Author: Wei Lan
Source: Zhenghe Island
Looking back at history, we can find that the rise of any country has accompanied the popularity of the country's products and brands to the world:
Tea, silk, porcelain, spices, etc. in China's Ming and Qing dynasties became scarce goods sought after abroad, and according to scholars' estimates, the silver flowing into China at that time accounted for more than half of the world's silver;
While the United States has become the world hegemon, Coca-Cola and Starbucks have transmitted the cultural concept of the United States to the world, and Ford and General Motors have also become powerful business cards representing the American manufacturing industry.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of Japan was accompanied by the rise of Brands such as Sony, Panasonic, and Toyota, and Japanese anime also became popular all over the world.
Time passed, the economy translocated, and the same situation once again came to China.
From 1978, China's total economic output was only 6.5% of that of the United States, and by 2020, China's total economic output reached 73% of that of the United States.
Today's China is closer, more confident and capable of achieving the goal of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation than at any time in history.
But while the economy is growing rapidly, we have ignored the huge efforts behind it. After more than 40 years of development, China has become one of the countries with the most complete industrial manufacturing categories in the world, but it is undeniable that in the division of labor of the smile curve, most of China's enterprises are still in the assembly and manufacturing links with low added value at the bottom of the smile curve, and the high profits at both ends of the smile curve are easily earned by foreign companies through brands, patented technologies, etc.
Overcoming the card neck technology and creating a high-end Chinese brand that matches the goal of realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has become an urgent problem to be solved in front of the times and all Chinese enterprises.
How to create a high-end brand in China? After studying the cases of excellent enterprises at home and abroad, it is not difficult to find the common quality of excellent enterprises.
01, the pursuit of the ultimate productism
1. Ultimate quality
The basis of productism is the ultimate in product quality.
For the competition of enterprises, there are generally four forms - product competition, market competition, management competition and human competition.
But no matter what form of competition, it will eventually return to the product itself. Without the product, all competition is passive water, even if it is a temporary wave, it will fade with the tide and cease to exist.
Taking the hot pot industry as an example, the development path of the general hot pot chain brand: to ensure the relative stability of ingredients and reduce costs through standardization, so as to achieve scale expansion.
On the basis of standardization, each hot pot brand is "eight immortals crossing the sea, each showing its magic" in the market breakthrough.
For example, Haidilao seizes the minds of consumers through the ultimate service; the low price and spices of sipping and feeding win the market response; Banu hot pot relies on product quality to gain the favor of the public...
The ultimate service and cheap price drive offline traffic to achieve sales conversion, but also to some extent deviate from the essence of catering - taste.
Therefore, in 2021, a large number of Haidilao stores were shut down, and the ultimate service could not solve this situation; sipping and feeding also went up in the process of transformation of high-end, the price went up, the product and taste did not change at all, and even the original signature sesame sauce also declined in taste, a large number of consumers were lost, thus the transformation failed, and 200 stores were closed in one go in August.
Only Banu hot pot has achieved contrarian growth in 2021, and the reason for this is that banu hot pot productism is supported behind it, product-oriented, and more energy is spent on creating high-quality ingredients, pot bottoms and environments, setting a new benchmark for the hot pot industry.
A very typical example: in the hot pot industry generally in order to reduce the cost of the use of alkali water hair hair belly, Banu hot pot launched a challenge, conquered the hair belly production preservation technology, became the first domestic use of "papain tender" technology of hot pot enterprises, so that the hair belly becomes a really healthy hot pot ingredients, Banu hot pot also won the "first pot of hairy mushroom soup" reputation.
2. Productism is not only good quality, but also insight into user needs
There is a saying in the "Xunzi Discussion Soldiers": "When you go up to heaven, you get advantages in the lower place, watch the changes of the enemy, and then send them first, and the key techniques for using soldiers are also." ”
If the principle is placed on productism, it means that the company adheres to productism, not only to pursue the quality of products, but also to gain insight into the needs of users.
Taking Nokia as an example, before the advent of smart phones, Nokia was a riding existence, and at its peak, Nokia's share of the global mobile phone market was as high as 72.8%.
So why did Nokia, which had such a glorious period, eventually go into decline?
Product quality is not good? This may be a joke, but Nokia once won the title of "can smash walnuts".
Being able to smash walnuts proves Nokia's ultimate quality, but from a product point of view, with the promotion and popularization of smart phones, is a Nokia that can smash walnuts really needed by the public?
The insight of productism into user needs is actually to change the relationship between "people" and "goods": from "people looking for goods" to "goods looking for people" - people as the center, mining user needs on the basis of user portraits, and guiding and attracting users to buy with rich and flexible scenarios.
