20 brands tell you the triple realm of brand content marketing in 2016!

Today's society has entered a stage of consumer society. This is not a derogatory term, but a reality that must be acknowledged: consumption has become the main activity of society. Consumers not only have higher aspirations in satisfying their material needs, but also want to gain spiritual pleasure or value recognition through consumption. This requires brands to not only continuously improve the quality and functions of their products to meet the social needs of consumption upgrades, but also continuously improve their brand image and tone to become a consumption symbol for consumers to demonstrate their taste. Therefore, whether it is to improve the external appearance or cultivate internal strength, content marketing has become a powerful tool for brands to communicate with consumers.

But what are we talking about when we talk about content marketing? We often focus on the following forms of content marketing: VR , videos, infographics, social media information, press releases... But in fact, in terms of connotation, content marketing can actually be very in-depth. To master content marketing, you can’t just learn from the horizontal perspective. SocialBeta observed the content marketing cases of industry brands in 2016, cut through the shell of content marketing from the vertical perspective, and summarized the three realms behind the dazzling content marketing:

First level: attract audiences with content, stimulate their interest and encourage them to share actively;

The second level: Gather fans and like-minded people through content to build a brand community;

The third level: Integrate content into our lives, become consumers’ sustenance or yearning for a better life, and a symbol of taste.

This article will not judge heroes by form, but will tell you specifically what kind of energy the brand's content marketing has unleashed at different stages and levels?

First level: Create high-quality content and explore brand IP

As brands pay more and more attention to content marketing, relying on a single, one-time burst of high-quality content not only requires extremely high creativity, but is also not a long-term solution in terms of brand effect. A heavy rain in Beijing made Durex shoe covers suddenly popular, but the praise for Durex was more due to the fact that Durex editors persisted in cleverly leveraging hot spots for marketing , which was both in line with the brand tone and at the same time very imaginative. Therefore, today's brands are more focused on launching a combination of punches around the brand itself, which is now a somewhat clichéd term - exploring brand IP.

The topic of IP is very hot at the moment. For brands, each brand is an extremely valuable IP. Brand IPization means that brand owners customize various contents around the brand to enrich the brand connotation, enhance the brand reputation or convey brand knowledge or spiritual concepts, and ultimately increase consumers' awareness and favorability of the brand . Currently, the idea of ​​creating "brand IP" has been practiced by many brands, and their development paths are also different.

The main way for brands to develop IP is to produce film and television content, games , publications... through situational, visual forms, or entertaining, knowledge and other content forms to convey abstract brand concepts. Their goal is to differentiate themselves from traditional advertising and use rich and diverse content to bring out the emotions or ideas conveyed by the product, thereby creating a new content marketing. Speaking of games, in 2012, Oreo's parent company Mondelez developed an app game called "Twist, Lick, Dunk" based on its classic advertising slogan "Twist, Lick, Dunk". Airbnb, a popular travel rental community, announced at the end of 2014 the launch of a quarterly travel magazine named "Pineapple" to provide travel guides for tenants. Its predecessor Michelin had already done this in the last century. In order to encourage people to travel long distances and thereby increase the demand for cars and tires, Michelin compiled the first "Michelin Guide".

However, in terms of operability and intuitive effects, the current mainstream form of brand IP development is still to focus on producing various types of film and television works. Even Apple has announced that it will start producing its first original TV show, which is a startup reality show called "Planet of the Apps", and the guests participating in the reality show are not Hollywood stars, but application developers. Of course, more brand IPs are adapted into TV series, each with its own unique characteristics, which also reflect the main purposes of current brand content marketing:

1. Gaining popularity among young people

There are many ways to make a brand younger, and filming TV series happens to be one of the more appealing ones. Tongcheng Travel filmed a web drama "How Big the World Is" at the beginning of this year. As soon as you listen to it, you know it was inspired by "The World Is So Big, I Want to Go See It" which became popular last year. It is known as China's first online road comedy. The elements of youth, dreams, and passion are constantly emphasized in the drama. It is obvious that this is a web drama built around young people.

OPPO, which focuses on entertainment and fan marketing, has created the "I'm Your xxPhone" series of short dramas for two consecutive years. Last year, it invited Li Yifeng as its spokesperson and launched an exclusive limited edition customized model based on its mobile phones, named "Chat Chat Phone". At the same time, it launched the online micro-drama of the same name "I'm Your Chat Chat Phone". This year, four young handsome men were recruited, Yang Yang and TFboys, and they customized limited edition Miaimei Phone and TFPhone mobile phones and the micro-dramas of the same name "I Am Your Miaimei Phone" and "I Am Your TFPhone" respectively. The shooting ideas of several web dramas are also in the same vein. Stars become mobile phones, or grow up with the protagonists, or go wandering and adventuring together like the three little ones of TFBoys. But idol stars with super powers are more attractive to fans. Obviously, these are all exclusive social network marketing for fans of stars. The target group is the fans behind the idols, and they try hard to make their brands "live". The effect is also gratifying. TFphone was sold out within 30 seconds after the online sale started at OPPO Tmall flagship store and Suning.com Tmall flagship store.

