Brand Strategy and Marketing Innovation (1)

Speaker: Mr. Li Guangdou, the first person in Chinese brand, brand consultant of CCTV, famous brand strategy expert, founder of brand competitiveness school, Huasheng Zhiye, founder of Li Guangdou brand marketing agency

Guest profile: Li Guangdou , born in the front line of marketing, has been engaged in marketing and brand planning since 1990. He has served as a perennial licensing strategy and marketing and advertising consultant for dozens of well-known enterprises across the country. He has experienced the development of Chinese brands after the reform and opening up. With very rich experience in brand building and marketing, he has won the Outstanding Contribution Award in China's planning industry and was named a man of influence in China's marketing process.

My friends, I am very happy to come to Xiamen again, because I am a visiting professor of branding at Xiamen University. Every year, I will share with you a lot of brand experience in this beautiful city. Today I will share with you the topic of brand strategy. and marketing innovation. You will find that the views of our guests are different. There is a saying that the butt determines the head, that is, what kind of thinking you sit in will determine what kind of thinking, I think the development of Chinese enterprises will have many different paths. choose. I started serving Chinese brands 20 years ago. At that time, we made a brand called Xiaobawang Learning Machine. It was the first time that we invited the international superstar Jackie Chan to advertise. At that time, I remember paying him 3.8 million Hong Kong dollars. But soon, the company achieved an output value of 1 billion in one year. Now the boss of this company has made a new brand called BBK, and a new brand called OPOOD. The scale of more than 10 billion. So I said that Chinese brands have indeed experienced a very big growth in the past 30 years, but now it's an eventful season for Chinese brands. What is an eventful season? In my opinion, in the 30 years of reform and opening up, China's biggest mistake is to build up the trust of Chinese consumers in Chinese brands every year.

I just saw on the Internet that Da Vinci's boss was crying bitterly, telling everyone that I really didn't cheat, I really didn't cheat, but I tested it, and raised his hand if he believed that Da Vinci didn't cheat ? No. Raise your hand if you think it's fake, okay, that's OK. If so, let me tell you that the brand has only been changed to a new brand, and why? Because it is the business of the rich, and the rich are most afraid of being told that what you are wearing is fake. I remember Andy Lau advertised for a brand called Baleno, and found that the effect was not good. Later, in a film called "Crazy Stone" that he invested and produced, he asked his protagonist Huang Bo to play a stupid thief who is Lian Li. A person who wants to steal people's things and can't steal anything, cleverly planted an advertisement at a very good time - when he climbed out of the sewer, he pointed to his clothes, and he told his accomplices, "You You know, my dress is a brand name, Baleno. Such an implanted advertisement caused Baleno's sales to plummet in the second year. The boss was so angry that he said who asked you to give me such an advertisement. Andy Lau said, I want to send you an advertisement, but I didn't charge you a penny. In the end, I didn't expect that the white-collar workers in our office would like to take them off on the spot after reading it, and would rather throw their shirts away and never wear Balenos again. So this tells us what a brand is. Just now, Mr. Pei Kewei made a point. I think he is more familiar with China than the Chinese. He thinks that Chinese people pay attention to buying not a brand, but a kind of identity. We want to be recognized by our identity too much, so in the eventful season of this brand, whether you are a brand or not, you have to consider this issue carefully. Therefore, some people say that not being a brand is waiting for death, and being a brand is courting death. Well, we have two options today, one is waiting for death and the other is courting death. You can choose whether to wait for death or court death, just kidding. In fact, the entire enterprise is a big wave. Americans have been in business for more than 200 years, but I did some research and found that there are only two companies in the United States that can survive for more than 100 years. One is called General Motors and the other is called General Electric. General Electric made the light bulb, and Edison invented it. GM was dying almost before, save Obama. So I think it is very difficult for a century-old brand, so we think that everyone is talking about a point of view called transformation, how to transform Chinese enterprises, why they need to transform, and what kind of problems we encountered in the development path of the first 30 years. , I can communicate with you.