The early typical case of "finding people for goods" was Procter & Gamble, in the field of shampoo, P&G carried out multi-brand market segmentation strategies according to different consumer needs. It has successively launched brands such as Piaorou, Haifeisi, Sassoon and Pantene, positioning them as "hair care experts" and promoting the functions of "dandruff removal, suppleness, nutrition and moisturizing" respectively.
For example, the personality of "Haifeisi" lies in the removal of dandruff, and the personality of "Pantene" lies in the nutrition and health care of hair. Through this strategy, P&G managed to capture more than 70% of the Chinese shampoo market at its peak.
Another typical case is the Mousse of the big health industry.
Mousse brand architecture diagram
In the subdivision track of the big health industry - healthy sleep industry, Mousse put forward the "brand strategy covering the whole life cycle", for the domestic and international markets, different functional needs, different scenarios and other aspects to create a brand matrix belonging to Mousse, reconstruct the new industrial format.
In view of the market strategy, Mousse Group has set up 7 major parent brands of Mousse Classic, V6 Home, Mousse Sofa, Mousse International, Trica TRECA Sridisa and Mousse Mercure, and under the parent brand, Mousse has set up a number of sub-brands to achieve "goods to find people" to meet the needs of consumers.
According to different groups of people and consumer needs, Mousse also launches different products under their respective sub-brands. For example, in 2021, the high-end bedding of the classic brand of Mousse will launch a series of products such as Mousse Kairui, Mousse Yijian, Mousse Blue Luxury, Mousse Smart Sleep and so on.
For another example, in view of the subdivision demand around the sleep aid, the sub-brand of "Mousse Sleep Aid" launched an ecological chain that includes aromatherapy, massage equipment, sleep aid sports, sleep aid video and other products to create a sleep aid scene for users.
3. The ultimate goal of productism is to establish industry standards
If you let everyone think about who is the representative of extreme productism, most people should think of Apple.
Why Apple?
We can enumerate a series of Apple's achievements:
Launched the first portable computer, Apple I, to bring computers into the field of personal consumption;
Released The Apple Lisa, the world's first personal computer to adopt a graphical user interface and mouse, two inventions that have become the standard settings for today's computers;
The launch of the iPhone, subverting the entire mobile phone industry, and promoting the arrival of the mobile Internet era;
The launch of the iPad has subverted people's cognition of PC computers and caused a huge impact on intel, Microsoft and other giants in the PC era;
……
To sum up what Apple has done, it can be summed up in one sentence: the ultimate goal of productism is to establish industry standards.
Great companies are always leaders, not followers.
This is also why we have formed a consensus that Huawei is a great company: Nokia is the standard in the 3G era, Goldman Sachs is the standard in the 4G era, and Huawei controls the formulation of global communication technology standards in the 5G era.
Today, standardization has more significance. Many developed countries generally upgrade standardization to national strategies, the United States implements the re-industrialization strategy, Germany implements the Industry 4.0 strategy, and Japan establishes the Standard Practice Strategy Headquarters.
China needs more companies that can establish industry standards, and more companies that can establish industry standards in China are also emerging.
Taking Mousse as an example, as one of the top 500 brand value companies in China, Mousse has participated in the formulation of 22 standards in the past few years, including 1 international standard, 4 national standards, 3 industry standards, etc., becoming one of the main participants and promoters of the standardization and standardization development of China's upholstered furniture industry.
Mousse also boldly sought breakthroughs from the "constituent cells" of products, creatively introduced international new materials such as 3D materials, space resin balls, gels and other international new materials used in the fields of racing and medical treatment into mattresses, and formulated more industry-forward-looking standards based on these advanced products.
In addition, Mousse specially invested more than 80 million yuan to build a testing center for professional product standard testing to further grasp the right to speak in the formulation of standards.
02. Innovation and value creation under long-termism
Behind the extreme productism is the persistence of the concept of long-termism. Let's take another example of Apple:
In 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4, which caused a million people to empty the alley.
When people marveled at its epoch-making and landmark significance, they ignored the many ridicule and incomprehension caused by the birth of the first generation of iPhones in 2007, and then Microsoft CEO Ballmer said bluntly: "The iPhone wants to enter the mobile phone market at all, maybe they can make a little money, but of the 1.3 billion mobile phones sold every year, Apple can get a 2%-3% share." ”
At the same time, people also ignore that in 2003, Apple began to try to combine multi-touch technology with the iPod, and in 1994, apple employees proposed the idea of combining multi-touch technology with mobile phones.
