The 4 growth logics of brand marketing

The 2021 Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2021 proposed that China's economic development is currently facing triple pressures: demand contraction, supply shock, and weakening expectations .

As reflected in the numbers, the total retail sales of consumer goods in November was 4104.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.9%; after deducting price factors, the actual year-on-year growth of total retail sales of consumer goods in November was only 0.5%, which is close to zero growth, which shows that actual consumer demand has weakened.

Not only that, the two-year average growth rate of physical online shopping in November dropped sharply from 15.9% in October to 9.7%, marking the first single-digit growth since data became available. E-commerce, which used to be known as a fast-growing business, has also begun to hit its ceiling.

"Growth anxiety" will become an indelible shadow surrounding entrepreneurs and executives in recent years.

"Competition for existing stock" has replaced "land grabbing", and the market will inevitably move towards differentiation. Some companies cannot achieve growth even if they break the cost price, but some companies can maintain healthy growth against the trend, and even raise prices calmly when upstream costs rise, maintaining a reasonable profit margin while growing:

Bosideng's revenue has maintained double-digit growth for three consecutive years, exceeding 10 billion yuan. In 2021, it ranked first in both global down jacket sales value and sales volume. The Double Eleven discount in 2021 not only increased from 71% in the same period last year to 14%, but also achieved a year-on-year growth of more than 50%, reaching 2.78 billion, ranking first in the Chinese apparel brand sales list.

Feihe achieved revenue of 11.544 billion yuan in the first half of 2021, a year-on-year increase of 32.6%. Its market share climbed to 19.2%, leading the Chinese infant formula market.

Yuanqi Forest’s sales in 2020 reached 2.7 billion, a three-fold increase year-on-year. In 2021, its overall sales continued to maintain ultra-high growth and are expected to exceed 7 billion.

China Resources Snow Beer continues to promote its high-end strategy. In the first half of the year, the sales volume of mid-to-high-end and above beer reached 1 million kiloliters, a year-on-year increase of 50.9%. The corresponding market share reached 22-25%, achieving growth beyond expectations.

Runbaiyan has achieved 20-fold growth in 4 years since its establishment. In 2021 , it has become the first technological skin care brand of Huaxi Biotechnology with annual sales exceeding 1 billion.

Ulike, defending the title of sales champion in the beauty instrument category on Double 11 in 2021, has exceeded the sales of the 2nd to 10th brands in the category by twice, and has been ranked first in sales on the entire network for 6 consecutive years.

Since 2017, the sales of Yili 's cheese business have doubled for three consecutive years, from 190 million to 460 million, 920 million, and reached 2.07 billion in 2020. In the first half of 2021, sales reached 1.522 billion yuan, an increase of more than 90% year-on-year, and the market share reached 30.9%, making it the leader in China's cheese industry.

These brand cases are all from the Focus Media Top 100 Cases recently released. Hundreds of brands have worked closely with Focus Media in recent years and achieved sustained growth. Among them are consumer giants with a market value of tens of billions, as well as emerging brands with a market value of hundreds of millions.

Today, the market size of China's advertising industry has reached one trillion yuan, and Focus Media, with an annual revenue of less than 20 billion yuan, has been able to produce hundreds of continuously growing brand cases in two or three years, which shows its media advantages in today's fragmented information age. Unlike traffic advertising, live streaming that rely on discount promotions, or the uncertainty triggered by public relations, these cases of Focus Media have achieved stable communication effects and brand-driven growth that does not rely on discounts.

As the pioneer and absolute leader of global elevator media, Focus Media has covered more than 200 cities and over 2.5 million terminals, achieving daily coverage of 400 million urban residents. By leveraging the high-frequency, low-interference reach of elevator media in office and residential buildings, brands can widely increase audience memory of brand information and build a deep cognitive moat.

From the Focus Media Top 100 cases, we can see four types of typical brand-driven growth logic:

1. Logic 1: Product breaks the circle

Many newly established brands first rely on leveraging the original population, because the original population is more likely to stimulate conversion, and the precise reach through traffic advertising is also very effective. However, when the reach of the original population approaches saturation, the brand’s sales will peak. Only by letting more people outside the circle know about the brand can it bring about further growth in sales. However, if the brand breaks the circle with traffic advertising, the ROI will be unsustainable, and the company will be caught in a dilemma.

