Positioning’s School Bets RMB 100M on AI Brands
On 14 November in Shanghai, at the 2026 Future Category King gala marking the centenary of Al Ries’s birth, Ries Strategy Consulting launched a five-year, RMB 100 million programme — RMB 1 million of strategy work each for 100 companies with new-category potential — and published a “super-technology enterprise brand methodology” aimed at AI, autonomous driving and embodied intelligence. The argument is that industrial-era advantage came from specialised product brands, whereas super-technology firms can build a corporate brand by opening a breakthrough category and extending across categories through content and hardware-software ecosystems; cited work includes Great Wall’s off-road positioning, XPeng’s “AI car” category from 2024, Junlebao’s zero-sucrose yoghurt and Weilong’s konjac snacks.
