An article reveals the "marketing decoding" of MINISO

How to build a good store brand?

For example, first you need to do a good job of store positioning; secondly, rely on creativity, leverage KOLs to quickly get out of the circle, and then conduct strong penetration. You can get many answers of this kind, but you will find that they are scattered all over the place and ultimately cannot form a combination punch.

Branding has passed the era of "empiricism only"; we need to move from the described "phase" to the "situation" where successful brands exist.

Only by returning to the "source" and using the traditional culture's "transcendentalism, holism, and mind-understanding unity" as reference tools and combining it with one's own situation can we gradually sort out the internal causal logic.

Today, Zhiyuan is reading the book "Breaking Word of Mouth: Brand Methodology from 0 to 15 Billion" and will talk to you about the brand philosophy behind the explosive growth from five dimensions.

01. A huge mountain for traditional stores

On October 15, 2020, MINISO was listed on the New York Stock Exchange with 4,200 stores worldwide, with the stock code MNSO and an issue price of US$20 per share. As of the close of U.S. stocks on October 16, the stock price rose 11.02% to US$23.18 per share, and the total market value reached US$7.046 billion.

However, behind this high-flying journey, countless offline retail companies are still suffering from the impact of the epidemic. According to Qichacha Professional Edition data, from January to July 2020, a total of 2.31 million companies were deregistered nationwide, which shows how great the impact on small and medium-sized physical retail is.

Many people may wonder, in such a depressed external environment, why did Miniso expand aggressively and even become the "first value retail stock" listed on the New York Stock Exchange? What is its confidence?

Before answering this question, let’s focus on the six major challenges faced by the traditional retail industry when MINISO was first established:

1) E-commerce maturity, 2) logistics acceleration, 3) payment changes

4) Inefficiency, 5) Management chaos, 6) Information disconnection

For the former, the essence of business is transaction, and the core of transaction is to reduce "fulfillment efficiency"; the maturity of e-commerce companies has continuously upgraded the online shopping experience, and business operations have become more direct compared to offline, which has an overwhelming efficiency advantage over offline.

In the meantime, with the rise of mobile payments, the consumption path has been shortened rapidly, and the actions from "planting grass" to "pulling grass" can be completed at home, which directly forces the improvement of logistics efficiency.

Secondly, traditional retail enterprises have no competitive advantages in market positioning, product prices, promotional methods, service quality, etc., and many employees adhere to small business thinking. In addition, management is chaotic and cannot be empowered, which makes the headquarters and agency interest management separated, and ultimately forms a hostile relationship.

Furthermore, the flourishing Internet has made traditional entrepreneurs out of touch with information, which has directly led to weak data technology management and a lack of solutions to personalized needs; rigid thinking has led to a fear of spending money and a reluctance to spend money; and even if they want to spend money, they don’t know how to spend it.

Since 2011, Mr. Ye Guofu has frequently visited and studied in countries with more developed retail industries, such as the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

Having personally experienced how those affordable products that were popular among foreigners continued to dominate the market during the global economic recession, these questions always dominated his mind:

1) Why are physical retailers in developed countries abroad not afraid of the impact of e-commerce? Don’t they have companies as large as Alibaba and JD.com?

2) Chinese manufacturing has reached international standards, so why can’t brands offer “high-quality products at low prices”? 3) Why can’t consumers enjoy “low-priced high-quality” products in China?

With this question, Mr. Ye Guofu believes that it is due to the brand's greedy control of prices and the pursuit of high-violence quick money that forces consumers to go online.

Secondly, the channels from manufacturers to consumers are outdated and heavy, with many middlemen making a profit from the price difference. In addition to raw material processing, there are also large marketing expenses that directly restrict the development of traditional retail.

The key to competition between e-commerce and physical retail may no longer be online or offline, but the distance between the factory and the store . Since the old way doesn't work, it is better to use Internet thinking to transform traditional retail.

In 2013, Mr. Ye Guofu met Mr. Junya Miyake, a young Japanese designer. He had a deep and unique insight into the high quality and low price of Japanese products. He believed that the design should be simple, natural, plain and not exaggerated, and the price of the products should also be affordable.

