Case Analysis | How to achieve “unity of knowledge and action” when writing a promotion plan?

Today we are going to talk about writing a planning proposal.

What is the most difficult part of writing a planning proposal? I think it is: unity of knowledge and action.

Sometimes, we may have a lot of good ideas, but when we actually open the PPT to write, we find that our thoughts become more and more confused, and the final plan is far less than what we originally wanted to express. This is a typical case of "action" not keeping up with "knowledge".

Sometimes, we tend to be immersed in the simple joy of making beautiful PPTs, instead of thinking clearly about how to solve the problem first. In the end, the solutions produced are often beautiful but lack substantive content. This is a typical case of "knowing" not keeping up with "doing".

It is difficult to achieve "unity of knowledge and action" when writing a planning proposal. This is also reflected in the following: I have read a lot of content sharing that tells you how to write a planning proposal clearly and logically. At the time, I felt that it made sense, but when I actually wrote it myself, I found that I would still encounter the same problems as expected.

The reason is that, on the one hand, writing a plan is indeed a very practical job, which requires more writing to gradually improve; on the other hand, most of the content that teaches you how to write a plan in a clear and organized manner only stays on the clarity of the steps, such as: first understand the target needs, then collect information, organize the core ideas before writing, you can use some models and storytelling methods when writing, etc.

I have read a lot of sharing like this myself, and the biggest feeling I get is that these are all correct, but lack a sense of actual immersion. When I write myself, I don’t know how to use this knowledge, and as a result it is difficult to achieve “unity of knowledge and action”.

Based on these pain points, I will combine a real case and share how to achieve "unity of knowledge and action" to the greatest extent when writing a planning proposal, from understanding the client's goals and needs, generating strategic ideas, to the final PPT presentation of these three core links: good ideas can be written down, and those that are written down are good ideas.

1. Understand customer goals and needs

The most important thing in this link is to understand the customer's goals and needs. This sounds like a very cliché sentence. How do you understand it specifically? Let me give you some examples: If the goal is to increase brand awareness, then the customer demand is actually more of a communication plan. The focus of the plan will be to first find the core communication information of the brand through insights into the industry, competitors, consumers and other dimensions, and then spread this information based on advertising, public relations, experience and other means.

If the goal is to increase online store sales, then the plan will include two parts: one part is on the store operation side, which is to first break down the sales target based on [GMV=store traffic + average order value + conversion rate], so as to estimate how much each of the three indicators should be achieved, and in order to achieve this average order value and conversion rate, optimization suggestions from dimensions such as product structure, flagship store UED layout, and product description page are needed; the other part is on the marketing and communication side, which is to determine how much contribution is needed from both inside and outside the site in order to achieve this traffic indicator, and how many campaign-like activities and regular content and media placements are needed in a year.

Therefore, understanding the client’s purpose and needs is not just empty talk. It not only points out the direction for providing corresponding strategies or creativity in the future, but also provides you with a general plan idea and framework in your mind in advance when writing the plan.

Okay, now let me use a real case to share how I understand the client’s goals and needs in this regard.

This customer is New Zealand’s largest apple grower and export trader brand, which we refer to as “X”. Brand X is engaged in B2B business. In China, it sells its products to some offline fruit and fresh produce supermarkets. Its prices are considered mid-to-high-end among Apple brands. Although it is a B2B model, they want to do B2C market communication, because this will allow the brand to be promoted among terminal consumers first, so that merchants will be willing to purchase more of their products, and they can also exchange for more resources from the cooperation platform.

The RFP document that the client gave us at that time included some information about the company, the brand itself, and links to its official communication channels in China (official website, Weibo, WeChat). It also had three objectives: to increase brand awareness and preference, to increase brand Weibo and Weibo fans, and to increase sales of brand X among dealers. It also did not specify what we were going to provide in the proposal. This might be because this was a foreign client and they did not quite understand the Chinese communication environment.

Therefore, I had to break down the requirements of this competition proposal by myself. Based on the examples we gave above, we can know that for the first two purposes, a communication plan is actually needed, including: the extraction of core brand information and the communication method based on this information, as well as the daily content of the two microblogs.

But for the third goal, to increase the sales of brand X among dealers, I was a bit embarrassed at the time: these channels are not official stores controlled by the brand itself, but mostly some offline fruit and fresh food supermarkets, which cannot be done with the store operation methods. Instead, would it be more effective to hold some small brand roadshow activities in these supermarkets regularly, and then cooperate with these supermarkets to give customers additional benefits? But offline roadshows are not our strong point, and we don’t want to get involved in this business for the time being. So, we communicated this idea to our foreign clients, and they agreed that we could skip the offline roadshow.