The unsustainable development of China's 30 years of reform and opening up

We are here in the first 30 years, Whether it is young people or entrepreneurs, I see many faces of young people. I took a test and said that my friends who shared the achievements of the last 30 years of reform and opening up applauded, let me listen, no? I applaud first. If I didn't share it, I would still be farming in the countryside without the fruits of reform and opening up. Then I would like to ask again, and applaud friends who hope to continue to share the achievements of reform and opening up in the next 30 years. Let me remind you that the strength of your applause determines the size of the cake you share, and I'll listen. In the 30 years of reform and opening up, China has solved a problem, whether to do it for the public or for itself, so we see that when you think that you applaud loudly and you are the size of the cake you share, you will find that you applaud even more. vigorous.

So in the first 30 years, there are actually three factors that made Chinese companies win the world's second largest economy. First, China has the cheapest labor force in the world. Mao Zedong's wrong population policy made China's The number of the population has increased from the 400 million people just liberated, which we call 40 million compatriots, to 800 million. We know how many years it took for China to increase from 200 million to 400 million, and it took a thousand years to increase from 200 million to 400 million. But Mao Zedong quickly made it to 800 million in less than ten years. By 1966, China had a population of 800 million. This wrong population policy actually provided the greatest common divisor for China's reform and opening up. That is to say, our labor force is the cheapest in the world, and there is one Chinese for every five people on earth. Of course, we have gone through a strict 30-year family planning policy. Now China's population turning point begins to appear this year. That is to say, ten years from now, one out of every two Shanghainese will be over 60 years old, and China will grow old before it gets rich. . So what are all the manufacturing industries facing now, I and all the bosses, I believe Xiamen is no exception, it is difficult to recruit workers, it is difficult to recruit, including the waiters, you go to the hotel to eat, you find a very good hotel, private rooms There is no waiter in it, he has to look at three spaces by himself, and the quality of service has dropped significantly. In fact, the United States is facing such a situation. If you go to any airline in the United States, you will not be able to recruit beautiful flight attendants, not even flight attendants. They are all empty nurses, old ladies. Including us going to Hong Kong for morning tea, you want to find a beautiful girl to help you pour the water on the plate, it is impossible. Because of the scarcity of labor, his employees are imported from the Philippines. Well, China has gone through this, so we overdrafted the "demographic dividend" that Mao Zedong gave us in the first 30 years. So at any time, mistakes often lead to another success. We have gone through a strict population planning policy for 30 years. Today, Guangdong has opened up, saying that if you want to have an only child, you can have it, but you find that you can’t afford it. , you let him give birth and he will not give birth. That is to say, the policy must be like the "Bornanke" of the United States. Now, of course, it has also encountered challenges and must be forward-looking. You can't treat the head with a headache, and treat the foot with a sore foot. China's manufacturing industry is facing a big bottleneck. Second, China has the cheapest land resources in the world. We can open factories if we get the village chief. Do you think a village chief can easily handle it? He has a great appetite. So in China, after 30 years of reform and opening up, we have already polluted all the rivers, lakes and seas left by our ancestors.

All of us did not realize the seriousness of this problem. China has 9.6 million square kilometers. Of course, it is said that the land is now 10 million square kilometers. On the 10 million square kilometers of land, no surface water is available. This is a resource released by the State Environmental Protection Administration, that is, no surface water reaches the standard of secondary drinking water. What does it mean? We watched a movie and saw that you are thirsty, go to the countryside, the spring water is ding-dong, and then you take a sip of the spring water and drink it in your mouth, what will happen to you immediately? Diarrhea running. All the water in China is polluted, and even our tap water cannot be drunk. Why do foreigners think that our tap water cannot be drunk? This is our second problem. The cost of land in China has changed from the cheapest to the most expensive. Selling the whole of Beijing can buy the United States, that is, according to the current land price in Beijing, we sold Beijing and this is the result. We can buy back the United States with a few hundred square kilometers of land. People don’t believe it. This is called a bubble. is the second question. What is the third question? We have the cheapest money in the world, and the value of RMB is strictly undervalued, so the US Congress has to struggle there every year, whether China is manipulating the exchange rate of RMB, the government tells him not, the US government says we support China, he Because if China is manipulating the exchange rate, it is impossible to do business with China, and the country is a currency manipulator. But the US Congress is debating every year. I don't know whether it is manipulated or not, but the price of RMB is seriously undervalued. Some economists have told me that the reasonable price of RMB and USD is 1:4.5, so I want to tell you these export processing enterprises, if the RMB is not 4.5, the RMB is 1:5.5 At that time, your business basically you go home to accompany your wife and children, and go with your children. Because you no longer have our Decathlon, she has shared it with us, that is to say, if China has such a high labor cost, whether it is Vietnam, Croatia, or some Central Asian countries in the former Soviet Union, I I used to buy clothes abroad, and I often buy clothes made in China, but now I buy more and more clothes made in India, Croatia, and Vietnam. rice bowl, so this is our problem. Faced with these three problems, it shows that China's growth in the first three decades is unsustainable. This is the consensus reached by our central leadership from the political and economic circles, that is, our model is unsustainable, so we must transform. Because labor costs will be very expensive in the next 30 years, the renminbi will continue to appreciate. Not only is the United States forcing us to appreciate it, but the world, including Brazil, India, and the Philippines, all proletarians all over the world have formed a united front to force China to appreciate the renminbi. The third is that the cost of land in China will continue to rise. For example, Xiamen will gradually become a city that is not suitable for manufacturing, because the income from selling land is far better than building a house. income.

