Podcast: Xiaomi’s Wang Bing on building value-based premium in the Middle East

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00][music] >> Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Campaign Middle East on the record podcast, where we speak to leaders across the region about the key trends and challenges facing the brand marketing and advertising landscape. I'm Anup Oman, the editor of Campaign Middle East, and joining us on the show today is Wang Bing, the head of marketing for Xiaomi Middle East. Wang, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. It's great to have you here. Wang, while I have you here, let's let's dive straight into it.

[00:00:32]I mean, I've >> [snorts] >> owned Xiaomi devices through my life, and um a large part of it, especially in those phases of my life, was the value that you get for the price it delivers, right? And a lot of these conversations across, I mean, within the brand's spectrum as well, has been around what value am I getting for the price of any different product. But when you come to markets such as the Middle East, for example, the consumer expectations move far beyond just price points, right?

[00:01:06]Um in this conversation, there's this idea about how do you define value-based premium? Mhm. Okay.

[00:01:15]>> And if you were to position brands like Xiaomi as a premium brand, then what do you need to show consumers, and how do you take consumers on that journey with you? Okay.

[00:01:27]Firstly, I would to like to uh respond to you that uh it is true that Xiaomi's widely recognized as a a brand good at value, right? So, uh we we are known as a providing good products with affordable price. But uh indeed, we see there's a clear shift towards this value-based premium.

[00:01:52]Customers The change is customers no longer use price as a proxy of quality, performance, of premium. And it was it used to be brand communication and a pricing strategy of this marketing activities to build the premium image of a brand.

[00:02:11]But the perception are changing.

[00:02:14]Customers starts to understand more and more and they are reactive to figure out what is the value this product bring to me. So for Xiaomi, we are also from the very beginning we are not only trying to provide affordable products.

[00:02:31]Our value is to provide wonderful product above expectation with affordable price. So mostly people know the second half sentence. We are trying to to elaborate the story that our product actually provides flagship technology, advanced technology experience that is tied with the day-to-day customer life even in Middle East. And also we are providing seamless ecosystem experience.

[00:03:03]So a customer they receive our products, they will understand from our communication what kind of value can be added through this product in their like multi-occasions like commuting, in their home life, and also in their office life. So this is how we enhanced our perceived value to our customers. And eventually customer understand this is the product they want and that's how we build the value-based premium. I like that. I'll take out three different phrases or words that you've mentioned. You mentioned products multiple times, but you also have mentioned the word story and storytelling so to speak within it.

[00:03:46]And you said seamless experiential ecosystem. Right now in that seamless ecosystem product and story, the three things that I'm seeing is I mean, as a former owner of of multiple Xiaomi products, you know, whether it's it's the speakers, whether it's a television, whether it's a phone, so on and so forth.

[00:04:04]A lot of the times that I mean, me as a functional person used to buy these products, used to be on we're comparing the specs of one product against the specs of another product, you know, and then based on what this product delivers and what this product delivers and what this product delivers across across your competition. Say then you then compare the price points. And you take a logical, so to speak, decision about maybe I should get this over the other, right? But even that perception seems to have changed, right?

[00:04:34]People are now, for example, how do you and and this goes to your conversation about the seamless ecosystem. How do you communicate that conversation about a seamless ecosystem or connected living is another thing that you were speaking about.

[00:04:49]Um through your messaging, through your marketing. So you get people to feel, not just logically make a decision, but emotionally connect with your consumers that goes beyond just sharing overwhelming details about product features or specifications.

[00:05:07]Yes, yes. Actually, the very easy to understand example is that in Xiaomi every year our new product launch event, they are more than just one single product. There are different categories always combined together to launch. So, if we if we are telling all the specifications of each product, it just make this launch event a little bit too long, too too complex, then too overwhelming for our customers. And it doesn't seem personal anymore. Yes, yes.

[00:05:39]There's no relevancy if you are doing that still at these days. So, Uh, we are telling customers uh this multiple different devices they can actually have a interconnectivity. So, in what occasion, for example, you are using a smartphone and a tablet at the same time uh during office hour. So, there is a easy task can be shared uh between these two devices.

[00:06:05]Uh also, when you are going out uh your uh your smartwatch, smartbands are also connected with uh the scooter you are using. So, all of these uh in real life scenarios we explain, we elaborate uh how this uh ecosystem can bring a better experience to our customer. So, we no longer doing that uh specification one by one. That's nice because I mean that that reminds us of this conversation that we're having before the podcast as well because um when you share a story, it resonates better. Uh when you connect with people in their everyday lives, it connects better than just sharing product specs.

