At a meeting at the end of 2016, Jin Zhijiang took the stage. This middle-aged entrepreneur, a disciple of Duan Yongping , and the founder of Xiaogeng Telephone Watch said:
children's telephone watch is expected to reach 10 million units next year.
Jin Zhijiang actually said it conservatively. More than 10 million units. Little Genius even became synonymous with the category " children's watch " a few years later.
His business mentor Duan Yongping once said in private: Doing a business requires duty.
Jin Zhijiang is a traditional entrepreneur with duty, and Xiaotiancai is a traditional hardware manufacturing enterprise.
Within a few years, Xiaotiancai used traditional methods to publish products, promote and advertise, precipitate channels for distribution, opening stores, and sales. Many links are full of " step by step flavor". At one point, it even surpassed many companies that used Internet thinking to make products.
But using "duty" to make a living may be a bit out of place with the current situation.
By this year, the trouble of the little genius has come. "Phoenix violence", "fee absorption", "induce deduction" and various accusations shattered people's imagination of the duty of little geniuses, and parents felt uneasy from children's electronic products for the first time.
"Selected high-quality content for children aged 0-12" - Little Genius T1 The promotion of tablets tries to make parents feel at ease. But its own app store is completely different from "high-quality content". It is reported that there are many "black games" that have not been officially approved - there is no youth protection mode, all use foreign languages, no game duration, and games can be played without registration.
For example, in a game called "Spider-Man City Hunter", the protagonist can not only attack passers-by, but also rob police cars, school buses and other vehicles. In another "Doukan Free Comics" APP with installation permissions of over 12 years old, a large number of comic works have extremely provocative content, not only the characters' clothing is exposed, but also involves many subjects that are not suitable for children. The confusion and lack of management in the content of
have completely lost the "duty" of the little genius.
On July 18, in response to the fact that some games, comics and other APPs downloaded by the Little Genius T1 Children's Tablet App Store contain pornographic, bloody and violent content, the Consumer Associations of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region jointly interviewed the Little Genius Technology Company . Before
, with communication and children's socialization, the children's watch produced by Xiaotiancai became popular all over the country from Dongguan , and it took only one year.
The changes in the current situation continue to transcend the iteration of electronic products. When traditional manufacturing companies try to touch new and unknown growth points, they must keep their duties while expanding their territory. In this process, there are full of conflicts, traps and the interests of all parties.
The little genius is also dementia.
Duo Yongping Sub-district
In 2008, Taiwan hardware manufacturing company Jingji Co., Ltd. planned to clean up some of its outdated brands. After the announcement came out, the name "Little Genius" was included.
"Little Genius" was a gaming console brand under Jingji in the 1990s, and became very popular because it is compatible with Nintendo FC gaming console. At that time, there was such a brand called "Little Ba Wang" in mainland China, but Ba Wang and genius had no intersection. "Little Genius" dominated the Russian market and was a cash cow for crystal skills.
time, and FC ended. When the "little genius" appeared on the sales list, there was only one brand left and there was no product.
But someone has been staring at it all the time.
A mainland institution contacted Jingji, and the two sides met and chatted very smoothly - the "little genius" was too cheap, only sold for RMB 300,000. The mainland institutions were very happy and did not bargain, and this transaction was natural. In order to express the market strength of this brand, Jingji said: You don’t know that there was a company called BBK ten years ago, and I didn’t sell it even if I bid 3 million.
The other party said, "I know, we represent BBK."
The person who went to find crystal skills to buy a little genius was Duan Yongping. At that time, BBK had not been broken into three companies. Duan Yongping likes the name "Little Genius". He told his subordinates: First of all, you must be easy to pronounce when giving a brand name, and fewer strokes are easy to write. Such a name is very balanced.
Lao Duan said nothing, and the naming of the product of the BBK series is very consistent with this logic. In the early years, BBK was a classic, and later mobile phone brands OPPO and vivo pursue minimalism.