Therefore, in understanding the customer's purpose and needs, we made it clear that the most important solution we provided should include the following:

Core message and creative concept of brand communication

Communication matrix planning based on this core concept

Daily content planning for brand microblogs

2. Strategy and Creative Ideas

After understanding what the plan should include, we began to enter the second stage of writing the plan: developing strategies and creative ideas. Before we get into the brand strategy formulation, we first thought about the strategy of the plan itself. What does it mean? To put it bluntly, we think that based on the above requirements, the planning work should be very huge, from the top-level brand planning to the specific implementation activities, strategy, creativity, content, media, etc. It will probably take a lot of time to write it all down.

Moreover, we don’t know this foreign client very well. We only communicate through emails and phone calls and have never met him in person. We are worried that the proposal we worked so hard on might be deceived. In addition, the clients are foreigners and may not understand what mini programs, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin are. Even if you write so much, they may not understand it.

Based on these considerations, the strategy for this planning proposal itself is: the first round of proposals should focus on the first demand, and focus on refining the core information and creative concepts of brand communication (also called BIG IDEA by people in the industry), and the highlights can be written in the following parts. If the customer likes this BIG IDEA, we will naturally further refine and expand on the following things. This is also my personal experience when writing such a large planning proposal: don't expect to cover everything, but focus on the core parts in the plan first. Of course, it may not be suitable for everyone.

After clarifying the key points of the plan, I began to really get into the strategy and creative planning of Brand X.

The normal process is: first collect as much information as possible, such as searching for relevant keywords on websites such as iResearch, 199IT, Penguin Think Tank, and Analysys, or doing social listening on platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili.

Then, we use these materials to quickly learn professional knowledge related to the brand. The three dimensions of data collection focus on are: industry analysis (environment, trends, competitors), brand’s own advantages, and target consumer insights. The intersection of these three is the key to our strategy formulation. For example, through industry analysis, we can know "what the entire industry is talking about and what competitors are talking about"; through insights into target consumers, we can know "what consumers need"; and through analysis of the brand's own advantages, we can know "what we have worth talking about". When these three circles intersect, we can roughly come up with the brand's core communication message "what should we say next".

Then, from the perspective of creative interpretation, this core information can be dramatically extended to arrive at a creative concept (BIG IDEA). It’s just that the level of creative concepts varies from person to person and from brand to brand.

The above are all the normal processes when formulating strategies and creative concepts, and are also essential content in many articles that share how to write a plan. Of course that's right. It’s just that when I was preparing this plan, my approach was rather special: after I had roughly read the brand’s official website and Weibo and WeChat content, a phrase came to my mind, and it was called “New Zealand Slow Apple”.

To be honest, I don’t know why this idea suddenly popped up in my mind. I don’t know if I have read something similar in any book before. I didn’t care about anything else at the time, I just thought it was interesting that Apple used the word “slow” to describe itself. To be honest, I was a little bit overwhelmed at that time because of this idea. But on second thought, isn’t that too casual? Could it be that I am just having fun on my own?

Later, I shared the idea of ​​"Slow Apple" with colleagues who were not involved in this project. As a test, I asked them: If there was an Apple brand that said it was "Slow Apple", would you feel fresh? Are you curious to know more about why it is "slow"? The result was beyond my expectation: most people were curious about this concept. Apples come in different shapes and sizes, such as big, small, red, sweet, and crispy. But no one has said that apples are slow-growing. So what kind of apple is this?

very good! I have more confidence in this "slow apple" concept that suddenly emerged, because in fact, when it comes to communication, especially for a brand that is not yet well-known among consumers, if you can capture the audience's curiosity from the beginning, then you have actually taken the first step successfully. So, I began to think systematically about how to systematically explain the concept of "New Zealand Slow Apple". To put it bluntly: I already have an idea, but I need to work backwards to find reasons to confirm it. I mainly deduced from the following dimensions:

First, I learned from existing information that the X apple is very slow in terms of planting environment, cultivation time, and post-picking screening process. This is very different from many domestic apples grown with ripening agents and greenhouses, which also makes the X apple very crisp in taste;

Secondly, I thought of the impression I had of New Zealand when I previously served a milk brand that also came from New Zealand: the last piece of pure land on earth, blue sky and white clouds, cows grazing freely on the grass, giving people an overall leisurely feeling.

This provided endorsement for many imported brands, especially in the beginning when food safety issues were a hot topic in the country. As long as they could say that their products came from New Zealand, they would not have to worry about not being able to sell them. However, with a large number of imported brands from New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands flooding into the country, it seems that everyone is focusing on the issue of origin, resulting in cognitive fatigue among consumers.

