Hongxing Erke Marketing Revelation

So far, there are two best cases of social marketing in 2021: one is the king of sinking tea drinks, Mixue Bingcheng, which became popular on the entire Internet with a magical theme song MV; the other is Hongxing Erke , which has disappeared from the public eye for many years and netizens once thought it had gone bankrupt. Even though it lost 220 million yuan, it still donated 50 million supplies to Henan, and its brand reputation and live broadcast room sales instantly reached maximum.

But in the case of Mixue Bingcheng, there are obvious signs of human manipulation. Its MVs and brainwashing music are all carefully produced; while Erke is more like a "natural event" that combines the right time, place, people and many coincidences.

From all angles, Erke did not expect at the beginning that it would have such a large voice. It was just a routine donation, but it was unexpectedly discovered and spread by Weibo netizens. After that, many "memes" were derived in the live broadcast room and Weibo, and spread explosively on major platforms, and finally "accidentally" became a hall-level social marketing case.

1. What did Erke do?

After the ERKE incident exploded across the Internet, countless brands and marketers were thinking about "what did ERKE do right?" But there is probably no answer to this question, because the communication event was highly accidental and had low replicability, and more importantly, Erke, as the protagonist, did not do much.

At first, Erke just posted an announcement about their donation on Weibo - a routine operation that everyone does, and there are many companies that donate more - the real trigger was this comment under the donation Weibo, and a picture that was subsequently circulated on major platforms:

Even if it suffered a loss of 200 million yuan, it would still donate 50 million yuan to help the poor. The image of this old-fashioned domestic product and national enterprise was immediately established.

With this strong sense of contrast, the recognition of national enterprises, and the reputation of affordable and high-quality products that Hongxing Erke has accumulated over the years, netizens have developed great love and sympathy for it, and quickly flocked to its brand live broadcast room, pushing the traffic of the live broadcast room, which originally had only dozens of viewers on a daily basis, to tens of millions.

This live broadcast room soon became a new communication node: the anchor with strong professional ability quickly got into the state after a period of panic, interacted naturally with the audience, and successfully caught this large wave of traffic.

Since then, jokes and gags like "The president of Erke rode a shared bicycle to the live broadcast room late at night, and the bicycle was swept away by someone ten minutes after the broadcast", "The president advised everyone to consume rationally, and netizens asked the president to stop interfering", and "Wild consumption" have spread virally in the comment sections of Weibo, Douyin and Bilibili. The Erke incident has completely gone viral and has become the hottest brand in recent days.

Frankly speaking, it is extremely difficult to replicate the Hongxing Erke incident. Because as a domestic brand, Erke has 20 years of accumulated sedimentation and brand potential in the field, which is very scarce. It is precisely because it has the sedimentation but has failed to continue to stand on the top of the wave in the new era that there is this sense of contrast and drama - the same logic applies to Huiyuan, White Elephant and Guirenniao, which have become popular in recent days.

What really deserves the attention of brands and marketers is not ERKE itself, but the platforms and new tools that have been overlooked in this incident but have played a huge role.

2. Brands must have their own broadcast room

The live broadcast platform is very important. Brands doing social marketing must have their own live broadcast room. Because the live broadcast room is not only a collection point for netizens' emotions, but also a scene for brands to show themselves, interact with netizens most directly, and establish emotional connections. It is another node for the event to be escalated and spread again, and it can also directly convert emotions into sales and purchasing power.

The two most popular live broadcast rooms recently are the Hansu live broadcast room involved in the Wu Yifan incident. The two hosts were paired up by netizens due to their excellent professional abilities and super sweet interactions. The other is Erke. Most of the jokes mentioned above originated from this room: the hosts have been urging netizens to consume rationally, and did not take the opportunity to promote products or raise prices. Instead, after the inventory was sold out, they sat down and chatted with the audience while eating. The overall perception and brand image are very good.

When a hot topic appears, netizens will quickly flock to the scene to "check in" and "eat melons". For companies like Hongxing Erke, the first thing netizens want to do is to support them with real money. The strong presence and interactivity of the live broadcast room can quickly carry emotions and convert them into purchases. Netizens can interact with the anchor in the live broadcast room, place orders to purchase goods, and chat with the barrage of comments. This feedback experience is incomparable to the "cold" traditional e-commerce.

Therefore, no matter how much traffic a brand has at ordinary times, it is best to have a permanent live broadcast room and an anchor with strong business capabilities on call at any time. Once a hot spot appears, they can make a public relations response as quickly as possible or convert traffic into sales.

3. Find the most suitable platform for "going viral"

Of course, in the case of ERKE, the live broadcast room is certainly important, but the prerequisite is that the brand must first find the platform that is suitable for itself to stand out.

The essence of social marketing lies in transforming an independent event into a truly public social issue, which then triggers spontaneous positive discussions among netizens, thereby bringing brand value and traffic benefits.

For example, in a Weibo post on July 25, Wu Rongzhao, president of Erke, described in just a few hundred words the hardships he had encountered on the road to entrepreneurship, responded to rumors of "being on the verge of bankruptcy", and stated his and the brand's original intentions. He caught this wave of large traffic on this hot spot very well, and directly raised Erke's brand image to a higher level. This Weibo post quickly became a hot topic on Weibo and went viral, and then continued to top the hot search list on Bilibili and Douyin, achieving quite efficient dissemination.

