Why are short videos so popular? What is the real bonus?

How to use “boiling water thinking” to create an Internet celebrity brand?

How to select products to create an Internet celebrity brand?

In the era of short videos, why is supply chain content so important?

After reading this article, you will definitely have a new understanding of "how to build an Internet celebrity brand in the era of short videos."

1. Why are short videos so popular? 、 What is the real dividend?

Why are short videos so popular today? Many of us only have a vague understanding of this. If we don’t see through the essence of this matter, it will be difficult to make good short videos.

Next, I will explain the three underlying thoughts behind why short videos are so popular: the era of laziness, the era of enjoyment, and the era of the senses.

1. The lazy era

The reason why short videos are so popular is that they first meet the needs of "lazy people". I call it the "lazy era".

Both Tik Tok and Kuaishou use decentralized algorithms for content distribution. For example, the logic of Tik Tok’s video going viral is as follows:

When you post a video, the TikTok system will first give you 1,000 users to try (1,000 is an assumed value). If the interactive behaviors of these 1,000 users are very good, such as likes, shares, comments and dozens of other indicators, which meet the requirements of the algorithm, then the TikTok system will give you another 10,000 users to try. If the user feedback is also good in the traffic pool of 10,000 people, then according to the Douyin algorithm, it is possible to give you traffic of 100,000 or even one million people.

This decentralized distribution platform uses an external evaluation system, that is, the weight of user evaluations, to make comprehensive decisions.

This comprehensive decision actually helps relatively "lazy" users by finding very precise content satisfaction methods for them.

In the Douyin system, every KOL will be labeled. For example, Brother Niurou is labeled as food, and Zhu Xiaohan is labeled as drama, entertainment, and celebrity. Then algorithms and labels are used to screen out accurate content absorbers.

Each user is also labeled. If you like looking at beautiful women, handsome men, clothes, or cosmetics, then content that matches your label will be pushed to you specifically.

Use this method to reduce the selection cost between users and content. So who likes this kind of content the most? "Lazy people" like it the most.

In terms of content presentation, the order from difficult to easy for users to accept is:

Text, pictures, voice, video, video with background music, short video, short video with BGM and subtitles.

When TikTok first started, many people were reluctant to add subtitles because it seemed deliberate, like something a film and television company would do. But later many people discovered that human nature is "lazy" and short videos with subtitles make users feel more relaxed.

Therefore, whether it is Tik Tok’s algorithm mechanism or the way the content is presented, it helps “lazy people” to better consume short video content.

2. The Age of Pleasure

The reason why short videos are popular is that they satisfy the psychological mechanism of users.

I once crawled more than 5,600 short videos with more than 500,000 likes, and summarized 10 types of user psychological consumption mechanisms . Many popular short videos now meet these 10 points.

1. Lust. For example, a good-looking person of the opposite sex.

2. Curiosity. For example, the landscape from Switzerland.

3. Psychological superiority. All funny, sarcastic, and imitation short videos basically belong to this category because users are reviewing them.

4. Moral contempt. For example, in the video, someone helps an elderly person, which stimulates the user's emotions.

5. Look for broad similarities. For example, when it comes to gender topics, many wives complain about their husbands. This group of women stick together and they look for common broad-sense people.

6. Look for similar people in a narrow sense. For example, celebrities can attract a group of fans and enthusiasts to gather together.

7. Desire to survive. I used to call it "desire to learn". The essence of user learning is for survival.

8. Get comforting satisfaction. For example, chicken soup for the soul and emotional resonance.

9. Idol worship. The essence of idol worship is to escape reality. For example, many of Niurou Ge’s fans think that Niurou Ge is a “startup hero”.

10. Obsessive-compulsive disorder of completeness. For example, continue to pay attention to users and continue to make short videos to make users feel like they are following a TV series.

After we understand the human psychological consumption mechanism, when discussing the source of user pleasure, we should pay more attention to the user's pain.