The two hit it off at the conceptual level and started their joint entrepreneurial journey. After learning from the business strategies of one-price stores such as "one dollar stores" and "100 yuan stores" in many countries, MINISO was born using reverse thinking to break the traditional "three old" (old model, old thinking, old technology) model.

Data is always the best evidence. In November 2013, the first MINISO store opened grandly in Guangzhou China Plaza; by the end of the same year, 27 more stores were added.

One year later, 273 stores were opened; in 2015, 1,075 stores were opened. The sudden popularity is not only a reflection of going with the flow, but also a reflection of the differences in its business philosophy and market strategy.

#Setting the bottom line

How can a new species be discovered, known and loved by more users?

This was the most important issue for MINISO in its early days. In the past 5-10 years, it was easy to build a brand. As long as you had enough budget and seized the golden channels, it was easy to open up the market.

But now that users are overloaded with information, their needs have shifted from material to experience ; from uniformity to personalized customization. It is not enough for the brand to say good things in public, but it requires the recognition of the people in the audience.

Therefore, MINISO insists on the "reverse" model: good products - massive users - word-of-mouth communication - brand ; and summarizes its own methodology, namely: the "three highs, three lows" model.

Three highs: high quality, high efficiency, high technology

Three lows: low cost, low gross profit, low price

There are four main principles for high-quality products:

1) The top leader must be deeply involved in product research and development. When the company is first established, a product committee is set up. The team leader is the founder, and the deputy team leader is the global product manager; the participating members are category managers, fashion buyers, designers, store managers, regional managers, brand department, etc.

2) Nearly 1,000 new products are launched every month, with a selection rate of 5%. Product selection follows Steve Jobs’ principle of creating the ultimate impact, following the principle of “focus, focus, and focus again” .

3) Invest heavily in R&D and quality control, establish international buyer teams around the world, covering nearly 300 designers, and study fashion elements from various countries at the first time.

In addition, Mr. Ye Guofu established the "Quality Guarantee Fund Plan" with his own money, and launched the 1+1+1 (self-inspection, other inspection, national inspection) control mechanism, and put quality strategy first.

4) Focus on design, do not add or subtract, just make the right differentiation.

Huang Hai of Fengrui Capital once proposed a concept called "picture formation rate". The aesthetic dividend is directly related to the picture formation rate, which refers to how many users out of 100 users who purchase the product are willing to take photos and share them. This indicator can indirectly reflect the aesthetic tendencies of the new population.

In terms of high efficiency, MINISO adopts the 711 strategy, which means launching 100 new products every 7 days, and maintaining about 5,000 new products a year.

To this end, standard logistics warehousing has been set up around the world, and no stores are required to retain inventory; everything is controlled by the headquarters, and deployment is completed based on regional sales.

In terms of high technology, we firmly use IT technology to achieve a 21-day commodity circulation cycle and control the logistics distribution error rate within 0.3%.

In the third low dimension, the gross profit margin of traditional retail is generally 35%. Miniso's supply chain cooperation model of large-scale factory supply, "pricing based on quantity" + "buyout customization" + no pressure on payment for goods has forced the market to scale.

Many people may wonder, how can this method enable stores to quickly grow in volume and achieve a balance between the supply chain and stores? The key lies in the brand’s strategy, namely “explosive product strategy + products with strong demand + high-frequency consumer products”.

So how should we do it specifically? MINISO focuses on the concept of "disconnecting and letting go", targets people born after 1985 and 1990, and innovates by identifying users' pain points.

For example:

There is an eyeliner that sells for 10 yuan. The reason for developing this product is that most products on the market have a major defect that is that they are easy to "smudge", which is more likely to cause disasters, especially in summer.

So MINISO found a joint venture with Chanel, Dior and other brand manufacturers to create an ultimate eyeliner of 0.01MM.

Its selling points are easy to use, easy to remove and no smudges, and it is promoted on major social platforms; global sales exceed 500 million units.