What is long-termism? Zhang Lei, founder of Hillhouse Capital, has a description of long-termism in the book "Value":
Personally, long-termism is a kind of sobriety that helps people establish a rational cognitive framework, free from short-term temptations and complicated noises;
For enterprises and entrepreneurs, long-termism is a pattern that helps enterprises reject the zero-sum game of confinement and reshape the dynamic moat of enterprises in the process of continuous innovation and value creation;
For society, long-termism is a kind of enthusiasm, and countless forces have converged to support the basic areas of human long-term development, focusing on education, science and humanities, forming a positive cycle of endless and sustainable development.
From the perspective of businesses and entrepreneurs, the key to long-termism lies in two elements:
1. Long-termism lies in innovation
Without innovation, long-termism is reduced to an old-fashioned interface, and no matter how big it is, it is doomed to be eliminated.
Among the world's top 500 companies, GM and Ford are enterprises with a century-old foundation and are real long-distance runners.
From assembly lines, T-cars, fully enclosed models, internal management reforms, optimization of profit indicators, and then to the abandonment of American muscle cars, the transformation of all-electric, engaged in timely innovation and change, GM, Ford you come and go, mutual wins and losses, and there are more than 1500 American automakers that have been lying in the bankruptcy list forever.
So long-termism is never simply "persistence" and "continuity", but a process of Bayesian renewal, both prospect and evolution.
For enterprises, the essence is the self-growth of enterprises.
Looking back at China's long-established enterprises, statistics show that only 10% of China's time-honored enterprises are more efficient in operation, 70% maintain the status quo, and 20% are in the dilemma of loss or even bankruptcy.
In particular, many long-established enterprises in the consumer industry have been further compressed under the boom of new consumption and new retail.
Yin Jie, director of the expert committee of the "China Time-honored Brand Revitalization Plan", once summarized the reasons for the dilemma of long-established enterprises into four aspects: first, the backward concept of the system hinders the innovation of the old brand; second, the product technology is outdated, which restricts the value of the old brand; the third is the lack of capital talents, reducing the vitality of the old brand; fourth, the modern brand awareness is not strong, and it is impossible to give play to the brand advantages.
How to maintain a steady stream of innovation and vitality in long-term development, so as to adapt to the trend of the times, is not only the dilemma faced by China's long-established enterprises, but also the problem facing every enterprise.
2. Long-termism is about creating value
Regarding the value created by long-termism, Mr. Feng Lun gave a particularly vivid example:
An oil cake costs fifty cents, selling two dollars, you can earn a dollar and five. Both men were in the oil cake business, and one of them regarded money as important, believing that the more he earned the better, so he used gutter oil to reduce the volume of a single oil cake.
Another person thinks that making money belongs to making money, but it is more important to let people who eat oil cakes eat healthily, so he uses the best quality oil and the best noodles.
The result is naturally that the queue at the back of the door is getting longer and longer, and the former is a dismal business and ultimately cannot be operated.
What should we see with this example?
Behind the long-term doctrine, we should return to the essence of the industry, see clearly the pain points and needs of our own industry, and what value can be brought to users and the whole society.
Chen Chunhua mentioned the three most important characteristics of long-termists, which precisely reflect that long-termism is to create value:
1. Symbiosis with the environment, we must understand how to form a concept of mutual subjectivity between the community of interests and generate greater value;
2. Be a whole with the world, integrate into the world, and build a relationship of symbiotic growth;
3. The most important mission is to be kind and to be altruistic.
Let's also take Mousse as an example for analysis:
More than 100 years ago, Americans invented the mattress to let mankind say goodbye to the era of hard board beds. In the bedding industry, what we need to think about is, what value can this industry bring to us?
Sleep, quality sleep is the guarantee of physical health, but also the value of this industry. In view of this value essence, at the beginning of the establishment of the brand in 2004, Mousse first proposed the concept of "healthy sleep system" in the entire upholstered furniture industry, which integrated all the elements related to sleep quality and transformed into a systematic product and service system, becoming one of the few enterprises in the domestic bedding industry that can compete with European and American brands in the high-end market, and indirectly promoting the innovation of the upholstered furniture industry.
And on the basis of the healthy sleep system, Mousse has integrated healthy sleep resources, from the first generation of spring mattresses to continuously iteratively updated, to now has developed to the seventh generation of T10AI smart mattresses, into the smart home "AI" era, to provide users with closed-loop AI sleep solutions.
Whether active or passive, enterprises need to seriously consider how to incorporate long-term thinking and action into their own organizational construction, strategic management, and market competition.
03, the three basic assumptions behind the operation of the enterprise
One end of the long-termism is the vision, mission and core values, and the other end is rooted in specific management and management practices, the former as the guide and standard, so that all current activities serve the realization of long-term goals, rather than sacrificing the long term to achieve the present.
Whether it is the vision, mission, core values, or specific management and management practices, they are all issues in business management.
