Introduction to the stone: Clear target user selection, accurate brand positioning, and a high degree of matching in product, marketing and channel strategy around brand positioning, so that iQOO brands have formed differentiated cognition in the minds of consumers, and then stand out from the fierce industry competition pattern.
The road is | author
1
A day of changing industries
March 1, 2019, a seemingly ordinary day, changed the pattern of China's smartphone industry. On this day, Chinese smartphone company Vivo released a new independent sub-brand iQOO, which did not attract much attention from the outside world at the time.
This is because at that time, China's intelligent industry had formed a situation in which China's Huami OV and 5 giant companies such as Apple in the United States "fairy fight" situation, in this situation, it is difficult for new brands to break through the game.
But three years later, it is surprising that the iQOO brand has begun to enter the "main battlefield" of China's smartphone industry. It has developed from the initial product to a complete product system with four product lines such as digital flagship series, Neo series, Z series and U series, covering each main price band from 1000-6000 yuan. And with competitive products, it is not left behind in the competition with any other mature brand, and has become a force that cannot be ignored in China's smartphone industry.
With the precipitation of strength, the iQOO brand started from the iQOO 5 series released in 2020, clearly positioned the digital series as the "future e-sports flagship", began to attack the high-end market, and quickly achieved results. For example, during the double 11 period in 2021, the iQOO 8 Pro achieved the top 1 sales volume of Tmall Android mobile phones in the 4.5k+ price segment; in the global best-selling mobile phone data report released by Rising Sun Big Data, iQOO debuted on the best-selling model list in the $600-799 price segment in the fourth quarter of 2021.
As a new brand launched less than three years ago, iQOO can achieve such achievements in the high-end market is rare, and it is precisely with iQOO's outstanding performance that vivo has helped vivo reach the peak of the Chinese smartphone market in 2021 and become the annual sales champion among all smartphone companies. This also proves that vivo made a smart move to launch the iQOO brand three years ago.
So, under the fierce industry competition pattern of giants, how does iQOO stand out as a new brand?
2
Target user selection and strategic positioning
In recent years, there is a business theory that has become quite popular in the Chinese business community, that is, the positioning theory created by the American management masters Trout and Mr. Reese. The core of positioning theory means that "the main battlefield that determines the outcome of corporate competition is not in the sales terminal, but in the minds of consumers." Whoever occupies the main position of the consumer's mind will gain the initiative in market competition.
When studying the growth process of the iQOO brand, StoneStone Business Review found that it has well practiced the above positioning theory in the top-level design of the brand, and the achievements it has achieved are largely due to the formation of differentiated positioning in the minds of consumers.
First of all, the iQOO brand clearly regards young people as the core target users, and from the perspective of young people's minds, it chooses "extreme performance", which is the core selling point favored by young people.
After research, iQOO believes that in various scenarios where users use smart phones, e-sports is the scene with the highest performance requirements for smart phones, and it has strict requirements for network stability, frame rate fluctuation control, temperature control, precise operation and power consumption. As long as iQOO's products can meet the requirements of e-sports events, they can naturally meet the user's demand for performance in all other application scenarios such as audio-visual entertainment, daily office, etc.
So, iQOO cleverly positioned its strategy as "building a high-performance phone with a top-notch esports experience." The connection with the "e-sports" scenario makes it easy to establish a high-performance differentiated brand positioning in the minds of consumers, and then win a "place" in the market.
3
Product strength
Accurate target user demographics and clear strategic positioning are necessary, but not sufficient, for a brand's success. After determining the brand positioning, it is more important for the enterprise to establish a product strategy, marketing strategy and channel strategy that matches the brand positioning. In positioning theory, this is referred to as "strategic matching".
Among them, the product strategy is the core of all business strategies. In the product field, iQOO closely focuses on the positioning pursuit of "high-performance mobile phones with top e-sports experience", and proposes the concept of "performance triangle" in the three hardware areas that determine the performance of mobile phones, such as processors, memory and flash memory. The "iron triangle of performance", that is, each generation of flagship mobile phones must be equipped with the strongest processor, memory and flash memory of the same period, thus absolutely ensuring that users are provided with a top-notch performance experience.
For example, from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor on iQOO's first-generation mobile phone iQOO, to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor on the 8 series, and the new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platform on the iQOO 9 series, they are among the earliest smartphone brands in the industry to carry the latest processors in the past.
In addition to the "performance triangle", iQOO continues to innovate in other key technology areas. Among them, the most notable is the Multi-Turbo acceleration engine technology and heat dissipation technology.
In order to better solve the common "slow stuttering" phenomenon of mobile phones, Multi-Turbo technology adopts the method of optimizing the underlying algorithm from the software level, and improves the acceleration effect from intelligent scheduling, processor, network, heat dissipation, game and compilation enhancement, etc., and quickly repairs system problems to achieve stable and smooth operation of the mobile phone system as a whole.
