Smartphone brand iQOO has clocked 700% growth YOY: Nipun Marya

iQOO, one of India’s fastest growing smartphone brands, has rolled out a uniquely self-aware brand film, titled ‘What’s In A Name’, which has been conceptualised by Dentsu Creative India. The ad film, featuring Vijay Deverakonda and Janhvi Kapoor, sees the two actors addressing iQOO’s unconventional  brand problem, which is, no one gets the brand name right, despite them being India’s No. 1 smartphone brand in terms of user satisfaction.

The ad film was created in response to a contest run by iQOO on their social media platforms, where they asked users to tell how they pronounced the brand name. It was found that most of the users were mispronouncing the brand name as ikku, eyekyun, IQ, IQ double O, etc.

The film portrays BTS moments where Vijay and Janhvi are hilariously struggling to find the correct pronunciation of the brand name. The whole concept cements the fact that while the world gets their name wrong, they get one thing right – user satisfaction.

Watch the ad film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOo_hH_X_z4

This brand film will be followed by another film, where Vijay and Janhvi will be exclusively presenting and unboxing the upcoming flagship smartphone – iQOO 11, but with a hilarious twist. iQOO 11 is iQOO’s upcoming premium flagship smartphone that has globally been acclaimed for some world’s first powerful and performance-oriented features. The smartphone has already created a lot of hype in the Indian market and is expected to launch in India anytime soon.

In conversation with Adgully, Nipun Marya, CEO, iQOO India, speaks about the performance of one of the youngest smartphone brands in India, the core thought behind the recently-launched ad campaign featuring Vijay Deverakonda and Janhvi Kapoor, how the brand has topped in terms of user satisfaction, and more.

What is the concept behind the new campaign launched by iQOO India?

The core reason behind this is that a few months back, 91 mobile published a report, which they call as The Great Indian Smartphone Survey. They do it every year. This time, as in last year, iQOO became the No. 1 brand with the most happy users. The data said that 70% of iQOO users are very happy with their device. And this was the highest in the category. iQOO beat all the other industry brands like Apple, OnePlus, Samsung, to be the No. 1 brand not just in terms of user satisfaction, but also in terms of the other parameters like battery liability, speed of the device, where iQOO topped the charts. This is not the first time that iQOO has been adjudged as the brand with the highest number of users. Even in the year 2021, iQOO was the No. 1 brand. We are a very young brand and not many people even know how to pronounce our name correctly, because the name is not very direct or simple to pronounce.

So, on the one hand we have people who are so happy with our phones, on the other hand we have people who know about our phones and our brand but don’t know too much about what we are doing, how we are pronounced, and what kind of brand we are. Therefore, staying true to the brand spirit of being fun, young, energetic, which forms the core DNA of iQOO, we thought it was a great opportunity to tell people about us, starting with the name itself.

We did not follow the conventional approach of just putting the celeb there and telling people how the name is pronounced. Even the celebs in the brand film face a challenge in pronouncing the brand name. As a young and confident brand, we thought it’s a fun way of telling people how to pronounce our name, and conveying the message that while you got the pronunciation of our name wrong, we got one thing right – which is user satisfaction.

We had a three-step process. Step No. 1 was launching a contest on our social media handle, where we asked people to tell us all the different ways in which people pronounced – or mispronounced – brand iQOO’s name. All the entries we received were UGC, where people were pronouncing in the right way as well as the wrong way. We got a lot of engagements. In fact, in one entry we had a user sending us a rap song around iQOO. In Step No. 2, we launched the same contest on iQOO’s official Twitter handle. In just two days, we saw close to 200k impressions, and more than 50% of industry benchmark engagement. In fact, we got more than 4,000 engagements on one single tweet.

Step No. 3 is this ad film with Vijay Deverakonda and Janhvi Kapoor.

Who is the target audience for this campaign?

The target audience is the young consumers of iQOO, which is the youngest brand in the market. It is really a brand for the young people, looking at the demographic profile. It is for people who are seeking high performance in their smartphones, people who know technology and are confident about the choices they are making.

What is the marketing strategy to promote the campaign?

Initially when I had this idea and I briefed both the agency and the internal team, I made it very clear that firstly I want user participation, especially iQOO fans. That was the core of the marketing strategy. So, both Steps 1 and 2 were focused on UGC – how a young brand will talk to its users and engage with them, that was our key strategic point. Then for amplification we made this video and we will promote this video majorly through digital video channels. Being a digital-first brand for a digital-first audience, most of our investments are going to be on the digital front. That’s where our TG is also sitting.

How has iQOO’s performance been in India in 2022 and what have been the milestones achieved?

In 2022, we have been able to set some very good benchmarks for ourselves. In some of the price segments, iQOO has also emerged as the fastest growing smartphone brand. There are two particular segments. One segment is the 20k-25k price segment, the other is the 30k-35k price segment, in both these segments we have emerged as the brand with the highest growth. YOY we have clocked 700% growth, so there again our growth has been very strong.

Has the pandemic impacted iQOO’s brand vision in any way?

Hopefully the pandemic is behind us now. Especially in whole of 2022, people have been active, they have been buying. We have been very aggressive with our launches. We are looking forward to 2023 and to a good year, as far as consumers are concerned and business is concerned.

What are your expansion plans?

Expansion wise we feel that there is a lot of opportunity for us to grow in various price segments. We still believe that we can really grow a lot from where we are now. And that’s going to be our key strategy – how we can offer differentiated products and unique offerings to our consumers, and because of these unique offerings and differentiated products, more and more consumers will choose us.

What have been the trends observed in the smartphone industry in 2022?

One big trend we saw was of course the launch of 5G, because of its launch we saw the consumer preferences changing. We also saw the marketing language changing. Below a certain price point, consumers were still okay about buying a non-5G smartphone. But as soon as we talked about slightly above the entry level price points, consumers wanted only a 5G phone. This has been one big trend that we have observed.

Secondly, from the previous years of the pandemic, we have seen some growth in the industry – while it has not been as strong as it has been in some of the previous years, but we are still seeing recovery. And going forward, we believe that iQOO as a brand has good opportunities to grow even in the year 2023.

What are your predictions for the coming year?

For iQOO, next year should be a strong year. It should be a year where a lot of people will get to know about brand iQOO, most importantly, how to pronounce iQOO!

What are your observations on the consumer behaviour in the consumer electronics industry in the post pandemic period?

As far as consumer behaviour is concerned, especially in the consumer electronics space, one thing that I’ve always been observing and recently also there was a report which came out saying that whenever it comes to consumer appliances, which involves electronics like mobile phones, or even larger appliances, these categories are extremely high involvement categories, where whether the consumer is buying offline or online, they will like to do a lot of research. He will like to spend time in understanding the different technologies that are available, understanding what different channels are talking about. Whether those are reviews on YouTube, or reviews on some other places, e-commerce platforms, I’ve seen that the involvement is very high. So, this is the most important thing that I can say as far as consumer buying behaviour is concerned when it comes to electronics. And I feel that this trend is only going to continue, as technologies become more advanced and consumers also become more matured.