How to avoid the “illusion of traffic” and design a successful marketing campaign?

We know that any economic operation or business model revolves around scarce resources, and only scarcity has value. In today's business environment, consumers' "attention" has undoubtedly become the most scarce resource.

Therefore, " event marketing " has taken on the responsibility of helping countless brands grab users' attention.

As a result, brands are increasingly inclined to create a big news story, something that will spark discussion, or even lead to quarrels or bad reviews.

There is no doubt that these methods can quickly attract consumers' attention and obtain a large amount of dissemination and discussion in a short period of time.

So, on July 8 last year, there was an event with the theme of "Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" launched by the official account "New World" sponsored by Flight Steward .

The specific content of the activity is: calling on hard-working white-collar workers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to temporarily put aside their pressure and tasks and go on a trip at any time.

As of 11:00 a.m. on the same day, just three hours after the event, the WeChat reading volume had reached one million, and the number of followers increased by 100,000. The topic #EscapeFromBeijing,Shanghai and Guangzhou# also became a hot search on Weibo, with a reading volume of 5.523 million.

This event became a "phenomenal" event at the time, making countless marketers envious, and they thought how great it would be if they could plan such an influential event.

However, the purpose of the event was to promote the "Flight Butler" brand, but after the event, apart from the "Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" event, the only thing left in people's memory was "New World View".

This means that the consumer attention attracted by the event is completely focused on Xin Shi Xiang, while the brand of Flight Butler is weakened.

Therefore, from a business perspective, this marketing campaign was undoubtedly a failure.

Because it did not make people remember the "Flight Butler" brand after the event ended and form a reason to continue using it.

Nick feels that this is also the " traffic illusion" that most marketers often fall into, believing that as long as the brand can trigger a large amount of dissemination and discussion in a short period of time, it means marketing success.

So when the Uniqlo incident went viral, countless marketers expressed envy, thinking how great it would be if this happened to their own brand.

However, why do countless marketers fall into the "illusion of traffic"? What conditions should a successful event marketing meet?

Nick believes that before thinking about how to do something successfully, you should first think about: why did it fail?

There are three main reasons why we often fall into the "illusion of traffic":

1. A hot event can often only be spread in a short period of time and cannot form long-term exposure, and the pure exposure effect is often more suitable for products with lower cognitive needs, such as ice cream and chocolate. So this results in consumers not being able to remember your brand.
2. Consumers themselves may pay more attention to the event rather than the product behind the event, and your brand information does not really enter the user's brain.
3. Even if you have attention and memory, consumers will not choose you because you do not arouse their motivation and they don’t know why they need you.

Ok, now that we understand the reasons for failure, it is not difficult to deduce the following: How should we avoid the "illusion of traffic" and design a successful marketing campaign?

Based on the above reasons, Nick believes that there are three main methods:

1. Occupy the consumption scene and let the "scene" help you trigger consumers' memories after the event ends
2. Provide clear awareness information to let consumers know what you mean
3. Provide motivation and tell consumers why they need you

1. Occupy the consumption scene: Let the "scene" help you trigger consumers' memories after the event is over

If the marketing department had to evoke consumers' memories of the brand every time, the company would have died long ago. "We all know that any company's advertising budget is limited, which means that we often have to use limited resources to implant the brand into consumers' memories in a short period of time. What's worse is that the continuous exposure effect of event marketing is often shorter, so we often see that when the heat cools down, consumers forget us.

Fortunately, we don’t need consumers to remember our brand all the time. All we need to do is make them remember us when they need us.

Therefore, in addition to marketing, consumers’ memory of a brand also requires a more important way: scenes.

Once upon a time, someone thought about doing a "roast duck takeout" project, but after investigation they found that "eating roast duck" is a very low-frequency consumption, and some people may not think of eating roast duck for several months.

However, they were also thinking: What scenes are generally triggered when people think of eating Peking duck?

As a result, “Call a Duck” was successfully remembered by consumers.

Although "eating roast duck" is a low-frequency consumption, "order it what" is a scene that people often encounter in life, so when people say "order it what", the memory of the brand in the brain will be spontaneously evoked.

The same is true in event marketing.

Speaking of Durex , I believe most people are familiar with it. Years of topic marketing have made this brand a successful representative in this field.

Many people say that the Durex brand has its own communication attributes, and its success comes from the natural triggering point of the "sex" topic, coupled with its clever combination with hot events, but this is not the case.

For example, the once popular "Durex overshoes" incident:

Beijing was hit by torrential rain that day, and someone posted this on Weibo: Cover your shoes with a condom and you don't have to worry about your shoes getting wet. It's mind-blowing and very unexpected. Durex combined the unique product attributes of condoms with rainy days, successfully implanting the brand and scene into consumers' memories, so that even though many years have passed, people will still remember it.

Similarly, Airmate fans are also well aware of the importance of "scenes" and have rethought the following question: Who says fans are only used for cooling off?

As a result, there are countless "boredom-relieving" scenes in life created by brands and consumers together.

After understanding the above cases, it is not difficult to understand why the "Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" campaign failed. Because it occupies more of a scenario like "head content can help companies create hot spots" rather than scenarios like "flight stewards can make consumers' travel more convenient."

This is not only true in business, even children's learning is closely related to the scene.

Every time a guest leaves, the child will hear something like this:

"Come, say goodbye to uncle and aunt."

So, the word "goodbye" almost becomes one of the first words a child learns.

2. Provide clear cognitive information: let consumers know what you mean

Consumers themselves may pay more attention to the event rather than the product behind the event, so sometimes the failure of event marketing is more due to the fact that your brand information has not really entered the user's brain. After obtaining traffic, consumers may only pay attention to the news itself, rather than the product or service. At this time, the value of this wave of traffic has not been fully realized. What you get is not potential consumers, but students who "sign up for a training class but have not been trained yet", so you have to continue to "educate" them.

