Evergrande’s electric car unit dazzles investors with flashy ad campaigns. But the quality of the products will count eventually
- Shares of the newly renamed China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group are soaring on the back of an intense marketing campaign that includes bombarding TVs with frequent, short ads
- Such marketing gimmicks, which seem to put style before substance, may not be enough in the long run to keep investors’ in thrall, warns analyst
When it comes to winning investors’ confidence, sometimes it’s not the product or brand that seems to matter so much as how aggressively you market it.
The rebranding has been backed by a strong advertising campaign designed to hammer home the shift from hospital and care homes to electric cars, and to convince the public that the name Evergrande – more commonly associated with home building – is now a serious contender in China’s field of Tesla challengers.
Earlier in August it launched six electric cars, under its Hengchi brand, along with an unusually intense television marketing campaign. Seven different versions of a 30-second advertisement are being beamed into living rooms across mainland China and Hong Kong dozens of times a day, each providing a brief snapshot of the Hengchi 1-6 models.
The ads, which all close with the slogan “Last forever and travel the world” – a loose translation of Hengchi – have been aired on a loop every half an hour on major TV channels like TVB Jade, Hong Kong’s free-to-air channel with the largest viewership in the city, and Dragon Television, a state-run channel in Shanghai.
“Evergrande wanted everyone to know that the company has gone all-in and that it is a serious player in this game,” said Yale Zhang, head of Shanghai-based consultancy Automotive Foresight.
The short, flashy ads are arguably lacking in substance and give very little away about the cars – pricing and availability are among the missing details.