Alipay circles, Durex trial with 100 people... Why is the marketing of this generation of Internet companies failing?

Li Jiaoshou once told a joke. A man and a woman fell in love. When talking about marriage, the man had to confess, "Actually, I have a younger brother who works in marketing ." His tone was full of guilt, as if it was something shameful.

This is true for individuals and companies alike. Xiaomi, which published the pocket book "Sense of Participation", confessed through Huang Jiangji: We are a technology company; Didi , which started out by issuing coupons on WeChat, calls itself a big data company; Huawei, which spent 2 billion to buy out the two-year advertising rights for G/D EMUs, can't even clearly explain what kind of company it is.

Everyone is suffering from it, but everyone is eager to distance themselves from it. What is the mentality behind this?

The prototype of "Romance of the West Chamber" is provided in the Tang Dynasty legend "The Story of Yingying":

The male protagonist Zhang Sheng was "gentle and handsome", but "at the age of 23, he had never approached a woman". In today's terms, his sexual orientation was a mystery. People "questioned" him (why didn't a handsome guy have sex ?). Zhang Sheng once made a confession:

"Deng Tuzi is not a lustful person, but he has evil intentions. I am indeed a lustful person, but I just don't meet my match. Generally speaking, the most outstanding things will always linger in my heart, so I know that he is not a person who forgets his feelings."

Dengtu Zi is a character created by Song Yu, and later became a synonym for a frivolous playboy. Zhang Sheng admitted that he was "lustful", but he looked down on his fellow lecher, Lecher. What he opposed was his promiscuous love without distinction between partners.

Zhang Sheng in ancient times and marketers today have one thing in common:

As experienced people, they pretend not to know this. They just want to be more reserved and maintain their eating manners so as not to appear to be hungry . The reason they have this mentality is that today's marketing has long changed.

1. The rush and chase of hot spots has gotten out of control

Unrestrained marketing has led to serious consequences such as self-congratulation and quarreling over a disagreement, so the randomness and uncontrollability of hot events have been greatly increased.

Feng Xiaogang ridiculed Wanda in the name of Pan Jinlian, and did his best to mock her, but his sourness was so strong that it was not as convincing as Wang Sicong's straightforward revelation, who took the fight on behalf of his father. However, neither of them who exposed their own ugliness can be considered a winner, and it is just a pity for the domestic films that have been floating in the saliva.

Last year on Children's Day, the traditional brand Fotile played a word guessing game , but before it could finish warming up its new products on June 7, it was overtaken by the sudden emergence of the "Cheng Yaojin" Vatti.

This kind of semi-open, freely participateable and freely interpreted creativity is a gift today.

In March last year, Shenzhen checked online ride-hailing drivers and found that 3,086 of them had illegal records. UCAR then took out full-page advertisements in many newspapers saying “No case of violation”, playing the safety card. As a result, competitors immediately launched a tit-for-tat counterattack: Why can’t people who make mistakes be given a chance?

If we could go back five years, this would have been a powerful counterattack, but today, this wave of "political correctness" offensive has quickly fallen into disarray because consumers collectively do not buy into it.

People today only need services that are in their own interests and do not care about the social cost of providing such services.

This alienation of consumer psychology makes it possible for any carefully planned marketing event to fail. The so-called beautiful copywriting , sophisticated design, and unique creativity are all unreliable. The deepest fear of marketers and their employers is to end up with a dog instead of a tiger.

2. The indirect damage of product marketing is amplified

Durex, which has always been outstanding, launched a big move last year by hosting a three-hour live broadcast on Bilibili in which hundreds of people tried out condoms. The goal, of course, was to make the experienced users smile knowingly, and it did trigger a screen full of comments like “WTF” and “How cool is this city?”

But this is a game that cannot be resolved. Durex incites users to appreciate content that it cannot provide, but the result is that men and women with blank expressions eat bananas with a hint of meaning. In the words of the audience, I have taken off my pants, and you show me this?

Just looking at the traffic and data, no one can deny that this is a successful communication! However, the foreplay was too long and the actual content was not up to par. The accumulated traffic led to a reversal of word-of-mouth, which may not necessarily be a blessing to the brand.

Ant Financial, which wants to engage in social networking , provides another counter-example.

The Alipay circle is committed to strengthening the interaction of high-quality users. According to this original intention, it should have been sufficiently immune to the possible emergence of campus diaries and white-collar diaries, and even expected it. However, the users' self-entertainment soon exceeded the limit that Alipay could degrade, and Peng Lei had to stop it in the form of an open letter.

Ant Financial finally restrained its urge to get involved in social networking through collective decision-making, also because most senior executives realized that this was the fault of the product's genes and could not be remedied by marketing and operations .

