40 Lectures on Brand Marketing Positioning

Perception is greater than fact, which is a topic that is particularly prone to debate.

Supporters believe that the key to brand premium is to create high-value brand awareness, which is the core value of the brand. Opponents believe that this is a deviation from productism, does not truly create value for society, is opportunistic and short-sighted, and is not worth promoting and even needs to be criticized.

We believe that any theory has its limits. Its performance is that it is valid within the boundary and invalid outside the boundary. For example, Newtonian mechanics is valid in three-dimensional space, but it will become invalid once the time dimension changes. For example, Confucianism is effective in the civil service system, but not in business ethics.

This article attempts to explore how cognition is greater than fact based on the three-brain theory.

Consumers can only remember feelings

Shenzhou Special Car had a classic marketing war. With the theme of rejecting illegal ride-hailing services, Shenzhou fired at Uber, which was at the peak of its popularity at the time.

This wave of marketing caused a lot of controversy. Many people felt that Shenzhou had lost its grace and affected its brand image.

But after the controversy passed, users still remembered Shenzhou.

Moutai once promoted the "Moutai liver protection theory" in the autobiography of its former chairman and in informal occasions, using animal experiments, academic papers, and expert platforms to spread the message that Moutai not only does not harm the liver, but also has a protective effect on the liver. This statement aroused the disgust of Wuliangye, which bluntly stated that it was immoral.

But after all the immoral behavior, Moutai is still the number one brand of liquor.

Guazi.com is a direct sales website that aims to eliminate middlemen from making a profit from the price difference. Many so-called industry insiders joked that without the middlemen making a profit from the price difference, how would you survive on the melon seeds? The implication is that Guazi is the middleman, a typical case of the thief crying "stop thief".

But after the thief cried "stop thief", Guazi has become the representative brand of used car direct sales network.

Melatonin has been broadcasting its annoying advertisements for more than a decade, and the media has lost the urge to complain about it. At the same time, they have selectively ignored the fact that Melatonin has been a best-seller for more than a decade.

Nongfu Spring is going to be listed soon. A group of pseudo-experts were excited after seeing the financial report: a bottle of Nongfu Spring has a profit of 64%, which is amazing. A new IQ tax product was born.

When Pepsi was positioning itself as a cola for young people, Coca-Cola thought it was ridiculous: Can a single cola make you feel the difference between being young and old?

In fact, there is no distinction between young and old in Coke, but there is a perception of Coke. After the ridiculous doubts, PepsiCo has secured its position as the second largest brand in the category.

Today, when I write this article, is Chinese Valentine's Day, and I estimate that diamond sales will increase significantly. Although in fact diamond is just a stone, and its main component is silicon dioxide like sand, but cognitively diamond is much more expensive than stone.

If anyone tells his girlfriend this fact, his genes may not be passed on.

The FedEx logo is said to be one of the most expensive logos in business history, with a design fee of five million U.S. dollars, because there is a white arrow between the E and the X.

When the IBM logo was first designed, people within the company said that it looked like the window of a Siberian prison; it was not only cold but also ugly.

The decision maker who paid $5 million for FedEx's white arrow and the executive who thought the IBM logo looked like a prison window were both thinking with their rational brains.

Reptilian brain, emotional brain, and rational brain

The human brain is divided into three levels. The innermost and earliest part is the reptilian brain, which is short-sighted, greedy, direct, and rude. It only cares about sexual desire and appetite. It was born 250 million years ago.

Reptiles such as crocodiles, snakes, and lizards have no emotions. They only have reptilian brains and no emotional responses. We often say that something is a cold-blooded animal, which means that it has no emotions.

This also makes sense from the perspective of evolution. Apart from birds and mammals, there are also cold-blooded reptiles such as snakes and lizards. They are not frightened like birds, nor do they have group emotions like monkeys, nor can they share human emotions like cats and dogs.

The next layer is the emotional brain, which appeared about 2 million years ago. The emotional brain, also known as the mammalian brain, represents the human experience of emotions.

Mammals have an emotional brain, so the emotional brain is also called the mammalian brain. The biggest feature is that it has emotional characteristics. It can be happy, sad, excited, panicked, etc. like humans.

The outermost layer is the rational brain, which appeared tens of thousands of years ago, that is, the prefrontal lobe. People with well-developed frontal lobes are called "full forehead" in physiognomy. Its functions are language, cognition, abstraction, reasoning, etc.

