Xiaomi marketing has become a leading project, Lei Junren and Xiaomi brand deep binding|Tanpoint Viewpoint

Author/Xu Tan

"There is light in the eyes, and there is strength at all times."

"People are great because of their dreams, and they grow because they persist in their dreams."

"How to gain inner peace in the torrent of changing times? My answer is: grow. ”

On the evening of August 14, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi, held an annual speech at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, covering 36 years and speaking for more than 3 hours from the beginning of university to the founding of Xiaomi. "Dream", "persistence" and "the sea of stars" are indispensable words in inspiration, Lei Jun has used.

In an anti-chicken soup era, how infectious chicken soup is depends on who said it.

Many entrepreneurs like to talk about feelings because I have nothing but feelings, and I don't know if there is still a chance for success; Successful entrepreneurs talk about feelings, which is the definition of success by successful people, and will be interpreted as idealism.

Nowadays, many entrepreneurs know that emotional marketing is an effective weapon but are unable to talk about feelings, Lei Jun has bound his personal personality and Xiaomi brand more deeply, and turned the founder's personality into a companion strategy of Xiaomi marketing, is this an effective strategy?

Sentiment is still productivity

One question is, why is talking about feelings so popular in the mobile phone industry, is mobile phone more qualified to talk about feelings than catering?

This began almost since the era of Steve Jobs, the founder of smartphones, who tried to persuade PepsiCo President John Sculley to join Apple in 1983: "Do you want to sell sugar water for a lifetime, or do you follow us to change the world." ”

By the time Luo Yonghao made a hammer mobile phone, emotional marketing had reached its peak. Lao Luo, who is good at stand-up comedy, has become a representative figure of the "attention economy".

"A fierce life does not need to be explained", "On the road to the bull, the scenery is so bad that people just want to say dirty words, but entrepreneurs care about the distance"... Lao Luo has accumulated a batch of die-hard fans of hammer mobile phones by relying on his own personality.

Xiong Sanmu, an investor in Hammer Mobile Phone, once commented on the spiritual value of feelings: "In the interpretation of the brand spirit, in the cultural pursuit of the trajectory of human civilization, it shows the blessing of ideals and feelings outside industry and science and technology to the product."

You will find that the deeper the development of smart phones, the more marketing and public relations scenarios have changed. That's because intelligence has also been the era of media decentralization over the years.

In the past, CCTV, print media, and radio were the main positions of brand communication, and in those years, the path of brand communication of various companies was similar, more precisely, brand communication was almost equivalent to advertising communication. Find a 4A advertising company, develop a brand communication strategy, and the 4A company bids to mainstream media and gets advertising space that matches the company's budget.

If you are willing to spend a lot of money and invest hundreds of millions to win the king of CCTV, the establishment of the brand will be more immediate. Mengniu, Yili, Moutai, Yunnan Baiyao, Meituan, these household names were originally CCTV champions.

But in an era of media "decentralization", these traditional models are not good, or spending money but not getting the matching brand effect. In an era of information fragmentation, communication is layered, and the main battlefield has become WeChat, Weibo, and short video platforms represented by Douyin, Kuaishou, B station, and WeChat Channels.

A company that was the king of CCTV once anxiously asked the media, "Can you tell me how to play now?" ”

Xiaomi was arguably the first to react to the change in media decentralization. Xiaomi is known as the originator of social marketing, claiming to "not spend 1 cent, achieve 1 million fans and sell 1 million mobile phones". As early as 2010, Xiaomi began to form a community to find Xiaomi mobile phone enthusiasts from various forums, these enthusiasts are called geek KOC, they are both the chief experience officer of Xiaomi mobile phones, new product testing officers, and the chief communication officer, Xiaomi's rapid rise, and the establishment of the brand is inseparable from geek KOC. This group of rice noodles was called "the sponsor of 100 dreams" by Lei Jun.

It can be seen that consumers are looking forward to a warm and emotional way of communication, rather than passively accepting products in the traditional media era.

