A piece from Kevin Freedman last week led me to that conclusion. He wrote that one in three cars at the Paris Motor Show is now Chinese. One in three!
They now command 10.7% of the European market. It took the Japanese decades to get there. The Chinese got there in about three years!
And they turned every marketing rule we learned on its head:
Old rule: Distribution / Image / Trust / Market Share
New rule: Price / Speed / Distribution / Market Share / Maybe Image Later
With the old rule, I spent 30 years learning how to write love letters.
That’s what advertising was.
You didn’t sell a car. You seduced. You told her you would make her smart like VW. Successful like BMW. You spent 20 years writing letters. Poems. Films shot in Iceland. And one day, she married you. She bought the car.
It took time. But it lasted.
Last week I realized: She doesn’t want love letters anymore. She wants a one-night stand.
Cheap. Fast. No commitment.
Chinese cars are the one-night stand.
They don’t write you a letter. They don’t tell you who you’ll become.
BYD pulls up at 11pm and says: “I’m electric. Full leather. $15,000 cheaper than the guy you married. Let’s go.” No heritage. No Vorsprung durch Technik. No history. No 20 years of brand building. No brand personality. And you go, because it’s easy. Because your husband, Volkswagen, has become boring and expensive. Market share without image. Sex without love. It works.
In three years, 10.7% of Europeans said yes to the one-night stand.
Keeta is another one-night stand.
Deliveroo spent 10 years writing love letters. “Your neighborhood. Your joy.”
Keeta arrives and says: “I don’t care about your joy. I care about your wallet: Minus 30%. Free delivery in 20 minutes.”
No tone of voice. No connection. No love.
Just price. Just now. Green jackets everywhere.
And it’s not just cars and delivery. It’s the whole economy.
Shein: 7,000 new dresses a day whispering “I’m $4, buy me and throw me away tomorrow.” Biggest fashion brand in the world. No one loves her. Everyone sleeps with her.
We are still in the bedroom writing poetry with a fountain pen. The consumer is already in the Uber on the way home.
Our rule was noble: Image first, then market share. Love first, then marriage.
New rule: Market share first, image maybe never. Sex first, love maybe never.
I’m an old romantic. I still believe BYD will need to write a love letter one day. And Keeta and Shein will need to be more than cheap. BYD is facing 20 other Chinese brands built on the same model.
Without love letters, it will be a race to the bottom with a guaranteed disaster… In a dog-eat-dog situation, someone writing love letters, even for a one-night stand, may become critical. As to the European carmakers, unless you manage to put a chastity belt on the Chinese cars through EU legislation and tariffs, perhaps it is about time to send flowers on top of love letters or go extinct. Start by hitting back with innovative design instead of revisiting the past like Renault and Citroen lately!
But I spent the week watching Kevin’s numbers.
Right now, love letters don’t pay the rent. One-night stands do. But love will prevail as always!
#makeadvertisinggreatagain