Many brands even have a misunderstanding here, thinking that their brand is already very well-known and that their sales are not growing because they have hit the ceiling.

In fact, the Internet will amplify the feeling of heated discussion. A brand with hundreds of thousands of users, coupled with the promotion of "marketing methods", can create a feeling of many people planting seeds and hotly discussing it. However, when we actually conducted random offline interviews, not many people knew about it, let alone conducting surveys in second-, third- and fourth-tier cities. The population that these brands have failed to influence is precisely the huge opportunity for incremental consumption.

In order to influence a person to become interested in a brand, understand it, and even make a purchase, it is necessary for them to be continuously exposed to the brand and form a memory. However, the ROI-oriented thinking of Internet advertising makes it difficult to accept the investment-production relationship brought about by this long-term impact.

More importantly, the advertising format of the Internet is not conducive to repeated and effective reach and memory formation. Consumers have a strong intention to read content when using their mobile phones. Internet ads are interspersed among them, and consumers are more inclined to swipe or skip them. It is difficult for brands to ensure that their content is received by consumers. If the content only pleases consumers, the message that the brand wants to convey will be obscured.

Therefore, the first unique growth logic in Focus Media’s top 100 cases is that after a brand has verified its feasibility within the original population circle, it can achieve saturated coverage of 400 million people through Focus Media’s explosive delivery, using the advantages of active and high-frequency media to help the brand break through the circle and form cognitive memory.

We can see that a large number of new consumer brands have achieved doubling growth for many consecutive years through this path.

As an innovative product, Ulike hair removal device quickly opened up the market through KOLs and anchors, and achieved the top sales in the blue ocean market for five consecutive years. But when it reached a scale of 1 billion, Ulike's growth encountered a bottleneck: although the core population had been reached, many consumers still did not know what Ulike was. At this time, the ROI of traffic advertising was declining, but if there was no investment, there would be no traffic, so it could only bite the bullet and invest to maintain the scale.

In 2021, Ulike chose to cooperate with Focus Media to break the circle and increase its popularity through a nuclear-like explosive launch. After several rounds of launches, Ulike experienced a sales explosion. Not only did it become the double champion of hair removal device sales on Tmall and JD.com with sales of 462 million during the 618 shopping festival of that year, it also ranked sixth on the Tmall beauty rankings, becoming the only Chinese company to enter the top ten of the list. It defended the title of sales champion in the beauty instrument category on Double 11, with sales exceeding twice that of the 2nd to 10th ranked brands in the category. Its revenue in 2021 is expected to exceed 2.5 billion.

What is even more concerning to Ulike CEO Pan Yuping is that the second most searched term in the hair removal device category has become "Ulike hair removal device", and the search volume for Ulike-related hair removal device terms such as "Sapphire Hair Removal Device" and "Ulike Freezing Point Hair Removal Device" is also continuing to increase. Consumers not only saw Ulike, but also took the initiative to look for Ulike. This is a shift from "goods looking for people" to "people looking for goods." While brand explosion brings sales growth, it also brings a steady stream of free traffic, which greatly reduces the investment required for traffic advertising and significantly improves the effectiveness of the delivery.

Yuanqi Forest entered the market with the positioning of "sugar-free sparkling water" and initially attracted a group of fan users through precise distribution on the Internet. It then gradually iterated its products through communication and interaction with fan users. Sugar-free sparkling water is not a new concept. Leading brands have already made their plans, and emerging brands are following quickly. If you want to maintain the results from 0 to 1, you must quickly go from 1 to 100.

In order to enter the broader offline market, the brand must have the support of breaking out of the circle on a large scale, breaking through the original Internet fan group, and truly becoming a mass brand. Wang Pu, vice president of Yuanqi Forest, once said: "In May 2020, we decided to conduct a nationwide media placement for the first time. The standard of the media was high frequency, and we chose Focus Media. From the subsequent data feedback, whether it is supporting distribution or increasing sales, Focus Media has played a very important role. "

Founder Tang Binsen also told the media: "In 2020, we mainly did a Focus Media (advertisement) and a Bilibili (evening party). The purpose of running advertisements is to compete head-on with competitors. If you do business in China, you will miss opportunities if you don't make key efforts at critical moments. These advertisements have helped achieve large-scale channel distribution and establish consumer awareness. "

In the end, Yuanqi Forest achieved a growth of over 300% in 2020, proving the breaking power brought by Focus Media's high-frequency reach of 400 million trend-setting people. In 2021, Yuanqi Forest continued to explode in the media. In addition to the rapid growth in performance, more importantly, it gained a solid enough recognition for itself and became the preferred brand for the public to buy zero-sugar sparkling water, allowing it to calmly deal with countless copycat imitators. The "2021 China Sugar-Free Beverage Market Trend Insight Report" released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows that among all sugar-free sparkling water brands, 82.1% of consumers prefer Yuanqi Forest, which is 4 times the total of other brands.

