When you think of the Avengers, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Marvel, video games? No, I'm thinking of Xiaomi executives. In 2019-2020, Xiaomi welcomed several executives, including Lu Weibing, Chang Cheng, Yang Zhe, Zeng Xuezhong, etc., who were executives of other brands before this, including many founders and CEOs, so Xiaomi's top management was once jokingly called the Avengers by netizens.
However, with the departure of Yang Zhe, the title of "Avengers" seems to have become a real name. Recently, Xiaomi released an internal document announcing that Chang Cheng, former vice president of the group and general manager of Xiaomi's mobile phone product department, officially resigned for personal reasons. This is also another departed Xiaomi "airborne" executive after Yang Zhao, and the future work of Changcheng will be replaced by internal promotion personnel.
As the former head of Lenovo's mobile phone business, the addition of Changcheng was once placed high hopes by Xiaomi and rice noodles. Many people hope that this "all-rounder" with both mobile hardware, software and marketing capabilities can become a boost for Xiaomi on the road to soaring. Unfortunately, from the perspective of changcheng joining Xiaomi for two years, its development is not smooth, and leaving Xiaomi is only a matter of time for him.
Former "Lenovo All-Rounder"
Admittedly, Chang Cheng is a rather controversial person. But before jumping to Xiaomi, Chang cheng has always been regarded as the soul of Lenovo mobile phones.
In 2000, he joined Lenovo Changcheng, worked at Lenovo for 19 years, served as a long-term software development work, and once created mobile core applications such as Lenovo Lex Store and Eggplant Express. In 2015, Chang Chengcai became the CEO of Lenovo ZUK, and under the leadership of Chen Xudong, the ceo of the mobile business group at the time, he was fully responsible for lenovo's mobile phone business.
When it comes to Lenovo mobile phones, perhaps many people's impression is still in the non-smart phone era dominated by "China Cool Union". After entering the era of smart phones, although the Lenovo Lephone series started well, with the influx of Internet manufacturers such as Xiaomi, the market share of Lenovo mobile phones was seriously divided. In the end, what is in front of Changcheng is a "mess" with chaotic product planning ideas, almost disappearing channel resources, and a sharp decline in brand awareness.
It is unlikely that lenovo mobile phones will be "brought back to life", but the constant course of being in danger has made Lenovo mobile phones somewhat improved. After combing through the product line, Lenovo mobile phone launched the Z5 series of mobile phones in 2018, and its excellent cost performance brought long-lost sales growth to Lenovo mobile phones, and the sales of Lenovo mobile phones in that year also unexpectedly entered the top ten of domestic brands.
Not only that, as the flagship product of the Lenovo Z5 series, the Lenovo Z5 Pro GT 855 Edition was equipped with the leading slide-type full-screen design at that time, and also launched the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 flagship processor, these two major selling points also allowed Lenovo mobile phones to successfully grab a rare market attention. From the design ideas of this product, we can also see some of Changcheng's foresight in capturing the development trend of hardware.
Of course, in addition to the software and hardware research and development capabilities, what impressed everyone the most should be his marketing ability. At that time, Lenovo mobile phone market share was small, brand volume was small, in order to maintain the popularity of Lenovo mobile phone, Changcheng frantically used the marketing means of "rubbing heat" on social media to associate its own brand and friends, and thus won the title of "Magneto King".
Although this marketing method is more cancerous, Lenovo can be active in everyone's vision at that time, and the means of Changcheng are indispensable. In addition to traditional advertising promotion, social platforms based on Sina Weibo have now become an important position for mobile phone manufacturers' marketing. In theory, Changcheng can not only provide Xiaomi with product development suggestions, but also assist Xiaomi in marketing activities, and the two are a match made in heaven.
Unfortunately, everything is just theory.
Bleak "Xiaomi Career"
Judging from the results, Changcheng's xiaomi career is certainly not as expected.
What can more intuitively reflect this is the Xiaomi Mi 10 Youth Edition.
As a product that is supervised by Changcheng in product planning, product design, and marketing activities, Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition can be considered as the first work that Changcheng handed over to Xiaomi, but the results of this work have surprised all onlookers.
