How Audi regained a new lease of life in the Internet age

The advent of the Internet era has changed the structure and form of organizations and society, and has also brought the business society into an unprecedented period of turbulence. Many brand giants that will never fall in people's hearts, such as Kodak, Nokia, and Sony, are facing this situation. React slowly to new technologies, miss the transition, and collapse. How can brands that once had great success in traditional industries cope with the Internet era? How can traditional industry brands regain a new life in the Internet era? This may require not only adjustments in strategies, but also changes in the way of thinking.

Audi: Catering to young users drives the brand’s age reduction

As one of the first high-end cars to enter the market, Audi’s earliest marketing strategy was to enter the seats of leaders in a planned manner. Exclusively for the car market. According to statistics, Audi A6 once accounted for more than 80% of the high-end official cars, and over time it formed the brand image of "official car" in people's minds. When cars enter the civilian consumer market, their audience is still focused on official consumption by enterprises and individuals. Even high-end white-collar workers who can afford such a car usually don't consider buying an Audi. Audi's success in government procurement of official cars has brought about the stagnation of the individual consumer market.

Although in terms of market sales, Audi still firmly occupies the dominant position in the luxury car market. However, with the introduction of government restrictions on official vehicles, the procurement of official vehicles has gradually tilted towards independent brands. Faced with the continuous differentiation and dilution of the market and the increasing pressure of competitors, Audi has felt an unprecedented threat. As automobile consumer groups become increasingly younger, consumer groups represented by those born in the 1980s are gradually growing into a force that cannot be ignored in the automobile market. How to please and win new users has become the most important brand issue for Audi.

Judging from Audi’s various actions, Audi’s senior management has already thought and acted on this issue. From the design and development of offline products to the strategy and execution of brand communication, the core audience has transformed from mature and stable business elites to the fashion-seeking upstarts, and "pleasant users" is regarded as the strategic starting point for sharpening the brand's user image in the future. In the past, most of Audi's advertisements depicted a "high-class" lifestyle for consumers and emphasized the core value proposition of "breaking through technology and enlightening the future." Now Audi is investing more in event marketing and Internet media platforms. The "Voice of the World" concert, which has been created exclusively for Audi users with a huge investment, brings together star instructors and popular students on the Voice stage from five countries to perform on the same stage for the first time in the world. It will be disseminated and promoted on the Internet media, bringing together distinguished and distinguished people. The professional combination of fashion needs has greatly pleased young Audi users. By meeting the emotional needs of young people, we can successfully transform the target audience and sharpen the young and fashionable brand image in an all-round way, thereby changing the market's traditional perception of "official cars" as lacking individuality, fashion, stubbornness, and conservatism.

If the target audience deviates from the mainstream consumer group of the product, causing the target audience and brand value to diverge, it is likely to cause a serious blow to the brand image and market sales. Predicting and grasping the changes in the mainstream car consumer groups in the next few years in advance is the secret to maintaining the enduring popularity of the brand. Currently, the proportion of individual customers in the total number of Audi customers has reached more than 80%. From 80% of government vehicles to 80% of individual customers, Audi has undoubtedly embarked on a successful road to brand rebirth.

Law 1: Who to talk to is often more important than what to say. Target core users and communicate in their preferred way.

Law 2: Predict trends, transform decisively, and use Internet thinking in brand building. "Interesting" is more important than "meaningful".

Lenovo: The secret of dancing with the elephant at the same time

On the last day of 2013, Lenovo broke the news that it would acquire Motorola smartphones from Google for US$2.9 billion. News, the acquisition covers 3,500 employees, 2,000 patents, and partnerships with more than 50 operators around the world, as well as the Motorola Mobility brand and trademark portfolio. This move immediately stirred up a stir, and many voices believed that what benefited Lenovo most from this move was not Motorola's technology, but its brand.

Although it cannot be compared with its peak period, Motorola Mobility is still the third largest Android smartphone manufacturer in the United States and the third largest smartphone manufacturer in Latin America, with a comparable position in the high-end mobile phone market. Although Lenovo did not obtain the core patents in this merger, the world-renowned Motorola Mobility brand, as well as the trademark portfolio assets of MotoX, MotoG and DROIDTM super series products, can effectively assist Lenovo in its post-merger brand operation model, which mainly includes the dilution of small brands. model, big brand endorsement model, dual-brand joint model and new brand model. It wants to significantly increase its share of the high-end smartphone market and lay a good brand foundation for entering the high-end product markets in North America and Europe and achieving global development. It can be said that in this merger and acquisition, the two largest values ??of Motorola’s smartphones were divided, with Google retaining the patent and Lenovo gaining the brand.