6 rules for making your brand a hit!

"The Breaking Bad" talks about how the content of popular culture must follow the rule of "familiar surprise". On the one hand, it must have content that the public is familiar with, and on the other hand, it must have some innovative elements.

After completing the content creation, when disseminating it, it must first be spread by word of mouth in a niche circle, and then slowly spread from the niche at the top of the pyramid to a larger circle like a pyramid. After reaching a certain stage, a large number of people need to receive information from one source.

It is equivalent to moving from the living room to the square, from the niche to the segmented, and from the margins to consensus.

"Going Viral" believes that the spread of hit products requires the design of social currency, scenes, emotions and stories. Social currency includes three aspects: unique design, recognition in public places and practicality.

Scenario design means combining the product with the customer scenario and using scenarios that are familiar to the customer to promote the product; emotional design means combining the product with the customer’s emotions; story design means giving the product itself story attributes.

In short, we should pay more attention to customer experience rather than the product itself.

"Contagion" mentions that the spread of products or culture depends on two tendencies of human psychology: imitation and differentiation. Imitation means doing what others do. Differentiation is what others do, but I just don’t want to follow them. Sometimes people imitate, and sometimes they differentiate, and what plays a role in the process is something called "identity symbol".

We believe that the methods described in the three books have a common core: the mind's lack of security and love of novelty. There are four rules that stem from insecurity: practicality, familiarity, conformity and simplicity. Based on the love of novelty, there are two rules: population differentiation and product differentiation.

practical

"God forbid" mentions that we are naturally attracted to practical information. The book mentions that in 1998, an article claimed that influenza vaccines would increase the incidence of autism in children. This article became a hot topic among the public in a short period of time. This was later proven to be pseudoscience.

But why are people so keen on forwarding such articles? Because it is practical. The most widely circulated headlines are often "Learn these few tricks and let your parents live ten years longer" and "Use these five methods to make your boyfriend dependent on you."

Even the title of this article is like this.

Practicality is the first step to creating trends and building hits. Because we naturally like practical information. However, the book "Contagion" mentions an opposite point of view - at some point, the worse the practicality, the more contagious it is - why is this?

familiar

There are three familiar rules: prior knowledge, cultural matrix, and credentials.

You need to mobilize the customer's existing knowledge instead of giving him something new. For example, the title of this article mentions the names of three books, and anyone who has read or heard of these three books will be interested. What if the title was simply “6 Rules for Creating a Hit”? The attractiveness will decrease a lot.

The advanced stage of existing cognition is the cultural matrix. The cultural matrix refers to the existing cognition that exists in the collective consciousness of human beings.

"The Tipping Point" mentions that in music history, Brahms liked to go to various local libraries to look for local folk songs, then collect his favorite fragments and incorporate them into his own works. In this way, people will feel familiar and close to his lullaby when they hear it.

In literary history, "Pride and Prejudice" inspired "Twilight", and "Twilight" inspired "Fifty Shades of Grey". Readers who are impressed by the first two books will unconsciously like "Fifty Shades of Grey".

In the creation of the film script, "Star Wars" took the concept of "the Force" and a villain in black armor from the "New Protoss" comic. It also imitated the duel scenes in western movies, but moved the duel location to outer space.

The concept of identity signaling is mentioned in Contagion. Identity signals are a form of trust.

For example, what clothes you wear, what car you drive, and what watch you wear will let others know your status. If a person often posts photos of traveling, diving, and skiing on social media, we will think that this person is rich, healthy, independent, and adventurous.

"Contagion" believes that the more public the identity signal is, the better, and the higher the cost, the better. For example, if you show off your doctoral degree certificate, it means that you have spent a lot of time studying in some area.

"Contagion" and "Contagious" have a contradictory point of view. "Contagion" believes that practicality is very important, while "Contagion" believes that the less practicality of identity signals, the better.

For example, many men's beards have no practical value, but the value of a beard is to show others that he has enough time and energy to take care of these useless things, which can indirectly prove that he is a very rich person.

The different perspectives of "Contagion" and "Contagious" reveal a message: we must use all means to prove our high value.

Follow the crowd

There are three principles of conformity: the more public the better, public recognition must be high, and there must be an original group of people.

Caillebotte, who was a contemporary of Monet and was more famous than Monet, is mentioned in "The Tipping Point". After his death, he left a will to donate the works of seven Impressionist painters, including Monet, to the French government, but his works were not among them.

Driven by Caillebotte's descendants, Impressionist painters became more and more famous. Seven painters, including Monet, became historical figures, but Caillebotte remained unknown.

"The Tipping Point" mentioned that in 2012, a video was watched by more than 100 million people in 6 days. This is largely due to the retweets from many celebrities.

"Fifty Shades of Grey" has sold 150 million copies worldwide, first of all because the author has more than 5 million readers online, who are the first batch of readers to buy the paper book.

Thanks to the publicity from these readers, the world's largest book publishing company, Random House, noticed this book. After negotiating the copyright, Random House began to promote this author. Media outlets such as The New York Times and Time Magazine, which have tens of millions of followers, also reported on this book.

It eventually became a global epidemic.

The falcon-wing door design of Tesla electric cars is mentioned in "Contagious". When the car door is opened, it will be raised high like an eagle's wings. Tesla's goal is to increase the public recognition of its products.

