2021, no war for brand marketing

It's been a lackluster year for the brand marketing industry.

There were no particularly popular advertisements throughout the year, and no nationwide creative ideas.

Many major Internet companies have been rectified and fined, and everyone has become more low-key. Online education has collectively collapsed, and tens of billions of marketing budgets have come to an abrupt halt. New consumer brands are starting to cool down, and the process from 1 to 10 is extremely difficult.

According to media reports, ByteDance's advertising revenue in Q3 stagnated, indicating that advertisers' budgets are tightening.

I have recently served as a judge for several marketing cases. Looking at the hundreds of cases that have been screened out one by one, there are almost no projects that are good in terms of strategy and creativity and have a public impact. If I were to choose an overall award for the marketing industry this year, I would choose vacancy.

Changes are growing in the details, and a feast is coming to an end.

What changes have taken place in 2021 and where will the changes lead? Let me share my thoughts.

Below, Enjoy:

The growth feast is coming to an end

First of all, don’t be pessimistic. The feast of growth and irrational carnival will not last forever. Eventually, we will return to rationality and normal life.

Looking back over the past decade, the marketing industry has been a moving feast, with the pie growing bigger, the territory expanding, and the budget increasing exponentially.

Ten years ago, in 2011, the mobile Internet exploded.

WeChat was launched in January; Kuaishou was born in March; Taobao mobile clients were launched one after another in March; Meituan was officially established in May and Momo was launched in August. ByteDance was founded in 2012. Since then, mobile Internet has entered a decade of rapid growth.

This means that marketing budgets are constantly increasing. At the same time, with the rise of Internet platforms, the advertising space that absorbs the budget is also increasing.

As mobile Internet expands, it also becomes a black hole for advertising budgets that you can never fill.

The marketing budget has increased exponentially. More than ten years ago, I found it incredible to hear that the marketing budget of a new car launched by BBA was as high as 100 million yuan.

A few years later, I worked in a large Internet company, and my annual budget planning reached 500 million yuan. Later, I changed to an Internet company. During those two years when the company was making money, the marketing department spent 700 million yuan a year. It felt magical.

Later I heard that some 3C and large consumer brands have annual marketing budgets of billions. This seems to be the end.

Just at the end of last year, I went to a meeting at an online education company to discuss the marketing strategy for 2021. They had a marketing budget of 15 billion for the whole year, but the young executives seemed very anxious because their competitors had just received a large amount of financing and according to intelligence, the other party had planned a budget of 20 billion. This is the most exaggerated budget scale I have ever heard of. Everyone knows the story of this year. The money was not spent as planned.

After a decade of extensive development, the Internet industry has faced fierce compliance supervision, huge fines and various new regulations. It can be vaguely felt that the decade-long run of mobile Internet is coming to an end.

The hundreds of millions, billions, and tens of billions of advertising budgets that we have seen or experienced in the past decade are largely the result of bubbles. It is far more than just 50% that has been wasted, but it is only concealed by the steep growth curve.

These marketing bubbles will slowly be digested in the coming years.

When investment cannot bring direct growth, it is inevitable to reduce investment and return to a more rational allocation of marketing budget.

Looking back at 2021, it may be a turning point

On the surface, the marketing budget appears to be sufficient this year and there is no sign of cuts.

In reality, much of the budget planned last year was not spent and some planned projects were not implemented. This situation has occurred due to both personal reasons and the influence of the overall environment.

Overall, 2021 is a year of transition. The trends of the past few years are slowing down or stagnating, and new trends have not yet formed. I will talk about my observations in 2021 from three aspects: live streaming sales, new consumer brands, and the general public opinion environment.

Live streaming sales have become a normal practice

Last year was a crazy year for live streaming sales. Various record-breaking sales and event-based milestones made all brands fall into a live streaming sales frenzy.

This year, live streaming sales have become the norm, and sales are still growing, but no longer crazy. Brands are still doing live broadcasts, but they no longer attract the attention of the whole nation.

During the 618 period last year, live streaming sales reached its peak, and all internet celebrities and stars started broadcasting on different platforms. At that time, my view on live streaming sales was more event-oriented and marketing-oriented.

At that time, I thought that a live broadcast of brand sales should not only break sales records, but should also be a marketing event.

But now, live streaming is becoming less marketing-oriented and more focused on selling goods. From marketing logic to transaction logic.

The live broadcast rooms of Douyin and Kuaishou are becoming more and more normal. Luo Yonghao’s “Make Friends” live broadcast room started broadcasting 24 hours a day this year. You can open it at any time and they will be broadcasting at any time. I think this is the trend.

As for live streaming products, last year we could see various big brand products being live streamed, such as Gree selling goods worth billions in one show. But this year, live streaming products are increasingly being screened strictly, and there is a clear distinction between products that can be sold through live streaming and those that cannot be sold through live streaming.

Big brands and high-priced products began to leave the live broadcast rooms.

