OV, Xiaomi, and Huawei have all started spending money on marketing. Is the path of pan-entertainment really reliable?

Lei Jun, who once demanded "no money for advertising", was fooled by Li Wanqiang this time. He willingly threw 140 million yuan to " The Rap of China " and even went on the show to show off his humor and make complaints. Luo Yonghao once ridiculed, "I would never believe that Lei Jun can talk so eloquently, even if you kill me", but Lei Jun, who bought a ticket to enter, is, in He Jiong 's words, a "godfather".

On the other hand, OPPO turned the R11 launch conference into a celebrity catwalk, with Jay Chou, Jolin Tsai, Li Yifeng, Wang Junkai and others appearing one after another, taking product violence and brutal marketing to the extreme.

At the launch of Honor 9 in Shanghai, the multiple products launched at once not only attracted the admiration of Hua fans, but also the uniform cheers of Hu fans who came for Hu Ge. The pan-entertainment marketing of mobile phone manufacturers actually achieved the same result.

Why must we take the path of pan-entertainment

But this time, pan-entertainment is not a return, it is just a new host.

For Xiaomi, since Li Wanqiang retired in 2015 and the company fell from the peak, and was overtaken by Huawei and OV, the deep-seated reason is of course the decline of brand and product strength, but from a marketing perspective, the serious decline in the ability to grasp and control the topic at low cost is also the main reason. Lei Jun, who is eager to step to the forefront, saw this point .

After the "Hey Hey" TV commercial was broadcast during the 2013 Spring Festival, the traditional channels were unfrozen. Redmi invited three spokespeople at once, Wu Xiubo, Liu Shishi, and Liu Haoran, and Xiaomi Note used Tony Leung. Then Lei Jun himself appeared on "The Rap of China" and Redmi played "The Law of Joy". Lei Jun can be said to have chosen the path of pan-entertainment.

The situation of OV is different .

From the investment perspective, OV has strong cost control over offline channels. Data from Strategy Analytics shows that OPPO's profits last year accounted for 1.5% of the global smartphone industry's total profits, and vivo's was 1.3%, second only to Huawei among domestic mobile phone manufacturers. They also have saturated coverage in advertising channels, with the investment in sponsoring various variety shows alone amounting to 1 billion yuan. Xiaomi, which sticks to the "price-performance ratio", will find it difficult to compete with them based on this alone.

Huawei's entertainment marketing is more sophisticated. The Honor 9, which was released on June 12, brought out an old joke from its spokesperson Hu Ge in advance, "I started out taking pictures just to pick up girls," making the shooting function and grandma gray color of the Honor 9, which had never been seen, the first to be preheated in the pepper fan circle.

Huawei’s insistence on celebrity endorsements is also very systematic.

For example, Huawei Ascend Mate 7 chose Lebanese queen singer Nancy Aguilem as its spokesperson in the Middle East and North Africa; the spokesperson for Honor 6 Plus is Chen Kun; the spokesperson for P9 is Hollywood "Superman" Henry Cavill and Scarlett Johansson; Olympic champion Joyner is the spokesperson for Huawei's "stubborn accumulation of strength" image; Messi was used for Mate 8; Wu Yifan was chosen for Honor 8; and Hu Ge was chosen for Honor 9. Even smart watches have hired the world's most expensive male model - Sean O'Pry, who is well-known to domestic fans for his guest appearance in Taylor Swift's hit single Blank Space, and popular model Karlie Kloss as spokespeople.

According to estimates by HIS and Strategy Analytics, Huawei's mobile phone business had a net profit of US$929 million last year, and Huawei's Consumer BG's own data showed a huge figure of US$2 billion, which can be said to be a strong backing for pan-entertainment marketing.

From this perspective, although Xiaomi insiders are amazed at the big investments in the past two years, it is not wise to compete with Huawei and OV in terms of traffic marketing and massive coverage models. Therefore, it is not surprising that they value joke platforms such as "The Rap of China". At least for now, Lei Jun is quite satisfied with the satirical oral advertisements of "The Rap of China".

Lei Jun, who admits that he is not very talkative, has his own reasons for being willing to stand in the front and show off.

Today, Xiaomi's ability to attract new fans is no longer as good as before. It lacks the offline fulcrum of OV in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, and its technical reserves and operational strength are not as good as Huawei. It is eager to find the hot spot for the spread of the virus , so it is naturally willing to lower its profile .

The key to success or failure

However, past experience has shown that the success of domestic mobile phones in the field of entertainment depends on several points :

The first is the ability to deeply integrate with products.

In the first half of this year, Xiaomi 6, OPPO R11 and Honor 9 were released one after another, and there is obvious comparison in terms of pricing.

Xiaomi Mi 6+64GB is priced at 2,499 yuan, 128GB is priced at 2,899 yuan, and the ceramic premium version is priced at 2,999 yuan;

OPPO R11 is 2999 yuan, Li Yifeng Hot Red customized version is 3199 yuan, and R11 Plus is 3699 yuan;

The 4GB+64GB version of Honor 9 is 2,299 yuan, the 6GB+64GB version is 2,699 yuan, and the 128GB version is 2,999 yuan.

Except for the Hangzhou girl who endorsed Xiaomi 6, the other two brands had celebrities to endorse them. The R11 from Green Factory invited many big-name stars, while Honor 9 invited Hu Ge. Different marketing logics can be seen.

Xiaomi Mi 6, a flagship phone that has been in the works for seven years, did not continue Redmi's star strategy. Although this is incredible, it fully proves that Lei Jun has turned to content marketing tactics.