However, many big news stories do not provide clear cognitive information to allow people to form cognitive evaluations. Without this information and clear claims, consumers will forget the big news in two days.

Therefore, any hot event marketing must convey an argument or conclusion to consumers.

So, on June 25, 2015, Shenzhou Special Car released a poster like this:

Judging from the content of the posters, many celebrities held warning signs with the letter "U" and attached their dissatisfaction with the "black cars" and various concerns. Many celebrities such as Wu Xiubo, Hai Qing, and Liu Shi participated in it. Among them, some spokespersons’ slogans such as “Compare with Momo for hookups , compare with WeChat for socializing , friend, are you here to drive a private car?” and “Uber, we don’t make appointments” were used to “blacklist” another major player in the private car market - Uber.

This activity has been forwarded over 10,000 times on Weibo, with almost 90% of the comments complaining about the malicious competition from UCAR.

However, just one day after the event, on June 26, KuChuan data showed that in the Android app market , the number of downloads of Shenzhou Special Car increased from less than 6,000 to nearly 20,000, an increase of more than 200%.

In the Apple App Store, Shenzhou Special Car has entered the top 100 of the Apple App Store free list.

After most consumers’ resentment has subsided, their memory of Shenzhou is almost always: we are safer.

Many people may wonder, "Why did Shenzhou's malicious marketing, which caused a lot of dissatisfaction, have such a good effect?"

Think about it this way: What do people really care about when they use a ride-hailing service? Do they really care whether this ride-hailing platform is ethical?

Nick believes that more people care about whether the driver is professional and whether the service is stable and safe.

Therefore, the cognitive message of "we are safer" implanted by Shenzhou in event marketing plays a key role in users' consumer decisions.

However, compared to Shenzhou, some brands are not so lucky.

The 60-second prime advertisement on the final night of China's Voice sponsored by Uxin Used Cars set a new record for the most expensive advertisement in history at a price of 30 million. The content of the advertisement was a simple sentence "Best, best, best, choose Uxin Used Cars."

What is dramatic is that just one year later, the company with the highest market share was Guazi, which entered the market later.

Comparing the differences in advertising between the two brands, it’s not hard to see why.

Uxin hardly used any information to implant into consumers' cognition, while Guazi, with the advertising appeal of "no middlemen to make a profit from the price difference, sellers make more money and buyers spend less money", took advantage of Uxin's negligence in not making any consumer claims and directly turned the results of its rival's event marketing into its own use.

Therefore, "providing clear cognitive information to let consumers know what you mean" is a key factor in whether a brand can be remembered by consumers.

3. Provide motivation: Tell consumers why they need you

Sometimes consumers are reluctant to participate simply because they don’t know why they should participate. So, you have to provide them with motivation. For example, a beauty and skin care brand once planned an event with the theme of "Aging is considered an occupational injury", which caused a huge response. On October 19, 2015, a 25-year-old woman in Shenzhen held up a sign at the Nanshan Labor Building to complain that her face had aged due to long hours of working overtime, overusing her brain, and excessive pressure, which led to both love and career failures. She called for "aging due to staying up late to be included in the category of occupational injuries."

The incident was exposed by a Weibo user, and Weibo celebrities jumped into the topic, which attracted public attention and discussion and resonated with countless women who had experienced overtime work. In a short period of time, "Aging is considered a work-related injury" topped the hot topic list. On October 30, Shi Tinglu Yaguoben, the owner of the "Aging is considered a work-related injury" advertisement, came out to reveal the answer. "Aging is considered a work injury" and pretending to be old to make accusations is to build momentum for the brand's new product launch project.

Immediately afterwards, the brand took on the "Face Protection Action" initiated by the "Aging is Considered an Occupational Injury" incident and provided beauty products for free to those who stayed up late and worked overtime.

This is not just true for event marketing, it is also true for charity activities.

This method is used in animal protection activities in Costa Rica.

There are many wild animals in Costa Rica, and many people often abuse animals. However, those who abuse animals are immune from punishment because there is no animal protection law in the country.

So in order to call on the government to quickly legislate, the animal protection organization in Costa Rica came up with an activity to unite the people:

Many people in Costa Rica keep dogs, and when they walk their dogs, they leave a lot of feces, which damages the public environment. The organization provides free plastic bags to citizens who walk their dogs, asking them to use the bags to clean up the feces after the animals have defecated, and then post the photos online.

At the same time, the plastic bags are printed with the country's animal protection laws and the slogan: Shitty Laws (implying that the legislation is unreasonable and does not contain any provisions to punish abusers).

The originally boring activity, because it was tied to the conflict between "civil rights" and "government rights", implying: laws are shit - in a democratic country, the government should listen to the people. Therefore, it inspired countless pet owners to participate and even attracted the attention of celebrities and the media. Eventually, the government bowed to pressure and amended the law to severely punish those who abuse animals. Therefore, "providing motivation and telling consumers why they need you" is the key factor we need to consider in event marketing.

4. Conclusion

In today’s article, Nick and everyone analyze why brands fall into the “illusion of traffic” and how to avoid it.

The main points are as follows:

(1) Occupy the consumption scene and let the “scene” help you trigger consumers’ memories after the activity ends

(2) Provide clear cognitive information to let consumers know what you mean

(3) Provide motivation and tell consumers why they need you

Of course, the factors that determine whether an event marketing is successful are far more than the above three points. Nick only lists some common misconceptions of people. Friends who have ideas are also welcome to leave a message to communicate.

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