Why do users like to look at beautiful women? Because dissatisfaction is a long-term pain for users.

Why do users love watching videos of others making fools of themselves? Because lack of a sense of existence is also our long-term pain.

Why are users willing to listen to chicken soup? Because deep anxiety is also our long-term pain.

Why do we want to chase stars? Because having no faith is our long-term suffering.

So when creating short video content services, we are actually "relieving pain" for users and we want users to "enjoy themselves".

3. The Age of Sensory

Another reason why short videos are popular is that they satisfy users' "sensory enjoyment".

In the era of WeChat and Weibo, most new media content is actually conveyed in the form of pictures and texts, and there are not many videos.

Today, when a platform’s content is entirely in video form, it is an all-round attack on the user’s sensory stimulation!

The five senses are smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch.

In the era of WeChat and Weibo, pictures and texts only stimulated people's vision, but in the era of short videos, short videos are easier to stimulate users than pictures and texts.

In addition, short videos not only stimulate people's vision, but also their hearing.

The best filter of Tik Tok is not any filter, but "music".

Douyin has spent a huge amount of money to hire a group of very professional music producers who specialize in making hit songs for internet celebrities. The music in short videos can stimulate consumers' hearing very well.

Short videos bring sensory stimulation to a new level because the pleasure doubles with every additional dimension of sensory stimulation.

Once in an industrial design course in Cambridge, a teacher asked a question:

How would you design an alarm clock that will impress?

Most alarm clocks actually only consider the auditory dimension, but one person designed an alarm clock that stimulates the user's sense of smell and won an award.

This alarm clock can emit the scent of lavender at 12 noon and the scent of rose at 8 pm.

Therefore, for new products of every era, it is extremely important to upgrade their sensory stimulation.

4. What are the real benefits brought by short videos?

So, what are the real benefits of short videos? What short videos really bring us is:

1. More "lazy" users.

2. Users who are more eager for "short-term satisfaction".

3. Users who are more eager for "sensory stimulation".

At the end of 2018, Douyin officially disclosed that 30% of Douyin users had never installed Taobao on their mobile phones, indicating that Douyin’s real benefit is not the traffic benefit.

Douyin has captured the incremental group that missed out on the WeChat and Weibo era.

If we can win over these 30% of users, it may be an opportunity to change our destiny.

So, why do I want to make red wine that costs 15 yuan a bottle? Because I make red wine that costs 150 yuan, it has nothing to do with this group of users.

This group of users is even more "lazy". They don't even use Taobao. They are more greedy for "short-term pleasure" and they value "sensory stimulation" more.

This is our opportunity, and this is the real benefit brought by short videos.

2. How to use “boiling water thinking” to create an Internet celebrity brand?

1. What is an Internet celebrity brand and its characteristics

What is an Internet celebrity brand? It’s actually very simple. If the brand’s voice is louder than its sales volume, it is an Internet celebrity brand.

It has four major characteristics: users are fans, brands are KOLs, products are content, and social monetization.

Users are fans

For internet celebrity brands, users are fans. We also need to understand that internet celebrity products ≠ internet celebrity brands. Internet celebrity products plus high expectations of fans are internet celebrity brands, and expectation management is also the first major issue in the operation of internet celebrity brands.

Brands are KOLs

A brand is a KOL, which must have a platform to speak out, leadership qualities and appeal, and the ability to persuade people. Without a leader, there will be no appeal, no conflict, and no soil for marketing communication. Conflict is the underlying logic of marketing. Just like what Zhengshan Niurou said: "It is one cent cheaper for Chinese people to drink Spanish wine than for Spaniards to drink Spanish wine!"

Product is content

What does product is content? The personality is important, but what is more important is that the personality must be connected to the product. Don’t be shy about promoting products. Just express directly that you are bringing good products to you. This will have a better effect.

The core goal of our content creation is to reduce shopping guilt. For example, if you buy this product at a low price and your wife scolds you, you can use our content to refute her.

