What BYD gets that everyone else has forgotten
Marketing still matters, and this is one car brand acting like it
ON AUG 5, I found myself at the launch of the BYD Atto 2 in Zouk, of all places. It wouldn’t have been the first time I was the least hip person in a room, but Atto 2’s debut took me back a couple of decades – not because Zouk was my old haunt (my youth was misspent elsewhere), but because it reminded me of a time when car companies knew how to make a scene.
Launches used to involve smoke machines, fun locations and, occasionally, exotic guests. Performance Motors once unveiled a BMW 3 Series at East Coast Park with a full-sized sand sculpture of the car that was slightly less memorable than the woman I chatted up there, who had turned up with a small python around her shoulders.
Mercedes-Benz floated a car down the Singapore River, while guests sipped bubbly and watched from the Asian Civilisations Museum. It was a memorable setting, although ironically, I now struggle to recall which model was launched there.
Call it profit pressure or a way to cope with runaway costs, but these days, a car launch is usually a perfunctory affair in the showroom, where someone whips a cloth off the new wheels to tepid applause, before everyone helps themselves to samosas and breaded shrimp. Coffee or tea is served – it can be hard to tell which.
BYD, by contrast, still puts on a show. More than 700 people thronged the Zouk event, some for the Atto 2, and others – let’s face it – for the open bar. Many came with a remarkable ability to contort themselves into influencer poses that would impress a chiropractor. All this for an entry-level model whose prospects aren’t even all that bright in today’s world of eye-watering Certificate of Entitlement premiums.
Yet, BYD’s actions merely match its ambition. It took the top sales spot here last year, and its determination to hang on to that is much along the lines of Charlton Heston’s attitude towards his favourite rifle. BYD sells more than twice as many cars as all the other Chinese brands put together, and is well on track to meet its goal to sell 10,000 cars here this year, with no signs of letting up.
Competitors throw their hands up at all this, but the most galling thing about BYD’s approach is that it is working. Buyers now either anchor their shopping list to what BYD has to offer, or think of switching to an electric vehicle (EV) because they see BYDs all around them in the first place – here, familiarity breeds the opposite of contempt.
Of course, it helps that BYD’s cars are quiet, plush and well-equipped. But then, so are many EVs from China. Some are, dare I say it, better than BYDs.
Yet, what BYD really understands is that buyers here don’t want EVs, per se. They care far more about value for money and social acceptance (meaning the approbation of friends and family). The Chinese have mastered the former, but only BYD has cracked the latter. Rivals gripe about lacking BYD’s marketing war chest, but they would do better to emulate than lament.
In doing what car companies used to do all the time anyway, BYD is demonstrating that car launches from new brands need to be more old-fashioned.
