How to create an internet celebrity?

This article takes Dyson as an example and analyzes what kind of core products and marketing strategies it relies on to become an Internet celebrity.

Dyson, a British brand that has become popular on the Internet in the past two years, is an unavoidable topic when talking about the sinking market and consumption upgrading, and is always used as an example. From vacuum cleaners and hair dryers to hair styling tools, the "Dyson whirlwind" created by Dyson products in China has never stopped. Whether you have used it or not, you must have been attracted to it directly or indirectly.

Of course, most people still think of it as “expensive”. Curling irons and vacuum cleaners that start at 3,000 yuan will leave a deep impression on everyone.

However, the home appliance industry has long been a red ocean. Chinese manufacturers have been conquering the world with their ultimate cost-effectiveness and manufacturing capabilities, while traditional Japanese, European and American home appliance giants have been losing ground.

But even in such a market environment, Dyson has quietly risen, conquered the public and become an Internet celebrity brand. The reasons behind this are intriguing.

Product is king. Geek temperament interprets "upward attack"

Dyson's popularity in the Chinese market in recent years makes it easy to forget that it is a company with nearly 40 years of history.

Dyson started developing vacuum cleaners in his backyard 40 years ago. It took him five years and 5,127 failures before he finally came up with the first bagless vacuum cleaner that successfully utilized vacuum gears.

This past event is enough to prove the unique geek temperament of the Dyson brand.

Dyson products are geeky in quality and design, and can easily be compared to Apple.

The founder, James Dyson, who was an industrial designer, attaches great importance to engineering culture and believes that products are the key to success, which is exactly the same as Apple products.

This is indeed the case, and Steve Jobs once praised Dyson products. Because of this, Dyson is known as the "Apple of home appliances" and Dyson himself is known as the "British Steve Jobs".

Everything starts from technology and the product itself - many of Dyson's products appear to be revolutionary in appearance, but tracing back to their origins, all of their interesting designs are based on revolutionary technology.

In China, what made the Dyson brand an Internet celebrity was a hair dryer. Before this, people could not imagine that a hair dryer could be hollow, silent, harmless to hair, with low temperature and high wind speed, and could dry the hair of most users in the shortest time.

All of its products continue to have this sense of surprise.

By producing aesthetically appealing, unconventional, and instantly differentiated products, Dyson, as a "market disruptor", has truly brought about a substantial change in the era of "using design, creativity and new technologies to improve people's lives."

The emergence of Dyson has made the originally calm small household appliance market segment become restless, and it is a good example of what "upward dimensional attack" means.

Hit the consumption upgrade node accurately and gain accurate insights into consumers’ pain points

Dyson's pricing is more than three times that of similar high-end products, so it can be said to be "high-end", but this does not mean it is "unpopular". On Tmall and JD.com, Dyson has always been at the top of the sales list in the same category.

Behind Dyson's success is the rise of the middle class. The premise for its successful entry into every country is that the country's middle class has sufficient purchasing power. This view has been verified by the European, American, Japanese and Hong Kong markets.

According to a World Bank report, in 2010, the number of middle-class people in China was only 20-30 million. Today, that number has increased tenfold to over 300 million. Another report predicts that by 2020, the number of middle-class people in China will reach 700 million.

The logic behind Dyson's popularity in China remains the same. Without the demographic dividend of China's 300 million middle-class people, Dyson's expensive products would only be luxury goods in the hands of a few people, rather than mass consumer goods that most people could afford.

Dyson just caught up with the critical time point of consumption upgrading among China's young consumer groups, and just met the purchasing intentions of this consumer group.

They value practical effects, like real technology that improves the quality of life, are keen on fashion consumption and keep up with the trend of the times, are brave to try, and have an open mind.

Someone once asked James Dyson why the same product is 10 times more expensive? He thought for a moment and replied, “How much do you think a pain point that makes you unable to stop is worth?”

For decades, people have accepted subpar product experiences simply because no one gave them any other options, but the pain points remain.

