How to cultivate APP into a "demon god" among brands

Pick up the three major brand elements: find differences, create experiences, and tell stories

Brand differentiation must not remain just a concept, nor can it be solved by a nice slogan or an advertisement. Brand differentiation needs to be solved through "differentiation experience". Lin Youqing once said, "Differences become experiences, and experiences become stories." In fact, he talked about three important things for a brand: finding differences, creating experiences, and telling stories.

Find the difference: Baijiahei solves consumers' unique problems

"First of all, how do we achieve differentiation? Our traditional understanding is to find a point of difference for the product, such as differences in raw materials, technology, functions, etc., but this is not the case. Real differentiation is not just about giving consumers "a unique solution", but more importantly, about "solving consumers' unique problems".

For example, competition in the cold medicine market is particularly fierce, with segmented demands including traditional Chinese medicine, Western medicine, quick cold treatment, and long-term cold treatment. If you launch a product that combines Chinese and Western medicine, or takes effect immediately in 5 minutes, then you are "giving consumers a unique solution" and trying to go one step further than your competitors (faster or longer than you...)", Lin Youqing changed his tone and said to Lutou News Agency, "But if you launch a Baijiahei, what you are doing is "solving consumers' unique problems" (I feel sleepy after taking cold medicine during the day, what should I do...).

Finding differences is a professional job, but one of the tricks is to find problems in past solutions! I believe that through this method, you have a good chance to "break down first and then build up, and rebuild the structure" of the original market.

Experience: Jiaduobao "If you dare to shout, I will give it to you"

Second, experience it. Many companies believe that "experience" is very high-end and suitable for big brands and romantic brands. In fact, this is a wrong perception. The core work of marketing is to create experience! No experience, no marketing!

We may all know this case: at Beijing Chaoyang Joy City, there was a creative interactive show by Jiaduobao with the theme of "If you dare to shout, I dare to give". A sound sensor device is cleverly set up on the right end of the Jiaduobao vending machine. When a consumer shouts "Have a can of Jiaduobao for the New Year" at a certain decibel level, the vending machine's built-in intelligent recognition system will start up, perform recognition, and then automatically roll out a can of Jiaduobao. A "giant" QR code is specially designed on the side of the vending machine. People at the scene can scan it with their mobile phones and enter the official website of Jiaduobao to learn more about the event. It is very convenient and quick. As a result, within just 8 hours of the start of the event, it attracted 5,000 people to participate, and the impact reached 90,000 people.

After reading this, have your imagination been opened and you are eager to try it out? But after you finally find the difference, do you feel you can’t think of any other way, and ultimately have no choice but to choose hard advertising to spread the word? In fact, we may need to create more interactive experiences, including experiences with different demands, in order to be more sales-oriented! Therefore, finding differentiation is an important task for a brand, and turning differentiation into experience is the core of marketing work!

Talk about experience: Extra packaging experience, Tide manufacturing experience, and then tell you a story

“Experience storytelling”, what is the story about? It’s about experience.

We know that almost all classic brands have their own "stories", such as Xiaomi, Coca-Cola and McDonald's. Many business owners also hope that their brands have stories to tell, but many of them have a one-sided view that storytelling is just about writing a good article, that is, writing an article about the founder, raw materials, and legendary stories for the brand, and then publicizing it widely. So, is it really possible? ——Then all the brands on the street could be Coca-Cola and McDonald’s!

If you go to Diaoye Beef Brisket for a meal, you will feel very novel and satisfied. It is more interesting than what you see on the Internet. You share this experience with your friends. Sharing this kind of experience has a huge impact on improving the brand image. How should brands advertise and tell stories? It’s simple, choose a good experience, package it well, and spread it. Advertising is about telling stories, spreading experiences and creating desires.

“It’s best to have two pills together!” Is Wrigley resorting to emotional marketing? NO! In fact, Wrigley’s products package up experiences with unique appeals and tell you stories; Doesn’t it look low for Hai Qing to bring a group of aunts and grandmas to experiment with Tide? NO! In fact, she is just simpler and more crude, but very effective in creating experiences and telling you stories.

The greatest temptation in the mobile Internet era is the ability to integrate experience and communication (storytelling), bringing “experience storytelling” to a new level.

For example, mineral water brand Evian launched a real-time marketing campaign called Evianbottle service next to Madison Square Park and Bryant Park in New York. When people are walking around the park and feel thirsty and want to drink a bottle of Evian mineral water, they just need to post a tweet with the tag #Evianbottle service# and show their location. Within 5 to 7 minutes, the Evian team, who keeps checking tweets at all times, will direct the brand ambassadors on site to ride their exclusive bicycles to deliver mineral water to the participants, allowing them to instantly cool down and quench their thirst.

