It doesn't smell good after a makeover. How did Xin Baojun find "the courage of the year"?

At the beginning of 20 19, Baojun released a brand-new logo-diamond logo, which was called "opening a new era" in the official announcement. Since then, Baojun brand has officially broken away from "New Baojun" and shouldered Baojun's rising sub-brand. Similarly, WEY is to Harvard, and Kling is to Geely.

However, after more than a year's market test, it seems that Xinbaojun's road has not gone smoothly. Hua dan RS-5, a master of heavy boxing, struggles at the level of "thousands of units" almost every month; The RS-3 upgraded from 5 10 only broke the 10,000-unit mark at 20 19 and 12. On the contrary, the more functional crossover model RM-5 has sold nearly 1 10,000 vehicles in recent months. But generally speaking, although it is not easy to build a new brand overnight, there are still many problems to be solved at least compared with the brilliance of previous models such as Baojun 5 10 and Baojun 730.

Bao Jun's Courage of the Year

If we have to seal an "explosion-proof professional household" for today's China automobile market, then Baojun brand will do its part.

After the establishment of the brand, every model it launched can be "fire" for a period of time. Baojun 5 10 even pulled Haval H6, the champion of SUV sales for many years, off the altar. In addition, Baojun 3 10 once reached 3 10000 vehicles, ranking sixth in the automobile sales list. In July of 30 years, Baojun sold more than 50,000 vehicles. Baojun 560 has also entered the top five of SUV sales list for many times.

The brilliant achievements of these Baojun are obvious to all. In 20 18, the cumulative sales volume of Baojun brand reached 879,000 vehicles, just one step away from entering the "million club". At that time, Baojun was just a narrow passenger car brand just separated from Wuling. To say how much brand power it has, at most, it has excellent Wuling quality as an endorsement, and more depends on its outstanding cost performance and configuration advantages.

At that time, Baojun completely got rid of the inherent impression of Wuling brand commercial vehicles, just in time for the outbreak of domestic SUV models.

However, when the Baojun brand is booming, the crisis also follows. Bao Jun, who was born in Anle, chose a route to completely release the product layout after eating the bonus that broke out in the SUV market. After the release of Baojun 530, Baojun 5 10 and 560 came out soon, and because of the high price overlap with 530 and the slight difference in product strength, consumers did not buy it, and Baojun 560 left immediately. However, at that time, Baojun 5 10 took the lead in pulling the price of small SUVs to the range of 50,000 yuan and became a hot star.

At this time, the production of 560 was stopped, which may be regarded as a loss of sesame seeds and watermelon for Baojun.

However, the same "internal friction" has formed a greater hidden danger on Baojun's MPV model. The price range of Baojun 360 is 568-808,000; The price range of Baojun 730 is 6.08- 108800. Obviously, the prices of these two cars overlap by more than 70%. Consumers thought about it, chose the choice, and finally gave up the choice and switched to other brands such as BYD Song MAX. This can be seen from the high sales volume of Song MAX at the beginning, and it is hard to deny that they robbed users of Baojun 360 and 730 in the whirlpool of "internal friction".

At this time, Baojun also realized the hidden dangers caused by serious internal friction, so at the beginning of 20 19, we saw the brand-new Baojun of "Diamond Label".

Why did Xin Baojun suddenly stop "exploding"?

In fact, judging from the brand discovery route, Baojun continued to follow the people-friendly route, and the task of brand promotion was handed over to Xinbaojun. This way is a more correct way that other car companies have verified. Success is another matter, but at least it gives the brand some new ideas.

The renamed new Baojun looks confident. Four new cars, RS-5, RC-6, RM-5 and RS-3, are on the market one after another. All the new models adopt brand-new R series platform and brand-new internal and external design, which really greatly enhances the sense of grade and value and completely gets rid of the shadow of the old Baojun.

