The CEO As A Master Rhetor:Lei Jun's Rhetorical Prowess And The Making Of The Xiaomi Brand

Commercial discourses increasingly play an important part in public discourses, and commercial rhetoric has crucial effects on commercial discourses. Being the CEO and co-founder of Xiaomi Tech Corp, Lei Jun is definitely an outstanding entrepreneur both in management field and rhetorical field and his product launch addresses, responses towards queries and public speeches greatly contribute to the making of the Xiaomi brand. His rhetorical prowess and the way it contributes to the development of Xiaomi is well worth researching and emulating by those who are engaged in commercial activities.To find out the rhetorical skills and strategies employed by Lei Jun during the making of the Xiaomi brand, we first make a brief introduction to Lei Jun as a high-tech entrepreneure, the Xiaomi Corp and Lei Jun as an outstanding commercial rhetor, and go on to lay out a general understanding of rhetoric, including its definitions and essence, the characters of persuasion, the concepts of rhetor, audience and exigence under commercial situation, as well as Aristotle's artistic proofs of ethos, pathos and logos. Then we employ relevant rhetorical theories to have an in-depth analysis of Lei's commercial discourses in dealing with different commercial situations, including Lei Jun's keynote address in the first product launch of Xiaomi, Lei's response to the query of Xiaomi Corp's "hunger marketing" and Lei's attitude change toward the epithet of "China's Steve Jobs", and at last, we take the 2014 Xiaomi product launch as a case in point to have a comprehensive view of Lei Jun's other rhetorical skills and strategies employed.Lei Jun is talented in employing rhetorical strategies in commercial discourses. Moreover, when faced with different communicative situations, Lei Jun has the ability to skillfully alter his rhetorical strategies, which significantly modifies the rhetorical exigences confronting Xiaomi and greatly benefits the making of the Xiaomi brand. Above all, we try to provide an empirical case study of the contributions rhetorically skilled leaders can make to the making of brands, and thus to offer successful lessons for rhetorical practitioners in commercial activities.