How far are we from the brand

“Does our company really have a brand?”

“Does it really have a design?”

“How much is the independent innovation of core technology?”

When asked When Chinese consumer electronics brands have successfully entered the world stage, Liu Guanzhong, an old Tsinghua professor who has been concerned about China's manufacturing industry for decades, first opened an industrial design department in China, and was hailed as the "father of Chinese industrial design" by academia, did not directly Instead, he threw the above three questions to reporters.

Before the reporter could react, Liu Guanzhong immediately asked back, "Do you think Chinese companies have these now?" The implication is very straightforward - we don't, and it's too early for companies to talk about branding.

Frankly speaking, his questions and conclusions are beyond our expectations, because from the survey results of "CEConline", Chinese consumer electronics brands can no longer be ignored.

30 years of reform and opening up, whether it is a consumer electronic brand supported by the government or a private electronic brand stocked in the barbaric market, after experiencing the law of the jungle for a long time, relying on simple capital drive, it has achieved today's scale - Haier The annual sales of companies such as , Lenovo and other companies have exceeded the 100 billion mark, and they have grown to 100 billion in the chaotic market overgrown with weeds.

Furthermore, since joining the WTO ten years ago, as the home appliance industry with the most transparent competition in the domestic manufacturing industry, in the process of competing on the same stage with "foreign brands" all year round, brand influence has drifted abroad, such as Lenovo, Haier, Hisense And so on, has also won the recognition of world-class peers.

These changes are evident at the annual CES show. At this year's CES, Haier, TCL, Hisense and Lenovo were among the top 50 consumer electronics brands in the world in 2010, sponsored by the International Data Group (IDG). In addition, among the top 20 global TV brands in 2010, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth, Konka, Changhong and Haier occupied six seats, catching up with Korean and Japanese brands.

At a time when domestic brand marketing is in full swing and its reputation is growing, it is undoubtedly biased to deny or ignore the achievements of domestic electronic brands. However, looking back, Liu Guanzhong's concerns about it are not unreasonable.

What is the brand?

Before evaluating the achievements of Chinese consumer electronics companies, perhaps one thing should be clear: what is a brand, and what are the differences in the understanding of brands at home and abroad?

For the definition of a brand, Walter Landau, a famous figure in advertising history, concluded, "A brand is a promise. By identifying and authenticating a product or service, it expresses a guarantee of quality and satisfaction." From According to Walter Landau's definition, he is obviously biased towards the perspective of customer approval.

"Father of Modern Marketing" Philip Kotler concluded that "the point of a brand is a specific set of characteristics, benefits and services that the seller provides to the buyer over time". Kotler's point of view is obviously biased towards the perspective of the company's output of products.

To sum up, the scope of the brand is very clear, and its extension has only two core objects: the enterprise that exports the brand's products, and the customers who buy its products. presented in a way).

"No matter how the brand is modified, its origin is only the product. Without a competitive product, the brand is nothing like water without a source." Liu Guanzhong thinks about the brand. As a consumer electronics product manufacturing industry, what degree should a company achieve in order to obtain a successful brand?

In this regard, Liu Guanzhong believes, "Whether it is consumer electronics manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, or manufacturing in other industries, the goal is the same, whether a manufacturing brand can be called a success, the premise is There must be competitive core industry technological innovation and excellent process design. With these two, we can talk about the follow-up brand promotion, whether the value of the company is really recognized by the world's peers, otherwise it can only be called a profitable company. It is not a successful brand that spreads value."

If Liu Guanzhong views corporate branding from the perspective of R&D technology and industrial design innovation, then Professor Chen Gang, associate dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University, believes that market development is the key to market development. The stage determines the way of the brand.

“For European and American countries, the market has matured in the 1960s. In a situation where products are relatively saturated and the market is fully competitive, the delivery of high-quality and creative brand value is the mainstream trend of corporate promotion. However, in the Chinese market, even if it has developed to the present, the market is still not saturated, and the brand concept of value transfer may not be fully applicable to domestic consumer electronics manufacturers." Chen Gang said.

