How LED lighting brands break

The outbreak of LED lighting applications has ushered in an unprecedented revolution in the lighting industry. With the fierce competition in the domestic lighting market in the next three years, how can lighting brands assault and upgrade? With the continued penetration of LED, how should the lighting brands make a decisive battle?

The era of great channels has come

The construction of the channel cannot be delayed. However, the channel environment has changed over time, especially the high-speed transformation and upgrading of the lighting market.

In the 1990s, China's lighting market was mostly shantytown construction market, and some were still in the downtown area. With the accelerating process of urbanization and the increasing demand of consumers for the shopping environment, high-standard professional supermarkets have gradually dominated the development trend of the lighting market.

In recent years, brand home stores and lighting stores have expanded rapidly. Such as: Red Star Meikailong, actually home, Jimei and other well-known brands of home stores in the country's rapid advancement, lighting investment in full swing. The professional lighting stores have mushroomed. From 2012 to now, the lamps and lanterns store opened or attracted investment, such as Changzhou Guanghui Boutique Lamps & Lighting City Phase II, Yancheng Coastal Lamps City, and Chengdu Power Star Lamps. Jiangxi Xingan International Lighting Plaza, Chongqing Yinan International Lighting Wholesale City, Chongqing Lamplight Lighting Wholesale Market, Xi'an North Third Ring Daming Palace Lighting Lighting Plaza, Foshan South China (International) Electric Light Source Lighting City and so on.

Taking Lampu Ancient Town as an example, after World Times Lighting Plaza, the World Trade Center, Oriental Plaza, Silver Spring Hotel, Modern Lighting City, and Taikoo Lighting City have been put into use, as well as the ancient Starlight Alliance Lighting City under construction. The launch and implementation of large-scale lighting store projects such as Weiminxing Square, Guyi Lokfeng Lighting City and Huayi International Lighting City.

At the same time, the terminal single store lighting supermarkets continue to appear, there are nearly a hundred stores in the country with over 5,000 square meters of lighting, and there are superstores with an area of ​​10,000 square meters such as Chongqing Lampmat and Zhengzhou Hualien. Although the lighting industry has not yet emerged as strong terminals such as Gome and Suning in the home appliance industry, the development of branding of China's lighting channels (stores) has become inevitable. The expansion of these lighting stores is leading and changing each Urban lighting sales pattern.

However, the emerging power of LED makes this rise more full of variables. The professional hypermarkets with LED themes have also emerged, such as Jiangmen Guangbohui, Guzhen Star Alliance Lighting Plaza, China LED Kyushu City, Guangzhou Optical Valley and so on. In order to adapt to the development of this emerging technology industry, traditional lighting stores are also not far behind. Changzhou Zhuang District Brilliant Lighting City has more than 20,000 square meters of LED area, Shilihe lighting, Sichuan large-scale chain stores such as Li Hong Kong also began to divide the area to introduce LED brand monopoly. Shandong Linyi Tianma Lighting reinstalled a large exhibition hall of 3,000 square meters, officially launched the LED channel sales strategy.

The traditional pattern of Shili Deng Street gradually faded from people's perspective, the expansion of professional lighting chain set sail, transformation and upgrading of lighting stores, to the development of scale, brand, and fashion, announced the era of large-scale lighting industry has come!

The channel layout has started

In general, the lighting company's channels are mainly divided into five types, one is engineering channels, mainly government and large-scale engineering projects. The second is export channels, including OEM and ODM exports. The third is traditional multi-level distribution agents represented by dealers, agents, supermarkets, and building materials home lighting professional stores. The fourth is the direct sales model of self-built stores and experience shops for lighting companies. Fifth, emerging marketing channels represented by e-commerce.

The expansion of lighting stores and the intensification of LED lighting applications are rewriting the channel pattern. “The LED industry is growing both in the middle and lower reaches of the industry. The growth in indoor lighting in the application area is the fastest, and the rate of price decline is also the largest year-on-year.” said Zhang Xiaofei, CEO of Gaogong LED.

Indoor lighting products are directly oriented to customers and consumers, which fundamentally determines the importance of channels. Whoever occupies high-quality channel resources will take the lead in the future lighting market. As a result, the brand's assault focus of numerous lighting companies has largely been placed on channels. For this reason, the choice of channel construction and channel model has become the top priority for every lighting company. The choice of speed, quantity, and quality has resulted from this, and the channel layout war has already begun.

The core resource of the manufacturer is the brand, and the core resource of the business is the channel. The main business objectives pursued by both parties are the increase in market share and profits. Manufacturers need quality channel resources, and high-quality distribution channels can help companies quickly open the market, increase sales, and increase brand awareness and influence. And what businesses need most is good products, and through the cooperation with manufacturers, they make huge profits.

The revolution brought about by this LED, whether it is manufacturers or businesses in the channel layout, there is not much time to wait. Since 2012, various types of enterprises, such as traditional enterprises, export enterprises, multinational corporations, and state-owned enterprises, have started to establish large-scale channels. Many international lighting brands have even defined this year as a year of channel development.

"The person who gets the channel gets the world." At present, LED lighting channels fall short of demand, and there are so many good and powerful distributors, but all manufacturers are eager to demand. Therefore, the competition for channels, especially high-quality dealer resources, has entered a period of intense progress. Various investment advertisements and investment conferences across the country are commonplace. Many middle-level and even multi-brand companies frequently appear on various investment occasions, and channel issues are unprecedented. Pay attention.

