Culture is the premise, product is the path, brand is the result, and all of this must return to the user-oriented as the core.
Written by | Shi Yang
Responsible for the | Yin Xiaolin
"2021, for vivo, is a very turning year, we have gained some achievements, but also seen many problems, precipitated more thinking." At the annual meeting held before the vivo company festival, founder, president and CEO Shen Wei summarized the past year. He believes that if we look back at 2021 in another ten or twenty years, this may be the first year of vivo's qualitative change.
Under the comprehensive layout of business at home and abroad, vivo has covered more than 400 million users around the world and served more than 60 countries and regions. Data from authoritative research companies such as IDC shows that vivo ranked first in the Chinese market with a market share of 21.5% in 2021, with annual shipments of more than 71 million units, an increase of 23.3% year-on-year.
The eye-catching data confirms the core values of vivo as a company of "duty, design-driven, user-oriented, learning, and team". Among them, design drive and user orientation complement each other. Shen Wei frankly said that design-driven is a user-oriented, innovative system of thinking that solves the potential needs of users and promotes social progress. It is a strong desire to change deeply rooted in the heart, which is "I don't want to be mediocre, I don't want to blindly follow, I want to do something different."
Kenichi Ozene, a master of Japanese management, also put forward a very similar point of view in his book "Professionalism". How does the brand face eternity and ride through the rapids and storms of the future? How to avoid falling into the dilemma of little knowledge and confusion, ignorance and blindness, ignorance and chaos? The answers to these questions all seem to point to a common word: professionalism.
The etymology of "professional" and "expert" is originally "profess," meaning "swear to God as a profession." For example, as a doctor, you must abide by the Oath of Hippocrates, be responsible for life, treat doctors as "professions", and consider patients as "customers". Kenichi Omae believes that companies or brands must also keep their promises to customers: to provide users with 100% satisfied good products and good services. To keep this oath, you need to have the spirit of "professionalism": the original intention of customer first, and the pursuit of the ultimate product creation ability.
In Shen Wei's view, the spirit of vivo's "professionalism" lies in: "We must always ask ourselves what our products have created for users, what has changed, whether this change is what users really need, really meaningful, and whether we are using simple, perfect and elegant ways to achieve this change." ”
The user is forever C bit
So in reality, how does vivo create value for users "in a simple, perfect and elegant way"? Let's take an example.
With the popularity of smart phones, the world has been suffering from privacy and security for a long time. At a time when some technology companies are still ingesting user information for huge profits, in 2021, vivo adhering to the three principles of transparency and controllability, privacy-side processing and data minimization, launched a thousand mirror security architecture to enhance the privacy protection of the Android ecosystem at the developer conference, so that users can easily set up on the device terminal to achieve the protection of their own private information.
The list goes on and on. For example, for the hearing impaired, Vivo and the China Hearing Medicine Development Foundation jointly released the information accessibility "Sound and Sound" public welfare plan, which helps the hearing impaired group "see the sound" by equipping the product with AI capabilities; for the visually impaired group, vivo comprehensively optimizes the reading screen to help the visually impaired group to better listen to the use of mobile phones; for the elderly population, vivo continues to gain insight into the needs of the elderly group, provides intelligent life solutions, promotes the aging upgrade of vivo intelligent terminals, and bridges the digital divide...
As Shen Wei said: "We must let all the work be carried out with the user as the core, understand the user with our hearts, return to various scenarios to gain insight and study the real needs of the user, truly solve the problems that the user cares about, and define the products that meet the needs of the user." In fact, this sentence has elucidated vivo's dialectical understanding of "specialization" and "karma".
Max Weber has two speeches, "Academics" and "Politics," both of which address the issue of "karma." In Weber's view, "karma" is an ethical concept, and "karma" is not only a job to support the family, but a vocation as a mission, ethical karma, or vocation.
In kenichi Ozen's view, whether it is a person, a company or a brand, as long as it has the spirit of "professionalism", it can be called "expert". Experts not only have strong professional knowledge and skills and strong ideas, but also without exception put customers first, with endless curiosity and never-ending initiative, strict discipline. In other words, technical talents who only stay at the level of knowledge and skills cannot be regarded as real experts. Experts must create value for society and for others.
Therefore, "karma" is the first, and "specialization" should be the second, the means to complete the "karma."
There is no doubt that vivo is an "expert brand" that always puts users in the C position and continues to create value for users. In recent years, vivo has increased its investment in research and development, made full use of local talent resources, and laid out a global R&D network. Its R&D centers cover 10 cities around the world, and have professional talent reserves in 5G, design, AI, imaging and other fields, and 75% of the company's staff are engaged in R&D work. As of December 2021, vivo's overall R&D personnel have accounted for more than 10,000 people. And all this is to solve the pain points and needs of different users.
Raid on the "Fourth Age of Consumption"
Japanese consumer society research expert Zomiura proposed the concept of the "Fourth Age of Consumption" many years ago. Consumers' consumption perceptions in their daily lives will change with the times, and will also change due to changes in various factors such as age, economy, values or hobbies. Japan experienced the first consumption era of "material from scratch" in the process of urbanization; the second consumption era of "having better goods than others" in the post-war economic recovery; the third consumption era of "pursuing oneself" after the economic take-off, and the fourth consumption era of "pursuing products that can make people feel truly happy".