Being from New Zealand is certainly an advantage, but if you only emphasize this, it seems difficult to create differentiated perception among a host of imported fruit brands. And if I add the word "slow" between "New Zealand apples", can it more concretely reflect the differentiation of X apples?

In addition, I also found an emotional support: the price of the X-Apple is in the middle and high end, and through the description of consumer portraits, the people who buy it are also some white-collar workers with middle and high incomes, the new middle class. They lead a fast and busy life every day, and deep down they must want to slow down occasionally. Spending 5 minutes eating a "New Zealand Slow Apple" is just right!

Based on the above dimensions, I added the second half of the sentence to the previous concept of "slow apple", thus forming a slogan called:

A bite of slow apple, pure and crisp slow life.

The idea is to create a concrete image of eating an apple and incorporate the consumer's desire for a slow life. As for the information about "New Zealand", it can be assisted by visual images or subtitles.

In the above, I am actually describing a "non-mainstream" approach, because I come up with ideas first and then work backwards to gain strategic insights. Although it is "non-mainstream", it is actually a method that is often used when writing a plan. Many times, when our thoughts become increasingly confused as we go through a large amount of information, it is difficult to produce any good creative ideas, and it is even difficult to form a clear strategy.

At this time, we might as well try this reverse reasoning method, try to forget the pile of tangled information first, and then see if some different ideas can pop up in our minds. The ideas at this time are often inspirations. After having inspiration, we can reverse the reasoning and see if we can get support from strategic insights. But remember not to hold on to inspiration that is not in line with strategic insights. This is also a misunderstanding of many creative people. They want a groundbreaking idea right away, but often ignore whether it is in line with the brand strategy.

Back to the real case of X Apple, after having BIGIDEA, we actually completed the most important part of the planning requirement, because as we mentioned above, the first round of proposal strategy is based on core creativity. However, although the following requirements do not need to be expanded in detail, you should still think about the framework roughly. I will introduce these contents together in the next PPT presentation stage.

3. PPT presentation of the planning proposal

Don’t complain about the current situation where all plans have to be presented using PPT. Because when we are not yet famous enough to explain clearly just by talking, and before anyone is willing to listen to you, it is fair to use PPT to systematically present your ideas. Especially for commercial communication plans, PPT is actually like a product, which carries all your insights, strategies, and creativity. Whether these services can be sold, PPT is one of the most important criteria for customers to consider.

Before making a PPT, in addition to clarifying your thoughts as mentioned in the second part above, I think there are two other very important things to do, which is to clarify who the audience of this PPT is, and whether the writer can give a live presentation or just use it for the other party to read. For example, if your PPT is for employees of traditional state-owned enterprises, try not to make it too fancy and think about the context they are used to. For example, if your PPT is for a press conference, then simple logic, concise text and beautiful pictures are the three basic principles.

Let’s get back to the case. The core audience of my PPT is actually foreigners from New Zealand and an overseas Chinese who has lived there for many years. Therefore, based on my general understanding of the audience, I think the logic of this planning PPT should be as simple as possible, and there will be no opportunity for on-site proposals (a round-trip trip to New Zealand is too expensive). It is very likely that they will read it and then give us feedback on the next step. Therefore, on the basis of simple logic, we must use enough space to make things clear.

The purpose is to sell my BIG IDEA first. Speaking of this, there is a small episode. In Chinese we can say "slow apple", but how do we say it in English? After much thought, I still couldn't find an English word to express this meaning. Finally, I decided to simplify it and just use "slow apple". Unexpectedly, foreigners actually understood it in the end.

Okay, now let’s start talking about the PPT presentation ideas for this case.

The first page should be the PPT cover page that many people like to make. I am not going to teach you how to layout here, but I would like to say two things: one is that for creative planning proposals, the visual effect of the cover is very important. Although it is not a layout design, it also lays the foundation for the overall tone of your entire PPT. The other is the text on the cover page. The conventional practice is: a certain brand name and a certain project proposal. In addition to this approach, you can also put some of your key viewpoints and the core problems that the client wants to solve directly on the cover as the theme. This approach can help you get straight to the point.

Before we get into the overall plan, I would suggest putting two pages. One page is called Requirements Review, which is used to confirm the requirements that both parties agreed upon. The other page is the Contents Page, which is used to tell everyone what the main parts of this plan include. Sometimes these two pages can be combined into one page.

