Media Focus | 2025 Golden Flag Awards Retrospective Interview – Avnet Reshapes the New Paradigm of Integrated Marketing Communication for the Automotive Industry in the AI ​​Era

In the 2025 Golden Flag Awards, Avnet China won the "2025 Golden Flag Award for Marketing and Public Relations Communication Case Study" for its integrated marketing communication project, "Intelligent Mobility for the Future: The Automotive Ecosystem Transformation in the AI ​​Era." This marks the third consecutive year that Avnet has won a gold award in this authoritative industry competition, demonstrating the continued leadership and profound industry influence of its brand communication strategy. Looking back, Avnet won the "2023 Golden Flag Award for To B Industry Case Study," the "2023 Golden Flag Award for Marketing and Public Relations Communication," and the "2024 Golden Flag Award for Corporate Social Responsibility" in 2023 and 2024, respectively . These three Golden Flag Awards not only record Avnet's solid achievements in strategic communication, industry empowerment, and sustainable development, but also confirm the deepening of its brand core as an ecosystem integrator and value co-creator.

2025 Golden Flag Award for Marketing and Public Relations Communication Case Study Gold Award – “Intelligent Mobility for the Future: The Automotive Ecosystem Transformation in the AI ​​Era” – Avnet Integrated Marketing Communications Project

A group photo of the Avnet team at the event: Mr. Cao Yuelong, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Avnet Asia Pacific (center), Mr. Fan Xingyan, Director of Marketing and Communications (right), and Ms. Chen Sihua, Senior Manager of Marketing and Communications (left).

• The following article is reprinted from the Golden Flag Award, author: Golden Flag Bearer

This issue's case study review is: the 2025 Golden Flag Award for Marketing and Public Relations Communication, Gold Award-winning project, "Intelligent Mobility for the Future: The Automotive Ecosystem Transformation in the AI ​​Era"—An Avnet Integrated Marketing Communications Project. We hope that through the sharing of Mr. Cao Yuelong, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Avnet Asia Pacific, we can bring more inspiration and reference to brand practitioners.

As a brand award that advocates long-term value, each case selected by the Golden Flag Award reflects the contribution of brand influence to the sustainable growth value of enterprises. It not only provides valuable insights and references for practitioners, but also provides rich practical materials for university teaching.

The 2025 Avnet Automotive Ecosystem Summit (AAES 2025) is an annual brand event for the automotive electronics industry established in China by Avnet, a multinational company with over a century of stable operating history. It aims to build an efficient exchange platform to discuss hot industry trends and cutting-edge technologies with industry partners, promoting collaborative innovation across the entire industry chain. Facing the deepening transformation of the automotive industry, Avnet drives development through technology, providing innovative supply chain services and overall solutions, earning widespread customer praise and market recognition in the automotive sector.

Currently, the wave of intelligentization is driving the automotive industry from "software-defined" to "AI-defined," further propelling it into a convergent intelligent industry. As a leading company in the automotive industry chain, Avnet actively captures the evolutionary direction of the automotive ecosystem. Through AAES, Avnet aims to collaborate with upstream and downstream partners to jointly strengthen and prosper the automotive ecosystem, helping local automotive OEMs and core component manufacturers accelerate technological innovation, escape the industry's internal competition, and seize forward-looking development opportunities amidst the accelerating integration of automobiles with AI, embodied intelligent robots, and eVTOL. Simultaneously, AAES also shoulders Avnet's mission to empower local enterprises to go global and expand into overseas markets. This integrated marketing communication solution, encompassing public relations and marketing promotion, is developed under the guidance of this brand strategic vision.

Recently, the Golden Flag Awards conducted an interview with Mr. Cao Yuelong, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Avnet Asia Pacific, to deeply analyze how the integrated marketing and communication solution built around AAES takes a multi-pronged approach across various dimensions, including forward-looking planning, innovative communication models, and outstanding industry value, to continuously drive breakthroughs in both brand value and business value. The interview also provided a more comprehensive interpretation of Avnet's benchmark role in promoting collaborative innovation in the automotive industry and empowering local enterprises and customers, given its long-standing deep cultivation in the automotive electronics field and its accumulated strong technical capabilities and global resource integration capabilities.