#StoreRenovation

There is a typical thinking model in psychology called the "Peak-End Rule". In order to better connect with the user base, in terms of store operations, MINISO adopts the "good products, good environment, and good services" as the center, focusing on providing the ultimate experience offline and taking over online traffic.

Based on the product, we first grasp the "emotional appeal". Mr. Ye Guofu believes that the symbolic value of face and low price are the biggest factors in impressing young consumers. The former represents the emotions and sense of value needed for life; the latter represents down-to-earth material life.

Based on the principles of offline "store" and "business", the decoration focuses on two major features: 1) white tone, open space and space boxes; 2) each store has an average of 3,000+ SKUs, shelf height is 1.5 meters, and store floor height is 3 meters.

In terms of display, we focus on eight principles based on our own characteristics of "mainly small products and large customer flow" :

1) obvious, 2) rich and full, 3) easy to take, 4) classified display, 5) first in first out, 6) related display, 7) vertical arrangement, 8) prime location display.

The posters, materials, audio and video required by the store are all SOP-based. The store’s POP focuses on product display, while oral broadcasts and videos focus on service.

Promotional materials for marketing activities are concentrated on the LCD scrolling screen at the checkout counter. The former maintains brand influence, while the latter allows consumers to enjoy shopping with less advertising interference.

In terms of service, we adhere to the "three no principles" (no service, no sales, no shopping pressure). Except for shopping guides for cosmetics, the work of other store clerks mainly revolves around four aspects: display, hygiene, anti-theft and cashier.

At the same time, in order to measure customer satisfaction, MINISO proposed the "Customer Expression Index Theory".

That is, the facial expression of a customer when he walks out of the door after checking out. If he looks happy while flipping through the shopping bags, it means he is very happy with his purchase; if he has no expression or looks embarrassed, it means he has doubts about the purchase.

Based on the redefined "people, goods and place", the brand reputation has gradually been established . Behind this, the marketing team has done a lot of thinking and action, such as the layout planning of social platforms, online and offline linkage, and how to use the tone and emotion of young people to communicate with them and become one with them.

02. Cultivation of a fan matrix with millions of fans

Looking at the development history of MINISO, it can be seen that despite the lack of huge advertising investment, it still attracts users; the ambition and foundation of building a brand ultimately lies in the ability to "create content, activate content and monetize content."

In 2016, MINISO CMO Mulan was determined to do one thing: to set up a content operation team dedicated to producing high-quality content. She also raised content to a higher status than products, and drove users through production and distribution of applications to establish emotional connections with them.

#New traffic depression

It is relatively simple to get started. You can use thousands of offline stores to place posters with QR codes giving away shopping bags on the LCD screen of each checkout counter. Consumers can get shopping bags by just paying attention to them when they are shopping.

Why use shopping bags? The reasons are: 1) The cost is low, and users walking on the street with shopping bags increase exposure. 2) Free benefits for second purchases. This method accumulated 10 million fans in less than a year.

Based on the background data characteristics, MINISO has repositioned itself as: a warm brand = hard-core products * interesting people.

The entire strategy at the time adopted three major actions: 1) creating a persona, 2) creating comics, and 3) creating emoticons ; creating characters that can be both handsome and cute, such as Xiao M, Xiao Mei, and the foodie and otaku M, and using comics to further narrow the distance between fans.

On a daily basis, the team focuses 60% of its energy on topic selection and content creation, ensuring that what is said is substantial and what is written resonates with the public; allowing users to gain benefits and not producing spam. The team's tasks mainly focus on: 1) selecting daily topics, 2) gaining insights into content, 3) keeping up with hot topics, and 4) topic selection meetings.

Topic selection:

Mining keywords based on target users, and then arranging and combining them, such as storage, girlishness, fashion, face shape; short stature, taking pictures, etc., dig out the points of convergence between the keywords and the brand products, and use them as topics to produce articles.

Contents:

Analyze the performance of your own account and the content selection direction of similar accounts, and use third-party platforms for detection; collect useful articles to form a material library, and find points that match your own official account for secondary creation.

Follow the hot spots:

For example, a body spray called 10 yuan Joe Malone was promoted on Douyin, and the "Social Peppa Pig Doll" and the double-layer "flip fruit plate water filter basket" were also pushed to the hot search by netizens.

