Yang Yang brushed the screen, and he couldn't brainlessly let me buy glory

"Whether to spend real money to buy a mobile phone, the most concerned is the product itself, not the spokesperson." Many consumers said bluntly on social platforms: This does not make me brainless to buy Honor mobile phones.

Author| Cindy

Editor|Yang Ming

Actor Yang Yang brushed the screen again. However, this time it is in the circle of friends of technology digital media.

On May 29, Honor released a new generation of digital series mobile phones - Honor 90 series in Chengdu. Compared with the new mobile phone products, one of the key points of external attention and honor publicity is the appearance of Yang Yang, the global spokesperson of the honor 90 series, and the screams caused by taking photos for fans themselves.

"The most cooperative, dedicated, amiable, and handsome..." Many friends who participated in the conference technology digital media used similar exaggerated exclamations to describe Yang Yang's appearance.

Relying on the star effect, driving the fan economy, and transforming it into commercial purchasing power is the original intention of the brand. The same is true of the smartphone industry, spending money to invite celebrities for brands, product promotion was once standard, but in recent years it has gradually changed, brands in the invitation of celebrities to endorse the popularity has dropped significantly, like Yang Yang has become the "most important" of the conference is even rarer.

So, can the traffic stars who brush the screen make fans or mass users brainlessly buy Honor 90?

Celebrity endorsement phones from hot to cold

"Waveguide phone, fighter in mobile phone."

In 2000, along with this well-known advertising phrase, it was the Waveguide mobile phone endorsed by singer COCO Li Min that exploded. Under the promotion of Li Min's endorsement, Bird mobile phone sales exceeded 10 million units in 2003, surpassing international brands such as Motorola and Nokia, maintaining the record of domestic mobile phone sales for seven consecutive years, and was also the first domestic mobile phone brand to rank among the top 10 in the world.

Although the Bird mobile phone later declined and fell for various reasons, the commercial value growth brought by celebrity endorsements to the brand inspired almost all mobile phone brands to flock to it later (except Apple).

Song Huiqiao + BBK, Jolin Tsai + Scooby-Doo, Zhang Ziyi + CECT, Andy Lau + Jin Li, Li Bingbing + TCL mobile phone, Lin Zhiling + Changhong mobile phone, Jay Chou + Motorola mobile phone, Shu Qi + Duo Wei, Wang Leehom + Sony Ericsson, in that era of functional machines, manufacturers are more inclined to big-name celebrity endorsements, although they have not reproduced the miracle of Li Min and Waveguide combined sales, but some unknown domestic manufacturers, so their reputation is great, bringing the relationship between products and the general public closer.

Entering the era of smartphones, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, and Huawei are gradually rising. In the entertainment industry, after replacing traditional stars with many fans and topics, traffic stars with many fans have also become the spokesperson resources for major brands to compete for mobile phones, and even the phenomenon of multiple artists jointly endorse a product.

For example, in 2017, OPPO and Zhejiang Satellite TV held an OPPO R11 new product launch conference, Jay Chou, Sun Yanzi, Li Yuchun, Jolin Tsai, Chen Weiting, Lin Yilian, Lin Junjie, Di Maxi, Li Yifeng, Wang Junkai, Zhang Yishan, Chen He, Zheng Kai and other 17 stars appeared, known as "half of the entertainment industry" stars came to help. When vivo X20 was released that year, Lu Han, Zhou Dongyu and Peng Yuyan were also signed as spokespersons.

Over the years, Glory has signed traffic or sports stars such as Wu Yifan, Sun Yang, Li Xian, Zhao Liying, Bai Jingting, Gong Jun and other traffic or sports stars to become its product or brand spokesperson.

Compared with the feature phone era, smartphone brands spend a lot of money to invite traffic stars to endorse, which has more purposes: traffic stars are based on social platforms, have a large number of crazy, young core fan groups, and are willing to pay for idol endorsements, which helps brands develop the female and adolescent consumer market.