In this era of mobile Internet where traffic is highly dispersed across different platforms, "going out of the circle" is both a brand's appeal and a necessity: because only by going out of the circle can super-scale, cross-group communication be achieved. Brands that want to do social marketing will most likely only be able to choose a specific platform as the first place to release information, and then use it as a basis to "break the circle" and spread to other platforms.

So what kind of platform is most suitable for being the first launch site for breaking circle dissemination? In other words, what kind of platform can enable brands to successfully receive huge traffic when it arrives and convert the traffic into brand value? The answer in terms of product mechanism is naturally interaction. Interaction can allow others to see a vivid brand image and enable the brand to respond quickly. Interaction includes two points: immediacy and sedimentation.

The live broadcast room has the strongest immediacy, but the problem with the live broadcast room is that it is always "live" and lacks "history", that is, it cannot accumulate information, and the information that can be transmitted within the same length of time is too little. The audience may not stay in the live broadcast room to listen to the host. Once some key content is missed, it cannot be seen by the audience. Therefore, it is more of a collector of traffic monetization and audience emotions. The jokes and key information generated in the process can only be disseminated outside the site after being refined into pictures and texts after the live broadcast.

But when audiences come to the brand’s online space, they want to understand the brand, get emotions and stories, so you must have more content to be seen.

At this point, the accumulated advantages of platforms such as Weibo come into play: viewers can quickly learn about the brand through the main text and official conversations in the comment area. There is a large amount of content to browse, and the brand can show its best side. Weibo's product mechanism does a good job in this regard. Highly praised comments and bloggers' comments will be highlighted, allowing netizens who come to browse to get relevant information most conveniently. For example, Wu Rongzhao, president of Erke, personally interacted with netizens on Weibo and listened to their opinions.

If a brand wants to attract traffic and communicate with the public, executives and bosses must have their own certified Weibo account. Because the strength of the self-broadcasting room lies in the ability to accommodate traffic, and having a Weibo account can release information, generate traffic and discussion as quickly as possible, and further absorb traffic and continue to cause topics. On such a hot social issue, the boss himself posts a Weibo and interacts with netizens in person. The effect is far greater than that of a cold public relations announcement.

At the same time, Weibo may be the most suitable platform for spreading emotions. Most of the highly-praised comments on Weibo are short and highlight emotions, and long messages account for a relatively low proportion, so it is easy for brands to get "likes" from users.

But there is still a question: why don’t other graphic and text platforms that also have the ability to accumulate content have the same functions as Weibo?

Because these platforms lack mindset and accumulation. Weibo has been dealing with celebrity and socialite resources since the PC era. To this day, Weibo remains the preferred platform for celebrities and socialites to release information. It has considerable content reproduction capabilities, which is something other platforms lack and is also Weibo's barrier. Therefore, Weibo is often the first point where hot events occur, and Weibo's hot list directly affects what topics can attract public attention, so netizens' first choice for "eating melons" and "chasing hot topics" is often Weibo - although other platforms may have more analysis and opinions, Weibo can restore the most authentic first-hand scene.

On this basis, Weibo's resources are unique on the entire Internet. It still has considerable advantages in creating topics and releasing information.

4. What should brands not do in social marketing?

Social marketing is a lot like leverage in the financial system: it provides high returns at low cost, but also amplifies risk. When a brand is at the center of a hot topic, huge amounts of traffic can both build the brand and bring it huge profits, but it can also subject the brand to more stringent scrutiny from the public. If it is not well controlled, it can be very easy to "turn over" and be hit back by the traffic. Therefore, when traffic comes, it is crucial to seize the opportunity and at least not do anything that damages the brand value.

For example, after the Hongxing Erke incident, many hosts of live broadcasts of footwear and clothing brands hung white boards around their necks with words like "Hongxing Erke yyds" and "Go buy Hongxing Erke" written on them. This kind of forced traffic and obvious showmanship naturally attracted a lot of doubts and disgust. For brands with higher positioning, it is even a "cheap" behavior.

Finally, in the current Internet culture, affordable brands with deep offline presence are often more popular with the public, while some high-end brands need to be more cautious when trying to do social marketing. Because in the popular values ​​on the Internet, products that exceed the psychological anchor price often mean original sin. In this case, doing social marketing will turn yourself into a living target of public opinion.

In a continuously evolving society, change is a constant. This change not only includes the replacement of new and old brands, but also the interweaving of power between new and old platforms. For example, in recent years, with the rise of short video and medium video platforms and the emergence of live broadcast rooms, the communication chain of public events has gradually changed from the past dominated by pictures and texts to the current situation where video platforms and pictures and texts each occupy half of the market and each has its own advantages.

An interesting rule is that there is no fixed relationship of strength between "new" and "old". Although a large amount of traffic later poured into the live broadcast room, Weibo was the most important initial dissemination site and subsequent key dissemination node at that time.

If it weren't for the initial comment from the Weibo user and if it weren't for Wu Rongzhao's subsequent interactions and responses on Weibo, this incident would most likely not have attracted any attention in the first place. As a platform for instant interaction between brands and consumers, Weibo can accommodate the emotions of different consumers to the greatest extent possible and has become the best outlet for gathering traffic and emotions.

It's like Erke, as an old brand, is loved by consumers today because of its identity as a national enterprise and domestic product when a large number of new brands are emerging. Perhaps there is no established boundary between the new and the old. Each has its own advantages, and things change over time.

Author: Li Xiaonan, Editor: Yang Zhenxin

Source: Sincerity Studio