In this regard, Chen Gang further elaborated, "China has a large market base and a vast hinterland. The market that has been fully liberalized today is only in first- and second-tier cities. In contrast, our products do not extend to the corners of the hinterland. Therefore, many domestic companies still use the promotion of 'staking' in their understanding of brands, especially how to use advertising to present brand value. In the actual product promotion, the method used is to succinctly inform consumers of product functions, efficacy, and how to use it, without demanding whether it conveys the value concept of the enterprise. At the same time, for many ordinary consumers in inland cities , their perception of products also focuses on simple practicality and price factors, rather than brand recognition."

"The market decides everything." Chen Gang pointed out, "When the market is there, it is too absolute to emphasize. Brand concept, it is not a good thing to force the ducks on the shelves and pull the seedlings to encourage growth, and it is easy for the company to fall into a management dilemma, because the promotion of the corporate brand requires a lot of manpower, material resources and energy."

Compared to the previous two domestic experts' opinions Viewpoint, David Grossman, the former chairman of the International Graphic Design Association and the chairman of the Israel Design Association, who has visited China many times, expressed his unique understanding of the brand's way - brand permanence.

"Everything has its own brand, including individuals and businesses. For businesses, a brand is the perception of a product's image, whether it can be perceived or not, it is constant." To this end, David Grossman advises Chinese entrepreneurs in particular, "Chinese CEOs must be wary of the notion 'I'll have my own brand when I'm strong enough'. of financial resources are contributing to brand generation, so one of the CEO’s important responsibilities is to develop and execute a long-term brand development strategy early on, failing to do so will end up spending more money on tinkering with the brand tomorrow.”

Regarding the future development trend of the brand, the above three experts all agreed that the brand concept of conveying corporate value must be the mainstream.

What are we missing?

Since the general trend of brand achievement is the way of value transmission, what is the status quo of Chinese manufacturing brands?

"Lack of 'quality', lack of 'system', lack of 'creation'." This is Liu Guanzhong's description of the status quo of Chinese manufacturing brands.

"Too many domestic manufacturing enterprises are in the stage of only making 'brands' instead of 'products', and they set up 'brands' everywhere and do image packaging projects; at the same time, as a manufacturing industry, our embarrassing situation is only ' There is no "manufacturing". Although the drawings and production lines of foreign counterparts are introduced through joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions, the enterprise just follows the process over and over again. The "manufacturing" part of the local industrial design has gone through decades, and it is still up to now. I have no right to speak; in the field of independent innovation, we only have 'new', refurbished 'new', and the part of 'creation' that is hard to see is said to be independent research and development, but everyone knows the gold content of its products." In Liu Guanzhong's view , this is the overall status of the domestic manufacturing industry.

Comparing with Liu's point of view, Du Jianjun, chairman of the far-reaching consulting agency who has been a marketing consultant for Lenovo, Midea and other companies for many years, expressed a similar point of view from the perspective of enterprise growth.

As a senior person in the consumer electronics industry, Du served as the vice president of marketing, regional director and branch general manager of TCL Sales Company in his early years, and vice president of marketing and marketing director of Skyworth Group. Later, he joined the related industry consulting industry. The ups and downs of China's consumer electronics industry.

“For Chinese consumer electronics manufacturers, development is divided into three steps: survival, growth, and finally internationalization. Now, many of our companies have gone through the first two steps and are facing the third step of internationalization. However, the problem has also been exposed in a concentrated manner. It is very difficult to suddenly let the company go back and re-learn R&D design based on the original point after being used to imitation and using the 'bringing doctrine'." Du Jianjun bluntly said that the "adapting doctrine" is a double-edged sword. If you use it well, you can quickly keep up with the pace of foreign counterparts, and bring forth new ideas.

The fact is also that in the first two steps for domestic enterprises to survive and grow in the early years, imitating and absorbing other people's technologies and products was a shortcut, and it was also the key to their cost reduction and even survival. , The enterprise has no technology, no talent, no funds, and no time. It can be postponed.

“But the situation is different now. With the deepening of internationalization, it is inappropriate to emphasize the national conditions to avoid the lack of original technical design.” Du Jianjun said.

