This is an ad that uses advertising to blacken advertising!

Blake Snyder, a famous Hollywood screenwriter, shared a point of view in the introduction of "Save the Cat", which I agree with deeply - if you don't want to make a movie that the audience likes to watch, why show it to the audience after making it?

The article starts with this video, Vipshop’s 228 Spring Beauty Festival’s “nonsense advertising video”, an advertisement that uses advertising to blacken advertising.

[Break the deadlock in beauty advertising and use advertising to attack advertising]

In fact, this is not the first time that Vipshop has used funny videos to serve its own marketing communications. Although the number is small, their viral short films are all "high-level humorous." Vipshop has been trying to use its own advertisements to convey the following idea to its target consumers: in a boring and self-indulgent marketing environment, create content that netizens can truly like.

So what kind of advertising video can make netizens like it? I think at least three things need to be done:

1. Try to make the form novel and interesting, but the form should not be more important than the content, so as to avoid raising the audience's psychological expectations at the marketing level and then being disappointed with the content.

(Short film format)

2. Avoid cliches like the plague. This article mentioned that Vipshop's video is an "advertisement that uses advertisements to blacken advertisements", which refers to the current beauty advertising environment where advertising content is all stereotyped close-ups, large apertures, stiff and artificial facial close-ups, various slow-motion shots, fancy cuts and pure display without a storyline. People have formed an aesthetic judgment of beauty advertisements as "empty and meaningless". The characters who play comedic roles in this virus are all "men" with distinct personalities or characters, which immediately contrasts with regular beauty advertisements and creates laughs. Using ironic plots and shots to fight against conventional routines is the true meaning of "black".

(Use advertising to blacken advertising)

3. Don’t treat consumers as idiots. Vipshop’s viral videos all look very clever. For example, this one has many mysteries in the copywriting , translation, selection of BGM, and blank spaces in the story. It is a very rare aesthetic taste to use hints, guidance and pointers to guide the audience to understand your own jokes and to achieve true self-explanatory humor, rather than simply appropriating Internet buzzwords.

(Translation with hidden meaning)

【Writing advertising short films with movie screenwriter thinking】

If you have studied screenwriting or read related books, you will find that this short story of about 6 minutes basically meets the elements of a micro-film:

The two go-betweens, the [director] and the [actress], are the dual protagonists, along with a group of unknown supporting actors who seem to have just finished filming on Stephen Chow's set. A causal story takes place in a single story scene and linear time period.

It includes conflicts between people (don’t challenge my profession with your interests), conflicts between people and the environment (the current situation of the crew environment), dialogues driving the plot (the writing method of stage plays), the interweaving of major plots (before and after filming), minor plots (interactions between characters) and nonsensical anti-plots (staff members were beaten to death), and the finishing touch of the climax of the ending where the heroine’s values ​​change (from impatience to “shoot it again”)… …

This video, wrapped in a nonsensical appearance, tells a story that is consistent with the content of the movie and needs to be savored slowly. The most not-so-nonsense part of this nonsense advertisement is that it can make the audience think about something else after they finish laughing.

A colleague commented on WeChat Moments ↓

The anti-plot part of the story

Stephen Chow-style treatment

Vipshop has achieved "oddity" from a marketing perspective by using this relatively funny form of advertising to carry out a beauty marketing campaign; looking at the video again, it is a typical "play within a play within a play" short film type, which can take into account the "beauty" and "level" required of a beauty blockbuster while ensuring the content of the story, and Vipshop has also achieved "positiveness".

If we can reverse-engineer this video from the perspective of a screenwriter or a creative, you will clearly figure out the brief issued by Vipshop: 1. First of all, it must be beautiful, because the video is made for women; 2. Secondly, it must be interesting, only if it is interesting can it be spread; 3. The story can be nonsensical, but the underlying logic cannot be nonsensical. 4 Be orthodox and innovative. You can be humorous, but don’t be a naive person.

Comedy must be offensive

There are many sub-genres of comedy, but no matter what type of comedy is, it cannot escape one ultimate core: there must be an attack.