So we followed the trending team and planned a tweet titled "TikTok has sold out popular items, and there are other hidden gems that only insiders know about. We have uncovered them for you."

Topic selection meeting:

One week in advance, ask each editor to submit their topic selection in a form. After team interaction, they will select the ones they like and dislike and explain the reasons.

#Create100,000+

MINISO’s content adheres to the “Four Musts” rule: 1) high quality, 2) emotional, 3) useful, and 4) interesting ; it is so strict that “articles about the boss’s attendance at events cannot be published” and “articles about the company winning awards cannot be published”; content that is not relevant to fans and does not have opinions cannot be published.

The core of Youpin lies in the quality of content. Quality can demonstrate the character of a company; for every hit article and every word-of-mouth product review short video.

From topic selection to excellent copywriting expression, it will take half a month or even a month to revise and polish it repeatedly, and it will not be pushed until you are satisfied.

Youqing is based on the similar values ​​of the enterprise and its users. It can be a TV series that you have watched, a discontinued variety show, a photo full of a sense of time, a fashionable retro outfit, or a topic that everyone is interested in.

This resonance can bring laughter and memories to readers, it can bring identity recognition and respect, or it can bring emotional resonance.

The core of usefulness is "a rigid need". The more practical the content is, the higher the probability of being collected. When users collect more content, they will become interested in it and will think of it again when they have related needs next time.

For brands to create popular content, they need to reduce users’ time costs and make users feel a strong desire to forward and share, rather than wasting time. Therefore, they use daily editing to create original comics and often create a gamified reading experience.

The team adopted two methods in selecting titles: voting and establishing a title library. The title dimensions tried to create suspense and doubt as much as possible, be relevant to me, contain conflicts, use specific numbers to depict details, stimulate pain points and provide solutions, and highlight benefits.

We should also review the daily activities, which are: 1) data layer, 2) manuscript layer) ; the data layer is the rational layer, which mainly focuses on reading, evaluation, forwarding and collection for evaluation; the manuscript layer focuses on the three dimensions of tweet quality, creativity and opinions.

Many content entrepreneurs encounter the problem of advertising loss. MINISO adheres to the three principles:

1) Toutiao is not open to cooperation, 2) no more than two pieces of content will be published in a week, 3) no hard advertising will be accepted; even if it is a sub-brand of the group, if the tone of the content does not match, it will be firmly refused to be published.

#Fans self-propagation

MINISO's new media operation strategy is not to easily explore new platforms before understanding the algorithm rules of a certain platform; because each platform has a different operation methodology, the team will first get a feel for the platform, and then move on to other platforms after success.

But the only things that remain unchanged are: 1) user-centricity, 2) creating four-quality content, and 3) not being a producer of junk content.

During the operation of Weibo, we insist on putting aside our brand image and publishing content just like operating WeChat Moments; in terms of style, we convey a brand image that can be both salty and sweet, with an interesting and fun style.

In terms of interaction, operations colleagues will post some activities to guide likes. Sometimes the topics are nonsensical, but the fan interaction rate is high. Colleagues organize at least one small welfare fan event every week and one large welfare event every month.

For example: new product benefits, movie ticket exchange, have a very good conversion effect. On the one hand, it can promote the main product; on the other hand, it can mobilize the enthusiasm of fans to evaluate, and the cost will not be too high.

The content is not limited to brand information, insists on 80% original + 20% forwarding, and focuses on timeliness, knowledge, interaction and fun.

Operations colleagues search keywords on Weibo at 9 a.m., 2 p.m., and 8 p.m. every day to monitor public opinion, and respond promptly to positive reviews and follow up on negative reviews. In addition to new media marketing, MINISO also has different methodologies in product marketing.

03. Marketing of hit products

In 2017, MINISO's brand promotion expenses were less than 30 million yuan, which was a drop in the bucket for a large enterprise with sales of 12 billion yuan at the time.

So how do we get a product with hundreds of millions of traffic? The answer is that success is a matter of opportunity.