Wanting to stand out but being afraid to take the risk is the embarrassment of product marketing. Both the overflow and lack of presence mean huge risks. Marketing is becoming more and more like a game with exciting process but unknown results.

3. There are no winners in the tear-X marketing

This is the biggest nightmare for marketers. Future marketing is the confluence of technology, entertainment and marketing. Therefore, writing good copy and having a wild imagination are no longer the winning factors for marketing.

Marketing carriers, tools , media, transaction methods and data storage and use are all changing.

Zong Qinghou tore apart Jack Ma 's "Five New Things", believing that only new technologies are reliable. In fact, among the "Five New Things", Jack Ma did not mention the other thing, which is new marketing, and that is the first batch of practical products of the new technologies.

Today's Internet companies are reluctant to talk about marketing simply because the aggressiveness and destructiveness of marketing have been greatly enhanced. On the one hand, players want to avoid being associated with embarrassing marketing, and on the other hand, they don't want to talk about their "results" and cause unnecessary trouble.

Last year, Alibaba’s DingTalk went to Shenzhen to fire at WeChat, but the latter remained calm and unresponsive. As a result, Jack Ma became unable to sit still and criticized the marketing department for “too low-level advertising, like what JD did.”

From the Internet to traditional industries, there is counter-marketing everywhere. The entire marketing system has formed an instinctive positive feedback. Every party is involved in it consciously or unconsciously, and no one can be immune to it.

This leads to two of the most important questions about marketing:

First of all, does marketing have style?

When the Baidu design director who got into trouble was in dire straits, he still couldn't forget to cheer himself up on WeChat Moments , "I was so tired that I even had pharyngitis but didn't make the IP popular. Today it finally became popular!" He was counting on the life-saving straw of spreadability.

Under the banner of communication, can any sin be redeemed by gaining traffic and eyeballs?

No matter how ridiculous or low-brow many marketing events are, there is often a phrase of forgiveness at the end of the case: this marketing did cause a lot of controversy, but in terms of the communication itself it was still a success.

But consuming emotion and pain is always dangerous.

During the 2007 Super Bowl, GM released an ad called "Robot Nightmare", which described the terrible experience of a robot making a mistake and losing its job and being unable to make a living, aiming to arouse people's confidence in its quality standards. The background music of the advertisement also used the song "all by myself" which became popular due to "Bridget Jones's Diary", which was very sensational. However, the scene in the film where the heroine was singing happily was full of the sadness of left-over women. This unpleasant memory was awakened and amplified by the tragic experience of the robot, which inevitably spoiled the view. The advertisement was eventually stopped because it caused serious discomfort to the audience.

Audi made the same mistake again this year, trying to express its support for gender equality with a father's monologue. However, the parallel rhetorical questions were a bit out of place in the atmosphere of the Super Bowl. The accusatory and incomprehensible tone was particularly confusing, and the fact that Audi's senior management consists of two women and 12 men also made this idea particularly ridiculous.

What these ads have in common is that they attempt to sneak in some personal messages into controversial topics, so it's no surprise that they trigger negative resonance. But at least they are wrapped in a shell of positive energy. Some Chinese marketers tend to come to the opposite conclusion: maintaining the style will not produce good and contagious ads.

The reason why they deliberately offend the public, touch taboos, and test the bottom line is based on this kind of result-orientedness. They never worry about getting into trouble, but just wonder why they haven't poked a hole in the sky yet.

Secondly, how should technological marketing be implemented?

Pokémon Go brought Nintendo $1 billion in revenue in the first half of 2016, demonstrating the power of technology. However, the downside is that it relies on the game and its popularity is difficult to maintain. By August, the number of online users had dropped to 15 million.

But technology can at least bring two major surprises to marketing.

First, it has its own style

This is reflected in the maintenance of experience and freshness. New technologies such as AR and VR will inject new pleasant experiences and social immersion, thereby having the ability to recreate scenes, which is especially effective for fooling offline businesses.

The increasing technicalization of the red envelope battle before the Spring Festival is proof of this.

Second, the whole process IQ is online

New technologies are making many scenes in science fiction movies become reality. Domestic supermarkets already have advertising screens with facial recognition, which can push targeted ads based on age, gender and other conditions. If artificial intelligence such as emotion judgment is added, interesting ads without quarrels or swearing can really be created.

But technology’s salvation for marketing does not end there.

A chef once said, "The most unpalatable thing in the world is food that you forgot to add salt to!" When technology becomes a seasoning, its greatest effect is to transform marketing from worrying about the appearance of the food to enjoying the meal.

But this time, the marketers with unique imaginations need the rescue of the programmers riding on colorful clouds.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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