prefer high-end cars, especially their own brands, and market space. Now Changan Automobile put EADO Yidong, a global full-time star model, into the market, and will promote the first SUV product, the CS35, and the middle- and senior-grade Chery Automobile in an orderly manner.

On the tactical level, compared to joint-venture brands, self-owned brands are closer to domestic consumers and consumer groups are younger, and because of the new generation of consumer groups represented by the post-80s, they are in consumption concepts, consumption habits, and past consumer groups. There is a certain difference, especially when it comes to treating brands, with higher requirements, and there is a certain resistance to all kinds of copycat and low-level brand marketing. In the past, self-owned brands mostly focused on product names and product selling points, and they may add customer interests at most.

The current self-owned brand is working hard on brand positioning and branding, and adds emotional resonance and emotional communication to narrow the psychological distance with the new generation of consumers. The most obvious examples are celebrity endorsements and cultural marketing that have been used by joint venture brands in the past. They have now become common marketing tools for domestic self-owned brands, such as the combination of Wu Qilong's creative endorsement, the creative release of drama, and even the combination of opera classical music. Marketing promotion methods such as "City Music Collection", micro-blog interaction and community marketing are becoming the focus of domestic self-owned brand marketing in the near future.

This may not be simply a hard and wide investment, but a variety of means.

In fact, this is also a key step for domestic independent brands to get rid of the current embarrassing situation. After getting rid of the past image of the past, they must also get rid of the vestige of the copycat in brand marketing and draw closer to the joint venture brand in the marketing of the brand and model. In order to catch up with the joint venture brand on the model, it can complete the sale of the self-redemption.