Logic 2: Exploring Scenarios

Whether it is a new brand or a mature brand, sometimes it will face a dilemma: the product is good and the recognition is good, but the promotion is repeatedly frustrated. In desperation, the brand continued to increase publicity on how good its products were, but it still failed to impress consumers.

You must think clearly here: Do consumers really not choose you because they don’t know how good your product is? Consumers first have needs, then choose categories, and then choose brands. Although some brands have become the first choice in their categories, there is an opportunity to create huge incremental space if they can better connect and stimulate demand.

For consumers, scenes in life are the best way to trigger demand, because scenes are states that consumers are bound to encounter in their lives, and behind appropriate scenes may be hidden opportunities for brands to leverage consumption demand , such as “May 20 Festival”, “Late-night overtime”, and “Taking children out for dinner”.

The second growth path in Focus Media’s top 100 cases is to explore more scenarios and stimulate consumer demand. Focus media resources are generally located in urban office buildings and communities. These two types of locations can better link consumers' work and life scenes. Combined with different groups of people, different time dimensions and other dimensions, they can link more scenes to stimulate consumers' new demands for brands.

1. Wake up demand at a specific time point

Hua Xizi took advantage of Valentine's Day and put up a slogan in Focus Media's elevators: "Sending flowers is worse than sending Hua Xizi." This resulted in increased business for boys buying cosmetics. On 520 and Chinese Valentine's Day, Hua Xizi continued to make efforts and launched the "Lifelong Love, Forever Together" lockable lipstick and "Heavenly Box" gift package on Focus Media, using the couple's festival to stimulate the demand of male users to buy cosmetics as gifts.

As the Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching, Xiaoguan Tea launched the longest "one-hour thank you letter" advertising video in its history. The advertisement uses the message "It's a long road, and you have many people to thank", which arouses consumers' gratitude to their benefactors during the Mid-Autumn Festival, touches consumers' hearts with extreme emotions, and stimulates consumers' desire to buy small cans of tea as a thank you. This advertisement received 550 million hot discussions on Weibo, and almost all Xiaoguan Tea products on Tmall were sold out.

2. Trigger at a specific location to awaken demand

During the epidemic, people are particularly concerned about hygiene issues, and many elevators even place disposable toothpicks as tools for pressing buttons. Safeguard seized the opportunity and placed advertisements in elevators: when people turned around, they would find Safeguard using elevator posters to remind people that touching buttons would increase the risk of infection, and that they should wash their hands frequently with Safeguard when they got home. This strategy quickly links “scenario-consumer pain points-product features”.

Based on office scenes in office buildings and home scenes in communities, Juewei Duck Neck launched a series of advertisements with slogans such as "Why work overtime without Juewei Duck Neck" and "Why watch TV series without Juewei Duck Neck", which appeared repeatedly in major scenes of daily life such as residential communities and office building elevators. When consumers work overtime late at night or keep seeing advertisements in the elevator when they go home from get off work, it will inspire them to think of Juewei Duck Neck in specific scenarios, driving purchasing demand.

3. Trigger and awaken needs among specific groups of people

Di Boer turned his eyes to the young people in the office building. In 2021, Diboer teamed up with Focus Media to place a large number of "Remove oil and grease without any effort" advertisements in office building elevators. When young people in office buildings who are in sub-health conditions due to irregular lifestyles and overeating repeatedly see advertisements in elevators, it can arouse their anxiety about their sub-health, and then stimulate their demand for the "oil-removing and greasy" Diboer tea.

The advertisement of Xibei displayed at the elevator entrance, "If you have babies at home, eat Xibei", is aimed at children in the family and has become a typical example of triggering demand through characters. When consumers are looking for a place to eat with their children, Xibei will be one of the first choices that come to mind.

