How to build a brand? Please be a showman first

We want to use the Internet to create a new brand"

Next, we will design a logo, come up with a slogan, and in the future, we will take advantage of the hot topics and engage in new media communications. We hope that the brand can become as popular in the online world as Durex .

Every boss has a "Durex" dream in his mind, but it is not clear whether this dream is suitable for the product, which often makes marketers feel miserable.

If you were a director, would you choose Lu Han to play the role of Wolf Warrior? Would you ask Wang Baoqiang to act in a youth romance idol drama? Just thinking about this kind of painting style will make people feel messy, but in real life we ​​can't avoid seeing such embarrassment.

No matter how good an actor is, he or she must have a role that suits him or her in order to fully unleash his or her potential. Similarly, no matter how good a product is, it must have a role that suits it in order to fully create a brand image that matches the product.

Can you imagine luxury brands taking advantage of the trend by making fun of it like Durex did? Perhaps, this may lead to a large number of reposts and exposure (taking advantage of the contrast effect), but doing so will actually lower the brand's status, and the brand image that has been established in the minds of consumers for many years will face the risk of depreciation.

The vast majority of actors have roles that suit them. Similarly, the vast majority of products have roles that suit them. The first step in building any brand is to clarify the role positioning of the product.

So what roles does the product have?

Generally, products will have these four kinds of relationships with people:

1. Self-concept - Solve the question of who I am and help users express themselves

When users use this product, it helps them establish their own identity. Sometimes it is to show which group they belong to (driving a luxury car and living in a luxury house shows that I am rich, using a Xiaomi phone shows that I am an enthusiast, and buying the latest trendy shoes shows that I am a trend seeker), and sometimes it is to avoid the group they dislike and distinguish themselves from them ("The atmosphere on Weibo is too loser, I want to go to Zhihu")

2. Nostalgic attachment – ​​connecting with my past self

People are constantly changing their roles from childhood to adulthood, starting as children, then students, boyfriends/girlfriends, employees, bosses, fathers, and we often see that some products use certain attributes of our past to establish connections with us. For example, from time to time, a campus youth film pops up, allowing us to go to the cinema and return to the age of 17. When I travel from my hometown to a foreign country and see a restaurant with the flavor of my hometown, I will feel familiar and will walk in without hesitation to taste it.

3. Interdependence – Become part of daily life

Some products have become part of our daily lives, and modern people cannot live without them. We cannot imagine what would happen if we suddenly did not have these products, such as mobile phones, WeChat , kitchenware, shampoo, clothes, etc.

4. Love – an emotional bond that triggers strong emotions

Usually users can feel a certain emotional experience when using this product, and the role of the product at this time is to better stimulate certain emotions. For example: "Give Nootropics as a gift" stimulates the warm emotions when others give gifts, and Wrangler advertisements usually inspire a "real man" passion to challenge nature.

The above four points can help brands clarify the role of their products, and the next step is the most important one. This step is also the reason why we often see the vast majority of brand images fail and only a few succeed.

After research, we found that the success of a brand role often depends on several points:

• Submission Cognition
• Behavioral consistency
• Improved sense of control
• Differentiate from competitors

Submission Cognition

People have their own views on things, which are acquired over a long period of time under the influence of culture, social environment, and the groups they belong to. In turn, this cognitive system also guides our behavioral norms. For example, the recent definitions of green vegetables in the north and south. Southerners believe that green vegetables must be a large plate of lush green vegetables, while in the north, when people stew pork ribs with beans, the beans are called green vegetables.

In terms of branding, we often see some failed cases because the role played by the product does not conform to the consumer's cognition:

• A few years ago, an American skin care product manufacturer tried to launch a men's hair removal cream as an alternative to razors and shaving cream. Although the product was simple, convenient and practical, it ultimately failed. Why? Because its formula is similar to that of depilatory creams for women, it threatens men's self-concept.
• Gerber, a baby food company under Nestlé, once launched a canned food for adults. The product was mainly intended to solve the problem of single people eating at home. However, consumers did not buy it. Not only did they hate being called Single (they even printed this word in large letters on the packaging), but it was also easily associated with babies. They thought the product was not only single, but also childish.

When any product plays a brand role, it must be clear that it is compatible and coordinated with the lives of the target group to avoid consumers falling into cognitive bias.

Well, in addition to avoiding cognitive bias, how can we apply the principle of cognitive compliance to brand image?

The suggestion is that when others have formed a unique cognitive impression of a certain group or individual, they can transfer the characteristics of this group or individual to the product.

• If an actor plays a popular doctor role in a TV series, a pharmaceutical company can use the authoritative image of the doctor to promote its products on TV. (You can totally imagine that Wu Yue, who played Ling Ling in "My First Half of Life", was scolded by netizens on Weibo and the comments were closed, and the actor who played the role of Rong Momo was refused a taxi, all because of the role)
• The design of the Coca-Cola bottle resembles the curves of a woman's body. It not only looks charming and seductive, but also has softer and smoother curves and feels better to the touch. The birth of this bottle has played an indispensable role in helping Coca-Cola stand out in the beverage market.
• Chu Orange is an inspiring legendary story about Chu Shijian, who experienced many ups and downs in his life, climbed to the top, went to jail, and returned to grow oranges at the age of over 70. Marketers have transferred this personal trait to the brand. Consumers are not paying for the oranges, but for a kind of ups and downs of inspiring emotions.

When it comes to self-concept products, sometimes using the characteristics of a certain group of people or individuals to create a product will make consumers form a comparative mentality, making them feel more dissatisfied with the status quo and then pursue a better self. (For example, most Weibo influencers are models for their own online stores. When fans see the beautiful clothes they wear, they instinctively compare themselves to them. After feeling dissatisfied with themselves, they start to pursue the characteristics (clothes) of influencers.)