Scholar Zhang Qian proposed in her book "The Power of Fans" that ordinary consumers do not have specific preferences for the programs they watch, they are just couch potatoes, but fans' mode of receiving text from their idols is "purposeful", their viewing behavior is devout, and they will repeatedly receive and consume text content. Most importantly, fans not only actively consume the text content of their idols and are familiar with the content, but also hope that the text will develop according to their wishes. This is where the concept of fan customization comes from. OPPO tailors idol content for fans, including elements of high appearance, cultivation, and romance, allowing fans to directly visualize their "fantasies" about idols and establish an emotional connection with fans, and naturally the fans' returns are generous.

2. Capture target consumers based on their interests and concerns

Of course, not all brands’ self-produced content revolves around young people. When producing film and television content around the interests and hobbies of young people, it is inevitable to escape the clichéd routine of having to have young idols and having youthful vitality and dreams. In particular, IP content that ignores the brand's consumer positioning in order to cater to the interests of young people will often fall into the helpless dilemma of self-satisfaction. Smart brands know how to capture target consumers around interests and concerns.

In order to increase product awareness among young family consumers, Nestlé did not choose to use the "IP-riding" method of sponsoring popular variety shows, but instead produced its own program "Nestlé Pure Life Family Talk Show". The talk show started with a family scene, with the three little red men in the Nestlé logo on the packaging bottle transformed into a family of three. At the same time, we have produced a series of interesting short films combining the current hot topic "World Cup" and the controversial topic "Virgo", all of which are aimed at young family consumer groups to convey the safety characteristics of the products.

Nike, which has always paid attention to female athletes, continued last year's "Just for the Best" story. This time, it has come up with an original series called "House Girl vs. Fitness Fanatic" to inspire sports enthusiasts to achieve "Just for the Best". The story tells about a bet between two sisters. The younger sister Lily likes fitness, and the "LilyNinja" Youtube self-media fitness channel she created is also very popular, while the older sister Marg has almost no interest in fitness. So on the first day of the new year they made a bet: Marg must challenge Lily's fitness channel and reach a thousand fans, and Lily must make three close friends besides her fans. So the two sisters began to change themselves for a bet that they could not regret. As Nike said in the introduction: "From competing against each other to becoming likeable together, the story of the protagonists Marg and Lily tells all girls: challenges can be a transformation for two people. With the support of best friends, energy can be infinitely magnified! As the plot develops, every girl and her best friend who follows the drama can break through themselves together with the protagonists."

Not only the drama, Nike has also added interactive sessions. After each episode of "House Girl vs. Fitness Fanatic", there is a fitness tutorial demonstrated by fitness fanatic Lily herself. After watching, the audience can participate and go to the Nike+NTC APP to interact and record. They can also choose an action to make a fixed poster, post their own exercise photos, and share them with more people.

Through these dramas, the brand not only conveys the brand or product characteristics to the target consumers emotionally, but also implicitly conveys the brand philosophy and values, which tempts people to think deeply. At the same time, in the social media era, content is no longer just for audiences to watch. Brands hope that through these self-made contents, consumers can become not only viewers but also participants and engage in direct dialogue. In this way, the brand's content can be more targeted and focused.

3. Dive into the hearts of consumers

Brands are keen on producing film and television content around brand IPs, probably because they understand that consumers no longer like to watch advertisements, so they hope to attract audiences through better-quality content and convey brand information to consumers seamlessly and naturally. But after so many years of being bombarded by advertisements, consumers are also smart. They are fully capable of identifying advertising content and marketing content. Only with the psychological healers who understand consumers best can a brand enter people's hearts.

The instant noodle brand Taiwan Uni-President has incorporated the bitterness, sweetness, sourness and spiciness of life into every bowl of noodles, slowly telling life stories one by one. It has launched the "Little Hour Noodle House" series of micro-films, which includes 10 related independent short films, telling the emotional stories between creative cuisine and every Little Hour Noodle House customer. The style is similar to "Midnight Diner", but it has more of Taiwan's unique fresh flavor. Each dish is cleverly paired with a concise life experience, blending the taste with the various flavors of life. Uni-President also hopes to convey its own brand concept: make every dish of noodles with care and season it with mood. It is worth mentioning that this series of advertisements won this year's Cannes Entertainment Golden Lion Award.