This is a good experience activity. Of course, every tweet shared tells an exciting brand story, doesn’t it?

It should be noted that a good brand story either comes from the consumer’s real (inspiring) experience or from the consumer’s desired (I want it too) experience. Only such stories can be infectious and inspiring, and can deeply root in people's hearts. Such stories are different from those stories made up for advertising.

Three attributes of brands: Only 2% of brands can touch the spirit

The essence of brand marketing is to establish a unique association for the brand in the minds of consumers. I believe most people have come into contact with positioning theory. The essence of brand positioning is "category" positioning, which means being the first or only one in a category. The unique association is actually the association of the category that the brand corresponds to.

Of course, knowing is easier said than done. So how can we create excellent brand associations? Let us first understand the three major attributes of a brand: functional attributes, social attributes, and spiritual attributes. They build up three levels of brand association. I think 80% of brands are focusing on functional attributes, 18% of brands are focusing on social attributes, and maybe only 2% of brands are touching on spiritual attributes.

First of all, functional attributes are the basic attributes of a brand and exist to solve specific problems for consumers. "P&G" is a master at this. Each of its products exists to solve a unique problem.

The second is social attributes. This is the extended attribute of the brand and an important demand and means for consumers to engage in social communication. Xiaomi, Diaoye and even Apple phones are largely designed to satisfy the social attributes of consumers. Social attributes are mainly reflected in two aspects: one is labeling, and the other is topicality, which makes their target groups feel excited, honored, and have a sense of belonging.

Ultimately it is the spiritual attribute, which I prefer to call the faith attribute . Examples often cited are Christianity and football clubs like Liverpool and Real Madrid. If a brand has the ability to give consumers a unique philosophy and spiritual belief, then your product becomes a cross and your channel becomes a church.

So, what is brand association? In fact, they are the three major attributes represented by your brand. You can have only functional attributes, but it would be even better if you have all three.

Designing brand associations is the core work of branding. Brand association is the result of design and practice, rather than a natural result. Consumers’ minds can and need to be planned!

Don't go! Are you falling for these misunderstandings?

There is a "consensus" among marketing executives in many companies: increasing sales means building brands, and as long as sales increase, the brand will naturally be enhanced. This one-sided view is also common in brand marketing. In fact, there are many misunderstandings in companies’ understanding and implementation of brands. Lin Youqing has summarized several of them to share with you.

1. Lack of brand awareness. Leaders with a sales or technical background often have misunderstandings, thinking that brand is something illusory or that brand is just a by-product of sales.
2. They start to have brand awareness but cannot persist, do things according to their subjective wishes, and cannot strictly abide by the requirements of the brand strategy. Brand thinking should be the source and starting point of their thinking.
3. Treat the brand department as a subsidiary of sales or other departments. The brand department is in great need of independent thinking and voice. If it becomes a subsidiary of the sales department, it will be difficult to maintain its independent thinking.
4. Being attracted by the small profits in front of you and not complying with brand norms and principles. Many times, people neglect to comply with brand rules because of some lucrative marketing activities, which is not worth the cost.
5. Using short-term sales targets to demand a brand will cause marketing activities to deviate from the original intention of brand experience. In most cases, there is a contradiction between brand interests and short-term sales goals. Simply emphasizing short-term sales will inevitably lead to the loss of brand experience and brand accumulation.
6. If you don’t see returns in the short term, you will easily give up on branding management thinking. Keep your eyes on the long term and stick to a branded management mindset, and you will always get huge rewards in the near future.
7. Can’t stick to one brand proposition, change frequently to find better ones. Is there anything better? Is this direction correct? The spirit of striving for excellence is right, but a brand is something that requires accumulation and persistence.
8. Frequent changes in brand managers lead to uncertain changes in brand direction. When no results are seen in the short term, replacing people is an easy measure for business leaders to adopt, but many cases have proven that frequent replacement of people is the worst decision.
9. Employ people without trust and impose personal preferences and wishes. If you impose your own will on everything, then the company's structure will be simple: just the boss and a few executives. A brand is a thinking system and a systematic project. Too much external intervention will only produce negative effects.
10. The mindset of maximizing profits lacks the spirit of brand sedimentation and building a century-old brand. Diversification and investing in other high-yield areas are the normal logical thinking of businessmen, but we need more entrepreneurs who have the spirit of building century-old brands.

When I heard questions like, “How does a brand advertise and tell a story? It’s very simple, just choose a good experience, package it well, and spread it,” I felt devastated at first... I wonder how about you after reading this interview article? Is there a brain reboot going on? Think about it carefully, are you really still broken?

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