Oppo invited so many celebrities for R11, quite a few of whom are probably not spokespersons, so their rights and interests must be fully protected at the press conference. This is a wave of rhythm.

From a strategic perspective, Honor, which focuses on Internet channels, emphasizes on the star effect. Basically, each new product only finds one star to endorse and deeply bind the product. The advantage of this is that in addition to supporting the press conference, there is also a subsequent communication effect. For example, last year, Wu Yifan played the Honor Stadium and other projects on the Honor 8.

This year, Honor 9 made a rare joke about its competitors on Bilibili , saying, "It's rare that a certain company has been holding back on a masterpiece for seven years, just to make it look like Honor 8. Are you ok, what are you doing?" It directly lowered the level of Xiaomi 6 released at the beginning of the year to the level of last year's Honor 8.

In terms of products, the Oppo R11, which uses a Snapdragon 660 processor and has no NFC or Type-c, is the most expensive. It obviously carries extremely high marketing costs and has been transformed from a digital product into an entertainment product. Xiaomi, which does not hire a spokesperson, seems determined to return to its low-key approach of making popular products, but the content resources injected for this purpose may not be cheap.

Media competition will be more intense in the second half of the year

According to the "Youth Insight Report" jointly released by AdMster and QQ Social Index at the beginning of the year, today's young people are only willing to pay for four major factors: time, identity, interest and aesthetics.

In short, it requires less waiting, faster product updates, more real-time interactive experience, rejects popular and vague aesthetics, and pursues appearance and fashion.

From the perspective of content consumption, young people are more interested in copyrighted dramas of ancient costume fantasy, youth campus, and competition and role-playing variety shows, including controversial topics, bizarre viewpoints, and even CP sweetness and couple quarrels in "We Are in Love" and "Love Battle", which may become channels for rapid dissemination.

This determines that the competition between Xiaomi 6, OPPO R11 and Honor 9 in the second half of the year will first focus on the competition for marketing channels. There are many copyrighted dramas that may become hits in the second half of the year, and there will be a large number of variety shows, including many self-produced dramas from iQiyi , Tencent Video , Youku, LeTV , Mango and Sohu.

Seizing these resources depends on the financial backers' pockets, but tapping their potential depends on ability.

The first is effectiveness measurement .

Pan-entertainment marketing does not belong to CPS type direct conversion advertising. Mobile phones themselves are high-priced items and it is unlikely to generate a marketing formula like fast-moving consumer goods. Therefore, we need to figure out whether the marketing goal is to attract universal fans, the word-of-mouth effect of topic dissemination, or the increase in brand search index.

Taking Xiaomi 6, OPPO R11 and Honor 9 as examples, all three companies have carefully designed the new product preheating and dissemination cycle, which can be seen from the Baidu Index.

Xiaomi Mi 6, which was released on April 19, has been preheated in the MIUI forum since the beginning of this year, leaving a long word-of-mouth communication cycle. This is in line with Xiaomi's usual routine, but the Baidu Index only had a peak when it was released in April.

The OPPO R11, which was released on June 9, was quite aggressive in preheating advertisements on landmark buildings in nine cities on May 16, but there was almost no effect, and the peak still occurred before and after the press conference.

The situation of Honor 9 is similar. The difference is that it did not use too many hard advertising resources. It only relied on Hu Ge to create topics and criticize competitors on Bilibili. However, the Baidu Index reached about 4.2 million before and after the press conference, while Xiaomi 6 and OPPO R11 did not exceed 700,000.

Creating IP is a skill, not a result .

Variety shows like "The Rap of China" have established an audience through their sharp comments, controversial opinions and three-dimensional approach. Lei Jun went to make comments and sang at Bilibili and had a lot of fun. However, this approach of turning personal image into an IP and deeply binding it with the Xiaomi brand may not be a good thing. After all, Xiaomi spent 140 million yuan to solve the problem that Luo Yonghao solved with a talk show.

This is also reflected in the data.

After Lei Jun's solo show on "The Rap of China" on May 20, Xiaomi's Baidu Index rose significantly, but fell back to normal levels after a few days, showing a wave-like trend as Xiaomi's marketing rhythm .

In comparison, Lei Jun's personal search index has hit a new high, and the trend of change is obviously smoother than that of the Xiaomi brand. Strictly speaking, this kind of personal IP-based gameplay by the sponsor is amplified through platform output, which is an external spillover of the brand's core strength. Its value to the communication platform and individuals is far greater than the help to the company itself.

The desire for quick success and instant benefits behind normalization.

The investment in pan-entertainment marketing has instantaneous volume, but the output has a certain cycle, and the hot spots are fleeting, so it needs long-term persistence. Xiaomi started by hiring three celebrities at a time to endorse Redmi and reached its peak with Tony Leung for Note2, but Xiaomi 6 no longer insisted on it and instead focused on fresh campus beauties, leaving the responsibility of attracting universal fans and increasing traffic to online platforms such as "The Debaters", which shows a certain hesitation in marketing strategy.

Lei Jun once said in an interview that he had 11 meetings every day and only three minutes for lunch. Under this flat management model where he has to do everything himself, it is questionable whether Lei Jun really has the energy to stick to pan-entertainment marketing.

Xiaomi's development has evolved from word-of-mouth marketing and fan marketing in the beginning to hunger marketing based on Moore's Law, to emotional marketing imitating Luo Yonghao, and then to today's seemingly lively pan-entertainment marketing. In essence, it is just a cycle with higher channel costs.

Shi Yuzhu once said, "There are no experts in marketing, the only experts are consumers!" Marketing that only looks at symptoms and not the causes is like a girl wearing a mask on a sunny day. Do you really think she is too lazy to put on makeup?

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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