On August 10, a nighttime mini-theater column titled "One Thousand and One Nights" with the theme of "Beautiful Things Can Heal" was launched on the homepage of Taobao Mobile at 10 o'clock. As the name of this column suggests, "One Thousand and One Nights" is only open at night, and you will never find a way to get in during the day. The first season of "One Thousand and One Nights" is based on the theme of Taobao food and tells 16 urban fantasy stories that take place in a mysterious little tent. The themes of this series of short stories are very diverse: girlish feelings, wandering homesickness, thrillers and suspense, and even some heavy-tasting stories. Maybe you can find your own shadow in these different kinds of people.

Taobao first launched the new concept of "Night Taobao" because it discovered through big data that 10 pm is the peak period of traffic for Taobao Mobile in a day, and that the late-night user group is very large. So brands want to sneak into the hearts of consumers during this time period.

Second level: building a brand community

No matter how fancy the content marketing form is, the most important thing is to achieve communication between the brand and people. Brands hope to influence the relationship between people, so that the brand can connect with the target group, that is, to form the "brand community" we are familiar with. SocialBeta has observed that brands now have the following characteristics when building brand communities:

1. Build brand belonging through interests

Brands sell products, while brand communities sell a sense of belonging. Just like when we mention a certain brand now, we will immediately think of the group it belongs to, which is the accumulation of the brand's years of hard work.

As a sports drink, Red Bull has always been closely tied to various extreme sports. According to a 2012 Forbes report, Red Bull supports 600 athletes worldwide, including 120 in the United States, and is involved in 160 different sports, with marketing spending accounting for about one-third of its revenue. The regular offline events have enabled Red Bull to attract many consumers who engage in or love extreme sports in its own brand community, making Red Bull synonymous with "extreme sports." Why does Red Bull invest so much energy and focus on building the extreme sports community ? Analyst Rebecca Reeb believes that as a sports drink, Red Bull first values ​​this type of consumer group, and the influence of offline events has become a way to attract purchasing power, making Red Bull brand peripheral products centered on extreme sports (such as extreme sports videos, extreme sports magazines, etc.) well-known to people.

Last November, L'Oréal created an internal "content factory" to provide real-time local shared content for beauty brands' products, including practical videos, beauty tutorials, etc. In March of this year, they created a low-key and fashionable online platform - Fab Beauty for fashion and beauty enthusiasts. The website brings together KOLs from the fashion and beauty world, allowing readers to draw fashion inspiration from around the world through daily articles, short films, interviews, and backstage insights from catwalk shows.

2. From PGC to co-creation of content between brands and consumers

In the early days of brand building communities, brands often focused on content production, maintenance and management, providing community members with a series of brand-related, authoritative and comprehensive information. Sports brand The North Face once won the Social Media Awards from Outdoor USA Magazine for its experience in building online communities. Planet Explore, an online community in the north, has worked with a number of outdoor activity associations and organizations to allow them to set up blogs, video channels, announce events, and organize events in the community. It has not only leveraged this power to win over members from a number of partners, but has also provided its own community members with a lot of useful activity information, greatly saving sports enthusiasts the time and manpower needed to collect activity information, and successfully creating an authoritative image for the community.

Similar to PlanetExplore is the DJI Community, which is a platform for users to exchange products and share their lives. DJI hopes that this platform can discover the greatest value of communication and provide the best user experience. Currently, this community provides multiple functions such as "flight tutorials", "excellent aerial photography collection", "activities", and "maintenance services". Users can register directly and speak at the end of the post.

However, brands build communities in order to connect to a part of the target group, with only a small amount of fan interaction, and such communities are more like a media. Therefore, the operation of many brand communities requires interaction between brands and fans, and even requires a large amount of high-quality UGC content.

GoPro stands out in the camera field. The key to its rise is its successful capture of explorers who love extreme sports. In 2010, GoPro launched its first video channel on Youtube, bringing together the excitement and happiness that all GoPro users discovered in their exploration journeys. The newly launched channels have a wide variety of content, including sports enthusiasts, mountaineering adventurers, and extreme photography enthusiasts, but the common point is that these users have opened up new perspectives on Youtube for potential sports enthusiasts to look at the wonderful world outside. Subsequently, Grpro created GoPro channels on mainstream social media such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and regularly released professional or interesting extreme sports videos. While encouraging consumers to upload videos, it also managed comments and questions on the videos in a unified manner, and provided answers to questions in the comments, thereby satisfying the needs of potential consumers and interacting with users. It has become a gathering place for extreme sports enthusiasts.