Behavioral consistency

I think what most people fear the most is something going wrong with a brand. Once something goes wrong, it means trouble is coming, so when faced with something going wrong with a brand, what people often do is evade responsibility and distance themselves from it. However, only a brand is one that makes mistakes; one that does not make mistakes is not a brand at all, and consumers do not need you.

How do you understand this?

Every brand will make mistakes. When a brand faces mistakes, it can honestly take responsibility for the mistakes so that consumers can punish it at the lowest cost. (For example, after the Haidilao incident, the company immediately took responsibility for all the mistakes and announced the name and phone number of the person most responsible. Consumers can call the number to complain directly, rather than just firing someone and letting it go.) However, when a brand makes a mistake, it will fail if it evades responsibility (for example, the recent kindergarten incident).

In the eyes of consumers, “your brand image is what it is.” Brands whose behavior and image are inconsistent lose the most basic brand trust, which is the foundation of the brand.

According to economists, trust in a brand comes from the basic assumption of repeated games. If a business makes a mistake, consumers can punish you. For example, tourist attractions are a one-time game. Good or bad consumers cannot punish the business. Restaurants in a residential area are the result of repeated games. If the food is not tasty, I will punish you and you will not come again.

For risky innovative products (technology products, financial products, skin care products), it is crucial to create an opportunity for consumers to repeat the game.

So how do we create opportunities for consumers to repeat the game? The general practice is to make some kind of promise so that consumers can choose to punish the merchant when they intuitively feel that the product is inconsistent with their expectations, such as ( Taobao ’s 7-day refund, Baojie’s promise of refunding body spray, a supermarket’s promise to double the price difference if the product is overpriced, etc.)

Improved sense of control

I believe many people have said or heard the words "I've told you so many times". Saying such words means that the expected result has failed. In life, we often see someone trying to persuade others to do things according to their own ideas, but they are often resisted. For example: the teacher asks students to be quiet and listen carefully in class, but the students speak loudly. The wife asked her husband to do something, but the husband just didn't want to do it.

Why does this happen?

Because this behavior itself is not controlled by the brain's will, people at this time will face the threat of losing control of their personal freedom, and will experience negative emotions, anxiety, anger, rage, and frustration, and then they will resist with some kind of behavior in order to restore their personal freedom.

In advertisements, we often see some products using persuasive tones to encourage consumers to buy the products. However, in reality, most of these advertisements end in failure.

However, the best persuasion is to give up persuasion, and the best control is to give up control. Smart marketers will enhance the sense of control for users to achieve marketing goals, for example:

• White-collar workers in big cities lead busy lives every day, and most of their time is dominated by work. In this case, many things they do and much of the time they spend are not done by their own will. At this time, people will have negative emotions such as anxiety, irritability, and depression. Xin Shixiang 's " Escape from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou " campaign hits this point and provides users with a sense of control. In order to resist the situation of losing control, people will choose the "Escape from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou" campaign to temporarily restore their personal freedom.
• When many choices in life and work are made by the will of others, people will want to regain their control in other ways. Shopping is one of the means to enhance the sense of control. It is up to you to choose which store and which clothes to wear. JD’s recent popular advertisement “You Don’t Have to Be Successful” is also based on this strategy, suggesting that you don’t have to live according to other people’s standards of success or to resist such standards. Just do what you should do and you don’t have to be successful.
• Similarly, Didi’s advertisement also takes advantage of this point. Life is spent acting for others all day long, but at least when you are in the car, you can be yourself.

Differentiate from competitors

Like all other marketing methods, find the main competitors of the product, differentiate yourself from their images, play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses, and create a unique experience. Only in this way can you enter the awakening set of the consumer's brain and occupy a favorable position. When users think of products in a certain scenario, they will think of your product first.

The competitors here are not just competitors of similar products, but competitors who compete with users for resources in a certain scenario.

For example, fruit and cake are different products, and no one considers one as a substitute for the other. However, at the higher level of desserts, they are competing for consumers' resources.

It is crucial to understand how consumers categorize products. This not only helps to identify competitors, but also helps to create a unique product image. General Foods once launched a series of Jell-O desserts, which were called "Jelly for salads." It was finally discovered that people would only use it when eating salads. Because people put the product in the "salad" rather than "dessert" category, the company finally had to withdraw this product line.

We often see some products that seem to have different products and services, such as games , social networking , and news apps. There is no competition between them, but at a higher level, they are all competing for users' time resources.

More than 100 years ago, the competitors that horse drivers focused on were other horse drivers. However, after identifying their competitors, everyone competed to create better horseshoes and saddles, rather than positioning their main competitors as those that could capture all means of transportation in the "consumer travel behavior" scenario.

When focusing on the scenario of "consumer travel behavior", all those who may compete with you for consumer travel resources are your competitors. Only then will you be able to make a strategy that is beneficial to you as soon as possible, rather than being eliminated by consumers.

Conclusion

In brand role building, you must avoid marketing that follows the trend. Four relationships (self-concept, nostalgic attachment, mutual attachment, and love) can help you find a role positioning that suits your product, and then through a series of behaviors, let the brand truly shine in the market, rather than just shouting slogans, wanting to be popular, wanting to evade responsibility, and wanting to increase brand premium to obtain higher brand assets. In the end, it depends on whether you have truly achieved compliance cognition - behavioral consistency - enhanced sense of control - and differentiation from competitors.

The author of this article @付永承 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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