From the perspective of the development history of vivo, OPPO, and Xiaomi, the endorsement of traffic stars in those years has indeed enhanced the brand's premium ability to a certain extent, attracting more attention from young and female groups. The survey report of Aurora Big Data in 2018 shows that OV has the most young users, generally under the age of 30, and the replacement frequency is higher than that of Huawei and Xiaomi, which is one of the reasons why OV sales are in the forefront of China.

But in the years since, mobile phone brands have become cautious in inviting traffic celebrity spokespersons. According to the statistics of "Pacific Computer", as of early May 2023, among the top 10 stars in the number of domestic entertainment endorsements, only four traffic stars such as Wang Yibo (Redmi), Guan Xiaotong (Huawei), Wu Lei (real me), and Yi Yangqianxi (Huawei) still have mobile phone endorsements, a difference of more than an order of magnitude compared with 2017.

This is a double change in the red sea of the smartphone market and the uncontrollable risk of traffic stars.

On the one hand, from the perspective of the smartphone market, officially from the incremental market to the red sea market, affected by the complex environment, insufficient consumer confidence, weak purchasing power and other factors, market demand is weak, global and Chinese market smartphone shipments hit the largest decline since 2013, has completed user mental education, the market structure is stable major brands, the focus of competition gradually shifted to products, innovation, technology itself.

Who the spokesperson is is more of an icing on the cake for consumers than a necessary factor in consumer decisions. For brands, they are more concerned about how to cross the cycle under long-term principles, and there is no need to spend tens of millions of huge expenses to obtain short-term marketing attention through traffic stars.

On the other hand, Zheng Shuang, Wu Yifan, Zhang Zhehan, Li Yifeng, Deng Lun and others "died in tricks", announcing that the myth of traffic star endorsement was shattered in the Chinese market.

For brands, choosing traffic star endorsements is the embodiment of reputation economy and fan economy, in order to get more traffic and exposure, but once traffic stars "overturn", brand reputation and image will also face huge losses.

For example, Wu Yifan has endorsed Xiaomi 5X, Mi 6, Mi Note3, Xiaomi MIX2S, Mi 8 and Honor models, but in the process of being detained on suspicion of rape until he was sentenced, although the above-mentioned endorsement mobile phone brand terminated early, it also suffered huge public opinion and consumer reputation "backlash", and as of now, you can still see netizens' dissatisfaction and doubts about their choice of the wrong spokesperson.

Therefore, the uncontrollable risk has also made brands gradually reduce cooperation with traffic stars and even big-name stars, and turn to AI virtual human endorsement. Or like Xiaomi Lei Jun, choose the form of personal endorsement.

Can Yang Yang save the glory of the plummeting sales gap

Relevant statistics show that domestic entertainment celebrity endorsements are now mainly concentrated in washing, beauty, food, home, clothing, jewelry, FMCG and other categories, and the proportion of mobile phone endorsements is not high. So, why did Glory ask Yang Yang to speak for him?

"Extreme Business" understands that when major brands choose to cooperate with a star, there is a set of complex process criteria, such as whether the star image is consistent with the brand positioning, whether the brand and product concept can be conveyed to the desired audience through the star, but the overall logic and purpose is still to rely on the star to expand the popularity of a series or a certain product line, which is converted into real sales in business.

Honor asked Yang Yang to endorse the 90 series, and its purpose is exactly this - the digital series focuses on thinness, appearance and photography, and Yang Yang is currently one of the few strong first-generation traffic, with more young fans in the rice circle, Honor obviously hopes to increase digital series sales through Yang Yang's endorsement and help Honor out of the current difficult situation.

Relevant data show that it has not completely got rid of the glory of Huawei's "shadow", and has achieved a 30% shipment growth in 2022, which can be said to be the only dark horse among domestic manufacturers. But in 2023, as Huawei officially returns to the mobile phone market, Glory has completely lost Huawei's halo, but the market performance has plummeted all the way, getting farther and farther away from the C position, which surprised the outside world.

