Smartphone market has been dominated by the Apples and Samsungs of the world but a
new player has been garnering a lot of attention for delivering quality at the affordable
price. Founded by the ex-employees of the Oppo, One Plus has been able to create its own
niche in the smartphone market thanks to the vision of its founders, Pete Lau and Carl Pei.
Product quality, affordable price and a highly innovative strategy has contributed to the
success of OnePlus. Let’s consider the various needs of a smartphone user.
Need Quality Smartphone, Good performance
Real Need Inexpensive without quality compromising
Delight Needs Cool features like face lock etc.
Secret Needs Association with brand name
OnePlus has been able to cater to the above mentioned needs and is often touted as the
‘Giant Slayer’ for effectively carving a piece of the market for itself.
Brand Mantra: “Never Settle”
In this report, we would talk about the Marketing Strategy made it the most desirable
phone in the world.
Targeting Group : Mid and high Price Range Smartphone Buyers; ‘VIP Product’; Millennials;
tech geeks
Marketing Strategy :
One Plus’ aggressive marketing strategy has three main elements, all of which are
innovative in themselves. Combine them together, and you’ve got a triple threat three-
pronged marketing strategy that has thus far been highly successful at fueling the hype –
and demand – for this new smartphone.
The phone is cheap, but without compromising quality. It’s relatively low priced with
a high specification ratio.
It’s invite-only. This has been the driving force in creating the craze behind the phone,
as the manufacturers are appealing to basic human nature: we always want what we
can’t have. The buy by invitation only system allows the manufacturer to gradually
fulfill the demand while customers are kept in a constant state of anticipation. This
also adds to the phone’s appeal as a “VIP product” for only a “select” group of people.
It’s something of a niche product. In opposition to all of their existing competitors, the
OnePlus One has the reputation of being the phone for tech geeks.
Add these three elements to a very clever ad campaign – complete with its own trending
hashtag, and you’ve got the recipe for a smartphone poised to take over the market. Take a
look at some of OnePlus’ effective ads. They’re clean, concise, and most importantly, poke a
little fun at the competition. Although industry experts then believed that the model will
back-fire for a new brand and strategy should be changed but OnePlus proved everyone
wrong and created a huge hype. Social Media has hugely contributed to the invite-only elite
model. If we look at the graph shown below, we can easily deduce the dominance of the
OnePlus on social media:
Let’s take the following ad for example : [Link]
The Following themes are visible:
‘Boundary Breaker’
‘Dreams have no limit’
‘Go with Courage wherever you go’
‘Choose Direction not destination’
‘Nothing can Stop You’
‘Now or Never’
‘Never Settle’
These themes are directed to the Youth. The demography of South Asia also allows OnePlus
to take advantage of the low median ages in these countries and create its loyal customers.
Smartphone market is highly dynamic. Loyalty is short-term. So, OnePlus has to
continuously innovate its products rather than just copying Apple and Samsung.
One product failure can cause huge losses like what happened to Samsung. There should
be proper trials and testing before launching the product.
Launching too many models in a short interval of time may deter some customers.
OnePlus has slightly modified its invite-only model and is taking pre-orders on platforms
like amazon.
References
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