3. From offline communities to online communities to mobile communities

The concept of "brand community" was formally proposed in 2001 to describe those "communities established based on structured social relationships among fans of a certain brand." Its form is not limited. It can be a new type of online virtual community or a traditional regional community.

Early brand communities were mainly offline. In 1983, Harley-Davidson established the Harley Owners Group to meet riders' desire to share their passion and show their pride. In the second year, the owner's club had branches in 49 locations across the United States, with a total membership of 60,000. It was not until 2006 that the Harley Owners Club came to China for the first time. Since then, they have initiated cycling events in Lijiang, Huangshan, Qingdao and other places. From September 2012 to September 2013, Harley also launched a 110th anniversary celebration event around the world. The event spanned 11 countries on six continents and brought together millions of Harley-Davidson fans to share their passion for riding freedom, self-expression and epic adventure.

There are also companies like Red Bull, which regularly holds offline events on the one hand, and creates online extreme sports communication channels on the other hand, forming an online and offline interactive community to attract consumers who engage in and love extreme sports.

The old luxury brand Burberry directly established a social networking site called "The Art of the Trench", encouraging users to upload and share various fashion street shots. In 2014, Burberry also expanded the business of "The Art of the Trench". Now this site has entered Burberry's global market. An average of 1.4 million people watch their video introductions and more than 24.8 million visitors browse the site every day. Its online and mobile sales have also tripled.

The Art of the Trench social networking site interface

With the advent of the mobile digital age, people have become increasingly accustomed to spending more time on various mobile applications. In order to make applications more user-friendly, many apps with social attributes have emerged. Taking sports brands as an example, sports giants led by Nike, such as Under Armour, Adidas and Japanese running shoe brand ASICS all have their own brand apps. Such apps are often related to fitness and can gather a group of people who love sports through data recording and sharing, thus forming the brand’s own sports community.

Brands are eager to establish a lasting and stable relationship with consumers, and communities act as a bridge. For brands, the large amount of user data that the community can gather can provide reference for brand market or marketing decisions, and even provide key support in the design and improvement of product sources.

The third level: Become your lifestyle

Good content marketing is not intended to translate into direct sales results, so what mission does content marketing that does not involve sales have? When brands develop to a certain stage, selling their products is no longer their ultimate goal. They hope to slowly penetrate into our lives in a "silent way", from three meals a day to leisure and entertainment, from knowledge learning to purchase references... These brands gently tell us what the best lifestyle is:

1. Teach you knowledge and teach you to learn

Whether it is the beauty video tutorials "produced" by L'Oreal's content factory, or the fitness communities created by sports brands such as Nike for fans who love sports, these brands are all planned integrated knowledge dissemination based on high-quality content, conveying knowledge information to enthusiasts in the industry and field, and creating communication channels and platforms to enhance consumers' awareness and favorability of the brand's cultural taste, thereby widening the gap with followers.

But it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. For example, the razor brand Harry's did something different at the beginning of this year - it launched an online series of lectures, H'University. The purpose of this course is to train students and recent graduates to experience the "real business world". Each class will invite an outstanding entrepreneur to share their views. These outstanding entrepreneurs include Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff, etc. To achieve this goal, Harry's has launched an entrepreneur growth program as part of its internal education program. At the end of the program, H'University also provides undergraduates and recent graduates with a series of internship opportunities with partners, including companies such as Michael Kors, Plated and Pencils of Promise. Starting in the summer of 2016, students studying at H'University have the opportunity to obtain summer internships and full-time positions.

Facing the entire male market, Harry's started with a small razor but did not stop there. This brand also wants to tell a brand story of its own. In addition to selling products and creating a lifestyle, it also has a greater ideal: shaving only makes men more confident in appearance, and encouraging students to plan their careers from the student stage is to teach them to invest in themselves with knowledge. SocialBeta believes that Harry's development of H'University is not only an extension of the brand story, increasing the brand's reputation; secondly, the brand has also become a talent incubator, and the students who will benefit from H'University in the future will most likely bring unlimited possibilities to the Harry's brand.

2. Change the way you travel

When brands change the way people travel and consume by planning content that consumers like, they are actually changing people's lifestyles step by step.

The Michelin Guide mentioned above was created during the Paris World Expo in 1900. Michelin compiled information helpful for car travel, such as maps, gas stations, hotels, and auto repair shops, and published a book the size of a pocket manual. It is the general name for food and travel guide books published by Michelin, a well-known French tire manufacturer. The currently renowned Michelin Guide mainly refers to the Red Guide (Le Guide Rouge), which includes information on food and accommodation, but the brand also has a Green Guide (Le Guide Vert), which mainly introduces attractions and itinerary planning.