According to the first quarter data recently released by a number of well-known market research institutions, whether it is shipments or market share, Honor is the mobile phone manufacturer with the largest year-on-year decline among the top five mainstream manufacturers in the domestic mobile phone market.

According to Canalys data, in the first quarter of 2023, Honor shipped 9.7 million units, ranking fourth in the market share of 14%, down 35% year-on-year compared with the same period last year, far exceeding the top five brands; Counterpoint Research data shows that Honor's market share in the first quarter was 14.6%, down 18% year-on-year, far exceeding the decline rate of Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo; IDC data also said that Honor's market share in the first quarter fell by 22.8% year-on-year.

In addition to the collapse of market share, according to a recent report by "Southern Metropolis Daily", some netizens broke the news on workplace social platforms that the 2022 year-end bonus of some departments of Honor has shrunk significantly, and even "broken bones", in addition to the stock meeting is also postponed.

In addition, in March this year, Nanfang Daily also quoted industry insiders as analyzing that "high inventory has increasingly become an unstable factor affecting the growth of glory." "Since last year, some Glory provincial agents have been forced by inventory pressure and began to "dump" goods to the secondary market, resulting in chaos in the product price system; Some dealers also had to close offline stores due to the rupture of the capital chain caused by high inventory.

At the same time, the brand image is not high-end enough, the product innovation is insufficient, the service quality of merchants is uneven, and the sprint to the high-end has not successfully broken through, etc., which are all difficult challenges for Glory at present.

The most powerful weapon to overcome the challenge is undoubtedly sales. But even if Yang Yang is still the top, how much actual retention and transformation fans can bring to glory is also metaphysics.

As a representative of the mid-range model in the market, from the perspective of the Honor 90 series products, the most controversial at present is its standard version priced at 2499 yuan, but equipped with the Snapdragon 7 Gen1 enhanced version processor. From the point of view of many digital bloggers, flat rotor motor, single speaker, plastic frame, no infrared, no optical image stabilization, these shortcomings can be tolerated, but the price of 2499 yuan uses the Snapdragon 7 Gen1 chip, which is "unbearable, and even can't be touched".

Since the development of smartphones, SoC (processor/chip) is still the first choice factor for mobile phones. As the core component of the mobile phone, it directly determines the performance of the mobile phone. Judging from the previous running scores, the performance of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is not as good as the predecessor Snapdragon 780G series because it adopts the Samsung 4nm process, and the performance of the Dimensity 1100 released by MediaTek in 2020 is also far behind.

Up to now, Honor has not announced the specific specifications of the Snapdragon 7 Gen1 enhanced version chip. According to the digital website "Jiufeng Network", the Snapdragon 7Gen1 enhanced version is the Snapdragon 7Gen1 overclocking version, that is, the main frequency is increased to 2.5GHZ, which has slightly improved performance. From the perspective of the market, there are few mobile phones equipped with Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, and even thousands of yuan machines launched in the first two years such as Oppo Realme Q3 Pro, Redmi Note10 Pro, and iQOO Z1 are also equipped with Dimensity 1100+ processors.

From the perspective of processor performance and other configurations, the Honor 90 Standard Edition is indeed not competitive enough compared to many mid-range models on the market. Perhaps, this is also the important reason why many participating digital media, brushing the screen Yang Yang, but ignoring the configuration of mobile phones.

"What does it mean when a newly released phone starts blowing on spokespeople?" An internet observer said.

In any case, for the current smartphone market, good products will speak for themselves, and the leader in comprehensive strength of soft and hard will win more market sales and competition, not depending on traffic stars.

Domestic mobile phone manufacturers, including Honor, and Apple, which is still struggling to catch up, is the best example. It never invites traffic stars to endorse, but does not prevent it from occupying the highest market share in the mobile phone market, grabbing the most lucrative profits, Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and other products, once launched, is the trend sought after by countless stars and fans.