Meiji Landou cheese sticks target children's nutrition, offering one stick for children when they get home from school, one stick for exercise supplementation, or one stick to share their happiness. While becoming the leader in cheese sticks, the company continues to push cheese sticks from a low-frequency snack to a high-frequency one, achieving three consecutive years of doubling revenue and becoming the leader in China's cheese industry.

Logic 3: Global Improvement

Kantar has conducted 360 TMROI (Total Marketing Revenue of Investment) studies and confirmed that in the real market environment, 70% of sales occur in the medium and long term and are contributed by brand assets; while sales achieved through short-term direct conversions only account for 30%. The brand assets created by brand advertising are the core driving medium- and long-term growth.

The importance of brand advertising is self-evident. However, there is a certain "lag period" between launching brand advertising and achieving revenue growth, which makes it difficult for many companies to make up their minds. Or when they launch brand advertising, they will put forward a core demand, which is the hope of "integrating brand and effect."

Of course, "brand and effect integration" is a false proposition. The logic of brand advertising and performance advertising is completely different. However, behind this demand of companies is that they hope to shorten the "lag period" of brand advertising as much as possible.

In response to this demand, Focus Media proposed that although brand and effect cannot be "integrated", they can be "synergized", and created a variety of solutions in the top 100 cases - "all-round improvement". The logic of this growth lies in opening up the relationship between brand advertising and channel terminals. While brand advertising establishes C-end awareness, offline and online channel terminals can also achieve resonance between consumers and channels through resource replacement, data connection, life circle linkage and other means, greatly shortening the time required for consumers to convert from exposure to advertising to purchase.

1. Channel resource replacement

Focus Media’s coverage of 400 million urban populations is a considerable traffic resource for many e-commerce platforms and offline channel dealers. So we will see that many brand advertisements will contain elements of Tmall, JD.com, or elements of offline terminals, such as Walmart and Kidswant. By directing traffic to these platforms/terminals, brands can also exchange resources for the platforms/terminals.

For example, we will see that many Focus Media milk powder advertisements will include the logo and address of nearby terminal stores. When consumers go to this terminal store, the brand of milk powder image is displayed in a prominent position in the store. By directing traffic to channels through brand advertising, we increase our bargaining chips with channels and, through win-win cooperation, strengthen the synergistic effect of advertising on brand and effect.

2. Return of data delivery

Focus Media can not only accurately select buildings through data analysis of more than 200 building group labels, but also connect with Tmall Data Bank to enable brands to conduct more effective secondary operations in the e-commerce domain based on crowd insights and re-analysis.

Taking Black Toothpaste as an example, the consumer action index (search, browse, favorite, add to cart, order, etc.) in cities after the ad was launched increased by 64% compared to cities without the ad. In cities where the ad was launched, the consumer action index of consumers exposed to the ad increased by more than 1 times the average of the city. The fully-interconnected marketing chain enables offline brand advertising and online performance advertising to achieve a wider and more efficient closed loop.

3. Three-kilometer living circle

There is an important concept in retail called the "three-kilometer living circle", which means that 60% of consumers' transactions take place within a three-kilometer living service range. Dining, entertainment, pet raising, and beauty are all common scenarios. Based on Focus Media’s backend big data, brands can choose communities and office buildings within a three-kilometer radius to place advertisements based on their own stores and terminals. Covering a three-kilometer living circle, it shortens the consumer's conversion path from "seeing ads" to "in-store consumption."

Taking the Focus Media elevator posters for Feihe organic milk powder as an example, Focus Media's FPS system, based on the precise site selection system of LBS and Focus Media's big data, selected high-end communities within three kilometers around Feihe's core maternal and infant terminals, with higher maternal and infant concentrations and higher organic purchase rates for the posters, thus forming an efficient "traffic linkage" between target consumers, strategic products and three-kilometer terminals.

Logic 4: Regional Attack

We surveyed entrepreneurs about their views on targeted advertising and found that many entrepreneurs have such doubts:

"Targeted advertising requires a large budget, which is quite stressful for a small or medium-sized enterprise like me."

“It seems that if it is not a nationwide campaign, it will be difficult for Focus Media to produce results.”

With their questions in mind, we paid special attention to brands that did not have big budgets and were not launched nationwide in Focus Media’s top 100 cases, and indeed found many outstanding cases of regional strategies.

In fact, a nationwide saturation attack is the most effective way to trigger consumer awareness, but a nationwide saturation attack may not be suitable for all brands.