In fact, the new Baojun's breakthrough in design won the hearts of the people. In my opinion, except for the slightly over-designed tail shape of RM-5, the improvement of the appearance and interior of other models can be described as subversive. Coincidentally, the arrival of Xinbaojun coincides with the collective rise of domestic brands. With the popularity of Changan CS75PLUS and Geely Yue Bin, BYD has returned to the mainstream by "Longyan", and almost all domestic brands have "made chicken blood" for their own design departments. Yan value, that is, justice, has also been well confirmed in these cars. Good-looking and good-selling also make this part of the independent car companies that put design and development in an important position taste the sweetness.

However, it is hard to imagine that Baojun, who once left Changan and BYD behind, slowly fell behind the First Group under the new Baojun and new image that received rave reviews.

According to statistics, the sales volume of the whole Baojun brand in 20 19 dropped from nearly one million vehicles in 18 to 604,000 vehicles. In fact, the reason is very simple. For China car companies, it may not be difficult to be a low-end market, and the technical threshold is not high. Consumers only require stable quality and affordable prices. However, once it enters the high-end market, on the one hand, it improves the hard requirements such as product strength, on the other hand, it will face stronger and broader competition.

Let's make a simple analogy: How competitive is Xinbaojun RS-5 with a guide price of 9.78-135,800 yuan in the face of Haval H6, Geely Job and even "rookie" Jetta VS5?

To put it bluntly, the new Baojun is really getting higher and higher on the basis of Baojun. However, it has only reached the basic height of first-line brands such as Haval, Geely and Changan, and there is still a big gap with WEY, Link and even Changan CS75PLUS.

And such a gap makes a new brand fall into the encirclement of mature brands.

Jump out? hopeful

In the 20 19 Spring Festival testimonial letter, Shenyang, general manager of SAIC-GM-Wuling, admitted: "Baojun brand has never found a suitable user group and has become a parasitic brand of Wuling brand, resulting in unclear overlap between the two brands."

In fact, this sentence is the crux of Baojun and Xinbaojun.

When it comes to specific products, the reason why Xinbaojun failed to open the situation is that, apart from high internal consumption and strong external competition, it still failed to give a "new" explosion point when Xinbaojun arrived.

On the other hand, Chang' an, before CS75PLUS, can be said to have been tepid, can not say no and can not say yes. However, the successful listing of CS75PLUS has given this brand a brand-new vitality and look, not only in appearance and modeling, but more importantly, the new technology of "Blue Whale" engine with high efficiency and fuel economy. So is Chery. The maximum effective thermal efficiency of the new 1.6TGDI engine is as high as 4 1%, and the data even exceeds that of Toyota. Chery, with advanced technology, also pushed the top edition to Tiggo 8 with the mark of10.5 million, and pushed it to the "ten thousand clubs" with monthly sales.

These examples also show that China's automobile consumption has changed from a "cost-effective" market to a "quality-price ratio" market. Consumers need not only cheap and easy to use, but also powerful technology to support product quality. To achieve a real breakthrough and make the "new" more brilliant, Xinbaojun may start with power technology or implement it from power matching. At least in terms of product performance, there must be something really available, rather than unilaterally saying "new platform".

In addition, Xinbaojun's marketing direction is to focus on car networking and intelligent interaction. This can be done, but you must not mention the primary position of product strength display. The Internet of Vehicles and intelligent interaction are highly reproducible in the current domestic automobile market, and even the intelligent driver assistance system is almost standard at 654.38+ 10,000. Then it may not be a good prescription to regard this technology configuration as the primary competitiveness.

Finally, the first impression of Baojun brand to consumers is also the reason why consumers are willing to pay the bill because of its high cost performance. Since the new Baojun did not choose the "Haval -—WEY" model, but used the name of Baojun, then perhaps a better way is to use its cost performance. Although this is not easy, it will also have an impact on Baojun's own brand products, but in fact, SUV products under this brand, including Baojun 5 10, have been seriously declining. Perhaps a bold brand adjustment can really get rid of the current "high and low" curse.

Conclusion: the road to brand is not easy, and the courage of Xinbaojun not to eat his old money is worthy of praise. However, there are many roads to the top, and the consumer market has never been "Huashan Road". Thinking about change may be more effective than innovation.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.