Cooling technology is another key area that affects the stability of mobile phones, if the heat dissipation is not good, it will often lead to PROBLEMs such as CPU downscaling and game frame drops. Therefore, iQOO has always made heat dissipation technology a core focus area, and each generation strives to improve by 50%.
For example, from the earliest super liquid cooling technology, to the carbon fiber VC liquid cooling heat dissipation system, to the 4K power pump liquid cooling heat dissipation system, and then to the high thermal conductivity rare earth alloy heat dissipation material, iQOO has continuously iterated the heat dissipation scheme in the past generations of products, and insisted on the goal of the strongest heat dissipation performance in the same price segment.
One of the most exciting is the brand's third anniversary "gift work" - iQOO 9 Pro Track Edition, which is a concentrated bloom of iQOO product concept and product capabilities.
First of all, in terms of performance, the iQOO 9 Pro Track Edition is equipped with a new "performance triangle" that includes a new generation of Snapdragon 8 flagship platform, an overclocked version of UFS 3.1 and an enhanced version of LPDDR5, achieving the top performance in the industry.
In terms of battery life, it is equipped with a top battery combination of 4700mAh large battery + 120W ultra-fast flash charge, which can achieve 100% power charge in 19 minutes, effectively alleviating the most common "battery life anxiety" of users.
On the screen display, equipped with a 2K E5 super retina screen, support LTPO stepless variable speed 2.0 technology, to achieve fine and vivid display effects and excellent power consumption optimization performance.
The most amazing thing is the appearance, iQOO 9 Pro Track Edition uses aramid fiber material made of 3D mobile phone back cover (Kevlar) and black braided texture color matching. In order to create this back cover, iQOO not only invested more than one million yuan in pure hardware research and development costs, but also tried 24,800 trial hands to finally successfully overcome many process problems. It is reported that this is also the highest cost mobile phone back cover of iQOO so far. In addition to the exquisite appearance, this back cover also has military-grade impact resistance, which can greatly improve the impact resistance of the product, and play a good role in protecting the fuselage and battery.
iQOO's place in the minds of consumers today is the result of the eventual stacking of its great products from past generations. The iQOO 9 Pro Track Edition, which combines iQOO technology and product capabilities, is bound to further strengthen its high-performance mobile phone positioning in the user's mind through strong product power like previous generations of products.
4
Marketing power and channel power
If product strength is the foundation that supports a brand's take-off, then marketing power and channel power are the most critical "two wings" to support the success of the brand. In both respects, iQOO also has excellent performance.
First of all, in the field of marketing, unlike many brands that have no rules in their marketing strategies and are dispersed, iQOO focuses on the core selling point of "high-performance mobile phones with top e-sports experiences" to carry out saturation attacks.
For example, in 2018, when the iQOO brand was still in the preparatory period, the iQOO product team began to invest a lot of research and development efforts to optimize the standard of e-sports machines, which helped it pass the KPL's most stringent competition machine test certification when the first generation of products was released in 2019, and became the official competition machine of KPL events.
Previous mobile e-sports competitions have used Apple mobile phones as competition machines. iQOO has become the official competition machine of KPL events, and it is also the first time that Android mobile phones have become the top mobile e-sports event machines in the world. And in the following three years, iQOO participated in each KPL event, and continuously participated in the global digital entertainment field feast - ChinaJoy Game Exhibition, which helped iQOO as a high-performance mobile phone brand positioning of e-sports continue to penetrate the hearts of the people, and strongly supported the smooth breakthrough of the iQOO brand in the initial stage.
In 2020, iQOO also successfully became the world's top partner of BMW M Motorsport. Readers familiar with the field of racing know that BMW M Motorsport has always been a legend on the DTM racing field, and its pursuit of speed, driving pleasure and extreme performance is highly in line with the brand connotation of iQOO's "i Quest On and On".
Cooperation with the brand of BMW M Motorsport, on the one hand, helps iQOO to strengthen its brand positioning of extreme performance in the user's mind, on the other hand, iQOO also gets a lot of design inspiration from the soul essence of racing speed and control, and under its influence, iQOO put forward the idea of creating a "supercar" in the mobile phone industry, hoping that iQOO mobile phones can also be like supercars, whether it is speed, control or design to achieve the most extreme level in the industry.
In addition, in the field of sports competition, the iQOO brand has also cooperated with the Chinese national rowing team & kayaking team to help them win gold in the Olympic Games. So, whether it's a joint KPL esports event, a joint BMW M Motorsport, or a joint Chinese national rowing team & kayak team... We can all see that iQOO's marketing strategy of focusing on the core selling point of "high performance" is extremely efficient to convey the core proposition of the iQOO brand, and also avoids the dilution of the core proposition of the iQOO brand by other non-core selling points.
At the recent celebration of the third anniversary, the iQOO brand did not forget to convey the core positioning and determined the theme of "Endless Exploration, 3Q Has You". Among them, the correlation between Endless Exploration and the extreme performance advocated by iQOO needless to say, the Quest Curiosity, Quest Exploration and Quick Speed represented by "3Q" are also highly consistent with the practice and spirit of iQOO brand exploration of the unknown and breaking through the limit.