Drucker published a paper in the Harvard Business Review, "Business Theory", in which Drucker mentioned that a business management theory should consist of three basic assumptions:
The assumption of the environment in which enterprises are located, in today's world, enterprises need to face a series of new situations such as digitalization and intelligence, Sino-US trade frictions, new consumption booms, technological innovation, Z generation, aging and so on;
The assumptions of the enterprise about its own fundamental goals can also be understood as the vision, mission and core values of the enterprise, which are the basis for the effective management of the enterprise;
The assumption that the enterprise achieves the advantage of the predetermined goal, that is, the assumption of the core capabilities of the enterprise. The so-called core ability is the most core and fundamental part of all capabilities, which can radiate outward and act on various other capabilities, affecting the play and effect of other capabilities.
We were able to find that the leading companies in the industry, in Drucker's three-part basic assumptions, are very clearly aware, or at least fit one or two of them:
Case 1: Mousse - the first brand in the bedding industry
In terms of the company's assumption of its own fundamental goals, Mousse put forward the vision and mission of letting people sleep better, and for the 8 trillion yuan health industry, it will position high-quality sleep as one of the four cornerstones of health, and enhance people's immunity and empower a better life by providing good sleep and healthy sleep.
According to the World Health Organization, one-third of the world's people have sleep problems, 27% of people have more serious sleep disorders, so Mousse has put forward its own strategic goal - to become the world's largest provider of smart and healthy sleep solutions.
In the assumption of the environment in which the enterprise is located, along with the arrival of the wave of digitalization and intelligence, Mousse has established the "Golden Butler" service, which ensures the quality and efficiency of customer service through perfect service quality management and service operation system, and ensures that it provides users with convenient, fast and reliable five-star services.
In addition, Mousse has also established an Industry 4.0 Healthy Sleep Industry Base with the highest production capacity in the industry to achieve digital production. Through cooperation with Oracle, IBM, SAP and other enterprises, we will build smart factories, carry out large-scale personalized and flexible production, and build digital capabilities that belong to Mousse, thus realizing the assumption of core capabilities of enterprises.
Case Two: Glory – Kill a Rifle
In the more than a year since leaving Huawei, Honor has released Honor Magic3 series, Honor 60 series mobile phones, Honor watch GS 3, Honor notebook MagicBook V14, Honor Tablet V7 Pro, Honor Smart Screen X2 and other products.
According to Canalys data, in the third quarter of 2021, Honor mobile phones shipped more than 14 million units, returning to the top 3 in China's market share.
Intensive product bombardment, coupled with a large number of channels, makes Glory once again return to the game and become another variable in the mobile phone industry in 2021.
What is the reason behind this? It is precisely because Honor's vision, mission and core values in the past at Huawei have not changed, and it only needs to restore cooperation with various supply chain companies around the world, and Honor can once again follow the trend.
And in the assumption of the company's environment, Honor has become a smart phone and terminal provider for the Chinese national team as early as the eve of the Tokyo Olympic Games in July 2021; on the eve of the Chinese Winter Olympics, Honor has once again become a sponsor of China's ice and snow technology, as well as a smart phone and terminal sponsor of the Chinese short track speed skating national team, quickly adjusting its strategy to cope with its current environment.
In addition, although Honor and Huawei "divorced", in the assumption of the core capabilities of the enterprise, Honor still inherits Huawei's excellent genes, such as "1 + 8 + N" - a mobile phone + 8 terminals, and then to create a 5G wisdom scene, in this regard, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers can do very little, but Glory is one of the minority, undoubtedly proving the strong core capabilities of Glory.
When any company enters the world's leading ranks, we will find that the basic assumptions of these companies have a strong supporting capacity. It is the embodiment of the pursuit of ultimate productism, the persistence behind the concept of long-termism, and the essence of enterprise management.
All in all, enterprises will be deeply rooted in the soil, when enterprises enter these logics, they begin to wantonly absorb nutrients, support the enterprise to advance to the high-end, become more and more excellent.
04. Conclusion
"Leaders will die, products will become obsolete, markets will change, new technologies will emerge, management fads will come and go, but the core philosophy of a great company will endure as a source of corporate guidelines and inspiration for innovation." ”
No matter which track enterprises are in, if they want to build high-end brands and pursue evergreen foundations, they need the adherence and innovation of the core concepts of enterprises in productism, long-termism, and enterprise management.
In the new wave of the times, how more High-end Brands such as Glory and Mousse can grow upwards, go abroad and go to the world is worth waiting and seeing.
As Qin Shuo said: "Hard work rejuvenates the country, hard work prospers, and hard work can benefit oneself, benefit others, and help the world." I hope that more of our enterprises can do their duty and create in a down-to-earth manner. ”