How popular Chinese smartphone brands Oppo and Vivo succeed without celebrity executives

When Xiaomi CEO and founder Lei Jun first took to the stage in jeans and a black top to introduce new phone models he was called a Steve Jobs copycat. Since then, Chinese smartphone brands like Xiaomi and its bigger rival Huawei have beaten back Apple and Samsung in the domestic market and taken significant market share in certain global markets.

While Lei still regularly takes to the stage to launch Xiaomi products, typically talking for 90 minutes or more, he has carved out his own persona and is now a celebrity executive in his own right in the world’s No 1 smartphone market, where Xiaomi’s market share is almost double that of Apple’s.

China’s No 1 smartphone company, Huawei Technologies, also has its own celebrity executive in the form of Richard Yu Chengdong, the company’s mobile division chief, who regularly appears onstage at product launches, recently flying to Germany to announce some new 5G models.

Yu stands out as a proverbial celebrity among his generally low profile peers in the company. Besides hosting all major events for Huawei’s new devices, he actively participates in interviews with domestic and international media to promote the company’s electronic gadgets.

However, when it comes to the second and third largest smartphone brands in China – Oppo and Vivo – which combined account for more than one third of the market and are referred to by Chinese as “OV” due to similarities in their products and marketing, consumers would be hard pressed coming up with the name of anybody in the companies.

While both brands spend millions on high profile advertising campaigns featuring movie stars and singers, the executives running these business have kept a decidedly low profile.