Especially in the TOC industry of mobile phones, feelings are still productive. Feelings do not seem to be the means of production, but they transcend the means of production. It is more like a catalyst, it seems that there is no feeling, and the role of other means of production cannot be fully utilized.

A product that is given an emotional color will certainly attract consumers more than a cold assembly line product, and feelings are more likely to be sought after and recognized. Especially in the era of social media, Lei Jun does not need to spend too much marketing and advertising expenses to obtain amazing communication breadth.

However, the more fission social media is, the greater the challenge for brand communication. After learning from Xiaomi, many companies found that many times, high popularity does not lead to high conversion, and content popularity is not equivalent to planting grass intensity. Therefore, the screening of the circle layer, the grasp of fan stickiness, and more detailed work to be done.

Lei Jun said in his speech on August 14 that "doing high-end is the only way for Xiaomi's development."

What does premiumization mean? It is high technical content, high product quality and high price. If the "craftsman spirit" promoted by Xiaomi cannot be precipitated on the product, without the blessing of team, technology, management and capital, just having feelings is a castle in the air.

Why is Lei Jun's character deeply bound to the brand?

In the past three years, Lei Jun has been the most active entrepreneur.

From his first public speech in 2020, this year is Lei Jun's fourth annual speech. The themes are "Believe in Yourself, Go Forward", "My Dream, My Choice", "Insights Through the Trough of Life", and "Growth" on August 14. The lecture venue has also been upgraded from the Xiaomi Science and Technology Park to the National Convention Center, and the largest conference hall can accommodate 6,000 people, which is getting bigger and bigger.

In an era of uncertainty, Lei Jun's character creation and Xiaomi's development are more deeply bound. Although some people are worried that if Lei Jun's aura is no longer there, will this cascade effect hurt the Xiaomi brand?

The emotional height of the mobile phone industry represents the fierce competition in this industry. Although after several rounds of shuffling, there are fewer and fewer mobile phone manufacturers, but the mobile phone industry has always been a red sea. Counterpoint Research, a market data agency, announced that the top six brands in China's mobile phone market in Q1 2023 are: Apple (19.9%), OPPO (18.3%), vivo (17.7%), Honor (14.6%), Xiaomi (13.6%), Huawei (9.6%). The market share gap has narrowed and the degree of competition has become more intense.

How to evaluate Lei Jun's eloquence? In the early days, it felt like "you can't win a quarrel with anyone", but in 2017, he was on "Strange Words", sharing the stage with Ma Dong, Luo Zhenyu, and He Jiong, some of the most talkative men in China. Of course, there was a "gold lord dad" at that time.

This is actually Lei Jun's character - a model worker, who dares to try, dares to persist, and also said the ruthless words of "looking down on life and death, and doing it if you don't comply".

Entrepreneurs are a group of entrepreneurs, each with a strong personal style and adhering to values, with a high degree of recognition. The brand of an enterprise in the eyes of the public is often unified with the entrepreneur. Ren Zhengfei is Huawei, and Zong Qinghou is Wahaha. Xiaomi's "focus, extreme, word-of-mouth, and fast" is also Lei Jun's personality to a certain extent.

Hu Yong, a professor at Peking University's School of Journalism and Communication, said: "Our confidence in an enterprise comes not only from its own strength, but also from the unique charm of the company's leaders radiating outward, and we even rely on this to judge how far the company can go." ”

So the style of the entrepreneur affects the style of the enterprise, and the image of the entrepreneur will also affect the image of the enterprise.

However, the creation of entrepreneurs' personalities is a "first-hand project", and there is no way to fake others. Because the more successful the boss, the more paranoid he is, and his success process is a process of constantly strengthening himself, constantly confirming that I am right to do so. He is so self-centered and powerful that there is no public relations to package the boss's personality, and the long-term strength of the boss's personality depends on whether he can achieve the unity of knowledge and action and continue to cultivate himself.

Just as Lei Jun mentioned in his speech on August 14 that "continuous cognitive breakthroughs lead to real growth", entrepreneurs who manage their personalities well are responsible for themselves, as well as enterprises, users, and shareholders.