Social Monetization

The content you create becomes a topic of conversation for others, making the cost of dissemination even lower. How to become a topic of conversation among others? Express controversial opinions affirmatively. If you can output correct but controversial opinions, consumers will interact with you, and it will also bring cognitive stimulation driven by curiosity.

I used one sentence to summarize the stages of an internet celebrity brand: It is just like the prime of life, penniless and regretless youth. You can sing loudly and bloom like a flower, but you will eventually have to get married.

2. Three elements of boiling water thinking: How did the explosive power of Internet celebrity brands come into being?

The process of creating a brand is the process of "boiling water".

First of all, among common substances, water has the largest specific heat capacity. If too much water is poured, it will take a long time to boil, but if too little water is poured, it will easily boil dry.

Secondly, water will not boil before the temperature reaches its boiling point, and the boiling point is related to the air pressure. The lower the air pressure, the lower the boiling point.

Finally, once you stop heating during the process of boiling water, all the gas used before will be in vain. If you stop heating after boiling, the water will also stop boiling. If you want to keep the water boiling, the best way is to cook it slowly over low heat. As long as you continue to heat it after it boils, it will remain boiling.

1. Water capacity = market mental space: Why wasn’t crayfish so popular 20 years ago?

Water capacity is actually the minds and expectations of consumers, which I call the market mental space. Its core indicator is industry cognitive density.

Let me give you an example. Why wasn’t crayfish as popular 20 years ago as it is today? When I was less than ten years old, I ate crayfish for the first time and thought it was delicious, but at that time there were neither crayfish restaurants nor markets.

From a market perspective, I think it is essentially a problem of cognitive density, because people who know about it may agree with it, but not many people generally know about it.

That is to say, when the cognitive density of an industry is relatively low, there is no opportunity, because many of the things you do are in vain. What is the essence of this? In fact, it is difficult to establish a brand in a market with absolutely no cognitive density.

2. Boiling point = market target: Rebuilding a Xiaomi requires rebuilding a set of demand scenarios and behavioral symbols

Ultimately, you have to understand one thing: how much effort you have to put in to make the water boil. I think the boiling point is the market target, and its core indicator is the intensity of industry awareness.

It is different from the industry awareness density. The higher the better or lower the better. It is better if it matches your ability. However, the weaker the industry awareness intensity, the better, because the weaker it is, the more opportunities there are.

There are two major elements in the market target. From the perspective of intuitive logic, can the demand be scenario-based? From the perspective of logical thinking, can the behavior be symbolized?

Let me give you an example. A few years ago, a mobile phone brand saw the success of Xiaomi and hired one of the top ten creative directors in China to plan “how to make a certain mobile phone brand become an Internet celebrity brand like Xiaomi.”

Finally, the creative director’s conclusion was very simple: it was impossible for a certain mobile phone brand to become the second Xiaomi, because rebuilding a Xiaomi required rebuilding a set of demand scenarios and behavioral symbols.

(Picture from the Internet)

At that time, the core scenario of Xiaomi mobile phones was to provide a way out for people who could not afford Apple mobile phones but were embarrassed to admit that they had bought domestic mobile phones.

From a logical point of view, Xiaomi uses behavior to verify scenarios, provides users with a forum, and turns users into "enthusiasts." Enthusiast is a behavioral symbol, a verb . "Enthusiast" means to play and have fun, and this action has created a huge communication effect.

This also shows that the first person who succeeds will occupy the industry's cognitive strength, and the second person will definitely be weak.

3. Continuous heating = marketing endurance: Why is the Double Eleven promotion particularly suitable for Internet celebrity stores?

Continuous heating is like marketing endurance . The ability to continue heating is particularly important, especially for companies that do full-scale delivery. The final measure of the level is whether the advertising delivery and user reach are continuous.

Once there is a gap in the middle, the user's memory will be interrupted and the impression will not be deepened. Unless it reaches boiling point and continues to heat for a while, it can occupy the user's mind space.

