How to do marketing for post-00s?

The post-00s have their own opinions, and they have long since spontaneously chosen to "lie down."

Starting this year, the art of lying flat has become popular. According to the original meaning of the words, lying down is similar to "Buddhism", which means that no matter what you do or what situation you face, you will be calm and unperturbed.

A deeper look into the deeper motivations behind lying down reveals that young people display an extremely abnormal avoidant attitude when faced with the realities of rising prices, inflated housing prices, stratification, hopelessness of promotion, moral degradation, spiritual emptiness, and pessimism.

"Lying flat" is a very interesting word, which implies the spiritual emptiness and lack of value orientation of young people... Under the influence of lying flat, different interest circles that are born may be a utopia for young people to escape from the world. Data shows that China’s young people’s cultural circles are divided into 8 major categories and 32 minor categories, totaling about 169 cultural circles.

Different circles have their own consumption habits and demands. Faced with diversified consumers, brands need to have stronger marketing for the post-00s, fully understand the consumption culture of different groups, and adopt a combination of various marketing elements to achieve success.

01 Model 1: The collaboration between cultural evangelists and highly educated opinion leaders

Most of the post-2000 generation have not yet reached the stage of starting a family, so they do not have the family pressure of having elderly parents and young children to take care of. They are a relatively emotional group and are easily influenced by others.

Fan circle culture is the most representative. The post-00s generation will use the people they admire as a reference for their own behavior. But in addition to well-known celebrities, there are also KOLs and KOCs on different new media platforms, who are all referred to as opinion leaders in the title.

It should be noted that the comparison among post-00s is not to show off - people with the same characteristics or values ​​as themselves will play a more important role in their lives, rather than from the product value level.

The normative and comparative effects of reference groups influence the consumption patterns and motivations of the post-00s generation. For example, if your favorite celebrity endorses Apple’s latest iPhone 13, no one will follow this trend. On the contrary, if the star himself has a constant pursuit of art and innovation, it will be easier to resonate with his peers.

This is the so-called matching degree between celebrity endorsement and brand. Of course, when extended to KOL and KOC, it is the fit between personality and brand.

In marketing, companies can seize the high knowledge and reference group phenomena of this group and adopt the approach of opinion leaders in marketing. Use the post-00s generation as spokespersons to convey the brand spirit and ideas, thereby leveraging the entire youth market in one fell swoop. You can even let them act as cultural evangelists for the brand and let them actively spread the word of mouth.

02 Mode 2: Symbolic Marketing - In-depth Exploration of Popular Elements

Compared with "partner group marketing", it emphasizes the influence of KOL or KOC more, and uses the social relationships within the group to organize marketing activities to achieve linkage of the entire group. Symbolic marketing emphasizes more on the establishment of brand cognition system and discourse power among post-00s.

The post-00s generation emphasizes individuality, and individuality is reflected through some avant-garde symbols or carriers. Their language expression system is most representative:

The post-00s have created many of their own language symbols on the Internet, including YYDS, CQY and many other simplified "jargons" that do not conform to grammatical rules at all.

Internet jargon has formed a threshold, helping 00 to exclude dissidents and find people with similar interests. When they consume, they will look for products that are consistent with the symbols of their group.

These fashion symbols have been widely disseminated and easily become popular culture, and even become the objects of following for white-collar workers and other classes. Many companies have cleverly utilized these cultural symbols.

For example, Luckin Coffee recently registered the YYDS trademark and may carry out a series of marketing activities based on this name in the future. The young group’s inner recognition will drive consumption of the entire group.

03 Model 3: Sensory Marketing - Combination of Art and High Technology

If companies want to win the favor of the post-00s generation, they need to make great efforts to explore some of the popular language, vocabulary, behavior and psychology of this group, and learn to integrate these elements into product development and communication strategies, so as to establish their recognition and trust.

But a brand with real potential must lead cultural creation rather than cater to youth culture.

The post-00s generation is not aware of the origins of their own popular culture, but as outsiders, what they feel most deeply is probably the freshness and surprise that high-tech products and cutting-edge art bring to young people.

Thanks to the profound transformation of the industrial chain by big data and artificial intelligence and the cultural integration brought about by globalization, today's society has greatly enriched the material carriers of youth popular culture. The post-00s are very curious about the latest digital technology, art and culture, and are also willing to pay for it.

At present, the consumption boom for national trends is brought about by this group. On the one hand, they like the novel experiences brought by science and technology, which drives brands to continuously increase the technical threshold of their products; on the other hand, their deepening understanding of art trends also makes brands pay more and more attention to cultural construction.

It can be said that the post-00s generation are both good-looking and artists, they are geeks and scientists.

04 Model 4: Private Domain Marketing—Reshaping the Relationship between Brands and Consumers

Among young groups, the Internet has surpassed print media in taking on the responsibility of communication, offline experience has surpassed online experience to become a powerful tool for brands to communicate with consumers, and brand co-creation has surpassed brand fans to become a new model of brand relations.

The young people of the 90s are the "sensory experience generation", and the young people of the 80s are the "image generation". The "image generation" will intuitively look for the remote control when they see the picture, while the "sensory experience generation" will look for where the mouse is. The post-00s are a "confused generation" who will spare no effort to actively seek out products that match their spirit.

Therefore, private domains are becoming increasingly important as a communication channel that is closer to users.

The biggest feature of private domain operation tools represented by WeChat for Business is not only that they can achieve backward compatibility in communication between brands and consumers, but also that, unlike social media such as Weibo, private domains have highly personalized characteristics. Brands can accurately express their brand values ​​and concepts to consumers through private domains.

It is said that Luckin’s private domain marketing is currently very effective, so I won’t go into detail on the data here. The private domain gameplay represented by Luckin Coffee can be called "efficiency-oriented" - they attract consumers to place orders in the form of coupons and achieve scale through software group control.

But from a certain level, Luckin Coffee only uses private domain as a reach tool, which is not in line with the private domain and emphasizes the essence of service and communication. On the contrary, private domain marketing similar to Perfect Diary has more advantages. At least, every "Chibi Maruko-chan" is a real individual.

05 Model 5: Subculture Marketing—Market Segmentation Promotes New Business Opportunities

Due to the mental immaturity of the post-00s generation and the fact that they are in a stage of strong pursuit of knowledge and understanding of society, they are divided within the group and form their own small circle culture. These small circles have become the subculture of the post-00s generation.

At present, the popular subculture of the post-00s group includes 169 cultural circles including Hanfu, rap, and street dance. These groups each have their own outstanding personalities and characteristics, as well as different pursuits and tastes.

Therefore, the post-00s generation is often regarded as a "complex" group by the older generation. Many companies also believe that young people are a big market, but this group likes complexity or multiple styles, and it is impossible to truly create products that all young people like.

The answer is always one dimension higher than the question.

Many marketing practices have proved that this group uses many symbols to promote themselves on the surface, but their inner pursuit of product style is not complicated - they just pay more attention to the spiritual and cultural feelings of the consumption process.

You can use AI and big data tags to integrate all interests, or you can find a higher-level "spiritual concept" for the brand to achieve dimensionality reduction, but no matter what method you use, you must not miss the big business opportunities in the segmented market.

06 Summary

For companies, to win the favor of the post-00s generation, they need to create various experience opportunities for them, and at the same time, convey the spiritual concept of brand differentiation through experiential marketing.

Moreover, the younger the group, the more it needs further segmentation of the brand's spiritual culture. Otherwise, it will be difficult for many products to establish correspondence and penetration with the group.

In short, brand spirit is important if you want to impress post-00 consumers!

Author: Community Marketing Research Institute

Source: Community Marketing Research Institute