Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Source: Lei Tech Digital 3C Group | Editor: a Tian Ming | typesetting: LIN

A generation of singer diva Coco Lee left forever, many netizens, especially fans, fell into deep sorrow, and the brand she endorsed returned to public memory and was hotly discussed by netizens.

"Hello, everyone is really good." this well-known advertisement is the work of Coco Lee's endorsement of "Guangzhou Haodi". Now Guangzhou Haodi is no longer the mainstream daily chemical brand, but it is still working hard. On July 6, Guangzhou Haodi's official Weibo also posted a tweet to mourn Coco Lee.

What many netizens may not know is that Coco Lee also endorsed an once very well-known mobile phone brand: waveguide. In 1999, Coco Lee's phrase "Fighter in the Mobile phone" made waveguide phones a household name overnight, and sales exceeded 700000 the following year.

However, waveguide phones are not as lucky as Guangzhou Haodi. Under the impact of the wave of smart phones, waveguide mobile phones have long disappeared and become the memory of netizens. Some time ago, Xiao Lei also took everyone to review the recent situation of the three "domestic giants" in the functional machine era, namely, Jin Li, Tianyu, and Newman, but judging from the feedback from the Wechat comment area of Lei Technology, compared with these brands, people seem to pay more attention to the waveguide mobile phone, the "functional phone king", and the brand power is really too strong.

Unlike Jin Li, Tianyu and Newman, the well-deserved domestic king was already a household name for his blockbuster products before China entered the mobile phone era. When Chinese consumers first came into contact with mobile phones, it already understood the importance of advertising marketing and was undoubtedly the king of Chinese mobile phones in the past.

Marketing is too strong, but also because advertising is too "brainwashing", the vast majority of people's impression of waveguide mobile phone should stay in the stage of "waveguide mobile phone, fighter in mobile phone". But unlike other domestic mobile phone brands, the layout of waveguides in the field of communications can be said to have a long history:

In 1992, Xu Lihua, who graduated from Southwest Jiaotong University, and four classmates were working on Chinese pagers (Call and BB) across the country. Finally, this group of entrepreneurs with ideas set up Ningbo waveguide Co., Ltd with the help of Fenghua District of Ningbo City. In 1993, Bao Bao presented their technological achievements-China's first Chinese pager with independent intellectual property rights. With this product, waveguide has officially gained a reputation in the domestic communications market.

Photo source: at that time, China's pager market was mainly occupied by overseas brands, but due to the limited domestic consumption capacity at that time, the development weight of the Chinese market was even lower. the direct result is that almost all the foreign pagers on the market at that time did not support Chinese display, and could only send specific phrase codes through the paging station to allow the other party to "translate" on their own. Or send a phone number directly and ask the other party to find a public phone.

But as the highlight moment of the waveguide, the Chinese pager greatly reduces the money and technical threshold for users to use the pager, and also plays an important role in promoting the popularization of the pager. In the next 6 years, waveguide has almost become one of the synonyms for Chinese pagers, and its market share has come to the second place in the country.

In 1996, the production of waveguide pagers reached 100000, but this is far from the peak of waveguide: in 1997, 1998 and 1999, the annual production of waveguide pagers was 320000, 1 million and 2 million, respectively, almost doubling in a year. But the era of pagers was soon over-China began to enter the era of mobile phones.

Picture source: waveguide completed the research and development, production and testing of mobile phones without qualification in 1998, and applied for a national mobile phone production license in 1999, which can officially enter the mobile phone industry. At the same time, Sagemcom, a French technology company active around the world, was preparing to enter the Chinese market. As the relevant departments had very strict control over mobile phone production qualifications at that time, overseas mobile phone brands had to participate in China's mobile phone market in the form of local business partners.

After inspecting a large number of enterprises, Sagem finally chose to cooperate with waveguide. With the joint efforts of strong and strong forces, waveguide finally handed over its first answer in the mobile phone industry-Mirage RC838, which officially opened the sales myth of waveguide in China's mobile phone market.

Picture source: although the waveguide with a technical background does have a certain R & D capability, under the strong market protection strategy, domestic mobile phones did not need to open a big gap in technology at that time. At this time, waveguide began to shift the focus of the enterprise to another vital area-marketing.

In fact, before Bao got the national mobile phone production license, Xu Lihua had already borrowed 200 million yuan to build a mobile phone production line. Compared with the emphasis on manufacturing, another move by Bao looks more risky: before the product is on the market, Bao borrowed 40 million yuan to put TV commercials on CCTV.

Now it seems that this strategy can be said to be promoted or hyped. After all, the waveguide at that time had not even been made into a mobile phone. However, facts have proved that the strategy of "product is not here, marketing is first" has made great returns, and the phrase "waveguide mobile phone, the fighter in mobile phone" has also spread all over the country along with the TV advertisement of waveguide mobile phone.

This kind of advertising effect is already a highlight moment for many brands, but it is only the starting point for waveguide.

Since waveguide is a listed company, we can find a lot of key data in the annual report. According to the annual report in 2003, the cost of advertising for waveguide was as high as 258 million yuan (258568111.69 yuan), compared with 190 million yuan (193049405.77 yuan) in the same period of the previous year, while the cost of scientific research in 2003 was only 58.5 million yuan (58500367.59 yuan). Compared with 88.88 million yuan in 2002, it is even lower.

