Question Lei Jun, understand Lei Jun, and become Lei Jun

Lei Jun's fans on Douyin have skyrocketed, creating a successful personal IP and giving big companies a vivid marketing lesson. After Lei Jun's success, major entrepreneurs began to compete for personal IP.

20 million fans is the dream destination for 99% of KOLs, but it is just the starting point for Lei Jun.

Since April, Lei Jun's fans on the Douyin platform have skyrocketed, with a net increase of nearly 4.75 million fans in one month. After Douyin fans officially reached 20 million and became the No. 1 Chinese entrepreneur, Lei Jun prepared 100 gifts to give to his fans to express his gratitude to them.

Unexpectedly, this became a hot topic. In just one day, the video received over 1.4 million comments, and Lei Jun gained nearly 2 million followers that day, bringing his total number of fans to 22.64 million. Lei Jun gave big companies a vivid marketing lesson on how CEOs should build their personal IP.

1. Xiaomi executives work together to create IP

It is already a very hot "trend" in the industry for companies to build IP matrices. The so-called building of IP matrices by companies means that all members of the company participate in the construction of the main account. After the main account reaches a certain size, the company members will split into other accounts. The "corporate content assets" formed by this corporate IP matrix can make corporate communications more vivid in marketing and reach more consumers in a down-to-earth way.

On the other hand, from the perspective of public opinion and public relations, multiple IP accounts within a company can at least increase the company's voice channels and provide more diverse perspectives. Executive IPs with good image can even turn public opinion into a joke in a casual conversation.

Among all the big companies that have built IP matrices, Lei Jun is undoubtedly the leader by a huge margin. As a recognized model worker, Lei Jun has always been known for his family-friendly image. Among many business leaders who are keen on "blessings", Lei Jun's "down-to-earth" and "humility" are particularly prominent, and he is loved by both the old and new generations of consumers.

The image was shaped thanks to Lei Jun's 17,497 Weibo posts (as of the date of publication). Before the concept of "entrepreneur IP" became popular, Lei Jun keenly discovered that building the founder's image itself involves communication and public relations needs.

According to him, he writes and posts every Weibo post by himself. He thinks of three or five Weibo posts when he wakes up every day, prepares them and saves them, and posts them during a break. The benefit is that he knows what users are criticizing and what the hot topics are.

After Lei Jun became an Internet celebrity himself, he decisively started the "Entrepreneur IP 2.0" version, that is, building a corporate IP matrix and collectively "driving" almost all Xiaomi executives into Douyin.

At present, many Xiaomi executives are active on the short video platform, including Lu Weibing (President of Xiaomi), Liu De (co-founder), Wang Teng (General Manager of Redmi Brand), Xu Fei (Vice President), Zhang Jianhui (Vice President), Cui Baoqiu (Vice President), Chen Bo (General Manager of Xiaomi Ecosystem Chain), Hu Xinxin (Product Manager of Xiaomi Civi), and Wei Siqi (Product Manager of Xiaomi Mobile Phones).

Among them, Wang Teng, who is known as "Brother Teng", and Xu Fei, who is known as "Aunt Xu", have won the love of many users with their low-key and modest video style, and have produced many popular short videos. Under the leadership of the "top streamer" Lei Jun and the "second top streamer" Lu Weibing, Xiaomi ate the "first hot meal" of the corporate IP matrix traffic.

In the first half month before the launch of Xiaomi SU7, Lei Jun posted an average of 5 Weibo posts a day, and even posted 10 Weibo posts on March 28. It can be said that he single-handedly supported half of the marketing plan for Xiaomi SU7. After the launch of Xiaomi SU7, Lei Jun continued to spread the word to users through live broadcasts. This kind of "company founder planting grass" marketing is enough to offset Xiaomi's 20 million yuan advertising budget.

2. Thousands and thousands of “Lei Juns”

Once Lei Jun stands up, there will be thousands of "Lei Juns". The most active one among them is Zhou Hongyi, the founder of 360. However, Zhou Hongyi took a completely different path from Lei Jun: persuading entrepreneurs to create IP.

On May 17, Zhou Hongyi held a 3-hour live broadcast, the core theme of which was "Should entrepreneurs create IP?" In his speech, the "cardinal" had countless golden sentences, which were particularly brainwashing. Now is an era where people's minds are formatted by short videos. Users have changed, and the way companies communicate also needs to change. Entrepreneurs should go wherever users are.