The success of the project lies in its precise and innovative systematic communication practice, encompassing planning, collaboration, and resonance. It leverages multiple dimensions, including regional collaboration, innovative content design, resource integration, and full-chain coverage, to create a market promotion and brand communication framework that combines breadth and depth.

One of its highlights was the dual-city collaboration and comprehensive reach. AAES 2025 adopted a dual-city collaboration model, opening in Hangzhou and concluding in Wuhan, spanning the Yangtze River Delta and the core areas of the central automotive industry, creating regional synergy and a synergistic effect across the industry chain. Simultaneously, the summit employed an OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) integrated communication model, combining in-depth offline exchanges with live online streaming. This not only enhanced the immersive experience but also broke down geographical and time limitations, achieving panoramic reach to engineers, upstream and downstream industries, and a wider media circle. Through the organic combination of dual-city collaboration, parallel development, and comprehensive communication, AAES 2025 created a communication framework with both depth and breadth, comprehensively enhancing brand influence and industry voice.

As the saying goes, the soul of integrated marketing communications lies in finding the value anchors that resonate with the market. In uncovering these value anchors, the entire project adhered to the principle of "global vision, localized communication." AAES 2025, supported by Avnet's global resources and technical expertise, applied practices, innovation capabilities, and keen market insight, provided cutting-edge international insights for the Chinese automotive industry. Simultaneously, it closely aligned with the development needs of local enterprises, delivering actionable solutions and business value. The summit showcased Avnet's global capabilities as a trusted partner in the industry chain and ecosystem, helping clients discover opportunities in emerging local markets, address industry challenges, enhance innovation and global expansion capabilities, and achieve an organic integration of global experience and local practices.

A comprehensive communication matrix and end-to-end promotional strategy are another major highlight of the project. AAES 2025 constructed a comprehensive communication matrix to achieve full-process promotion before, during, and after the event. Before the event, it collaborated with leading automotive media, well-known KOLs, and self-media to release pre-event promotional articles, expanding attention and brand awareness, and attracting the target audience to participate. During the event, it created a multi-touchpoint interactive experience through keynote speeches, roundtable discussions, sub-forums, and full online live streaming; concurrently, it arranged for senior executives to be interviewed by TV media such as Dragon TV and Zhejiang TV, leading financial media, and mainstream news media, strengthening the authoritative voice and brand influence. This integrated communication strategy effectively amplified the brand, topic, and ecosystem value of AAES 2025, achieving full-process exposure that balances breadth and depth.

Building upon its broad reach, AAES 2025 focuses on high-quality content, bringing together renowned experts to decode trending topics and continuously solidify the summit's professional depth and intellectual value. The summit invited global experts and thought leaders in automotive electronics and AI to engage in in-depth discussions on hot topics such as intelligent driving, in-vehicle AI, autonomous driving chips, and cross-industry collaboration between vehicles and AI. Through keynote speeches and roundtable discussions at the summit forum, experts shared global and local practical experiences and cutting-edge insights, helping the entire industry chain seize opportunities and strengthen confidence during the transformation period, and promoting collaborative innovation in the intelligent mobility and new energy vehicle ecosystem.

By leveraging the deep involvement of authoritative media to empower brand communication, Avnet demonstrated its industry leadership and achieved a leap in brand awareness. AAES 2025 partnered with leading automotive media outlet Gasgoo, utilizing its industry influence and having Gasgoo's research institute deliver a keynote speech to endorse the summit, enhancing its authority and credibility. During the event, Avnet China's president and other senior executives were given exclusive interviews via television, video, and in-person presentations on channels such as Dragon TV, Shanghai Daily, Zhejiang TV, and 21st Century Business Herald. These interviews focused on in-depth discussions of hot topics including the cross-industry integration of AI and automobiles, the prospects of China's new energy vehicle market, opportunities for overseas expansion of automobiles, and technological and application trends. Through precise media cooperation and executive interviews, Avnet enhanced the professional depth of its information delivery and promoted the dissemination of industry topics beyond its core audience, extending the summit's influence to a wider range of decision-makers and industry stakeholders, effectively amplifying brand awareness, strengthening its thought leadership in the industry, and consolidating its authoritative position in the industry chain.