[00:06:44]Like I I like what you said about I mean um I don't know if I should be saying this out loud, but uh Wang Bing has a uh a mini dachshund and and I have two dogs, and we were talking about uh very plainly about uh how a phone can be connected to a camera at home and how we can, you know, but it seems simple, but when you open a phone that's clearly seamlessly connected to a pet camera at home, just that experience of being able to without, you know, loading without any issues in itself, but also the fact that when you stick that that story that you've shared with me, for example, we've exchanged, that sticks.

[00:07:21]That sticks more than oh, this is the quality of the phone, this is the megapixels of a camera, this is, you know, the the the battery life of a smart camera at home, or this is how long it lasts. Like these stories of, you know, looking into your pets and just checking in on them make you want to have Okay, I want to try that product.

[00:07:40]Customers start to understand the technologies meaning behind the specifications because it is relevant with their own life. So, this is how we turn the product specification into ecosystem story time. I love that. I love that. Change product specifications into ecosystem storytelling. That could be my headline of this podcast I wanted.

[00:08:03]Um moving on. I mean, we've spoken about product, we've spoken about promotion. I want to move away from performance to brand, right? And I think this is it's a much bigger, more important piece because this is a part of this world where you're you're dealing with very different sets of consumers, whether you're talking about APAC, when you're talking about the MENA, when you're talking about, you know, North Asia, whether you're talking about, you know, the Americas, is very different audiences that we're speaking to. And this part of the world, especially that we're in, um has a great is greatly influenced by influencers, Yes.

[00:08:39]>> by content creators, right?

[00:08:41]>> Yes. And I mean, we've reached a point where most brands are partnering with them, are working with them, or co-creating with that at some point. And one of the conversations that has come about has been in and around brand safety, you know, brand control, or you know, brand values, brand vision, and long-term brand building overall, right?

[00:09:00]And not just the short-term performance metrics that we're trying to do for bottom of the funnel conversions and sales, but genuinely having a a vision long-term.

[00:09:08]The question then is for a brand like Xiaomi, you know, where you're building this value-based premium, where you're building this seamless, you know, ecosystem storytelling, connected living, and all of that. How much of that story do you own as a brand? Yeah.

[00:09:22]And say that we want to take control of this as a brand, and how much of that are you willing to either co-create or certain share a certain level of that with the users, with creators, with influencers? How do you balance that?

[00:09:35]Yes. Before answering that question, uh it's also this question is also inspiration to me that actually every change and shifts of the industry is always you can going back to customers to find the answer. That's the reason why every brand nowadays are working more closely with creators because the way of discovery, way of perception of customers are changing.

[00:10:03]They're not only looking for product relevant informations. They are looking for real usage experience. That's why from creators they can see in the real life how does this products are experience will be and the from also as part of the now we say KOC, key opinion customers. They are always keen to share their own opinions everywhere e-commerce platforms on community even on Xiaomi. We have our own website for our fans to share opinion to exchange. So the the reason why brands are changing their approach with to collaborate with creators, I think it's also because customers are changing their habits. So when coming back to your question that how do we balance between the brand taking lead or the creators taking lead.

[00:10:58]I have to say of course there is a difference in terms of messaging. When it is about the brands innovation, when it is about the brands narratives, the brand will talk first.

[00:11:11]But when it comes to like I say the user experience and also about some authenticity, customers are looking for creators. They want to see. So and also it always happen together. That's why in most of Xiaomi's product launch events we always partner with creator to spread the news and also we invite our fans to be part of us even launching the product together. So I I would say creators is part of our long-term strategy. That's That's wonderful. I'll throw a little curveball in there, something that you know, we're not expecting but I what you said kind of resonated with me because what you're doing is is not just building a user base, you're building a fan base so to speak. The beauty of a fan base that we didn't have say 20, 30, 40 years ago is you have real-time feedback now. You know, and so internally when we're looking at it from a marketing function, there's always we speak about these silos that exist within a marketing organization saying So now sometimes marketing doesn't speak to product, doesn't speak to sales, doesn't speak to finance. But now that you're building this ecosystem internally, you're not only becoming a function [snorts] within the organization but you're also becoming the voice of the consumer within your organization and that feeds back. So for example, if say a KOC may not have as amazing experience they do as they want or they might find some other part of a product more fascinating than what the builders built. It's almost like you're QA testing at scale. You know, it's almost as if you're getting feedback in the loop. Do you feel like that's helped the brand over a period of time? That interaction, this openness to be co-creating with consumers, with fans who don't always say good things but they also give you real-time feedback across.