So when Jin Zhijiang, CEO of BBK Education Electronics Co., Ltd., got the "little genius" ten years later, this seemed a matter of course.
In fact, for BBK, it is not a big deal to be worth 300,000 or 3 million. The difficulty is what you do after buying it.
At that time, BBK's main products were repeater and point reader. Thanks to 2008 Beijing Olympics , the matter of learning English was swept the west wind in China. The repeater and point reader and the principle were extremely simple, but at that time it was bet on the future of a generation.
But "little genius" can't become the second repeater. It was originally able to run a brand of Nintendo, so you had to do something earth-shaking.
Results The first product designed by BBK for "little genius" is - early education machine.
doesn't seem to be new, but before that, the team spent a whole year examining all the markets involved, from toys to learning machine , the market size was not very satisfactory. When everyone was depressed, the leader said: Let's do this, will not pursue sales before the "little genius" encounters a large category, and we must win the reputation of consumers in everything. Even if we sell one .
From 2010 to 2014, early education machines were indeed in line with the leaders' expectations. Without any advertising, they only sold 2 million units.
However, since 2013, within BBK, it has set its sights on another market - telephone watches. Market analysis followed. In mid-2014, at a meeting, Jin Zhijiang held a research report and said:
Telephone watches category should come.
This watch is used to make calls
Before the little genius, there was no category of telephone watches on the market.
manufacturers embed chips in watch molds, plus sports and health functions, and gave a tall name when it was released, saying it was a smart wearable device.
major manufacturers such as Huawei , Xiaomi , many small factories also occupy one part. At that time in 2015, everyone was making relatively early-generation products, and there was no technical highlight. In the field of children's watches, the little genius almost traveled to this world.
The little genius has a unique skill in his hand - advertising.
advertising is almost engraved in the genes of BBK companies. In the early years of , the "Little Overlord is endless fun" accurately hit people's game psychology and became the childhood voice of a generation; later, "I can't click wherever I can" revealed the core functions of step-by-step high-point reading machine .
Before the Xiaotiancai phone watch was launched on May 1, 2015, this sentence was also needed to make a hole in the market.
At that time, Xiaotiancai Company organized a meeting internally, and there was only one theme: What is the name of Xiaotiancai watch and how to package it. Two factions were formed in the venue. One school believes that the highlight of the little genius is that it can find children; the other school advocates that the highlight is communication. The two factions were quarreling, and later they simply sat around in front of the TV in the conference room to watch advertisements for other products - most of them focused on warmth and even a little crying: the lost children, the crying parents, after a phone call, they found the children and were all happy.
Jin Zhijiang believes that the tone of these advertisements is too low: if the phenomenon of child trafficking decreases year by year, it means that safety is a false demand.
He finally supports "Communication Pie": this watch is used to make phone calls.
By April 2015, Tiantian and Sen Die appeared on the screen in the variety show "Where Are We Going, Dad" and starred in a very step-by-step advertisement. The little genius phone watch in the hands of a child star was particularly conspicuous. There was no false warmth in the advertisement. Instead, the children used their watches to answer the phone while playing: No matter where you are, you can find you immediately after a call.
advertising slogan accurately hits the key points of "communicating with children anytime, anywhere".
Before May 1, 2015, almost everything was right: the advertisement was broadcast repeatedly on TV, exhibits were placed on the counter, photos of child stars wearing watches were spread on the Internet, channels, sales, and stores were all ready.
At this moment, something went wrong with the product. A fatal bug may cause the watch to suddenly crash. So the company decided to stop selling all products and the technical department will solve the problem first. What happened later in
surprised Jin Zhijiang's team - parents who saw the advertisement ran to physical stores and online stores but found that there was no goods. Soon someone accused Xiaotiancai of doing hunger marketing online, and some asked the sales staff at the counter of the physical store why there was no goods. The channel boss had to come forward to hand in cigarettes and serve tea to calm his emotions.