MINISO is standing at the forefront of the new media era. The marketing methodology of traditional brands comes from the AIDAS funnel marketing proposed by Louis in the 1960s.

Based on this model, brand advertising needs to reach consumers more than six times in a month to change their minds.

Judging from today's Internet, this model requires a long time and cycle investment; because external media factors have undergone tremendous changes, and at the same time, the boundaries between products, content, media, and channels are becoming increasingly blurred.

If we use this model, problems will easily arise, so the team innovated a new marketing mechanism - the PTM rule for explosive products.

P (product): product perceived value

T (Topice): Word of mouth breakthrough

M (marketing): external promotion

The P dimension still revolves around the traditional four-P marketing model, namely product price, channel, and promotion ; after any new product is developed, how does the brand quickly and accurately push the product to consumers?

The most important thing in the T dimension is to build social barriers among specific groups of people, that is, everyone around the consumer is using it and says it is good; there are four aspects to summarize, namely : 1) people, 2) tools, 3) topics, and 4) sense of participation.

In terms of external marketing, we follow three major rules, namely, using public opinion platforms (social media) to expand influence (corporate public relations) and integrating and leveraging momentum (cross-border cooperation).

#Four major elements of hot-selling promotion

How to make consumers choose your product from many similar products? You need to create a super good sense of value. If we only make something that we feel good about, but users think it is dispensable, it will fail 100%.

The four major factors for promoting MINISO’s hot products: 1) look at the product, 2) look at the users, 3) look at the competitors, and 4) look at the trends.

There are three reference bases for looking at products, namely: category dimension, price dimension and hot spot dimension.

In terms of category, does it have unique selling points, is it good-looking and is it a necessity? At the same time, can it be micro-innovated? Furthermore, whether it has technological support, endorsement from a big-name supply chain, authoritative certification, or has won industry awards, etc.

In terms of price, on the one hand, we need to understand the payment threshold of consumers. Generally, products with high cost performance can easily trigger impulse purchases by consumers, and the conversion rate is relatively high. On the other hand, some products with high unit prices but technological support are also very suitable for promotion.

Therefore, product promotion does not mean selling at a lower price, but rather starting from the value that the product brings to society and users, and finding the value threshold that consumers are willing to pay.

The hot topic dimension refers to the topicality of the product itself and whether the product can arouse consumers' discussion. Generally, there are two major rules: 1) natural traffic, 2) content genes;

For the former, consumers are very willing to buy even without any marketing promotion, and it is easy for KOLs to recommend products like nine-square eye shadow. For the latter, it is easy to inject content when creating products, such as visualization, perception, and spreadability. Can be performed.

Look at the users: As the name implies, we should start from the root of users, discover their needs, create value and spread value, rather than showing a variety of creative ideas right away; just like the saying, what users want is never a drill with a diameter of 5mm, but a hole with a diameter of 5mm.

We often think about 5 questions:

1) Who are the target consumers, 2) What do they need, 3) Why do they have such needs, 4) How to satisfy them, 5) What value can be created for them?

There are two aspects to look at when looking at competitors: 1) finding differentiation, 2) highlighting the product’s superior value. The former mainly focuses on whether there are similar core product functions. What are the micro-innovations of this product compared to similar products?

The latter mainly grasps the invisible needs of customers, such as social consumption, appearance, consumption, emotional consumption, etc.; for example, a cup of milk tea, others sell an ordinary bowl of pearl milk tea, but you sell taste, appearance, and story.

When looking at trends, we should proactively focus on market heat and users' exploration of social short video media.

#grass marketing word of mouth

Selecting the "grass" of the product is the first step, and actively attracting consumers is the core purpose, so the key to marketing lies in whether you have the ability to plant grass; MINISO mainly starts from three aspects, namely: 1) niche circles, 2) channel selection, and 3) content dissemination.

Circle aspect:

Tmall divides the population into eight categories: new white-collar workers, senior middle-class people, sophisticated mothers; small town youth, urban silver-haired people of Generation Z, urban blue-collar workers, small town middle-aged and elderly people, etc. MINISO also follows this principle and does not pursue being big and comprehensive, but only focuses on a certain circle.