At that time, people mainly traveled by train, and only a very small number of people traveled by road. The Michelin brothers were optimistic about the development prospects of car travel at the time. In order to make the public believe that traveling by car is both comfortable and convenient, they planned to change the way people travel through the Michelin Guide. It is understood that the food, accommodation and tourist attraction information provided by the Michelin Guide is all based on road travel, rather than the rail travel that people were used to, and this book has indeed gradually played a role. Today, the Michelin Guide has established its important position in the food and tourism industries, and its value has far exceeded its original vision of "selling more tires."

In a similar vein, Louis Vuitton has launched the city guide "LOUIS VUITTON City Guides" since 1998. This year, in addition to the new guide, it also brought 7 Chinese special editions. Through city guides, LV has been sharing its unique taste for the world with readers, carefully selecting attractive places in each city. They invited many artists, journalists and special contributors to reposition and interpret those big cities that have both fashion and tourist charm. In the digital media era, LV also launched an app called LOUIS VUITTON CITY GUIDE in November last year. In the App, the city guide is divided into six sections: neighborhoods, city strategies, addresses, walking tours, 24 hours, guests, and maps, making it easy for everyone to browse while traveling. At the same time, in order to promote the city guide, LV has also shot many beautiful city promotional videos, truly taking content marketing to the extreme.

"LOUIS VUITTON City Guides" Chinese version promotional video

3. Love the life you love

Fotile, which focuses on cooking utensils, now not only wants to occupy your kitchen, but also wants to make consumers become real life masters. In 2015, FOTILE launched an O2O service social platform based on food and lifestyle: "FOTILE Lifestyle". Online, the "FOTILE Lifestyle" App will recommend dishes that suit local tastes and private chef recipes based on seasonal changes to users based on their location orientation. However, this is not only a cooking learning platform, but also a social media platform for consumers to share high-quality lifestyles. Offline, FOTILE has currently opened nearly 50 offline experience stores across the country, including cooking classroom experience activities, local food theme activities, cooking expert exchange sessions, etc.

Just as the name FOTILE Lifestyle Home suggests, here FOTILE does not talk about selling goods. It just connects the brand, products, users and chefs by grasping the core value of "cooking life in the kitchen", which not only increases user stickiness but also creates more content related to lifestyle, which in turn makes consumers have a good brand impression of FOTILE.

Another local original clothing brand that also understands life and does not sell goods is Exception. Against the backdrop of a large number of physical bookstores closing down, Exception opened an 1,800-square-meter bookstore next to an Hermès store in Guangzhou - "Fangsuo": selling books, clothing, coffee and creative products. Why would a clothing brand open a bookstore? In fact, it is more than just a bookstore. In addition to carefully selected professional and theme books, Fangsuo also brings together publications from well-known museums and various aesthetic products. Consumers can not only buy books, but also drink coffee with friends, read books, and buy creative products. As the founder Mao Jihong believes, "Fangsuo is selling a slow life."

Why do brands like to "go off the beaten track"? In fact, whether it is Fotile or Exception, including other brands, they provide consumers with a lifestyle and also convey the brand's values ​​​​and culture. When consumers are willing to use or enjoy this lifestyle and identify with this value or culture, they are the best spokespersons for the brand. When you use FOTILE Lifestyle, you are actually a "lifestyler". This has nothing to do with brand sales. If you don’t believe it, just look at those big brands or luxury brands that have been around for many years: when we focus on what brands to use to convey our taste class and construct our social image and status, the brand becomes a symbol, a symbol of a lifestyle.

In the second half of the last century, when various TV promotional advertisements came to every household on time every night at dinner time, they were denounced as the discourse hegemony of advertising. Now that advertisements appear more prevalently in our lives in various forms of content and even become a part of our lives, it is difficult for us to define whether brands interfere with our lives or make our lives successful.

As society becomes more and more diversified, this characteristic is also reflected in consumers. When people are consumers, they are also audiences, listeners, participants and lifestyle experts. Consumers have diverse appearances and complex identities. They seek different recognition or satisfaction in different consumption processes. Brands meet consumers' diverse needs around content and also create different stages of content marketing: from the simplest way of satisfying consumers' visual enjoyment; to entering a circle of people; to shaping a new lifestyle and becoming a symbol. These methods have only one purpose: to make communication between brands and consumers more direct, interesting, and meaningful.

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