Yu Yongfu: Why did AutoNavi seek cooperation with Guo Degang?

Recently, AutoNavi Maps reached a cooperation agreement with Mr. Guo Degang of Deyun Club. In the future, when using the navigation function of AutoNavi Maps, everyone can travel happily by listening to Mr. Guo's voice, especially in the bus navigation process newly released by AutoNavi. Through this cooperation, Yongfu also learned from Mr. Guo and indulged in his crosstalk addiction.

On the surface, this is a successful brand collaboration between the two parties, which is visible to everyone and very lively; but on a deeper level, this is a comprehensive reflection by AutoNavi on factors such as product design, user demand positioning, and industry trends as it implements its new strategy of focusing on travel and location information services.

Personalization, but not “decentralization”

The key word of the press conference for the cooperation agreement with Mr. Guo was "Happy Navigation". A key reason was the product cooperation - Guo Degang's voice navigation in AutoNavi Maps. This involves a hot word on the Internet: personalization.

Personalization has gradually become the core demand of mobile Internet users, and all businesses have this trend. Recently, I have read a lot of media reports that mentioned a word that I think is wrong: "decentralization." In fact, it should be more and more personalized, but not decentralized.

Think about it, are the clothes we wear more and more personalized, but are there more or fewer companies producing clothes? Will big data and cloud computing lead to more and more centralized or decentralized backends? Strictly speaking, user needs are becoming more and more diversified, and the products that meet user needs are becoming more and more diversified, but from the perspective of product structure, it is not decentralized. On the contrary, the development of these technologies is actually more centralized. Because big data itself is a centralized trend, there is no so-called "decentralization", but actually diversification, and the backend is becoming more and more centralized.

For map products, AutoNavi is moving towards personalization step by step. This is also an important reason why we chose to cooperate with Mr. Guo. A friend of mine from Samsung said that everyone needs three voices in life: the voice of parents, the voice of wife/husband, and the voice of navigation. Therefore, AutoNavi's personalization starts with the most obvious voice. Moreover, personalization can bring happiness to users - the pace of modern society is fast and the pressure is high. "Happiness" is really not a false word, but has become a rigid need.

In the past, the reputation of AutoNavi Navigation’s voice came from Lin Chiling. Many boys liked it and were very happy, but I found that the boys’ girlfriends and wives were not necessarily very happy. In order to avoid such family conflicts, we wanted to find a more magnetic male voice to bring happiness to everyone.

We did some research and found that Mr. Guo Degang is definitely one of the voices that is suitable for both men and women, young and old. Later, after a formal user survey, Mr. Guo was ranked first in the "most wanted navigation voice", so we decided to select Mr. Guo's voice and put it into AutoNavi Maps, upgrading it on top of professionalism and adding a fun element.

Public transportation navigation is the new blue ocean

AutoNavi has been focusing on map navigation for 12 years. With its complete competitiveness in both products and data, it has become a professional and time-honored brand in the field of driving. For example, we have recently confidently upgraded the "You dare to use, I dare to compensate" policy to a regular "travel guarantee plan", as well as the traffic analysis report on major Chinese cities and the congestion avoidance function released every quarter.

But from the perspective of user demand, it is not enough, because in addition to self-driving users, there is another large group of travelers - bus users. One big background is that the center of the entire mobile Internet is in Asia, which developed earlier than the United States and has a large number of users. One of the important reasons is related to the user's lifestyle: the United States is a country that lives on wheels, with hands tied to the steering wheel; while in Asia, students in China, Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia mainly travel by bus, and play with their mobile phones two hours more every day than American users. From another perspective, it is bus users who have created the prosperity of the mobile Internet.

However, these users have encountered many pain points during the entire bus trip: taking the wrong route, missing the stop, and feeling dizzy when transferring. I don’t know if it’s because of the design or something else, but China’s bus transfer routes and stops are always very strange. Therefore, from the perspective of pain points, users really need a professional "bus navigation" product. But before, there was no map navigation product in the market that could help users perfectly solve these problems. Unlike the maturity of driving navigation, bus navigation is a completely blue ocean market.

So today, AutoNavi changed its perspective and redesigned a public transportation product from the perspective and ideas of navigation. This is something that no one in the industry has done before, and it is the first professional public transportation navigation product in the country. Generally speaking, the design principle of AutoNavi public transportation navigation is to provide a "seamless public transportation navigation experience". The core functions include walking guidance at the station, timely guidance on bus routes, arrival reminders, and full voice navigation. You can be less anxious on the bus, take a nap, play with your phone, and not worry about missing your stop.

This is another important reason why AutoNavi chose to cooperate with Mr. Guo, because he is very popular among the general user group who rely on public transportation to travel, and there are many users who listen to Guo Degang's crosstalk on buses and subways. Therefore, from this perspective, using Mr. Guo's voice throughout the entire public transportation navigation process meets the preferences of the target user group.

Of course, like driving navigation, bus navigation is also a service that requires professional capabilities. The three core modules of bus basic data, bus planning engine, and bus navigation engine are indispensable. Similarly, only by having the dual competitiveness of products and data can we make high-quality products.

In general, AutoNavi's focus and expertise in the field of map navigation is the reason why we were the first to launch professional public transportation navigation in China. The addition of Mr. Guo has brought high-quality benefits to the AutoNavi Map Public Transportation Navigation version from the perspective of user positioning and needs, bringing us a double improvement in brand and product experience.

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.