At present, China is in a transition period between the third consumer society and the fourth consumer society. Chinese consumers are gradually entering the fourth era of consumption that abandons material comparison and focuses more on quality and inner needs. People said goodbye to the concept of "shopping makes people happy" and replaced it with the concept of "happiness comes from free choice". But the real difficulty of free choice is how to have the judgment to say, "This is what I want, in a world of abundant material."
In contrast, today's smartphone industry is indeed responding to the call of the "fourth consumption era". Young consumers do not hesitate to pay for high-quality innovative products, but many brands are still trapped in the low threshold, low technology, low price competition quagmire, the market lacks innovative products that can stimulate consumption upgrading. Secondly, consumers' consideration of the personality, quality, cultural connotation and other attributes of goods has begun to increase, focusing on whether they can meet individual needs and highlight differentiated personal tastes.
In vivo, the "professionalism" spirit with user orientation as the core has become a "surprise weapon" to stimulate product power in the face of the "fourth consumption era".
Shen Wei proposed that the improvement of product strength is based on "user orientation". Since 2019, vivo has taken design-driven and user-oriented as the link, connected scientific and technological innovation and the original needs of consumers, clarified the four "long tracks" of design, imaging, system and performance in the field of innovation, carried out long-term and continuous research and development investment, built a "barrier" of quality and personality product force in the "fourth consumption era", and highlighted the "professionalism" spirit of vivo user first.
1. "Quality Transition" of Image and Performance
Today, superior imaging capabilities have become a key element in the user's "identification" of a smartphone. As a continuous explorer of mobile phone images, in December 2020, Vivo and ZEISS launched a global imaging strategic cooperation to raise the popularity of professional photography and the expressive ability of mobile photography to a new height. In 2021, Vivo cooperated with ZEISS to open up a new track for mobile photography with the X70 series, bringing moving images to unprecedented new heights. In addition, vivo also launched the first self-developed professional imaging chip V1. The chip took 24 months to develop and has the characteristics of high computing power, low latency and low power consumption. At the same time, it can meet the higher needs of users for taking pictures and recordings, and the effect experience is compatible and compatible.
In the performance track, vivo through system optimization and software research and development, the performance to the extreme, optimization to solve the user's use of smart phones "Caton pain". On December 5, 2021, the analog network laboratory jointly built by Vivo and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology was completed to ensure the best communication signal experience for users. In terms of computing performance, vivo is based on its capabilities in computing, storage, display, etc., and truly achieves the smoothness of the whole scene under daily high-frequency use scenarios such as application startup, content loading, visual fluency, touch perception, multi-task concurrency and network operation.
2. "Personality Butterfly Change" of System and Design
In the design track, in 2021, Vivo launched a new mobile operating system OriginOS Ocean. Based on the design-driven concept, originOS Ocean design language takes "simplicity" as the core, and uses design to bring clearer primary and secondary, more accurate focus, and more efficient communication to content. In the system track, simplicity, reliability, and excitement are the best summaries of the OriginOS Ocean user experience. OriginOS Ocean has created pioneering interactive modes and applications such as lock screen system, atomic walkman, atomic reading, atomic privacy system, atomic note, etc., bringing a new visual and interactive experience; through the optimization and tuning of the underlying layer, continuously improve the smooth experience of the system, while achieving the perfect balance between smoothness and power consumption.
With continuous investment in product strength and deep user product insights, Vivo ranked in the top three in the third quarter of 2021, with a share of more than 4,000 yuan in the high-end mobile phone market. As Hu Baishan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Vivo, said: We believe that the product is the cause, the brand is the effect, and the core is to do a good job in the product. Think from the user's point of view, make the product better than the opponent, so that in the user's mind, your brand will naturally rise. ”
Technique can enter the Tao, and art can penetrate God
"Aiming at the mountains and seas, there is no far-reaching future." Looking back on the past year, our biggest gain is to take another step in the right direction. However, this is not enough. As Shen Wei's speech at the 2022 Vivo Annual Conference was, "Embracing users, pursuing the ultimate, and creating surprises." 2022 is not only the 27th year after the establishment of vivo, but also a key year for it to implement and practice the spirit of "professionalism".
Zhuangzi once said that "technology can enter the Tao, and art can penetrate God", and the essence of "professionalism" is expressed. Skills, which are the basic skills of the profession, can be understood as the professionalism of knowledge and the practical ability of the profession, with the foresight ability of forward-looking vision; the ability to think of multi-angle analysis and observation of problems with far-sightedness; the ability to embrace industry changes, ask questions and think about the unknown, and tolerate the ability to discuss multiple voices; and the ability to maintain curiosity, be willing to tirelessly cope with challenges and adapt to contradictions. Taoism, on the other hand, is a higher realm of professional understanding, or can be understood as a professional belief that transcends the mundane and utilitarian. This belief means the cognitive transformation from "making a living" to "career", which is a deep recognition of the realization of self-worth.
In Kenichi Ohmae's view, "In the fierce competition of the 21st century, we have nowhere to retreat. With the development of global strategy and the advent of the "fourth consumption era", vivo's corporate culture has also moved towards the 2.0 stage, that is, "using design to drive the great products that users love".
Shen Wei emphasized: "Creating world-class great products and services for users is the value of our existence... Culture is the premise, product is the path, brand is the result. In his view, all this must return to the user-oriented core. Only by integrating "technology" and "Tao", "specialization" and "industry" and building the brand into an "expert" can we be invincible in the future market. This is not only the soul of vivo's "professionalism" spirit, but also its ability to plan for the future and chop the waves.