Channels:

There is an internal formula: F (media quality) = M (transmission speed) ✖️A (channel communication effect) ; a pyramid model is used for delivery, which is followed by celebrity top KOLs, mid-level KOLs, and long-term micro-blogs and amateurs.

However, it should be noted that the traffic of social media continues to sink from the top, and users will become more and more dispersed; for example, originally a few top bloggers were enough to drive the voice, but now it takes thousands of small bloggers to drive it.

Top KOLs generally have 50,000 to 300,000 fans and mainly play three roles: brand image, producing marketing content and bringing goods; mid-level KOLs mainly output real experiences and influence ordinary people to bring UGC content.

In terms of content, the communication directly hits the pain points and itch points, telling consumers what problems the product can solve, or reminding consumers what problems they will encounter in life if they do not buy my products, and displaying them intuitively.

The overall gameplay is divided into six stages:

The first stage is to confirm the core selling point of the product; the second stage is to create topics, plant seeds, create memes, and produce scenario-based content; the third stage is to conduct multi-dimensional product evaluations and build word of mouth.

In the fourth stage, during the dissemination and diffusion process, mid-level KOLs join in the evaluation and produce trial experiences to endorse the product.

In the fifth stage, a large number of KOCs release information, and intensively promote product experiences to set the pace; in the sixth stage, ordinary consumers post their orders, creating a nationwide trend and conducting word-of-mouth certification.

04. IP co-branded marketing decoding

Since 2016, MINISO has launched new products in succession with globally renowned IPs such as Pink Panther, Naked Bears, Sesame Street, Forbidden City, and Marvel. It has been creating popular series with rhythm, frequency, and content, using new ideas to attract attention from the circle.

The methodology of IP marketing can be summarized as the onion model, namely: 1) content going viral, 2) IP empowerment, and 2) brand core.

The former includes topics, background, and sales; the original intention of empowerment is to cleverly use integration to achieve influence; the core is values, target audience, and cultural matrix.

#IP collaboration helps MINISO

First: Break the ceiling of product design

Second: Keep the brand young and vibrant

Third: Well-known IPs bring their own traffic, bringing huge advertising effects

Let's first clarify the concept and logic of IP. The so-called IP usually refers to the ability to break free from the constraints of a single platform and gain traffic on multiple platforms by relying on its own appeal; the content for distribution can be a story, a person, a comic, or even a name or symbol.

IP can be divided into enterprise-owned IP creation and IP marketing. The former refers to the enterprise's anthropomorphic or anthropomorphic packaging of its own brand or product, such as Jiang Xiaobai and Three Squirrels.

The latter is leveraging marketing, which means that the company cooperates with certain well-known IPs from the outside world to empower the brand through joint ventures.

There are two reasons why IP is so popular: first, compared with advertising, IP’s own traffic can increase exposure, and it can also interact with fans through personalized content;

Secondly, IP represents a kind of cognition, which will bring a group of fans who trust the related brands.

#Use IP to endorse products:

In terms of IP, MINISO has developed three strategies. The first one is to deeply bundle products with IP peripheral customization and design. For MINISO, the long-term lifestyle concept centered around product design creates brand imagination and attracts consumers to make long-term purchases.

After obtaining the authorization, the first thing we need to think about is how to associate the characters and story symbols of the MINISO IP, rather than simply printing them on a logo.

During the cooperation with Pink Panther, MINISO developed a series of products targeting the cute image, such as baseball caps, hardcover stationery, plush dolls, cosmetics and dozens of other SKUs.

The second type is the way to sell popular products at affordable prices. After other brands cooperate with well-known IPs, the prices of their products double because of copyright fees, and it is normal for limited edition products to increase in price.

However, there has been almost no price increase for Miniso's IP co-branded products. This is actually a way to restrain one's own greed. Whether it is the cooperation with Marvel or Pink Panther, the brand's price and gross profit system must be respected.