At first, I thought that the Douyin and Kuaishou live broadcast rooms posed a threat to Tmall and JD.com, but now I find that the goods in the Douyin and Kuaishou live broadcast rooms are becoming more and more Pinduoduo-like. High cost-effectiveness, instant decision-making, impulse buying.

Live streaming sales will still have a bright future. Perhaps in another three years, every brand will have a 24-hour live streaming room. But at present, the marketing and event attributes of live streaming sales have been fading.

New consumer brands from 1-10

New consumption seemed to cool down overnight, just like the first snow in Beijing this year.

In the past three years, in the consumer field, there have been two major events: the outbreak of new national trends and the outbreak of new consumption. These two areas have contributed a large amount of marketing budgets and cases.

People were talking about Li Ning's turnaround, Heytea's growth path, Luckin Coffee's merits and demerits, Zhong Xue Gao's price and other topics.

A large number of new brands have achieved development from 0 to 1 and have become good niche brands in a certain segment, and everything seems to be thriving.

However, no phenomenal brands were born this year, and the brands that achieved a 0-1 success in the past did not seem to contribute any new topics of conversation.

I really don’t know why there are no new phenomenal brands this year, and I haven’t figured it out. But for the new brands that are already on the table, I know that times are not easy for everyone. Going from 1 to 10 will be extremely difficult and a process that will test your marketing strategy.

It is difficult for new consumer brands to achieve explosive growth this year. The value of big anchors in bringing goods is limited, but it is difficult to de-internetize and brand them. This year, many new Internet-born brands have begun to expand their offline stores, trying to establish brand barriers at various levels in an attempt to break into the general public.

I still remember that on last year’s Double 11, many new brands announced big-name celebrity spokespersons, and the elevator advertisements were all for brands such as Perfect Diary, Huaxizi, Bananain, and Sandunban, but this year’s Double 11 seems to be quieter.

The next few years will be a purgatory stage for new consumer brands. No more than 10 brands will break through the circle and become mass brands, and some will stay and continue to grow.

The outcome that more brands may face is that they cannot die even if they become big, which is a slow process of being hammered.

The public opinion environment is more complicated

Any rational person can feel that the public opinion environment in 2021 is more complicated.

I don't know why, people are becoming more radical, more binary, and social networks are more aggressive. Different forms of moral judgment, parades on the Internet, and "capital" becomes a rat crossing the street.

Whether the public opinion environment is friendly and inclusive is related to the boldness of marketing creativity. This year I have heard brands say more than once that we want to spread, but we don’t want to be too high-profile. I think this is also one of the reasons why there is a growing lack of bold creativity.

I have always said before that brands need to integrate into public opinion and establish their social role in public opinion. But this year some brands have begun to deliberately avoid public opinion.

I don’t know how to elaborate on this phenomenon, you can experience it for yourself.

Looking ahead, marketing is more restrained

I am not pessimistic. This will make marketers more rational and restrained, focusing on solving brand problems rather than sensationalizing the screen.

With the suspension of the ten-year high-speed growth period and the current changes in the environment, meaningless and excessive bubbles should become less and less common, and marketing will become more rational and restrained. This is a more positive outlook.

How to stand in the present and look to the future, I would like to put forward three thoughts: brand goal-oriented, systematized "private domain" communication, and productization of marketing strategies.

Brand goal-oriented

First, oppose excessive marketing. Be practical, not fame-seeking.

When doing brand marketing, it is easy to fall into a certain kind of vanity and create an illusion with the amount of communication and KPI. There is no communication that feels that this volume is enough and no more is needed.

For all marketing, the greater the reach, the better. Regardless of whether it is effective or not, as long as it can go viral, it is good marketing. Such perceptions need to change.

The trap of digital advertising is that there are unlimited ad spaces and unlimited traffic, but you can never buy them all and you can never have complete coverage.

A lot of dissemination is unnecessary, and a lot of screen-sweeping is ineffective. These are all bubble-like excessive dissemination.

My thinking is to be guided by brand goals and communicate rationally.

For example, if you only have a budget of several hundred thousand, then you can find a precise traffic pool, create a good content, do one thing well, and fully develop a selling point, and that's it.

For example, some big brands have already reached a very high level of popularity, but there is no incremental information in their communication strategy. They still repeatedly spread information that everyone is already very clear about, which is ineffective communication. This kind of communication lacks a clear brand goal. It may be widely disseminated and may go viral, but it is certainly not helpful to the brand.

The goal is not to increase the effect and the amount of dissemination. The goal is what you want to change and to do what is really important.

For example, the brand’s mid- and long-term strategic goals are: new consumer brands need to get rid of internet celebrities and break out of the circle to become popular; old brands need to become younger and upgrade their brands; brands that have gone astray need to create a new consensus, etc.

The short-term goals of a single project are whether the content provides new value, whether it changes some people’s views, and whether it prompts some people to take action.

When I wrote "Creativity Should Be Simple, Action Should Be Powerful" before, I mentioned that a good idea is the first domino. Pushing it down can prompt a series of subsequent changes.