Secondly, in terms of channels, iQOO focuses on the channel saturation attack of e-commerce, which is gathered by young people, and soon becomes the most eye-catching Internet cutting-edge brand in major e-commerce marketing nodes such as 618 and Double 11 in recent years.
In this year's third anniversary celebration, the iQOO brand also planned the "Kuke E-sports Festival" based on online sales through e-commerce channels such as iQOO Community, Vivo Official Mall, iQOO JD.com, iQOO Tmall and iQOO Suning Official Store, which began at 20:00 on March 4 and ended at 24:00 on March 11.
During this period, iQOO took out benefits worth 1 billion yuan to give back to consumers, users can not only enjoy thousand yuan god coupons, explosive mobile phones limited time 50% discount, old-for-new subsidies and live broadcast room free single privilege, if you go to vivo's own official mall, you can also enjoy battery replacement specials, anniversary exclusive game rights, millions of coupons and other exclusive benefits.
The "Kuke E-sports Festival" attracted a lot of consumer enthusiasm, during which the iQOO brand achieved considerable sales results. For example, the iQOO brand won the Tmall Android mobile phone brand sales championship, the Jingdong official self-operated flagship store mobile phone sales increased by 106% year-on-year, vivo official mall sales were 2 times the same period last year, suning Android mobile phone brand sales & sales double champion........
Among them, from the perspective of specific products, iQOO 9 series won the sales and sales champion of Tmall mobile phone 4k-6k price segment, iQOO 8 won the sales and sales champion of Jingdong mobile phone 3k-4k price segment; iQOO Neo5 vitality version won the double champion of sales and sales of Jingdong & Tmall mobile phone 1.5k-2k price segment. In addition, as of now, users have received welfare vouchers worth more than 350 million yuan.
From these data, it can be fully seen that iQOO is forming an increasingly strong brand recognition in the minds of consumers with the extreme performance of products and the saturation attack of marketing, which has laid a good foundation for it to achieve larger-scale performance improvement in 2022.
5
epilogue
3 years, at the snap of a finger.
But it is in this short period of 3 years, iQOO has achieved from the first product entry, to the formation of a complete product layout, not only with major brands in the core battlefield, but also to achieve breakthroughs in the high-end market, which has to make us lament the effect of time compound interest.
However, this time compound interest effect of iQOO comes from its clear target user choice and accurate brand positioning on the one hand, and on the other hand, from its "strategic matching" in product, marketing and channel strategy around brand positioning. This allows iQOO to form a differentiated perception in the minds of consumers and helps them successfully break through from the fierce industry competition. This successful practice of iQOO provides a new paradigm of success in branding in the Chinese business community.
For the future, the iQOO brand also has its own grand blueprint. First of all, as a deep participant in the e-sports industry, iQOO will actively participate in the formulation of mobile terminal standards in the e-sports industry, and continue to consolidate its absolute leading position in the field of e-sports mobile phones by establishing a voice in the industry standards.
Secondly, the iQOO brand will further achieve high-end breakthroughs and put forward a "1+3" track layout around this. 1 refers to the long-term track at the core of "performance-esports", and 3 refers to the three auxiliary tracks of "technological innovation, design and imaging".
Through the combination of "1+3", iQOO hopes that in addition to bringing users a high-performance experience, it can also provide users with the advanced feeling brought by innovative black technology, the aesthetic perception brought by elegant design, and the humanized experience brought by cutting-edge imaging technology, becoming an all-round champion without shortcomings. This will help iQOO brands to achieve greater breakthroughs in the high-end market.
Finally, the iQOO brand is not limited to competing in the Chinese market, it was positioned as a global brand from the beginning. After the domestic market gradually gained a foothold, iQOO is accelerating its expansion into overseas markets.
From the above plan, we can see that "a high-end technology brand that markets globally" jumps out of the paper, which is a grand blueprint depiction of the iQOO brand's long-term vision for its future. The author is looking forward to this blueprint of iQOO.
This is because in the business observations of the "Stonestone Business Review" in the past two years, it was found that with the gradual fading of the labor dividend, market dividend and policy dividend that previously supported the rapid development of China's economy, the current Chinese economy has begun to encounter a significant growth ceiling. In the future, if China's economy is to achieve a new leap forward, the only effective way is for Chinese companies to go abroad and achieve global success.
The success of globalization requires Chinese companies to create high-end products that are comparable to Apple, Tesla, BMW and Mercedes-Benz marketing around the world. To create differentiated high-end products, there is no shortcut, only rely on technological innovation that no one has. We are pleased to see hope in iQOO, which not only has the vitality and vitality of a new brand, but also has the systematic thinking and scientific methodology of a mature enterprise, which makes it possible to become the biggest variable in china's smartphone industry in the future.
We look forward to seeing iQOO as a global high-end technology brand in the near future as a pioneering force in the process of China's new economic leap."