Tesla uses a lot of high-tech, but it cannot be seen from the appearance. But the falcon wing doors are easy to spot. Therefore, all of Tesla’s early publicity was based on the background of the open falcon wing doors.

Nike once had a choice between two options - hosting the Tour of America or selling yellow wristbands with the Nike logo - and ultimately chose the second.

Because wristbands are accessories worn outside and are public in nature. At the same time, yellow wristbands are rare and distinctive.

The third principle is the origin population.

"Contagion" mentions an American reality show whose main content is to show young people at the bottom of society who have no jobs, are often drunk, and have confused values.

One day, the heroine of the show received a Gucci handbag, which was a classic Gucci model. The giver hopes that the heroine can use this clutch on the show.

According to general opinion, this handbag should be a gift from the Gucci brand. In fact, this is not the case. After Gucci discovered this, it immediately spent money to take back the bag and did not want the Gucci brand to appear in the show.

A similar thing happened to the male lead of the show, who received money from a clothing brand on the condition that he not wear clothes from the brand on the show.

Because the young people in this program are at the bottom of society, if Gucci handbags appear in the program, it will damage the brand value of Gucci.

"Contagion" argues that we are often influenced by the decisions of others, which is the instinct of human beings as social animals. Throughout the long process of human evolution, we have survived by imitating the behavior of those around us. If a tiger suddenly appears in the forest, some people start running for their lives, and others will follow.

Various trends in society are born out of imitation.

Simple

The rule of simplicity has three manifestations: scenario, emotion and visualization.

"Contagious" mentioned the scenario design of a chocolate brand. The marketers found that customers were drinking coffee while eating chocolate, so they positioned themselves as a coffee companion.

Then an advertisement was filmed: one person was holding coffee and looking for chocolate, and another person was holding chocolate and looking for coffee. The advertisement was very effective after it was aired, with sales increasing by 30%.

The new design of Tropicana caused sales to drop by more than 20 million US dollars because it did not fully consider customer scenarios.

The idea behind the new design is orange juice in a cup, but when the package is placed on the shelf, it is difficult for customers to tell that it is orange juice in a cup. The designers did not take into account the shelf scenarios in which customers purchase.

The second principle is emotionality.

The movie "Contagious" mentioned a musician who was on a United Airlines flight and found that the United Airlines staff carried his guitar roughly. When he arrived at the destination, his beloved guitar was broken.

He spent a long time negotiating with United Airlines for compensation, but the problem was not resolved. In a fit of anger, he wrote a song called "United Airlines Destroyed My Guitar" to express his dissatisfaction. The song went viral millions of times, and United's stock price fell 10%, resulting in losses of $180 million.

The third principle is visualization.

"Subway has 7 sandwiches for you to choose from with less than 6 grams of fat," this is Subway's slogan. But without context, customers won’t understand.

"Eat Subway's diet every day and lose 100 pounds in 3 months." This is a visual design.

We need to transform a product from an internal perspective into a scenario that customers can understand. Because customers are very familiar with visual scenes and understand them as soon as they hear them. I don't feel the technical description of the product.

This scenario-based change has at least three benefits: first, it changes the impression that Subway is junk fast food; second, Subway helps with weight loss; and third, you can eat Subway for three months without getting tired of it.

When it rains heavily in Beijing. Condom brand Durex posted a Weibo: A boy put Durex on his shoes to prevent them from getting wet. This Weibo post was forwarded crazily by netizens.

If you just tell customers how strong Durex is and how large its capacity is, customers won't feel it. But if you switch to a scene that customers are familiar with, it will be memorable.

Population differentiation

"Contagion" believes that humans have the instinct of imitation and the instinct of differentiation.

For example, many people like some niche bands, movies and writers. It doesn’t matter if others don’t know, they just like this feeling of exclusivity. If a band is good but not famous, they will call it a "treasure band".

The instinct to differentiate is because humans are competitive by nature. If most people like one way, there will always be a small number of people who like another way.

To create a hit product, we must make good use of the differentiation instinct of the crowd. For example, Monster energy drinks are designed to attract the attention of young people. When Red Bull sponsors extreme sports such as racing, skydiving and skateboarding, Monster sponsors e-sports competitions.

The latter is obviously closer to young people.

The Beetle was not popular when it first entered the United States in the 1960s. Later, the Beetle associated itself with the hippie movement, encouraging young people to graffiti on cars and turn them into props to express their own values.

This also mobilizes the differentiation instinct of the crowd.

Product differentiation

Just like the psychology of group differentiation, products must also be differentiated.

Brahms, mentioned in "The Blast", is good at incorporating folk songs from all over the world into his own works, which makes his music sound familiar.

This alone is not enough, Brahms would add some church music elements to folk songs to make the music more gorgeous. Make the audience feel novel based on the familiarity.

A study of American pop songs showed that songs with a score of 65 are most likely to become popular. If the score is below 65, it means you have failed, and if the score is 90, it means most people cannot understand it.

"Contagious" mentions unique designs. For example, a mineral water brand launched a product with only half a bottle of water. They put photos of children in the water collection area on the bottle and promised to donate the other half of the bottle of water to these children.

Once this product was launched, it attracted more than 300 media reports and the sales of mineral water increased by 650%.

Author: Zhiyu Brand Positioning

Source: Zhiyu Brand Positioning