Monopoly, low cost, high quality does not mean that it is a brand

I think there are many ways to solve this situation. One of my solutions today is what Hillary said, to continue to enhance the country's soft power. What is soft power? In fact, it is the branding ability of your country. Why can the United States become the global leader? Let's take a look at the list of the 100 most valuable brands in the world. 51 of them are American brands, so globalization often means Americanization, while there are only 7 in Asia. These 7 There is one in China and South Korea, the remaining six are Japanese brands, and there is no one in China until now. When I expressed this point of view on CCTV, the CEO of PetroChina and Sinopec said, why are we not one of the 100 most valuable brands in the world? I said your name is PetroChina, is China a brand? China is a national brand, cut off your Chinese brand, you are called oil. Whether oil is a brand, it cannot even be registered, but the government has given you a privilege to allow you to be called PetroChina. Private enterprises cannot be called PetroChina, so here we are told that monopoly does not mean brand. So what is China's new strategic advantage? It has the largest market in the world, why do you say that? There are now 1.4 billion people in China in the world. If each of these 1.4 billion people has to develop a living habit, saying that they go to bed after taking a hot bath at night, then our water heater industry will continue for 20 years. Growth, that is, China still has a very broad space.

George Soros, the financial jaw of the United States, said that the current adjustment is not a normal economic cycle, but a fundamental system reconstruction, and the prosperity of the past was built on a wrong Foundation, you can no longer build prosperity on that foundation. He is referring to the US economy, but I think it should be enlightening to our Chinese enterprises. Speaking of brands, I posted a Weibo post on Weibo and it was reposted more than 6,000 times. It was two months ago. Now I estimate at least seven or eight thousand. Let me see how much the brand is negotiating. Do you still want to buy it? LV bag? Italian luxury brand Gucci, his president Patricio DiMarco said in an interview with the French "Globe" that the material cost of a Louis Vuitton canvas bag is 11 euros per meter, and the material cost of a Gucci leather bag is 0.305 meters is fifty euros. What he means is that the materials we use in Gucci are much better than him, but he exposed a shocking secret, saying that no matter how good you are, how much is your cost? If you say you are 50 euros, you Using three meters to do it is how much, 500 euros. Then he said that I will calculate the cost of the LV bag for him, plus the cost of the designer's fee does not exceed 300 yuan, how much does it sell for? Sold for twenty-three thousand dollars. Of course, after I posted this Weibo, most of the people scolded me. How could this brand expert be able to settle accounts like this. When we took this LV bag to the street, although many of them were babysitters, and there were more opportunities for robbery, it meant that the LV bag meant her identity. This shows that there must be bargaining behind the brand. According to the viewpoint of the Technical Supervision Bureau, the bag of LV, the director of the Zhejiang Technical Supervision Bureau, is a substandard product. Why? China stipulates that a piece of leather should be hung on each bag, whether you are the top layer of skin or the outer skin, whether you are the skin on the thigh or the skin on the waist, you have to make it clear, right. But the LV bag cannot be hung like this, because it is a canvas bag, it is not a leather bag, an imitation leather bag, the Chinese always ask if it is genuine leather. Right, LV won't play with you on this material, he's telling a story, he said we've ordered boxes for the royal family since Napoleon's time, so that's the power of its brand.

