NIE 2024 | CoolCard Group CEO Wu Ruijin: Responding to Inflation with Transformation, the Path for Platform Enterprises

Here are the key points of Wu Ruijin's speech:

Wu Ruijin pointed out that the automotive industry has now entered a period of stable development, with low profits, rapid research and development, and product competition becoming a consensus. Currently, the domestic new car research and development cycle has been shortened to 12 to 18 months. In the first half of 2024 alone, more than 200 new cars were launched on the domestic market, corresponding to increasingly fierce price competition. According to statistics, the average promotional margin for new energy vehicles is currently 11.4%, while for fuel vehicles it is as high as 18.6%, which has directly led to the common phenomenon of selling cars not making money. In the first half alone, the proportion of car dealers incurring losses reached 50.8%.

Wu Ruijin further stated that with the increase in available vehicle models, declining consumer power, and the proliferation of information, consumers' car purchase decision-making cycles have become longer; coupled with the coexistence of multiple sales models from traditional 4S stores to direct sales and agency models, it is no longer applicable for traditional manufacturers to focus on brands and 4S stores to focus on sales. The industry has entered a new era of 'open models' and 'open ecosystems', and automakers need and are introducing more partners to build a complete marketing ecosystem.

Wu Ruijin pointed out that as a service-oriented platform enterprise, if it wants to continue surviving today, the first thing it must do is keep up with environmental changes, meet customer needs, and improve organizational efficiency. In the highly competitive environment, it must also make customers feel that 'things are worth more', and technology is the primary driving force for providing 'new value'.

Wu Ruijin said that based on past successful experiences, Coolcard has accumulated millions of car transaction data and a decade of relevant knowledge bases, and combined with relevant industry methodologies (including brand marketing, scenario services, store services, matchmaking transactions, user recall) and intelligent technologies (including big data mining, shared large models, industry vertical models, digital simulation), it has created a series of implementable applications including digital humans, live streaming robots, creative imitation apps, and industry short video generators.

Through the 'human + AI' model, Coolcard can truly achieve personalized scale, thereby reducing costs, improving efficiency, enhancing content quality and scale influence, and breaking through the previous bottlenecks of human resources in space, time, and ability.

In addition, Wu Ruijin believes that the new architecture built based on large models and industry models plays an important role in the innovation and breakthrough of the 'people, goods, and places' in the automotive field. Coolcard will help automotive enterprises quickly accumulate brand digital assets based on this architecture, thereby delivering exposure efficiency and sales conversion higher than the industry average.

Wu Ruijin believes that the current overseas expansion of Chinese automakers is the 'going west' of contemporary enterprises. Enterprises need to deal with the cognitive differences between overseas markets and brands and products: different usage habits, climates, lifestyles, market maturity, etc. around the world, different user perceptions of cars compared to China; the difference between new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles is not only in the type of engine drive but also in driving experience, car-machine interaction, etc., which are significantly different. Secondly, enterprises going overseas need to face cross-category system market competition: Chinese new energy vehicles need to compete with globally renowned brands and other countries' new energy vehicle enterprises in overseas markets; in addition, automakers need to solve time efficiency issues: Chinese cars have a shorter time to go global and there are many scenarios that need improvement, such as service networks and business resources; although Chinese new energy vehicles have some leading advantages, competition between similar and cross-industry products is fierce, product and technology iteration speed is faster, and time advantages are limited; under the general trend of the internet, different operation methods in limited time can easily lead to irreversible results, entering first does not mean leading, product leadership does not mean sales leadership.

Wu Ruijin believes that in the face of an overseas path that combines opportunities and challenges, the importance of marketing first for Chinese automakers cannot be ignored. To achieve marketing 'localization' and 'walk into' the market, through rapid coverage, differentiated experiences, and cultivating high brand awareness and acceptance among local consumers.

In response, Wu Ruijin pointed out that while platform enterprises give full play to their resource advantages, they should start with marketing, build a complete system with partners, and help Chinese automakers build international brand influence. They should enhance product exposure through diverse scenarios, encourage more consumers to experience product power, and achieve transactions through full-scenario localization. At the same time, form brand word-of-mouth fission through continuous sharing and dissemination in local markets, and achieve a closed-loop acceleration of Chinese brand localization.

At the end of the speech, Wu Ruijin once again emphasized that the dividends of the times, industry transformation, and organizational efficiency are three essential elements for enterprises to survive and develop successfully. In the current environment, if enterprises want to break through cycles and stand out, they must devote more energy to transformation and improving efficiency.