Under this background, the channel resources of all lighting companies have been rapidly expanded, because no one wants to lose the competition opportunities, otherwise the brand assault will be more than a tree. It can be said that the construction of the channel is in vain.

Brand upgrade is imminent

The industry characteristics of the lighting industry and the extremely uneven status of the domestic market have determined that the competition for channels has become a trend indicator for the competition in the lighting industry in China. With the increase in the intensity of competition, brands must achieve successful surprises in order to obtain success advantages through channels. In addition, strengthening brand building in channel cooperation is an inevitable trend. In 2013, the lighting market will usher in a breakthrough period. With the scarcity of advantageous channel resources, brand building will become the top priority for brand assault.

Into the 21st century, China's lighting industry led by NVC, Op and other companies, more than 10 years, the formation of a number of brand enterprises in the industry. More than a dozen companies in the lighting industry have successively won the title of “Chinese Famous Brand”, and several companies have also obtained the “China Famous Brand” title, such as NVC, Op, Sanxiong Aurora, Sunshine, Yaming, and Huayi.

Moreover, with the advent of the era of large lighting channels, more lighting companies need to think about how to make their own brand will not be submerged in the light of the sea, how to make the brand's strength gradually deeper into the hearts of people; already a well-known brand companies how to achieve brand upgrade?

It can be said that with the continuous development of lighting industry, the importance of lighting companies to build a brand has formed a consensus in the industry, lighting companies also recognize that the lighting industry's competition has evolved from product competition, price competition to brand competition. However, the industry is very confused about how to achieve brand changes or upgrades.

Looking at the current brand upgrade of the lighting industry, it is reflected in the “three axes”: celebrity endorsement, CCTV advertising, and introduction of CIS.

The purpose of signing an image spokesperson for most companies is, first and foremost, to hope to increase the popularity of celebrity endorsement products and increase sales in the short term. This is a means of marketing use. In the past few years, in the field of home lighting alone, there have been Joshua Zeng Zhiwei, Guan Hua please Jia Jingwen, Mini Zhai Ying, Karman Wu Ting, Liang A please Fan Bing, Mei Diemei Jia Fu Yi, Qian Tai Please enquire, and so on, the industry is almost flooded with a lot of this approach because companies believe that celebrity endorsement is the best way for industry brands to achieve brand popularity. However, few brands consider the lack of strategic deep-reaching and excavate the marginal effect of stars to achieve the goal of “value for money”.

TV media has become the first choice for brand promotion of lighting companies, and it has gradually become a marketing tool for lighting companies to promote new products, expand channels, and develop dealer teams. In 2010-2012, almost 30 brands appeared in CCTV every year. In addition, CIS has been introduced to complete the transformation of the company's visual system in order to obtain a better brand image.

Celebrity endorsement became popular, CCTV advertising got together, and the image visualized to follow suit. It was hoped that through “three axes”, it would become a “magic bullet” created by the brand. The brand building of lighting companies presented a phenomenon of quick success and instant benefit.

Category breakthrough is the foundation

The brand's foundation is product quality and unique value positioning. The author believes that an accurate product category positioning is more important than anything else, that is to say, "What can I represent?" Because it is necessary to shape the psychological understanding of consumers and implement the core of brand marketing. It's important to tell the consumer what I'm selling! A brand can only become a brand if it can represent something, just as NVC represents commercial lighting, and Op represents residential lighting. In the past two years, in the field of severely homogenized electrical switches, a brand called “Home” has rapidly grown into a brand that can compete with front-line brands such as TNV, TCL, and Futian. The reason is that “steel frame switch” is the category. breaking point.

At present, the number of LED lighting applications in mainland China exceeds 10,000. Unlike the embarrassing situation in which traditional lighting enters homogenized alleys, the technology of LED lighting applications has been continuously upgraded, giving upgrade space for many new brands. It is difficult for traditional lighting companies to differentiate their product development. Product design is also difficult to differentiate, but LEDs give many companies the opportunity to redefine the industry. Such as "street lamp expert" on the photoelectric, such as "display experts" Shanmu display.

So more lighting company's product category positioning can not be differentiated from the concept of product it? First put forward many new product concepts, we often say, first of all to "product conceptualization", that is to do marketing, first of all To give a concept to the product; then, it is necessary to "conceptualize product", that is to implement the concept to the specific product development and design, so that the product can truly reflect this concept. Otherwise, there is no concept of product landing, it is just a skin. At present, many lighting companies have begun to carry out the first step of "product conceptualization" work, such as the same is the field of home lighting, Liang Di proposed intelligent lighting, Oakes scene lighting, Sheng Hao healthy lighting, etc., are good concepts . Just whether there is “conceptualization” or not is what these brands need to think about in the next step.

The author believes that brand positioning is focused on a distinct feature of the product, and brand positioning is based on product feature differences or concept differences. It is also a brand assault. As for lighting companies, they frequently launch brand promotion campaigns to build brands, and they carry out brand promotion activities. For example, they advertise their advertisements through industry-specific media and mainstream media, and on the other hand, hire stars as brand image endorsements, etc., all of which are based on brand positioning. Based on the tactical behaviors carried out on the basis of these tactics, there is no difference between them and they are suitable.

"The players who are good players don't want to be good players." The same is true for companies. With strategies, the road is longer and will one day come. For the lighting industry that LED brings about rapid changes, companies should start to think about and choose the future development strategy. As Mengniu said: Ideas determine the way out, and the layout determines the outcome.