As a Millet model released in the first half of the year, from the configuration point of view, Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition has few highlights, the performance of the Snapdragon 765G processor equipped with the machine is average, and even not as good as the Tianji 820 processor equipped with the Redmi 10X; the machine only has a 4160mAh battery capacity, supports 20W fast charging, and the endurance is not enough as its selling point; single speaker, cheap OLED waterdrop screen is also deducted points, only the telephoto lens is not bad.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with the machine is still the product pricing. The starting price of the Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition was set at 2099 yuan, considering that the Redmi K30 Extreme Commemorative Edition, Redmi K30S and lower-priced Redmi K30 5G, Redmi 10X and other products at the same price at that time obviously lacked sufficient competitiveness in its main terminal market of 2000 yuan.
The defects of various products have made the Xiaomi Mi 10 Youth Edition have not achieved any results in terms of sales and popularity. From the sales point of view, a month after the release of the machine, the Jingdong Alliance showed that the product sales were only barely over 10,000, and there may still be no breakthrough to play. In order to quickly clear the warehouse, Xiaomi even made a substantial price reduction for this product in the second half of 2020, but unfortunately it did not help.
In addition to the product is not good, the major mistakes in marketing have become a major stain on Changcheng Xiaomi's career. In order to promote the 50x zoom function of the most prominent highlight of the Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition, Chang Cheng actually issued promotional copy on Weibo such as "secretly photographing the girls' dormitory" and "secretly photographing the crotch of the boys", which not only damaged the reputation of the Xiaomi 10 Youth Edition, but also directly damaged Xiaomi's own brand image.
With the fermentation of marketing events and the poor sales of the Xiaomi Mi 10 Youth Edition, Changcheng seems to have lost its original activity in an instant. According to the internal information of Tencent's "Deep Net", it is precisely because of a series of negative events caused by Changcheng that Lei Jun is actually not satisfied with Changcheng. In the following year, except for a "new bottle of old wine" Xiaomi 10S, it is difficult for us to hear news related to Changcheng.
To this day, Changcheng's xiaomi journey has finally come to an abrupt end.
Collecting executives does not allow Xiaomi to "rush higher" as desired
Since its listing, Xiaomi has run wild on the road of "collecting executives", first ushering in Lu Weibing, who is full of combat effectiveness, and then Chang Cheng, Yang Zhao, Zeng Xuezhong and other "friendly business bosses" have also joined, this phenomenon has also been jokingly called "The Avengers" by netizens.
However, as we enter 2021, that momentum seems to have slowed down. Xiaomi's top management not only did not join the "new people", but sent away many "old people". First, Yang Zhe, who has been employed for less than a year, announced his departure as vice president of Xiaomi due to physical reasons; then decided to abandon the routine of Lenovo's mobile phone and announced his resignation as vice president of Xiaomi for personal reasons. In the "Dream Team" that Lei Jun once vigorously recruited, the number of executives who have fallen behind is becoming more and more numerous.
For a company with a weak foundation like Xiaomi, "recruiting talents" is indeed a rapid and powerful method. Judging from the past achievements, the executives who joined later did bring remarkable results to Xiaomi. In particular, Lu Weibing, after joining Xiaomi, took on the responsibilities of president of China and general manager of the Redmi brand, led the Redmi mobile phone to attack the city strategically, and better completed the two core goals of "implementing cost performance" and "benchmarking glory".
In addition, the former CEO of ZTE Zeng Xuezhong is also a backbone member of the "external executives", as a senior industry insider with more than 20 years of experience in the communications industry, Zeng Xuezhong has been promoted from vice president of the group to senior vice president after only eight months of performing his duties, not only from Lei Jun to take over the CEO business of a number of Xiaomi subsidiaries, but now he has taken over the position of general manager of the mobile phone product department from Changcheng, which shows that the business ability exceeds expectations.
Of course, this style of recruiting "external executives" is a blow to Xiaomi's existing employees. Because of the "external executives" in the core decision-making circle, Xiaomi's internal promotion space has always been criticized. Because of this, after Changcheng's departure, Xiaomi will emphasize that Changcheng's work will be replaced by internal promotion personnel. In Xiaomi's rapidly expanding executive team, there is a real need for some new faces from within.
Most importantly, for Xiaomi, the inclusion of industry leaders does not mean "safe world". It should be known that Hammer Technology once gathered Industry leaders such as Li Jianye, Qian Chen, and Chi Jianqiang, but in the end it did not make Smartisan mobile phones famous in the world. If Xiaomi wants to make achievements and successfully impact the high-end market, it still relies on making products in the end.