[00:13:05]The feedback is not only real-time but also everywhere.

[00:13:10]We are Xiaomi, there is a philosophy of Xiaomi always making friends with our users. So all the time no matter is our engineer or our commercial team, we always sit down and uh have a have a dinner, have a real conversation with all the fans. And we continually organize all kind of offline in-depth communication with our fans. And of course we are not we are we are not only expecting good comments.

[00:13:43]That's not how we're doing it. We also receive suggestions and how to improve our product. There are more than one time our product our engineer uh product managers they are changing this product based on an advanced QA test. They collect some suggestion and they change the product and they launch. That's beautiful. Um I think there's a lot of meat in there. Before I conclude, there are a couple more questions that I want to take. I'm I'm I'm ready of time but I I I'll just power through these as well.

[00:14:15]Um there is this conversation that is happening building on what we said about, you know, fans and and how you change your marketing strategies and perspectives as well based on different audiences. One of the beautiful things about this region, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, this region that we live in, is the fact that they are very open to new things. Now that's not just in terms of this specific category or the specific product but across all categories. It's it's a common theme that we've seen is they're very quick to adopt. They're very quick to experiment. They're very quick to share their feedback and they're very quick to innovate on what they've done, right?

[00:14:58]And this is something that's markedly different from other markets that might like legacy, for example. You know, from other markets that might like the tried and tested. You know, that might go with, you know, something that a brand that stands for credibility that's has 20-30 years of experience within the industry.

[00:15:18]Here there is a little more openness to experimentation, you know. Has that has an had an effect on how you market differently, you know? You go to market differently, your marketing strategy is differently in this region. Yes. Yes, indeed. Uh the um this market, Middle East, we already noticed that it's not only a fast-growing market.

[00:15:40]>> Mhm. It is a innovation uh a market fast adoption of innovation.

[00:15:46]>> Mhm. So, uh we also noticed uh the smart home appliance the market is growing at a 10 to 12% compound annual growth rate.

[00:15:55]>> Wow. So, which is really uh really really high. So, for Xiaomi, we also have a strategy we introduced. It's called the human-car-home.

[00:16:06]So, that that means uh we are not only uh focusing on smartphone and wearable products and other categories are uh we're trying to connect everything. So, as you said here, all the um customers, they are open to new experience, new devices, and also it's a growing for the number of a multi-devices users.

[00:16:29]>> Mhm. So, our ecosystem strategy is really working well here. We also use this market as as our um innovation hub That's right. to test and learn and scale our creativity. So, uh that's why we really consider Middle East as a strategic market for Xiaomi. Wonderful.

[00:16:49]Um before we close, I've got um an audience that is brand side marketers.

[00:16:55]Mhm. We've got agency leaders, and whether that's creative, whether that's media, digital, events, and experiential, all that you do at Xiaomi and the way you take that to market. Um if you had a parting message to share to this industry, Mhm. and just wrap up all your thoughts together, and things that we really need to focus on either now or later, or just your message from Xiaomi to the world.

[00:17:16]What would that parting message be?

[00:17:18]Okay. From my own perspective as a marketer, actually these conversations are also super inspirational for me.

[00:17:26]We are looking at the trends like AI innovation and also ecosystem marketing and how customers habits are changing smoothly.

[00:17:39]But I want to highlight that as a marketer we always follow the trends but principles should stay with us. Those principles principles are helping us to win customers, to win the market. And for Xiaomi, I have to say I heartfully recognize that the company always stay close to users putting users as the core. So that helps the company and the marketers to better adapt with the to ride on the trends to make a bigger success. So that's what I want to say. I love that. What a wonderful way to end the podcast. Go back to the fundamentals and understand that everything that we're doing is for the users. It's not necessarily to make a fast buck. It's not necessarily just innovating for the sake of innovating or you know using AI as a sake of for the sake of AI as a KPI but actually going back to what benefits the user the most and making them as we said part of the conversation and part of that feedback loop. Thank you Wong.

[00:18:38]It's been a fantastic conversation. I absolutely enjoyed this conversation with you.

[00:18:41]>> Thank you. Same for me.

[00:18:43]It's a pleasure and that's a wrap on this episode of Campaign Middle East on the record podcast. Stay tuned for more such wonderful conversations with leaders in the industry. That's all for now and until next time, goodbye.