You need to think about this idea and what can be changed after this project is completed. If it doesn't change anything, what's the point of doing it?

Systematized "private domain" communication

A few years ago, when I was writing about Luckin Coffee, I put forward the view that systematized marketing subverts big ideas.

From centralized single content to decentralized content, form, and media combination, a comprehensive influence is formed. This is my view on systematic marketing.

The current communication environment does not support the generation of traditional big ideas at all levels. Media is fragmented, traffic is algorithmic, positions are antagonistic, and so on.

We need to rethink the communication strategy that can solve brand problems. My personal opinion is: do relatively local communication and conduct systematic "private domain" communication.

I put “private domain” in quotation marks because I don’t want to define it as a WeChat group, but rather to understand the brand’s private domain from a mental level. A brand needs to focus on a certain point, focus on a limited number of precise groups of people. This group of people is the brand’s private domain group at the mental level. There are many forms of communication. You need to establish a communication platform for this group of people so that you can communicate with them continuously.

For example, the personal brand of "Yang Buhuai" only communicates with a limited number of professional marketers and sets a threshold for the content. Non-practitioners don't know what I'm talking about. I don't involve popular topics and don't enter public opinion. But I hope that these contents and ideas can provide a little inspiration for current marketing strategies, which would be great.

Mass communication has a broad impact on everyone, while systematized private communication has a deeper impact on everyone.

Marketing strategy productization

When it comes to marketing, it means making an annual budget plan, spending money, finding third parties, creating content, investing in media, etc.

Marketing is essentially an idea, and advertising is just a form of conveying the idea.

The best way to express an idea is to integrate it into the product and express the idea through the product. The product name, a color, a function are all ideas and brand attitudes.

An example I have talked about before is Tencent Pay. Tencent has been trying to make it successful for ten years. During this period, it has also done a lot of advertising and spent a lot of budget to promote Tencent Tenpay, but it didn't work. Finally, it is a simple WeChat red envelope that has made Tencent Pay a strong competitor to Alipay. WeChat red envelopes are a productized idea.

Similarly, the Alipay "One Click for Health Code" project I wrote about before puts high-frequency functions in the visual center of the homepage, which can be used more conveniently, and creativity and communication are just to inform the public of this information. This is also product marketing.

Make marketing more proactive, involve the product itself, and convey the brand through the product.

To achieve this, it is necessary to change the organizational system and internal collaboration model. Almost all marketing departments I know of only spend money and have almost no say in product development.

Usually when the product is 100% complete, it is handed over to the marketing department as a finished product, and then the marketing department racks their brains to think about how to sell it. This path makes it impossible to productize marketing strategies.

The marketing department should be more deeply involved in product research and development and definition. Product names, packaging designs, selling point definitions, etc. can all demonstrate marketing strategies.

If the product itself has the power to spread, the subsequent advertising content will be simpler.

To sum up

In the brand marketing industry in 2021, there are almost no new topics and talks, nor are there any cases that attract attention from the entire industry.

First, let’s find the reasons and delve into historical logic. This year is a turning point for the Internet industry, and the decade of extensive growth of mobile Internet has basically ended. The explosive growth period from 0 to 1 for new consumer brands has basically ended, and what follows is a long and arduous growth period.

Internet media is more fragmented, or algorithm-centralized. I think the public opinion environment is becoming increasingly unfriendly, full of moral judgments and internet digging, which makes people even more reluctant to take a high-profile approach.

The next trend will be the stage of de-bubble in marketing: first, there will be no excess budget, and second, it will be more pragmatic rather than seeking fame.

This is not a bad thing. We have gone through a decade of crazy growth and big spending. Next we need to test real marketing strategies and build real brands.

From my personal perspective, I have summarized three trends for your reference:

First, it should be brand goal-oriented . Everything should have a clear brand goal. The amount of dissemination is not the goal, and screen-sweeping is not the goal either.

Think clearly about what you want to create, change, and gain. Oppose excessive and unnecessary dissemination, and do what is truly important to the brand.

The second is systematized “private domain” communication , which is generally a shift from breadth to depth.

In the past, we did big brand events, which became social issues and had a broad impact on everyone, but they were not necessarily deep. Next, in addition to name recognition, we need to establish a deeper connection with consumers. It does not necessarily have to be mass communication, but it must have a stronger brand consensus.

The third is the productization of marketing strategies . After the market dividend ends, there will be product dividends and organizational dividends.

Optimize products, integrate organizations, and marketing is not just about spending money on advertising, but also about providing new concepts for products.

From this round of new consumer products, we can see that there is no leapfrog technological innovation, but more of a redefinition of products and consumption scenarios based on consumer demand. This is the productization of marketing strategies.

Finally, I think there is still hope for the future.

In the past, channels were said to be king, but in recent years, traffic has become king. In the future, brand will definitely be king.

above.

Author: Yang Buhuai

Source: Yang Buhuai (ID: yangbuhuai01)