A series of problems like this are constantly reported to the Xiaotiancai headquarters. When solving the problem, the management team also knew that this watch was popular.
A month later, the Little Genius watch that fixed the bug was re-listed, and the sales situation was not discounted due to previous out-of-stock. In a public speech in 2016, an executive of Little Genius said: This market (children's watches) has now been opened.
The scale growth of the little genius began from this. But note that until now, the "myth" of the little genius is still created by a traditional manufacturing enterprise.
In some aspects, the marketing routine of little genius is firmly grasping the market and constantly crushing the products of Internet companies at the same time.
It's time to make up for it
Internet thinking lost in this round of children's watches.
In December 2014, Sogou " sugar cat " was launched, and Sogou boss Wang Xiaochuan likes this market.
"Sugar Cat" is like many Internet companies' products. The launch conference is only held in one city or one venue, and the advertisements are mostly placed on the Internet channel; in terms of sales, offline channels are almost ignored. At the beginning of the release, it is only launched on JD , and it is planned to update the product in the second half of each year - this window period is almost a new launch period commonly used by most mobile phone manufacturers.
This runs contrary to all operations of the little genius.
Little geniuses usually release new products in the first half of each year, and the sales window is set at the beginning of the summer vacation; new products will be held many times in various places to create momentum; in advertising, it focuses on TV children's program advertising, and Little geniuses' strategy is the kind of "children clamor for parents to ask for after watching the advertisement, rather than parents making choices for their children"; and the sales channel is also offline stores and online distribution at the same time - when the child reads the advertisement, he may ask his parents to buy it directly in the mall.
's "old-down" anti-trend sales method has allowed the little genius to take every step and crush the "Internet thinking" product sales strategy without any suspense.
But nothing is unchanged.
After the epidemic in 2020, home isolation has become common. During the time when parents and children look at each other every day, the communication demand for "no matter where you are, one phone call will find you" has rapidly shrunk. The children's social function that makes WeChat scared is not so important after "classmates" gradually become alienated due to isolation - the children's playmates turn to neighbors, and their social styles are more inclined to face-to-face.
A institution called Counterpoint Research calculated: In the first quarter of 2022, China's children's watch market fell by 7% year-on-year. Little genius accounts for 3.4% of the global smart watch shipments, compared with 4.9% of the same period last year.
Xiao Genius's phone watch is not as easy to sell as before, which will inevitably put pressure on the company's revenue.
The little genius tablet computer TI, which has a "pornographic violence" problem, was born in 2021. This is not the first pad product of Little Genius. As early as 2014 when the phone watch was not yet launched, Xiao Tiancai tried a children's tablet K1. The launch of
T1 can be regarded as an ecological supplement to children's watches. , such as some models of Xiaotiancai Phone Watch, can wirelessly transmit the photos of the watch to T1, and the tablet also has a built-in software market. In addition to children's learning applications, the market is also filled with a large number of third-party APPs.
There are reports that Xiaotiancai has taken a fancy to the market potential of children's software and wants to use it to do the application distribution business.
hardware and software business are completely different. The former has a team that is very careful and vigilant, and can capture cities and land even with traditional thinking; while the latter not only needs such a team, but also has a huge review team to control each software and content.
A little genius who is proficient in hardware manufacturing business, obviously lacks such experience and genes when facing software and content.
Back to the beginning, when the little genius was still a game console made by Jingji, he quickly seized the market due to his excellent hardware manufacturing level and compatibility. At his peak, Nintendo actually negotiated with Jingji to "recruit" the little genius. But this incident failed at that time. Jingji believes that as long as the best compatible game console is produced, it can be invincible in the market. What finally made Xiaotiancai stop the game was the game software - crystal technology did not have the ability to develop games for the console. As the FC halo faded, Xiaotiancai gradually lost control of the market.
Times changed, and many years later, the "little genius" was included in the BBK system. When the software once again became the shackles of the "little genius", it is time to make up for this lesson next.
(Source | AI Blue Media Author | Black Sheep)
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