Back to the industry, we marketers or advertisers talk about "insight" every day, so what exactly is insight? To put it simply, "insight" is the perspective you use to observe the world; to put it more broadly, marketing insights can be divided into brand insights, audience insights, market insights, human insights, phenomenon insights, etc.

In fact, it is not difficult to find that comedy movies and marketing have one thing in common at the root: a tenable focus.

Netizens are willing to accept a "hard advertisement" full of content

The story of Vipshop's 228 Beauty Festival video is clearly based on "human nature", namely "human beings' aversion to meddling in other people's business", "the monotony of beauty ads" and "don't use your interests to challenge other people's expertise"; and the delivery of advertising information is repeatedly reflected in the film's visuals, the characters' lines, and the advancement of the plot, which is a very clever idea.

From an advertising perspective, this is a condensed comedy that combines an explicit story with explicit marketing information. "We're waiting for you on February 28" and "Your skin will tell you whether women are made of water" are business information that serves the business itself and appear in the video in the form of story elements. People smile knowingly while grasping the story and appreciating the humor, and then they unconsciously remember these advertising messages.

There is an emotional resonance, a knowing smile from the story experience, and retention of the information conveyed. I like this kind of advertisement and I look forward to Vipshop’s next advertisement.

Netizens discussed the advertisement and the brand itself

This is what social marketing is all about

[VIPshop’s combination punch for the 228 Beauty Festival]

Vipshop’s 228 marketing layout is very ingenious. In addition to the cooperation with off-site viral videos and the 228 Beauty Festival activities on the site, it also engages in deep linkage marketing with major brands participating in the Vipshop Beauty Festival.

Collaboration ① Join hands with major beauty brands to discuss women's humanities issues

Around the 24th, Vipshop sent out a Weibo post starting from the official Weibo account of the platform, leading all the major brands participating in the Beauty Festival to discuss a question that is of great humanistic concern - in addition to beauty, what else can we bring to women?

Soon after, international beauty brands such as SK-II, Hansu, OLAY, YUNIFANG, OSM, and MARUMEI used bouquets as the background and used joint posters to give their own answers on their official Weibo accounts. Based on their own brand style, brand concept and brand tone, they convey to consumers the core concept that the brand wants to convey during Vipshop’s 228 Beauty Festival through this question.

While cooperating with Vipshop's Beauty Festival marketing, it is also able to communicate with consumers emotionally from a sentimental or humanistic dimension. Under the premise of "Flowers bloom with you, and the more they bloom, the more beautiful they become", it achieves emotional linkage and emotional maintenance with consumers and e-commerce platforms.

The picture shows the brand linkage posters released by some brands at the Beauty Festival

Linkage②Celebrity traffic diversion and live marketing with spokespersons

With highly discussed viral videos and humanistic joint posters, Vipshop's marketing combination continues to upgrade. During the Beauty Festival, Vipshop teamed up with other brands and their celebrity spokespersons to launch a live marketing interaction called "Walk into the Celebrity Dressing Room."

In fact, the form of "live broadcast" has been "abused" by major advertisers in the second half of 2016, and it is difficult for brands to compete in terms of content,

No matter how brilliant the subversion is in the details or the idea. Vipshop's theme live broadcast of "Celebrity Private Talk" takes "audience's desire and curiosity about celebrity privacy" as its entry point, accurately grasps the psychology of the consumer group and is a conceptual live broadcast innovation, which can be said to be a "brilliant" move.

Conclusion

Whether it is the "nonsense video" widely recognized by netizens, or the "multi-brand humanistic linkage poster" that followed, or the "all-star live broadcast" done by the joint brand spokespersons, Vipshop's marketing thinking has made relatively extreme thinking and carving in terms of "content depth", "breadth of dissemination" and "topic interactivity", and has achieved tangible excellent results.

An e-commerce website that specializes in special sales is able to calm down and create something memorable and thoughtful. 228 I took this recommendation.

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

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