A company has three IPs: founder IP, product IP and company IP.

From the perspective of easy to difficult, you should first create the founder's IP. 99% of entrepreneurs who create IP can succeed. Creating an account is not as difficult as starting a business. Tell your own story. This is not only the "top priority project" of entrepreneurs, but also a compulsory course. The ultimate goal is to represent the company.

Zhou Hongyi kept using Lei Jun as an example, saying that the reason why Xiaomi Motors, which was once invisible, was able to turn around its sales volume and become a huge success was because of Lei Jun, a big IP. Nowadays, entrepreneur IP has become a "prominent subject", and the bosses of large, medium and small factories have begun to "compete for jobs" with Internet celebrities.

Zhou Hongyi However, traffic is a double-edged sword. It can create a god in one day, but it can also destroy a god in another day. Just taking the issue of entrepreneur IP as an example, the recent Baidu Qu Jing incident is a typical case of "destroying a god".

Ni Jing continued to explore highly sensitive social topics such as workplace rules, emotional needs, family division of labor, and professional women, and as she wished, she got strong traffic. The new account became the center of Internet traffic in just one day.

But what followed was that Baidu's market value evaporated by HK$6 billion in just a few days, and Qu Jing resigned and cleared her account. Qu Jing is not an isolated case. There is another famous female entrepreneur before her, that is Dong Mingzhu.

In the long ten years, Dong Mingzhu has never lacked topics, and is not inferior to Lei Jun at all. However, as an old-school entrepreneur, Dong Mingzhu has become the opposite of young people in the context of young people becoming the mainstream of the times.

In recent years, the comments that "college students should not seek jobs just for money" and "they should pay for my training" have been criticized by the entire network. The cases of Dong Mingzhu and Qu Jing bring a clear fact: netizens only like to see "modest", "approachable" and down-to-earth entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs who like good news, like PUA, and like wolf culture will suffer the backlash of traffic. How happy they are to scold people in the office, how embarrassed they are on the Internet. Just as Zhou Hongyi said in the live broadcast: "To be an entrepreneur IP, you must break the barriers of 'face and stature', look straight at others, and talk like a chat. You must 'not do your job properly' and talk about general content. Entrepreneurs must be true to their nature and not pretend."

3. The face of the entrepreneur is the poster of the brand

Marshall McLuhan proposed a theory in 1964: any media is nothing more than an extension or extension of human feelings and senses. Text and print media are extensions of human visual ability, radio is an extension of human hearing ability, and television is a comprehensive extension of human visual, auditory and tactile abilities.

This perfectly fits the characteristics of the entrepreneur's IP. The entrepreneur's face is the brand's poster; his words and deeds are the brand's promotional video; the content output by the entrepreneur must be the soul and spirit of the company, which can directly hit the hearts of consumers and resonate with them.

This unique brand value output, which converts potential customers into fans, is much more effective than fancy advertising. If we take it a step further, the entrepreneur and the brand are deeply bound together, and then integrated into the grand narrative of the times, it will become an immortal monument in the history of business. The classic example is Steve Jobs and Apple.

Wearing a high-necked black sweater and jeans, Jobs stood under the spotlight in the center of the stage, controlling the audience's thinking and guiding the audience's emotions with carefully organized language, actions and "plot", perfectly demonstrating the magic of his "reality distortion field".

Jobs incorporated the "rebellious spirit" of the hippie era into his brand promotion: "Rules are made to be broken", "Live to change the world", "Think different", "Follow your heart" and other classic quotes were repeated over and over in public occasions when he appeared. If a sentence is repeated 10,000 times, it becomes the truth.

As a result, Jobs and Apple became a spiritual community for consumers, changing consumer thinking, subverting industry concepts, creating products that changed lifestyles, and even changing the ideas and habits of a generation.

After Apple became the world's number one company, Jobs is still the soul of Apple. Not only Jobs, but Elon Musk is also a model of an entrepreneur's IP. As an "Internet marketing master", Musk is very good at using his influence to launch a "traffic war" on social platforms, thereby influencing the market.

For example, Musk used Twitter, Tesla's support for Bitcoin trading, and the disclosure of Bitcoin holdings to stimulate the price of Bitcoin. He also frantically recommended Dogecoin on Twitter, which soared from $0.056 to $0.6848 in three months, an increase of more than 12 times. Using only personal influence to disrupt the market in a business field, this is probably the ultimate example of an entrepreneur's IP, right?