Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun "joined" on Douyin. On the night of Double 12, Yu Chengdong opened a Douyin account in a low-key manner, and the certification was displayed. The certification information was "Managing Director of Huawei, Chairman of Terminal BG & Smart Car Solutions BU" and his signature was "Makelt Possible Practices Words by Action." On the afternoon of the 14th, Yu Chengdong posted his first Douyin video, and his number of fans soared from more than 600,000 before posting the content to 1.1 million. The number of fans is still increasing rapidly, and he once again became a hot search topic.
Yu Chengdong took the initiative to catch the traffic
It can be seen how amazing the natural traffic of this head of Huawei’s consumer business is. Yu Chengdong joined Douyin at this time, initially for two reasons:
First, there are too many "Li Gui" accounts on Douyin, and it is difficult to tell whether they are real or fake. Some accounts even have more than 40,000 followers, but the platform lets it go.These accounts posted a large number of short videos about Huawei. Yu Chengdong personally stepped down to set the record straight and avoid too much noisy information from negatively affecting Huawei's business.
At the same time, he used this to complete important puzzle pieces in his personal social media matrix. Yu Chengdong is very active on social platforms, with more than 8 million Weibo fans. In November this year, it also joined the WeChat video account. The first video released was to warm up the Mate70 series. It received more than 100,000 likes alone.
On the other hand, actively cater to traffic and actively seek windows for communication with users.The core reason behind this is that the business led by Yu Chengdong is facing great market competition pressure.
Volkswagen can see from his account authentication information that he is mainly responsible for consumer (terminal) business and smart car business with smartphones as the core. Currently, Huawei mainly includes five business segments: ICT infrastructure business, terminal business, cloud computing business, digital energy business and smart car solution business (car BU). According to past performance, the terminal business is the mainstay of Huawei's revenue.
Huawei's performance report for the first half of 2024 shows that the company achieved sales revenue of 417.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.3%, and a net profit margin of 13.2%. This is equivalent to a net profit of 300 million per day. Its sales revenue and profit growth far exceeded that of the same period in 2023, mainly due to the sales of smartphones and smart cars.
On August 14, market research organization TechInsights released a report that Huawei’s global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2024 increased by 49% year-on-year to 11.6 million units. Among them, Huawei's high-end models (Mate and Pura series) account for the largest proportion, and its wholesale average selling price and wholesale revenue have reached record highs. Huawei's mobile phone market share is the fastest growing among the top five mobile phone manufacturers in terms of market share.
The smart car business, that is, the car BU, has incubated the "four realms". Taking Wenjie as an example, sales in the first half of the year increased by 664% year-on-year, with cumulative sales reaching 181,000 vehicles. Thalys also turned a profit in the first half. With the huge sales of Wenjie, CheBU lost 4 billion last year and has already made 1.69 billion in the first half of this year. In addition, the average price of the Wenjie M9 exceeds 500,000 yuan, and it leads the way in sales and delivery. It firmly ranks as the best-selling luxury car, making "BBA even less popular."
But these two businesses are not completely "stable."For example, in the smart terminal business, smartphones are its core. However, due to well-known reasons, Huawei's mobile phones have been restrained in China and are fighting with friends. There is still great uncertainty in going overseas. It can only find a path to differentiation by relying on its high-end strategy of continuously raising prices and the construction of the Hongmeng ecosystem integrating software and hardware. Although he survived and accelerated his recovery, the ceiling was also visible to the naked eye.
The smart car business is not an easy nut to crack either. Ren Zhengfei's document of "not building cars" is still valid, and Yu Chengdong can only find a way to build ecological cars through the compromise "Hongmeng Zhixing" plan. But a foreseeable result of this model is that in the face of the hot sales of star products such as Xiaomi SU7, Ideal L6 and BYD Legion, the communication and sales pressure from Huawei's "circle of friends" of car companies will all come to bear on Yu Chengdong.
As the only traffic manager in the Huawei system, other than Ren Zhengfei, who can communicate closely with consumers and the industry, Yu Chengdong almost carries the largest exposure demand for terminal business.Looking at September alone, he made three intensive appearances. Some media reporters lamented: "I actually met Yu Chengdong three times in one month."
