Lao Duan said: The Internetization of TV Brands

By chance, I invited my neighbor to dinner. Their daughter is very outstanding. She graduated from Renmin University High School. She did not follow her parents to Tsinghua University, but was admitted to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She will go to Boston College as an exchange student next semester. I asked her about her opinion on Chinese TV brands, and her answer surprised me: she had never known TCL, Skyworth, Changhong, or Konka. She knew Hisense only because their TV, refrigerator, and air conditioner were all bought by their rational engineering father. They knew Haier, but not because of home appliances, but because of the cartoon "Haier Brothers". What surprised me even more was that she said she dared to guarantee that at least two-thirds of her high school class (in Beijing) should be in a similar situation as her.

They will be the most mainstream consumers of Chinese TV in the future. Not only will their spending power be amazing, but their influence will also be amazing. It is conceivable that in a few years or at most ten years, they will make the choice to buy TVs, which should make our current TV brands sleepless. I think this is the key to the Internetization of Chinese TV. The Internetization of TV brands is the first issue worth thinking about and solving.

When I asked her if she had three choices to buy a TV, "First, Haier and Hisense. Second, LeTV, Youku and iQiyi. Third, LG and Samsung." Her choice was the second one. It seems that this is not a problem unique to Chinese TV brands. Even the world's largest and second largest TV brands are not immune to this. She said: She bought a TV just like she bought an iPad, just to watch online videos, not to watch live channels. Online videos and TVs should be together. We often see many institutions and even some government departments evaluate the brand value of China's national electrical appliances. The brand value of many companies we are familiar with is tens of billions. If we are complacent about this, it means that we do not have enough sense of brand crisis. I often talk about advertising with many CEOs of TV manufacturers and executives in charge of technology, products, marketing, and sales. Most of them are big customers of TV advertising, but they rarely do Internet video advertising.

I think this is the crux of the matter. In the brand building of the Internet era, the tried and tested models, methods and processes of Chinese TV in the past 30 years have failed for the first time. Just like antibiotics, users have developed drug resistance this time. No matter how much money manufacturers spend or how they make selling points, they always feel that their fists are hitting cotton and they can't exert any strength. In fact, the problem is very simple. In the Internet era, if our mainstream TV viewers and users are using the Internet functions of TV sets, then the communication channels, marketing and brand building of TV manufacturers should also focus on Internet channels, rather than traditional channels. It is for this reason that Skyworth TV is the first to title the "The Great Magician" jointly created by iQiyi and CCTV, which is currently on the air. It is not a TV channel, but an Internet exclusive broadcast platform. In fact, in addition to thinking about the Internetization of traditional TV, Skyworth made this decision because of the successful case of title sponsoring Hunan Satellite TV's "Dae Jang Geum". There is a suspicion of advertising for Ma Dong's content team and Skyworth 4K TV. But as one of the witnesses of this incident, I think the key to the Internetization of TV is brand, and the key to brand building is to first think clearly about "where are the users" and "where to advertise", because brand building is not an instant success. Once the direction is wrong, the harder you work, the further away from the goal you may end up. In addition, we cannot simply and crudely turn the Internetization of traditional TV into e-commerce, Weibo, and operations. The key to the success of Internetization lies in details, finding users first, and then making users like you. Many people, even industry insiders, attribute Xiaomi's success to e-commerce and Weibo. This is a very crude mistake that hurts others and yourself.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.