Now let’s get to the point. Below is the general content of each page of this planning proposal. Just for reference:

I first spent several pages explaining the trends in the domestic fruit market: China's fruit consumption level has great room for growth and potential from a global perspective; among them, the consumption of imported fruits has increased year by year, and New Zealand fruit imports rank second in the country. These two pages mainly tell foreigners about the positive prospects of the domestic imported fruit market.

The next few pages talk about how the growth of the domestic imported fruit consumption market comes from China's "new middle class", and then use cases to introduce how brands should cater to this group of new middle-class consumers, such as Dyson, SWISS, avocado salad, etc. Finally, the key point extracted is: to create an attractive lifestyle based on quality, that is, to create "itch points" for users, allowing them to imagine what kind of lifestyle they can achieve after having these products.

Then there is a transition page: For Brand X, how can we create a kind of life that new middle-class consumers yearn for? Now let’s start our creative performance time!

Next, I used a storytelling approach to interpret the creative deduction process. I let one of Brand X’s original Apple characters be the first-person narrator of this story, similar to this:

Now that I have introduced myself, let us shift our focus to China's modern cities. I saw the high-speed trains speeding by, the office workers hurrying on the streets, the lights on in the office buildings all night long, and some urbanites who need to take care of their families and children after returning home... (A series of ranking sentences are accompanied by a large picture and a paragraph of text)

Sometimes, do you also want to slow down? If you want to slow down, you can have your own time to do some exercise, read some books, watch some TV series, or do nothing to relax yourself... (A series of ranking sentences are all accompanied by a large picture and a paragraph of text)

What you actually want is an occasional "slow life". Maybe I can help you with that, because my name is "Slow Apple"!

After introducing Apple in the first person, return to the third-person perspective of the proposal. I used two pages to summarize how the "slow" here can both bring out the core selling point of the brand and create the lifestyle that the target consumers want. Later, the BIG IDEA was naturally derived, which is called: a bite of slow appleto enjoy pure & crispy life.

After focusing on the first requirement of the planning proposal - core communication information and creative concepts, we move on to the second requirement - the creation of a communication matrix. We did not focus on this part and only wrote these few pages, as follows:

The core strategy of communication - content seeding. Of course, I first explained the importance of content seeding in the domestic communication environment, and then introduced the method of content seeding by using KOLs on multiple content platforms to spread the concept of slow apples.

Then use one page to introduce several major domestic content seeding platforms - Xiaohongshu, Weibo, WeChat, and Douyin. Four pages are used respectively to introduce how to create communication angles on these platforms. For example, on Xiaohongshu, beautiful pictures are used as much as possible to reflect that the "slow apple" comes from New Zealand and has a crisp taste, while creating a "slow time" lifestyle; on Douyin, a more exaggerated and funny situational drama method is used to interpret the scene where the "slow apple" can immediately make you slow down and enjoy life (you can use your imagination); on Weibo, more suspenseful topic-based content is used, such as using the "slow apple" as a model for the release of black technology products, which is progressive and attracts the curiosity of the audience; and on WeChat, more immersive content is used to explain the selling points of the "slow apple", what is the difference between it and ordinary apples, fancy recipes and other content.

Next, another page is used to introduce how to choose KOLs to promote products. I drew a pyramid on this page of PPT and divided the pyramid into three layers, corresponding to top KOL, mid-level KOL and amateurs (the term KOC did not exist at that time). I also roughly talked about the role of each type of KOL. For example, top KOLs are more responsible for enhancing brand awareness and brand content output, mid-level KOLs are more about further spreading brand content produced by top KOLs, and amateurs use a large amount of UGC to create real brand word-of-mouth influence.

After roughly writing the second requirement, I was writing the third requirement of the plan - brand dual microblog content planning. I know that this is actually very abstract and foreigners may not be able to understand it. So, I gave an example in my plan that I thought was quite interesting. Aren’t we spreading the concept of “Slow Apple”? Then the official account and Weibo can actually be positioned as the “Slow Apple Space”. In addition to introducing products, this space can also write about some of the ideas that people would think about when they slow down, such as “What if there were no apples in the world?” Adam and Eve might have stolen bananas, what fell on Newton’s head might have been a durian, the witch might have given Snow White a poisonous watermelon, and what was on Steve Jobs’ iPhone might have been a pear…

Finally, the plan was completed and submitted. The result was both what I expected and what I didn't expect.

As expected, the client replied to the email saying that he really liked the idea of ​​"slow apple". What was unexpected was that he finally decided to entrust us with all the brand's business for the whole year except for the offline roadshow.

Author: JS Planner

Source: JS Planner (powerpluspoint)