How long can African kids continue to use signboards to market?

Recently, a video of African children holding signs has become popular on WeChat Moments . Several children read aloud the 20-word text on the blackboard in African Chinese, including blessings, marriage proposals, advertisements, and so on. Lian Run also made a video promotion for Mr. Lian’s five-minute business school offline course in Shenzhen.

Five-minute business school

Holding a sign for small green tangerines

It is very easy to make short videos of African children now. You can find them by searching on Taobao . The price ranges from a few dozen to two hundred yuan, depending on the format.

This kind of short video marketing is obviously not new. When I first saw this format, I thought: Isn’t this just a short video sending blessings? We must have done something similar before. For example, when a friend is getting married or having a birthday and we cannot go to the event, we would record a blessing video and send it to the other person.

The last part of If You Are the One is all about friends sending blessings, wishing the friends participating in the show to be successful in finding their love. Does it have a similar effect?

The problem is that what we do is just a private information dissemination between friends or individuals, and we don’t commercialize it. Many people can think of this idea, but the idea has no value. The key is to be able to commercialize it.

Why did the video of African children holding signs go viral? What is the business logic behind this commercial phenomenon?

1. An efficient advertising and marketing model

Compared with private short video blessings, the African children holding placards video is a highly efficient advertising and marketing model, which is why it has become popular so quickly. Let's take a look at the characteristics of this model:

1. The eye-catching black kid

In the video, several black children gathered around a blackboard with text written on it, following an adult in reading the words on the blackboard in unclear African Chinese.

Black children, interesting Chinese copy, childish voices, and hilarious pronunciations, these elements combined together create an eye-catching advertisement with the effect of a variety show.

2. Remove the copywriting design link

When shooting a short video, copywriting design is actually the most time-consuming. The store is not responsible for the copywriting, you need to provide it yourself, which is about 20 words. This greatly saves the delivery time of the video. If the store designs the copy, it needs to communicate with the customer, and each customer's case is different. As a result, a lot of time will be spent on this part. If this part is separated and provided by the customer himself, production efficiency will be greatly improved.

3. Standardized interfaces and processes

The text is about 20 words. The format is to write the text on a small blackboard, and then a Chinese living in Africa reads it, and several black children follow along to read it, and the video is considered to be shot.

There is basically no need for editing, and keeping the original ecology is more realistic. And there are basically no requirements for shooting equipment, an ordinary smartphone can do it.

The time is also controllable and it can basically be done within a minute.

4. Spread through self-media

After the video is shot, it is delivered to the customer. Customers can spread the information themselves through Weibo, WeChat , and Kuaishou . The traditional advertising model requires publishing on TV stations, websites with high traffic , or outdoor billboards. This type of short video can be easily spread through social software.

Through the above four designs, the advertising service that originally took a long time to deliver has been transformed into a standardized product that can be delivered in a short time, greatly improving efficiency. And the price is very cheap, the most expensive one is only over 100 yuan, so ordinary people can try it if they want.

2. Nodes and amplifiers of communication

The first to do this was a Taobao store called "Chuangyiyuan Overseas Studio". Through online information, we learned that the store actually started selling this kind of video two years ago. Previously, it was mainly sold in the form of representing white or blessings, but it did not become popular, and many people did not know the existence of this model.

Why has the marketing campaign of African children holding signs become so popular since August this year? A big reason is the amplifying effect of important communication nodes.

We know that in the dissemination of information on the Internet, influential communication nodes such as big Vs or celebrities will effectively amplify and promote the dissemination of information.

The first communication node that approached this store for cooperation was 360 Mobile Security. The video has received more than 800,000 hits . Later, Internet companies such as Sogou , Momo, and Mobike also did the same thing. This type of short video marketing immediately became popular on social software.

Hold up a sign 360 mobile guard

Holding a sign on Momo

3. The way forward after homogenization

Since the threshold for shooting this type of video is very low, a group of followers quickly emerged on Taobao. If you search for “African kids holding signs” on Taobao now, you will find three pages of about 150 merchants offering similar products.

In addition, product standardization means that except for the copywriting content, its presentation form is basically consistent, and everyone still feels fresh and interesting in the first few videos. However, if videos are forwarded in this form all the time, the spectators will soon become aesthetically fatigued and their attention will be diverted elsewhere.

Again, this marketing model can increase the visibility of a company or product in a short period of time, but it does not have much effect on brand building and enhancement. Moreover, since there is no supervision, anyone can play, resulting in uneven quality of copywriting content, and elites and grassroots competing on the same stage, which will probably be ruined soon.

Therefore, if the African children's sign-holding marketing model is not subsequently improved and differentiated, it is likely to be just a passing fad and return to normal after the hype.

Currently on Taobao, some differentiated marketing methods have emerged compared to African children holding signs.

First of all, there is racial diversity, with white, yellow, brown, etc. people all joining the battle, and the prices are different;

Secondly, there is portrait marketing, which is that you send photos to merchants, and foreign painters sketch the photos and then display the portraits on signs;

African children holding up signs for marketing does not have core competitiveness because the merchants are not responsible for the production of content. As more merchants enter the market, this method has become a standard and optional content dissemination method rather than a content production method.

Only strong content producers can continue to attract public attention, such as the Durex team, Liushenleilei and other big accounts. After all, people care about the content, not the way it is delivered.

However, no matter how it evolves in the end, at least the popular "African kids holding signs for marketing" itself is still worth our understanding and attention.