This is unique to humans, and no other species has been found to have this ability. The biggest characteristic of the rational brain is rationality.

If you are reading this article and a beautiful woman walks by, and you unconsciously take a look at her, this is your reptilian brain and mammalian brain at work. You immediately think that instead of coveting beauty, it is better to learn some knowledge and make money. This is the rational brain at work.

When the so-called experts say that Guazi.com is the biggest middleman, that the Melatonin advertisement is tasteless, that Moutai is immoral, and that Xiaoguan Tea is a waste of money, they are thinking with their rational brains.

The rational brain has only evolved for tens of thousands of years. It consumes a lot of energy, starts up slowly, and has a low network speed. It will only be activated when a major decision is made. In contrast, the reptilian brain and the mammalian brain start up quickly, have high network speeds, and consume little energy. They have been running at high speed for 250 million years. It is so fast that it is effortless for you to glance at a beautiful woman, but glancing at professional knowledge is like pulling a tooth from a tiger's mouth.

This is especially true for consumers.

Like you and me, they have exhausted their energy at home and at work, and it is difficult to get them to activate their rational brain again when it comes to spending. You don't need to be an elevator expert to take the elevator; you don't need to know much about television to watch TV; you don't need to know anything about rubber to buy an inflatable doll online.

Why do you have a unique impression when you see an inflatable doll? Because it taps into your reptilian brain. If I put a photo here you will definitely be happier.

Consumers will not use their rational brains, they will not think about: how Guazi used cars make money, whether Moutai’s liver protection is real, what is in Melatonin, is Nongfu Spring selling bottles or water, how different are the chemical structures of diamonds and sand, and whether Shenzhou Special Car has lost its grace.

They rely more on the reptilian brain and the emotional brain and can only remember feelings: Guazi does not make a profit from the price difference of used cars, Moutai is good for health, Melatonin can be given as a gift to parents, Nongfu Spring is very natural, and Shenzhou Special Car is very safe.

Consumers will not think like the pseudo-experts: diamonds are actually a marketing scam and we should not be fooled. Even if he sees a particularly rational analysis article, he will not remember it. Because it’s too troublesome to activate the rational brain.

Consumers need an explanation that makes sense based on cognitive logic, not one that conforms to factual truth.

Cognition influences facts

China's effective control over drugs far exceeds that of the United States. One important reason for this is the definition of drugs in Chinese: poison. It is something that is obviously harmful to health.

In the United States, the name of drugs is: drug, which is neutral. If the names of drugs and cold medicines are similar, then their harmfulness will not be much different.

At ByteDance, the founder does not allow employees to call each other "Boss", "Brother", or "Leader". They must call each other by their names. The purpose of this system is to create a democratic atmosphere and prevent internal bureaucracy and hierarchy. Everyone is an effective manager.

A title is so important.

When Sun Yat-sen first started the revolution, he called himself a rebel party. Until one day, he saw the title "Revolutionary Sun Yat-sen" in a Japanese newspaper, and was instantly inspired, so he immediately changed the name to the Revolutionary Party.

Because in the context of Chinese culture, rebellion is when officials force the people to revolt, from the bottom up. Revolution is different; it comes from top to bottom and follows the will of heaven. Revolution has moral advantages over rebellion.

Interestingly, the Qing government’s newspapers always referred to Sun Yat-sen as a rebel rather than a revolutionary. Even after Sun Yat-sen changed his name, the Qing government still called them the rebel party. The reason is self-evident.

When Chen Duxiu founded New Youth in 1915, he was not well-known. Until 1918 it was still a small publication, with only 1,000 copies printed per issue.

During this period, Lu Xun worked in the Beijing Education Department and saw this magazine. Later in Call to Arms he said of the New Youth at that time: "It seemed that not only was there no one to agree with it, but there was also no one to oppose it." In his later years, Zhou Zuoren also recalled that his impression of the early New Youth was "just an ordinary publication. Although it was edited by Chen Duxiu, it did not have any special features."

The turning point occurred in 1918, when Qian Xuantong and Liu Bannong staged a marketing war. Qian Xuantong used the pseudonym "Wang Jingxuan" and, on behalf of the readers, accused New Youth of violating traditional culture and being disrespectful to Confucius.

Liu Bannong, the representative of New Youth, refuted each one one by one, using deliberately provocative and stimulating expressions in his words.