Why do Internet celebrity stores and Alibaba’s Double 11 promotion fit together so well? This is because Alibaba’s entire e-commerce traffic path mechanism is very similar to the traffic generation mechanism of Internet celebrities, which is the logic of explosive products.

Let me give you an example. The actual sales volume of Tmall Double 11 started from October 20th and continued until midnight on the day of Double 11. At this time, a very interesting phenomenon emerged. No company could hire an internet celebrity to promote products every day starting from October 20th because the cost was too high.

(Picture from the Internet)

We are different because we have our own internet celebrities. Starting from October 20th, we can post dozens of videos every day to sell one product. I have 10 million fans. If I do this for 20 consecutive days, what do you think will happen?

In fact, this is marketing endurance . It means being able to continuously output heat energy in marketing to boil the water. Double 11 is the boiling point I have identified.

To sum up, the core of Tmall is to explode all GMV in one day. The first 20 days are for endurance charging, but most companies do not have the cost advantage of charging. In fact, the core indicator of marketing endurance is the cognitive conversion cost.

3. Tips for Internet celebrity brands: You have to have a dream

I believe that there are three stages for brands to gain the full trust of users in a rich media scenario like short videos. I call them the left brain, the right brain, and dopamine.

The first stage is supply chain trust (left brain trust), the second stage is personality trust (right brain trust), and the third stage is dream resonance (dopamine trust).

Dream resonance is the most important thing. Whether you can truly hold users in your hands actually depends on dreams. Dream resonance is also the core strength of top Internet celebrities.

3. How to select products to create an Internet celebrity brand?

How to choose products? I will start from three aspects:

The first is the analysis of categories and sources of goods. In fact, it is about how to find a suitable market appreciation space, a large enough "empty kettle";

The second is to talk about price and rule analysis. How to adapt to local conditions at the tactical level and find the "pressure" that can control costs;

The third is cognition and key analysis. Find something that you can hammer at people’s perceptions over and over again, with the lowest communication cost.

Today, let’s take “beef jerky,” a category that we may be involved in in the future, as an example to discuss how to select products.

1. Higher industry awareness density

We are currently in the steak business. Although we can find profit points in the supply chain, steak is actually a category with low public awareness density.

But what is the market for beef jerky?

The market size of steak is 1/15 of that of beef jerky. When Zhengshan sold 10 million steaks, it could actually make 150 million beef jerky - if the marketing and traffic levels were of the same magnitude.

Compared to steak, beef jerky is actually a good category with a relatively high public awareness density. It's impossible that anyone here has never eaten beef jerky.

2. Low industry awareness

So are there any strong brands in the beef jerky category? I think basically none. In fact, many brands are still in the 0 to 1 stage, and among the internet celebrity brands, many have more voice than sales.

As long as it is still at this stage, everyone actually has a chance.

The scary thing is that when there are four or five things like "Bandi" in this industry, there may be no chance.

The cost-effectiveness of China's domestic beef ranks at the bottom in the world, so domestic beef is very expensive. The cost of making jerky and other foods using domestic beef is very high.

So those big and comprehensive beef brands that we imagine are actually giving up on such positions because they don't make much money.

However, using relatively low-cost foreign beef to make beef jerky is something that can be tried.

So I think this is a good industry. Its industry awareness density is very strong, but its industry awareness intensity is not strong.

There are some local brands of air-dried beef all over the country, but there is no national brand nationwide.

From the perspective of entrepreneurs, this is something worth being "happy about" because there may be opportunities to "make trouble".

3. Products are easy to be content-oriented, scenario-oriented, and symbolic

So is it easy to turn beef jerky into a product that is content-based, scenario-based and symbolic?

I think there is no problem with content. Because beef jerky has been a content element that captures the minds of users since ancient times in China;

It is not difficult to create a scene, because beef jerky is a casual snack, it has a sense of scene, and it is easy to create content;

The only problem is that it hardly has "behavioral symbols". But we can "create" it, and we will come up with a methodology for eating.