Picture source: what is the concept of waveguide advertising with more than 200 million yuan in 2003? In 2004, Tencent listed in Hong Kong at a price of HK $3.70 and a market capitalization of HK $219 million, which means that 200 million yuan was enough to buy a high-quality technology company like Tencent in 2003.

Waveguide is not only willing to spend money on marketing, but also very attentive. At the end of 1999, Bao Mobile spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire Coco Lee as an image spokesperson, and renewed her contract with Coco Lee in 2001. At that time, it found Coco Lee to endorse the waveguide phone not simply to take a photo or advertising video, but to give full play to Coco Lee's specialty, combined with her post-song expertise, specially created the advertising version of the song "find me" and a number of advertising MV, "find me the first time with the waveguide phone". The classic advertising slogan comes from the advertising MTV "find me". In one of the MV, the waveguide phone also designed a futuristic leather dress for Coco Lee to meet the fashion image of that era.

Mr. Sui Bo, deputy general manager of waveguide at that time, pointed out that in a market where the brand was weak, the use of celebrities could promote the brand, and this strategy was successful at present: "although it cannot be said that the growth of mobile phone sales is only due to the star effect, it is indeed a factor that cannot be ignored."

Photo Source: waveguide Advertising "find me" after using Coco Lee as a spokesperson and launched a vigorous marketing campaign, Bird mobile phones sold more than 10 million units in 2003, surpassing Motorola and Nokia to become the champion of mobile phones. and maintained the record of the first domestic mobile phone sales for seven consecutive years, the first export for three consecutive years, and global sales of nearly 60 million units, and it is also the first domestic mobile phone brand to rank among the top 10 in the world. It can be called "the light of domestic mobile phones".

Waveguide mobile phone brand has been a great success. "waveguide Mobile phone, the Fighter in Mobile phone" can be called one of the most successful mobile phone advertising marketing in history. In the 2007 Spring Festival Gala, Song Dandan's sketch lines appeared: "laying Roosters, fighters in Roosters, Oh yeah!" It can be seen that the advertising mind of waveguide mobile phone is strong.

However, the good times did not last long. In 2005, the relevant departments relaxed the restrictions on the production license of mobile phones. Overseas mobile phone brands and "parallel imports" poured into the domestic mobile phone market, and the waveguide, which lost the protection of the industry, was quickly washed out by the new generation of domestic mobile phones. In 2005, the waveguide lost 471 million; in 2007, the waveguide lost 594 million. At one point, the parent company of waveguide mobile phones, which was in a sharp decline, was on the verge of delisting. Although Bird tries its best to increase profits and retain its identity as a listed company, it is no longer defenseless in the face of the wave of smartphones set off by iPhone.

Waveguide phones are getting farther and farther away in the smartphone era, and most of the time, we can only see the waveguides in the complex network of Zhu Zhaojiang, founder of voice phones and former executive deputy general manager of the waveguide sales company.

From Zhuge Liang's point of view, the huge marketing advertising expenses and disproportionate R & D expenses are generally considered to be the main reasons why waveguide mobile phones can not keep up with the industry.

For domestic mobile phones, they have to be technologically advanced and afraid of the smell of wine. Mobile phone marketing is of course very important, but an excellent marketing campaign can really break the public's impression of the brand, such as the famous "Jazz Life" and Apple. It will spend money on occasions such as the "Super Bowl" to establish and strengthen its brand image. Today, when the brand is strong enough, it will also place advertisements in many outdoor places in Guangzhou.

However, marketing and products should not put the cart before the horse, but should be a "want-and-want" relationship. Marketing promotion is inseparable from the outstanding product strength, after all, consumers buy mobile phones for use, not for spokesmen to hit the list. Without the technical strength of the product technology, no matter how to promote it can not be recognized by consumers. Again, the background of all brands is product power, products are not good, no matter how strong brands are castles in the air, towers in the sand.

Photo source: Xiaomi, we can see that domestic mobile phone brands in recent years have taken technology upgrading as the primary goal, such as Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo vigorously improve imaging technology, such as OPPO in charging technology, OS and other dimensions to improve themselves, such as vivo, OPPO continue to play the leading role of folding screen technology, and Huawei / Glory has been the ultimate network basic technology.

After the market pattern is solidified, focusing on publicity can indeed move consumers of other brands to a certain extent, especially for new categories such as folding screen phones, image flagship phones, mid-range phones and other new categories that grow in smartphones. Strong enough marketing can play the role of educational market, and it is more likely to attract consumers not to be "nail households" to replace better mobile phones. However, while strengthening marketing, brands must also increase their R & D budget. Only through continuous innovation, making better products and even opening up new product lines can consumers have a better experience and make the cake bigger. This is also a truly long-term and effective way of brand management.

This is the inspiration left to future generations by the waveguide mobile phone, a "former fighter". Over time, domestic mobile phones will certainly give birth to more real "fighter" brands.

Finally, let's remember a generation of queen Coco Lee and pay tribute to every one of her works, including those classic advertisements.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Lei Technology (ID:leitech), author: Lei Tech Digital 3C Group

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