This marketing war was a two-way battle and attracted the attention of some people outside the circle. Lin Qinnan's attack was particularly vicious and influential. In 1919, Lin Qinnan published a series of novels in Shanghai's Xin Shen Bao to slander his fellow members of New Youth. He then wrote two open letters to Cai Yuanpei in Beijing's Gong Yan Bao, attacking New Youth and Peking University.

After Lin Qinnan's open letter was published, Cai Yuanpei also used the media to reply and refute it. Because Lin and Cai are both famous scholars, their debate quickly attracted public attention.

For a time, major newspapers and magazines in Beijing and Shanghai reprinted the correspondence between Lin and Cai and competed to publish comments. Various newspapers even titled the "Lin-Tsai dispute" with highly explosive headlines such as "the dispute between the new and the old", "the conflict between new and old thoughts", and "the duel between new and old thoughts".

The heated debate attracted the attention of Shen Bao. Shenbao was the most famous newspaper in the country at that time, with a circulation of 150,000 copies. That was China in 1918, when not many people could read newspapers. Converted to today's circulation, that's equivalent to 1.8 million copies.

Compared with New Youth, which had a print run of only 1,000 copies, Shenbao's influence was many levels higher.

The report in Shenbao officially ignited the popularity of New Youth and also boosted its sales. After becoming famous, New Youth sold 15,000 to 16,000 copies.

Half of the mouthfeel is the heart. Wang Zhigang summed up this sentence when he was planning for Moutai, and it is also suitable to explain the above case. We have talked a lot about the facts about cognitive influence in fast-moving consumer goods, so I will not go into details here.

No consumer would use their rational brain to think: "New Youth" is just hyping, I just won't buy this magazine. Or: Maotai-style liquor is not worth that much money, and Moutai is just marketing.

Only pseudo-experts take the views of the rational brain as the feelings of the mammalian brain, which is in fact also a kind of internal thinking. 

In 2014, Nongfu Spring launched a water war of the century, accusing its competitors of being harmful to health. Even though it lost the court case, Nongfu Spring is still mobilizing the power of cognition.

China Economic News reported:

In 2000, Zhong Shanshan made a high-profile declaration: Long-term drinking of purified water is harmful to human health; and Nongfu Spring only produces natural water. At that time, all water companies led by Wahaha and Robust were producing purified water. An industry war ensued.

Afterwards, Wahaha announced a boycott of Nongfu Spring's unfair competition, but Nongfu Spring sued Wahaha in court, accusing Wahaha of spreading negative news about itself. The two sides argued back and forth, and finally Nongfu Spring was found to have lost the case by the court.

Nongfu Spring lost the lawsuit, but not the facts. It is a fact that Yibao water is acidic, and the farmer never fabricated it.

Regarding our company’s testing and comparison of pH value of bottled water in marketing activities, China Resources C’estbon Company filed a complaint with the Guangzhou Administration for Industry and Commerce. The Guangzhou Administration for Industry and Commerce determined that our company’s activities were “unfair competition behaviors that fabricated facts, denigrated competitors, and damaged competitors’ business reputation and product reputation” and imposed an administrative penalty of RMB 100,000 on our company. Our company also lost the first-instance appeal at the Tianhe People's Court of Guangzhou. However, our company believes that the judgment cannot change the facts. Nongfu Spring lost the lawsuit, but did not lose the facts.

The comparative water testing activities are based on scientific experimental methods, present objective experimental results, and have sufficient scientific basis:

1. China Resources C'estbon purified water is indeed processed from tap water. We investigated its factories and OEM factories, and found that the water used was local tap water;

Second, no matter whether it is tested with a pH test instrument or precision pH test paper, the test results of China Resources Yibao purified water are all acidic;

3. When tested with a TDS tester, the TDS value of China Resources Yili Pure Water is close to 0, indicating that the water does not contain any mineral elements;

We also welcome the media and consumers to verify the above facts. Many organizations and scholars, including the World Health Organization, have pointed out that drinking water without mineral elements is harmful to health. In practice, pure water without mineral elements is usually acidic.

We believe that consumers have the right to know the source, pH value, mineral content and other information of the water they drink. Water pH testing is a beneficial activity to protect consumers' right to know. We deeply regret the decisions of Guangzhou Industry and Commerce Bureau and Guangzhou People's Court.

If we have to be serious about the facts, the proponent of the acid-base balance theory has admitted in 2018 that the theory is a lie. But what does it matter? Nongfu Spring has won recognition.