4. Products have diversified characteristics

Beef jerky is actually a weak category in this regard, and the example I gave today is not perfect.

In my track, I will try my best to match these characteristics, but in fact I may not be able to do it perfectly. For example, beef jerky has a weakness, it cannot achieve the characteristic of "diversification".

5. High spiritual attributes

Taking beef jerky as an example, there is one product that does well - "Mother" brand beef sticks.

(Picture from the Internet)

The scenario they are playing is actually "meal replacement". Why is it called the Mother brand? They figured out the importance of "scene" many years ago.

The brand name is "Mother Brand", who is most likely to buy it?

Of course, it’s being a mother.

So why would a mother buy a product like beef sticks?

In fact, it is designed to solve a problem that often happened to us when we were children - children did not have time to eat breakfast when they went to school. I get up late and don't eat a single bite, which makes my mother upset. Then put some beef jerky in the children’s school bags to fill their stomachs on the way.

Because in the mother's mind, high-protein beef jerky is nutritious, and children can fill their stomachs and love to eat it - several points combined together form a very precise scenario, and the brand name is called "Mother", which perfectly realizes its psychological mapping.

So, why does our beef jerky also need to appear in this market? If "Mother's Brand" is a good case in the children's protein meal replacement market, are protein meal replacement products for adults also an opportunity?

Among the snack brands, there are Bestore, Baicaowei, and Three Squirrels. They also have meat jerky products, such as beef jerky and pork jerky. But in your minds, do they have much to do with beef jerky? Not big. Because they all started with nuts, and the threshold for nuts is low, and the mental threshold is also relatively high.

Are there any big brands in the Chinese meat jerky snack market, or in the high-protein snack market? Yes, but that brand is not young enough. So in the Internet track, it is a real opportunity for me.

6. Have the opportunity to create popular items

It’s so easy to make beef jerky a trendy item.

And I also found a more interesting phenomenon, today five-spice and spicy beef jerky are gradually losing the market. The volume of original beef jerky is increasing exponentially.

Why? Because the public has more and more demands for health, one of which is to "buy original flavor". What is the original flavor? There are only two ingredients in the recipe: beef jerky and salt.

What’s so wonderful about this?

Although my beef jerky is not called "Zhengshan", its user group is the same as steak. "Old customers, new products" - this is the easiest thing to do in all businesses.

Because what is the mindset of the users who buy our steaks?

- I want original cut steak, not composite steak.

What is the inspection method? There is only beef in the ingredient list, and never any additives. Therefore, the target users of beef jerky and steak have highly coordinated mindsets.

7. Supply chain maturity

From steak to beef jerky, it's a path dependence for me.

(Editor’s note: Regarding how to build an online celebrity brand, the product selection section also includes “price and rule analysis” and “cognition and key analysis”; in addition to product selection, it also includes the creation of KOL personality settings, supply chain content, and business expansion content. Due to space limitations, they will not be presented one by one.)

4. In the era of short videos, why is supply chain contentization so important?

1. The purpose of content production is changing:

I put supply chain and content together as a topic because they are inextricably linked in my overall business strategy design.

And from the perspective of content creation, it is actually the most accurate part. When it comes to content creation, we who work in marketing have always said that “content is king” in marketing.

But that’s one thing to say, but when you actually do it, you actually feel that content is something that “directs traffic”.

It plays more of an assisting role in your entire business logic, and few companies can turn content into their core capability.

But this is not just because of the genes of each company's entrepreneurs and teams, it has a historical inertia.

1. Brand Marketing Era - Content Empowers Products

In the earliest days, there was no Internet, no so-called decentralization, and no fragmentation. We were actually in a relatively primitive "era of brand marketing."

In the era of brand marketing, it is the mainstream media, such as newspapers and television stations, that can capture consumers.

In this era of brand marketing, content itself can only empower products and is actually part of advertising.