Recently, we are going to organize some entrepreneurs to visit European luxury brands, why they can do it for 100 years, how they are passed down, and how they tell stories. That is to say, Chinese entrepreneurs have only learned one thing in the past 30 years of reform—value warfare. There is no minimum, only lower, so when we minimize the cost, we go all over the world, and the whole world is burning our warehouse, why? There is no way for us to force others to survive. So you have to keep in mind that a consumer will never give him something because you sell it cheap. He will thank you. We know that marketing and economics cannot be considered in terms of cost. No matter how much you sell, when you sell more and more, consumers will be full of hatred for you. When I gave a lecture in Zhejiang, I talked about how Mengniu can open up the market with a low-cost strategy. Several returnees immediately said that this is also a good way to talk about how strong and durable my products should be, and then invented a kind of Socks, what kind of socks, the most sold is the American invention nylon, which we know as nylon socks, invented by DuPont, which used to make explosives. Then, after the invention of this elastic stockings, 45 million pairs were sold at once, exceeding the population of American women. This was the largest explosion. Then our returnees came back in the DuPont laboratory and found that the biggest feature of this socks is that the quality is too high. The difference is very easy to break. With a scratch of the hand, everything comes off. Then they invented the strongest socks in the world. This socks can't be scratched with a screwdriver. Then I wear a pair of socks for a summer, and no matter how I wash it, it won't rot. As a result, they invested a lot of marketing expenses. He hired a lot of beauties on TV and performed live performances. The knife could not be damaged, and it could not be broken. In the end, no pair was sold. He forgot the ladies' consumption point of view. A lady who buys a pair of socks and wears them for three years without breaking them will hate them. You don't even have the pleasure of letting her shop, you think. One of her socks is broken, she will go shopping and buy them everywhere. Then I asked DuPont, I said can you use your nylon, like nylon for parachutes, to make socks, he said of course you can, $100 for a sock for three years, would you buy it? Maybe I will buy it, but your family will hate you. If you buy this pair of socks for three years, they will not be damaged. The new three years and the old three years will sew and mend for another three years. This is Lei Feng's point of view. At the beginning of the reform and opening up, Comrade Xiaoping asked Li Ka-shing a question about what is the most valuable asset of an enterprise. Li Ka-shing's answer is worth recalling to this day. He said that the most valuable asset of an enterprise is that which is not listed in the balance sheet. some assets. what is it? It's your goodwill, it's your brand. And Li Ka-shing is a brand. Li Ka-shing goes to any city to take a loan, and he never takes a mortgage. The governor and secretary must see him, because as long as he invests, the land will definitely appreciate in value, regardless of the quality of his house. , many of his houses have also attracted complaints in the mainland.

Then I think brands are the soft underbelly of the Chinese economy, but also a new growth point for Chinese companies, when you can negotiate prices. I have communicated with Zhang Ruimin what is a brand? He said that your product is sold more expensively, sold faster, sold more, and sold for a long time, and this is called a brand. Fighting price wars is not a brand, so the status of Chinese brands in the world is actually very embarrassing. The EU specially registered a trademark called not made in China. It is not made in China, which means that I have quality and guarantee. So this is actually an insult to Chinese brands, but after examining the century-old history of brand development in the whole world, I think this is a rule. Back then, the British Empire was the world's largest power. Products are forced to be marked as Made in Germany, why? The meaning is to distinguish the products made in the UK, and the products made in Germany are "flow wild", and the quality is very poor. Then, in just a few decades, from the beginning of World War II, Germany has now become synonymous with global precision manufacturing. I posted an article on Saturday called "What to Learn from Made in Germany?" ” published in the China Summer News. Well, in the 1990s, about 1994 and 1995, the Chinese still thought that Korean products were street stalls, and they were embarrassed to drive a Korean car. At that time, Chen Daoming bought a Korean car, and he said that it was only driven at night. When I came out, I felt that the quality of Korean cars was very poor, but when you think about the Beijing Olympics, many people think that South Korea held the Olympics, because when you see the taxis on the street, they are all Korean, including Samsung, which has surpassed the brand value of Sony. Therefore, a brand must have a course of development, so we have an optimistic view on the growth of Chinese brands.

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