In terms of results, the project not only achieved significant communication effects, but also innovated content supply, broadened communication channels, transformed communication power into brand influence and potential new momentum for industrial development, and achieved a two-way breakthrough in the sustainable growth of brand value and business value.

The 3rd Avnet Automotive Ecosystem Summit (AAES2025), with the strong support of Avnet's many strategic partners, was successfully held in Hangzhou and Wuhan. The summit included 8 keynote speeches, 3 automotive electronics summit forums, and 40 technical seminars. It brought together top forces from the global automotive industry chain, with over 20 internationally renowned semiconductor manufacturers sharing cutting-edge technologies, and attracting enthusiastic participation from numerous professional attendees. Statistics show that the two offline events in Hangzhou and Wuhan attracted over 500 in-person attendees, while the online livestream of the Hangzhou event drew over 30,000 viewers, fully demonstrating the high level of attention and widespread recognition of AAES2025 within and outside the industry.

This summit is not only a grand event showcasing cutting-edge technological achievements, but also a rallying cry for driving industry convergence and jointly shaping the automotive ecosystem in the AI ​​era. It provides an important platform and opportunity for industry partners to deepen collaboration and gain insights into industry development. Through this summit, Avnet will continue to deepen collaborative innovation across the industry chain, injecting innovative momentum into the intelligent mobility sector. Avnet will fully leverage its deep expertise in automotive electronics and its growing ecosystem advantages, working hand in hand with industry chain partners to jointly explore and incubate future-oriented core technologies and innovative solutions, thereby helping customers navigate the wave of technological change and ultimately achieve revenue growth.

The core highlight of this integrated marketing communications project centered around the "Avnet Automotive Ecosystem Summit (AAES)" lies in its deep integration of public relations and business needs, constructing a replicable and scalable new model for industry communication. Through a systematic integrated marketing communications solution, it leverages brand influence and transforms it into new momentum for industrial development, empowering client innovation and driving the transformation of the industrial ecosystem—this is both its initial aspiration and its mission. As the automotive industry accelerates its deep transformation towards electrification, intelligentization, and connectivity, AAES will continue to focus on the direction of local and regional industrial development, not only providing an open exchange platform for partners to discuss industry trends and technological directions, but also committing to cross-industry technological integration and enabling innovation to take root and flourish.

Avnet has been deeply rooted in the Chinese market for over 30 years. As time changes and new chapters unfold, Mr. Cao Yuelong, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Avnet Asia Pacific, stated that this award is a recognition of Avnet's "Intelligent Mobility for the Future: The Automotive Ecosystem Transformation in the AI ​​Era" AAES integrated marketing communications project. As an industry pioneer with a 104-year history, Avnet has successfully transformed from a component distributor into a technology-driven provider of innovative supply chain solutions, and has been recognized as one of the "World's Most Ethical and Trustworthy Companies" for many consecutive years. Throughout its more than 30 years of development in China, the company has steadfastly pursued a localization strategy, growing alongside the market. In the automotive sector, Avnet delivered up to 5.5 billion chips to customers in fiscal year 2025, and through its R&D centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen, it has co-created over 100 automotive solutions with partners, gaining widespread market recognition.

“We hope that through platforms like AAES, industry colleagues can get to know each other, exchange ideas, and jointly explore technological trends and industry hotspots. In the future, Avnet will, as always, be rooted in China, serve the world, and continue to work hand in hand with all our partners to create a smart mobility ecosystem,” he added.