2. The era of product-effect integration: products empower content

Later, when the advertising effect was not as good as expected, the entire advertising industry entered the second stage, which is the era of "brand and effect integration" that advertisers often talk about today.

Of course, this is not an easy thing to do, but there is indeed a possibility, which is to allow products to empower content.

Why do we say that products empower content?

Because if you want to achieve brand-effect integration, there is a very "naked" standard - there must be a large amount of sales within a short period of time after the advertisement is released. This is called brand-effect integration.

In the composition of this content, the product description must occupy a considerable proportion. So I can also draw a relatively "barbaric" conclusion - I believe that under the premise that content is widely disseminated, it must be because of the characteristics of the product itself - its connotation, its design concept, its designer's endorsement, etc., all of which are given to the content itself.

3. The era of personalized brand marketing: supply chain empowers KOLs

Then when we entered the era of internet celebrities, further changes occurred, which we call the "era of personalized brand marketing."

At this time, the "supply chain directly empowers KOLs" emerged. The supply chain is equivalent to the "products and content" in the past brand marketing era and the era of product and effect integration.

KOL now refers to "brand".

Because after personalization, it is difficult to distinguish between KOL, personalized brand and IP. The supply chain actually basically includes both products and content.

2. Content empowerment chain: content-driven, unable to form a closed loop of empowerment links

Let’s take a look at what a successful case looks like in the “brand marketing era”.

This is an advertisement copy written by Ogilvy for Great Wall Red Wine in 2003. It is very well written.

More than a decade ago, each piece of copywriting like this was worth more than RMB 5 million. Today, we still pay respect to such texts.

However, you have to admit that consumers or the current mainstream market actually have no patience for such content - consumers have become more impetuous. They prefer to use short, punchy words to get their points across, and they don't have a very good system for receiving signals for rich, emotional paragraphs.

Why is this?

This is because in the process of marketing strategy planning, as more and more "variables" are involved, the effectiveness may be reorganized.

Back to the era of brand marketing, what did the world look like before the emergence of new media, short videos, and decentralized distribution?

First of all, content empowers products.

Ogilvy created such a beautiful copy for Great Wall Red Wine, and this copy added value to this product; and the success of this product made the brand widely known, which was ultimately reflected in sales.

This is a very normal way of thinking, and every successful brand in the past has followed this path.

But there is a problem, it cannot form a spiral upward path.

Why?

Because when it comes to sales, you'll find that the story ends.

The increase in sales does not allow Ogilvy's copy to evolve, so its efficiency stops there.

Of course, this kind of content is still the mainstream today, and 4A companies are still telling everyone such stories today. But today I want to give you a completely new logic.

3. Supply chain empowerment chain: Supply chain driven, forming a progressive empowerment chain closed loop

Let’s look at the next picture first. When our marketing content can be empowered by the supply chain, the entire marketing chain closed loop changes.

First of all, we have a high-quality supply chain. We have exclusive authorization from the top three wine groups in Spain, extremely low procurement costs, and excellent cooperation plans with distribution service providers.

These contents will be reflected in our products, and these products will become the content of our company . We combine our products with our own content very closely.

Therefore, among these five marketing-related elements, I fully display each one to consumers , and it is basically equivalent to the role of 4A advertising mentioned earlier.

These contents will empower KOLs and brands, and will ultimately be reflected in sales. But these sales will not disappear, and its influence will not disappear.

For example, if we won the sales championship on Tmall and gained three million fans, these would become new materials and enter the next cycle.

4. Consumers are more willing to believe the truth they have sorted out, and the content of the supply chain plays a supporting role

The contentization of the supply chain is undoubtedly a huge energy machine that has been inadvertently revealed in the era of short videos.

Because it is fragmented cognition and rich media cognition.

In the past, it was actually very difficult to succeed in turning supply chain into content. Why? Because the efficiency of user group representation and content penetration factors has never been so successful.

Author: Mantou Business School

Source: Mantou Business School ( mantousxy )