In a general sense, in a manufacturing industry chain, core technology, industrial design, channel sales, and brand influence are at the top of the profit pyramid. In the absence of core technology and industrial design, it can still enhance itself in channel sales and branding, and obtain high profits.

“In the past, the market importance of core technology and industrial design was not as prominent as it is now. In the industry profit value chain, domestic enterprises can adopt a curve breakout method to obtain high profits through channels and bypass the shortcomings of their own design and development. For example, Du Jianjun said that early Lenovo, Gree, Haier and other companies have made great achievements in the construction of local channels. For example, Gree has realized a community of shared destiny through the way of joint venture and shareholding of manufacturers, which has largely solved the problem between manufacturers and channel merchants. game problem.

Understanding the local area and being familiar with local operations are the innate geographical advantages of domestic enterprises. In China, it is the Chinese agents, distributors and consumers who need to deal with them. Congenital acclimatization is a common problem for foreign companies.

“On the other hand, domestic enterprises can generate large-scale sales advantages through large-scale channel advantages, and then obtain large-scale brand recognition. This is the early stage of Lenovo and Gree’s victory over foreign counterparts, and firmly occupy the PC, air conditioner and air conditioners. It is a powerful weapon for the leading position in the field. In fact, this is also a classic way for Chinese electronic brands to break through against the trend when they lack core technology and design disadvantages.” Du Jianjun pointed out.

However, it may not be appropriate to take the previous path now, and it is even more unreliable to rely on one trick to eat fresh food all over the world.

"In those days, there were many restrictions on foreign-funded enterprises entering China, and the disadvantages of channels were obvious. However, with our accession to the WTO, the trend of international cooperation has continued to advance, and foreign-funded enterprises have become less and less restrictive in their localization, and their distribution in channels has also changed. They are becoming more and more sophisticated, and at the same time, they are also transferring OEMs to places such as Vietnam, where human capital is cheaper, to gain further cost advantages. So now this ball is kicked back into the hands of our consumer electronics manufacturers themselves, as the core traditional The channel advantage is gradually fading, and in the remaining division of labor chain, the importance of industrial design and industrial core technology will only continue to be strengthened, what should we choose?" Du Jianjun believes that the answer is self-evident.

For the strategic approach to channel success, VentureRepublic founder and CEO Martin Rolle further analyzed Asian companies from a more macro perspective. He believes that the general mentality of Asian companies is based on trade, not branding, and revenue-based, not profit-based. Branding is seen as advertising or logo design, and many managers also regard branding as a mere Considered as an adjunct to the growing business.

Liu Guanzhong further pointed out, "The channel promotion and customer service of branding are soft external skills, while product innovation and design in branding are hard internal skills. If the external skills are well polished, the implementation will be effective in the short term, but the internal skills will not work even if the internal skills are properly implemented. It requires long-term precipitation. If you don’t diligently cultivate internal skills and rely solely on external packaging, you will not be able to achieve success in internationalization.” In Liu’s view, many large domestic companies have a product development cycle as short as several months or even tens of days, and one year. The same product line can push more than a dozen products, and there is a question mark about the R&D and design of the gold content.

The opinions of the above two industry experts are also in line with the latest survey results of "CEConline" magazine. We found that domestic electronic brands in the three representative product fields of smart phones, notebook computers, and LED-TV, overall The score is far lower than that of foreign electronic brands such as Apple, Blackberry, Samsung, Sony, etc. At the same time, in this era of pursuit of creativity and personalization, the two most critical core options for brand building - product innovation and product design, in addition to the smartphone Meizu brand In addition, compared with foreign brands, the scores of domestic brands can be described as "failure across the board". Even big domestic brands such as Haier and Lenovo, although their scores in brand influence and customer service are not lower than those of European, American, Japanese and Korean brands, there is a huge gap compared with their foreign counterparts in the aforementioned two options.

Achieving a brand through industrial design

In fact, a large part of product innovation and design originates from industrial design. Only when industrial design thrives can products become powerful. Its importance is self-evident in modern corporate strategies. , In many countries, industrial design is called "the god of creation" and "the source of wealth", but from a practical point of view, if it is difficult to break through the high-end technology of the core industry in a short time, then industrial design is relatively easy. The field of breakthrough, in changing the role of China's economy as a "global manufacturing factory", has played a more prominent role.

