One Plus Phone’s curious campaign
I recently came across an interesting advertisement from OnePlus for their Nord CE 2 Lite 5G phone:
What caught my eye: “Your First OnePlus”. #YourFirstOnePlus
My initial thoughts: First? Why say First One Plus?
A quick search shows that this is a consistent marketing theme for the phone across social media & print platforms.
How is OnePlus confident that this phone will be a customers first OnePlus?
Let’s dive in to understand the target segment. That will explain the campaign.
#YourFirstOnePlus campaign is strictly for one particular one plus phone.
One plus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G.
Phone costs ~20K INR. It’s cheapest One Plus phone currently.
This is not sufficient to understand the target segment. We need to understand something more on smartphones.
Smartphone Status dynamics
Smartphone in the current world is an important status symbol. A status symbol is generally an object meant to signify its owners’ high social and economic standing. Common examples are Cars, Houses, Clothing.
And like all status symbols, smartphone brands have a status hierarchy.
It looks as follows:
Xiaomi/Realme<<<One Plus<<<Apple
There are subtle ways to validate the status hierarchy as well. Let’s take Apple. (Easiest to prove) Most celebrities use it. High profile Business Professionals as well.
Another way to validate status hierarchy is the most popular phone within each price segment:
Now here is the trick with status symbols:
People don’t downgrades status symbols! Everyone wants to climb UP the status hierarchy!
Thus, everyone is constantly upgrading smartphone as well. It’s human nature.
With this insight we can estimate the target segment.
Estimated Profile of Target segment of One plus’s phone:
Users typically spending 10–15K INR on phone.
Current Phone: Oppo/Vivo/Xiaomi (Industry leaders in 10–15K segment)
Looking to buy a new phone. And. Looking for Status upgrade.
Willing to spend a few extra thousands for a status upgrade.
For such a segment, One Plus Nord CE 2 Lite is going to be their FIRST One Plus.
This explains the campaign. #YourFirstOnePlus
Post Script:
It’s generally difficult to prove the exact value of a status hierarchy, since brands at the top of status hierarchy offer intangible benefits.
In this particular case. It can be calculated.
Realme offers the same phone as One Plus. Reame 9 Pro 5G.
It has the exact same specifications as One Plus.
It’s similar to the point that there are speculations that One Plus blatantly copied Realme’s phone.
Realme version is cheaper by 2K.
