Chapter 194 Yuanxin's Archway
"Any product bearing the Yuanxin logo must never initiate a price war. In fact, even back during the battles between Zhongxin and Motorola for the pager market two years ago, Zhongxin's strategy was always to carefully test the market's tolerance and then price just slightly lower than Motorola," Su Yuanshan said, his fingers interlocked, thumbs pressing against each other. He looked seriously at Wan Yongliang and Gao Mingcheng. "And whenever we launched a new product, the price would directly hit the top."
"A brand that enters the market with a self-demeaning price will find it extremely difficult to elevate its status later," Su Yuanshan continued, thinking of Xiaomi and his old company from his past life.
Xiaomi initially entered the market with a focus on value-for-money, quickly stirring up the scene, but at the cost of brand value. Even after rolling out numerous black tech innovations and trying to reposition itself with higher pricing and branding efforts, it ultimately failed to break through to the top tier. His old company had a similar fate; in the beginning, it had been too tightly bound to telecom carriers, resulting in a widespread perception that it was "cheap phones bundled with mobile plans."
At that time, the so-called "China Cool Alliance" (ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, Coolpad) all followed the same path.
Only much later, realizing the dangers, did his old company begin proper brand management: spinning off sub-brands, targeting different demographics, adjusting pricing tiers, and investing heavily in R&D. Eventually, they broke away from the mass of low-end brands. But even then, they remained far from the elite tier occupied by Apple.
To challenge giants like Apple required not just superior hardware, but an entire user-recognized ecosystem and years of accumulated brand trust. It wasn't something that could be achieved simply by shouting slogans like "buy Apple" or boasting about benchmark scores. (More on brand management when the timeline catches up.)
"Xiaohui, notify Senior Brother Qin and Senior Brother Tian," Su Yuanshan said, checking his watch. "Have them here within fifteen minutes."
"We'll first listen to Yuanxin's strengths in channels and distributors—not now, but what it will look like in two years."
As soon as Su Yuanshan finished speaking, Chen Jing blinked at his serious expression and chuckled.
"This shows how shallow our foundations are. Even before we see the enemy, we already act like it's a matter of life and death."
"Exactly," Su Yuanshan said, sipping his coffee.
"Old Wan, Old Gao, and Uncle Zhang—let's hear your thoughts."
Qin Weimin put down the phone, surprised when Zhou Xiaohui emphasized "within fifteen minutes."
It was the first time Su Yuanshan had ever summoned him so urgently.
And with Tian Yaoming included too.
It meant Su Yuanshan had run into real trouble.
But Qin Weimin wasn't worried.
If they were being called into a market meeting, it could only mean one thing—
Su Yuanshan already had a solution, and it would involve them.
He strode quickly to the elevator.
Just as he pressed the up button, the doors opened, and there stood Tian Yaoming.
The two greeted each other briefly and, during the ride up, speculated that this must be related to Su Yuanshan's plans for integrated baseband chips.
At present, Yuanxin's mobile phone baseband designs, like the rest of the industry, required multiple chips and countless components crammed onto a motherboard.
Su Yuanshan had already said the future was high integration:
combining CPU, channel encoder, signal processing, modulation/demodulation—all into a single System on Chip (SoC).
"Looks like Xiaoshan gets nervous sometimes too," Tian Yaoming chuckled.
"First time for everything," Qin Weimin said, smiling.
The elevator dinged open, and they walked together into the meeting room.
...
At that moment, Su Yuanshan was listening to Marketing Director Wan Yongliang's presentation.
Wan smiled at the two newcomers, waved for them to sit, and continued.
"Since Yuanxin is positioning itself as a high-end brand, we need to increase advertising efforts and actively manage public opinion. After all, the masses still believe strongly in advertising."
He even used a buzzword new at the time: "public opinion management" (a term that had already appeared in reports as early as 1993).
Su Yuanshan nodded to his two senior brothers and quickly jotted down notes.
Wan continued,
"Additionally, we need to separate Yuanxin's brand image from generic domestic products.
We must create the perception that—although Yuanxin is domestic, it stands out like a crane among chickens, fully comparable to imported products."
"But how to guide users to think this way... that's the tricky part."
"Normally, aligning prices with international brands would be the simplest way.
But mishandling that could cause massive backlash."
"So we'll need to discuss specific strategies."
"Also," he added,
"we should fully leverage our relationships with telecom operators established through our base station deployments.
Telecom sales channels are still the bulk of the market."
He laughed bitterly,
"Those foreign devils are shameless.
We bust our asses building networks, and they sneak into the village to steal the fruits of our labor."
Everyone in the room chuckled.
Su Yuanshan gave Wan a look of approval.
Seeing that Wan had finished, he glanced at Chen Jing, who signaled she had nothing more to add.
He pursed his lips and smiled.
"Old Wan's analysis was excellent. Let me add a few points."
"Advertising must be ramped up, and we'll need to hire a professional team for it.
As for public opinion management—that's brilliant!
Plenty of starving writers out there. Pay them, and they'll praise us to the heavens."
Chen Jing couldn't help but laugh.
"You make it sound like all writers are sellouts."
"Haha!
They should at least strive for honesty when it benefits us!" Su Yuanshan said, shaking his head.
"But first, we must spin off the advertising group into an independent team."
Everyone looked at him, waiting.
"Using the current advertising department as the core," he said,
"we'll establish a new professional Brand Management Department—with a dedicated director."
Wan Yongliang froze.
He hadn't expected his suggestions would lead Su Yuanshan to create an entire new first-level department.
That was serious elevation.
And it would be spun out from his own team.
"The Brand Management Department will oversee advertising, promotion, public relations, crisis management—
everything related to Yuanxin's brand."
"In simple terms," Su Yuanshan said,
"it will exist to build and maintain Yuanxin's Archway."
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