The importance of industrial design is also clearly reflected in the survey results of CEConline magazine.

Apple's score is far ahead of domestic and foreign brands, and it can be said to be the leader, and the performance of domestic brand smartphone Meizu is also surprising. As we all know, the object of Meizu's "apprenticeship" is Apple. If there is a "king" of consumer electronics brands at the moment, there is no doubt that Apple is well-deserved.

Why has a brand with a history of more than 30 years achieved such a high reputation? Perhaps we can only say that Steve Jobs had a slight insight into the relationship between human nature and products, and the cold industrial design evolved into the tenderness hidden in the depths of people's hearts in his hands.

You can use a simple human-computer interaction detail to prove the excellence of Apple's industrial design. For example, how to browse photos on the iPhone without buttons, Apple's design method is: when two fingers are pressed on the screen and gradually approach, the photo is zoomed out, and when the two fingers are gradually separated, the photo is zoomed in. This method of operation is exactly in line with people's experience that people associate two-fingered gestures as pinch, and two-finger apart as stretching.

Such a simple detail design is enough to impress countless people, not to mention that the Apple iPhone is an ingenious combination of countless such details, and it is precisely this way that Steve Jobs' Apple culture spans the vast Pacific Ocean, and in China Causes a persistent "apple wind".

In contrast to the industrial design of domestic electronic brands, as Liu Guanzhong said before, "lack of products, lack of systems, lack of new products". The question is, how do we seek changes and achieve brands through industrial design?

In this regard, David Grossman suggested, "Because of the perennial 'copying' OEM, Chinese enterprises misunderstand design as a cheap service limited to appearance packaging, this concept must be changed; from the perspective of long-term brand building Considering that enterprises should form a set of their own design strategies and precipitate their own design language, if the enterprise does not have this set of design language, every product produced by the enterprise has to be designed from scratch. The more difficult it is, because product design is easy to imitate, and it will also cause waste of resources."

"It is necessary to increase the importance of industrial design in internal institutional settings, treat it as equal to sales and other departments, and create an equal voice internally. Opportunities. At the same time, don't simply regard the industrial design department as a money-making organization. Enterprises are reluctant to invest in the industrial design department, but expect it to make profits. This logic itself has problems. The role of the design department should be considered for the enterprise. The value created by other departments should be evaluated." This is Liu Guanzhong's suggestion.

This proposal is also aimed at the current embarrassment of the industrial design department of domestic enterprises. Liu Guanzhong said, "Now the crux of the problem of our enterprise is very clear. The industrial design department has no say in the enterprise. In the face of the strong company sales department, the design department only Attachment, no voice. A good design is to take one step forward, another step, and another step in the case of market research. After three steps, according to the actual positioning of the enterprise, and then two steps back to cooperate with sales, finance and other departments , to coordinate a product design that satisfies the market, while domestic companies take a step and then go back, stay where they are and even go backward, so now the domestic market is full of garbage designs."

This "CEConline" People magazine's survey results on industrial design also verified Liu's point of view. Among the 279 domestic respondents (more than 90% in the manufacturing industry), 60.5% of the interviewed companies chose "US$100,000 for the annual budget of product industrial design". or less (including 100,000 yuan)”, if the equivalent of RMB is only more than 600,000 yuan.

In fact, these measures of the company are only a microcosm of the overall cultural atmosphere. The lack of domestic creative talent cultivation soil, the highly popular take-it-ism approach, and the lack of government-related incentive systems are the shortcomings of industrial design. direct trigger.

“To change this bad ethos, we need the support of the government, the media, and people from all walks of life. The government must introduce clear support policies to encourage and support the industrial design of excellent enterprises. Looking at Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and other countries , the role of the leader of industrial design is the government, and it is very difficult for enterprises to rely on market-driven and capital-driven clusters to form spontaneously, and no enterprise can shoulder such a heavy responsibility.” Liu Guanzhong pointed out.