The emergence of Dyson just meets consumers' pursuit of high-quality life.

At the same time, Dyson has brought humanized design to its fullest, providing users with the ultimate user experience.

Dyson uses this top-down strategy: word-of-mouth spread from the new middle class to the general public makes its products have the attributes of internet celebrities and light luxury, and consumers are willing to pay for it.

Filling the gap in the female market, the ultimate reputation triggers the "Internet celebrity" effect

We often joke that behind Jack Ma’s success are women all over China.

Behind Dyson's success, people are also reminded of elegant and noble women.

Among urban female consumers in China, the light luxury style is becoming increasingly popular, and more and more consumers are pursuing truly good design and high quality. Dyson, which has both mid-to-high-end taste and unique black technology added value, is naturally popular among white-collar workers.

In the past, cool tech products that were basically all about technology were mostly reserved for men. The emergence of Dyson effectively filled this gap in the women's market.

And one of the genetic traits of women is that they love sharing more than men.

As the end users of Dyson products, they have the most important say. This may be Dyson's natural advantage.

It can be seen that in the tens of thousands of grass-planting notes in the Xiaohongshu community, and on social platforms such as Weibo and Moments, Dyson has become the favorite of exquisite girls with a touch of pink on its body, and has been crazily "planted" by countless girls.

When a brand or product becomes a symbol with a highly discussed attribute, arousing secondary discussions among multiple levels of consumers and media, further attracting a lot of public attention, it can form a truly phenomenal marketing.

These high-quality shared contents are deeply connected with Dyson’s own marketing. Its strong user participation enables two-way communication and word-of-mouth effect between consumers and brands, thus forming powerful marketing and communication power.

This is the most important part of Dyson's process of becoming an Internet celebrity.

Marketing ignites: Diversified marketing methods increase the momentum of "Internet celebrity"

If the ultimate product is the core factor that makes Dyson an Internet celebrity, then hitting the node of consumption upgrading is a natural move, and hitting the female market is its natural advantage.

Dyson's own brand marketing allows its "Internet celebrity" attributes to be progressively spread and penetrated among consumer circles.

The first among them is the marketing support from e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com.

During the Double 11 event in 2016, Dyson and Tmall Lab jointly conducted a live broadcast with the theme of "Technological Highlights", which allowed visitors to directly visit Dyson's laboratory.

Or the creative activity "Rescue Plan for Allergy-Sufferers" launched in Shanghai in January this year in collaboration with Tmall Club; or the marketing activity "Technology, Achieving New Year's Ideas" created in collaboration with JD.com, etc.

With the help of marketing tools of e-commerce platforms such as Tmall's global marketing and JD's Marketing 360, and with the support of major marketing promotion events such as Double 11 and 618.

It helps Dyson to operate long-term with consumers, conveys a high-quality lifestyle concept, connects consumers' interests with the brand, and continuously strengthens their desire to become Dyson fans.

In addition to the support of e-commerce platforms, we have entered the era of experiential marketing. Dyson's offline experience event of the world's first all-shaped vacuum cleaner museum and a cross-border performance art experiment on "bubbles" done together with Guokr have both attracted huge attention.

It can be said that with the help of the combination of "high-quality products + precise channels + creative marketing", based on Dyson's technological innovation and cool technology concepts, the brand's series of marketing actions have been quite effective, adding bricks and tiles to Dyson's road to becoming an Internet celebrity.

Final Thoughts

But the road to becoming an internet celebrity is destined to be full of thorns, and one may rise overnight or fall overnight.

Faced with numerous competitions in the Chinese market and even the global market, how long can a home appliance brand maintain its internet celebrity attributes?

How to continue the geeky product experience? Will it face as many head-on confrontations as Apple does today?

Will Dyson continue to pursue its geek spirit or gradually transform itself into a traditional home appliance company with a stable and diversified structure?

Everything is full of unknowns, but worth looking forward to!

Author: Wang Qi

Source: Brand Case Selection (ID: Brand2016)