On September 10, at the Huawei Extraordinary Brand Ceremony held in Shenzhen, Yu Chengdong released the three-fold screen mobile phone - HUAWE IMate
On September 24, at Huawei’s autumn full-scenario press conference, Yu Chengdong led Terminal BG CEO He Gang to introduce a series of blockbuster products including the pure-blood Harmony OS NEXT, Huawei Smart Screen V5 Max 110, and Harmony Smart’s first coupe SUV-Zhijie R7.
Yu Chengdong's intensive appearances not only made the industry marvel at Huawei's super product capabilities, but also showed that the terminal business relies on Yu Chengdong, and Huawei needs traffic.
Entrepreneur IP creation: There is only one Lei Jun
It can also be seen from here that the home court of public opinion has gradually shifted from graphic communities such as Weibo to short video platforms such as video accounts and Douyin. Yu Chengdong is well aware of the power of short videos and live broadcasts. The live broadcast with Dong Yuhui in July this year had a total of more than 17 million viewers, and the single-game sales reached a "small goal" of 100 million.
Yu Chengdong has a deep understanding of this. At the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Auto Show six months ago, he said, "Now is the era of traffic economy, and live streaming is indeed very meaningful from the perspective of bringing and selling goods." But Yu Chengdong has always had concerns. "I was approached internally several years ago, but Huawei is a relatively rigorous company. I thought it was too high-profile, so I never agreed."
With the opening of his Douyin account and his efforts to catch this wave of traffic, the entire industry will also usher in a traffic war.In this context, the script that people are looking forward to is that Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun will "showdown" in Douyin. Two top figures, who has greater influence?
Since this year, Lei Jun has transformed into "the ancient Greek god in charge of traffic." With the label of "Shuangwen Male Protagonist" and his own efforts, his number of Douyin fans has doubled from less than 10 million in March 2024 to more than 30 million today. Some people in the industry commented that even the most successful MCN organizations and the most powerful traffic traders can only create 30 million fans and bloggers. "This is the real tip of the pyramid."
Lei Jun's great success has made it a prominent skill for entrepreneurs to create personal IP. New Oriental Yu Minhong, NIO Li Bin, Great Wall Wei Jianjun, Chery Yin Tongyue, etc. successively left the stage to shoot short videos and start live broadcasts.
Although live broadcast by business leaders or executives is a low-cost and efficient way of communication. The marketing departments of these companies also have to cater to their bosses and carry out a sports-style "star-making" campaign.But after the commotion, everyone will still find that not all entrepreneurs are suitable for this style of play: there is only one Lei Jun, Zhou Hongyi is still one million short of his tens of millions of fans, and he has recently fallen in love with Wu Liufang.
Yu Chengdong’s entry into Douyin’s hot search also revealed a truth:As for the traffic itself - Yu Chengdong, like Lei Jun, both have their own traffic and are top-notch in the industry - whether it is Douyin, Weibo, or video accounts, it is just a traffic pipeline. What entrepreneurs and companies need to do most is to manage business expectations, make good products, and put products and services into the hearts of consumers. It's not that important whether you can activate Douyin or not, or whether you can shoot short videos.
As "an old gun" said, China's top entrepreneurial IPs do not have short video accounts, but they all live in the world of short videos. Li Xiang did not embrace short videos, but still gained a lot through pictures and texts.
This phenomenon has been further verified by Tesla’s recent actions.To a certain extent, Yu Chengdong, Lei Jun, and Zhou Hongyi all have the shadow of Musk.This technology geek is good at using topic settings on social platforms, personal speaking skills and unconventional product attitudes to save a lot of marketing expenses for his companies such as Tesla and SpaceX. At the extreme, Tesla has disbanded its public relations team in 2020. The company has mainly relied on social media for external communication, especially on the X (formerly Twitter) platform that Musk acquired and reshaped.
But the latest news shows that Tesla is showing signs of restarting its media relations work, and its official website has issued recruitment information for "Vehicle Communications Manager" (Vehicle Communications Manager). This may indicate that its external communication strategy may be adjusted. In addition, Musk proposed launching "small-scale" advertising last year. These trends all show that Tesla is trying to sell more cars through a combination of advertising and public relations.
This also releases a new signal:It is inevitable that Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun will compete on Douyin, but the field of competition is no longer limited to traffic, but also the competition of their own product capabilities.The secret to Yu Chengdong's victory lies in four words, which is to make products and services truly "far ahead". The same applies to Lei Jun.