For example, a growing brand may not have the financial strength and channel capabilities to support nationwide investment. Firstly, with limited funds, a nationwide advertising campaign of the "scattering flour" type will be difficult to create awareness among consumers and fail to fully influence them ; secondly, if a city's channel acceptance capacity is weak and customers cannot find the corresponding products after the campaign, then the advertising costs will be wasted .

There are also some regional brands, such as local restaurants, which aim to deeply cultivate the local market and do not need to make nationwide deployments. Even for some brands, their core mission is to focus on a certain city, so there is no need to carry out nationwide advertising.

Therefore, the growth logic of regional breakthroughs is created for many brands that do not need or cannot carry out nationwide advertising. Focus Media has currently covered more than 200 cities across the country and has over 2.5 million terminals. With such a large resource base, Focus Media has the strength to penetrate any city.

Therefore , when choosing where to place investments, brands can focus resources on one or more cities to form a regional breakthrough . This approach has two advantages:

1. Use less money to create hot sales and awareness in a region and maximize resource utilization;
2. After creating a model city, the strategy can be copied and used in more cities.

If Daily Fresh, a high-end fresh milk brand under Mengniu, wants to solidify its position as a high-end fresh milk brand, then the key is to attract the attention of the mainstream trend-setters. As a first-tier city, Shanghai has huge consumption potential for high-end milk. Taking over Shanghai will not only become the granary and base of Daily Fresh, but also a benchmark for the brand's potential. However, Shanghai is already occupied by strong local brands, and it is not easy for Daily Fresh to capture Shanghai.

After Tang Wei became the spokesperson, Daily Fresh and Focus Media jointly created a unique Shanghainese advertisement, inviting representative Shanghainese to tell Shanghai consumers in Shanghainese: Today, Shanghainese with an accent are drinking Daily Fresh. This innovative regional expression based on regional breakthrough strategies is more eye-catching and repeatedly reaches Shanghai consumers, making Daily Fresh Words = "high-end fresh milk" deeply embedded in consumers' cognition. Since its launch on the market, Daily Fresh’s sales have doubled for three consecutive years, and it continues to be the number one brand of high-end fresh milk, further consolidating its position as a new benchmark for high-end fresh milk.

In 2019, although Feihe became the number one milk powder brand in China with its "milk powder that is more suitable for the physique of Chinese babies", changing the pattern in which Chinese milk powder brands have been suppressed by foreign brands for a long time, in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Feihe's market share and brand awareness are still lower than those of foreign brands. If Feihe wants to become the number one milk powder brand in China, it cannot just be a leader in second-tier and third-tier cities, it must also become a leader in first-tier cities. However, in these first-tier cities, consumers prefer foreign milk powder, and Feihe can only break through the cognitive barriers of foreign brands with stronger firepower.

In 2019 and 2020, Feihe launched an attack on Beijing with Focus Media as its core media, and carried out explosive advertising with firepower far exceeding that of its competitors. Combined with the channel tactics that had been honed to maturity in the past, it successfully won the first place in sales in the Beijing milk powder market in 2020 and conquered first-tier cities where foreign milk powder has a stronger awareness.

Finally, let’s summarize the four growth logics that Focus Media is good at:

1. Product breakthrough : Break through the original crowd circle and use saturation attack to achieve breakthrough explosion among the general public;
2. Develop scenarios : Use scenarios as triggers to stimulate consumer demand and open up new growth space;
3. Global promotion : Using unique delivery methods such as resource replacement, data reflow, and coverage of the radius of living circles, brand advertising can achieve product-effect synergy;
4. Regional attack : When the budget is limited or there is a clear main attack area, achieve a saturation attack on the region by segmenting and focusing resources.

Today, companies inevitably have to face drastic changes in the macro environment and growth anxiety, but the more this happens, the more they need to find the right approach. Brand communication is a key growth focus for companies, but also a difficult point. Many companies have not thought clearly about the relationship between brand and consumers, brand and media, media and consumers, nor have they returned to the basics. Instead, they like to chase "trends" and "dividends," which in turn magnifies potential business risks.

The four growth logics pointed out by Focus Media’s top 100 cases are one of the models for growth in the new era. This kind of healthy growth that can bring about relative certainty is precious. We also hope that every brand can find a path that suits itself and resolve growth anxiety.

Author: Nancy

Source: Nancy