The third method is to let users tell stories with IP: for example, the MINISO*Pink Panther marketing event has four steps:

Step 1: Understanding

Considering that joining hands with Pink Panther is the first time that MINISO has cooperated with a big IP, the preheating phase must be explosive. Therefore, in addition to the official announcement on MINISO’s own social media, WeChat Moments ads and Weibo splash screens were also added to build momentum for Pink Panther’s upcoming appearance in stores across the country.

Step 2: Start a conversation

To attract consumers' attention by creating topics, the creativity and execution mainly rely on two activities: 1) H5-style activities, the official Girls' Heart Revival Challenge, and 2) creating the topic "Other People's Boyfriends".

September is the start of the school year for major universities, so Miniso used the topic of graduation and breakup as a starting point, packaging the male and female protagonists as going abroad to study further, as a surprise for the girlfriend who is a veteran Pink Panther fan.

He domineeringly bought out all the Pink Panther dolls in the MINISO store and used them to decorate his girlfriend's room. During the entire filming process, he also carefully designed emoticons of passers-by as a communication channel.

Step 3: Stimulate Desire

In addition to guiding online traffic, the campaign also carried out a large-scale Pink Panther roadshow offline, during which many game sessions were set up. One of the sessions was that fans could participate in the lottery by presenting their receipts as long as they purchased related products in the store.

Another part is to allow fans to obtain medal certification by playing games and post it on their Moments to collect likes. You can get a prize draw.

Step 4: Sedimentation of users

The strategy for building a social media planting matrix is ​​to target a certain segment of the population and find the most influential KOL in the relevant field.

To this end, we divided the search for promotion into two branches: 1) Find 50 bloggers through intensive promotion on Xiaohongshu, with the content mainly focusing on the joint penetration of Pink Panther and MINISO.

2) Find senior fans of Pink Panther and reach cooperation with bloggers through gift exchange, allowing bloggers to publish content for free.

Through recommendations from numerous KOLs and spontaneous word-of-mouth content dissemination by consumers, the entire project ultimately received 230 million exposures during the promotion period.

Many people think that IP cross-border cooperation is just a marketing event that will be short-lived; but we have to admit that IP cooperation has brought huge traffic and attention to Miniso, but what is important is that after the integration of the two cross-border brands, there will be more possibilities for cooperation.

Another example:

There are two main extensions in the creation of the Marvel Black Gold theme store. 1) In terms of products, the copyright holder of Marvel opened IP licenses in 123 countries to MINISO at one time, covering five continents and 13 product categories.

2) Transform the store’s visuals, deeply integrate the display and hero images, turn the virtual into the real, and create a scene-based spatial experience.

In terms of national trends, after the official announcement of the joint cooperation between MINISO and the Palace Museum, there was no rush to put products on the shelves in stores. Instead, MINISO carefully designed an event to allow users to feel involved and launched the "MINISO Creation Office" event.

The event is themed on elements of the Forbidden City and is an open design competition for netizens. The author who receives the most votes will receive a prize of 10,000 yuan.

This event attracted more than a thousand fans to participate and produced more than 1,300 works; the team quickly followed up and launched a topic on Weibo called "The Forbidden City has been ruined", which eventually ranked eighth on the Weibo Funny List with 90 million reads and 98,000 discussions.

Therefore, rather than the continuous voice of a single brand, stimulating consumers’ content co-creation will make the brand content output more contagious.

The IP marketing methodology model is actually a circle, which starts with IP, expands to topics, and finally returns to products; but we must remember that brands that can retain consumers are not because they keep up with trends or indulge in IP, but focus on the inner qualities.

05. Decoding the hot star marketing

More and more brands have realized that fans are the undisputed primary productive force. Fan circles and traffic circles have become popular among brands in this era.

In order to better play with young people and leverage their brand co-creation power, traffic stars and fan economy have undoubtedly become the best leverage points in the eyes of many brands. There are four dimensions for entertainment marketing:

#Marketing Circle Model

Why has the celebrity endorsement effect, which is considered invincible by many brands, failed to work? Looking at phenomena through their essence can be summarized into three dimensions:

First: The traffic of some stars is fake traffic. Second: The celebrity circle effect is difficult to break. Most stars find it difficult to influence mainstream consumer groups other than fans to make active purchasing behaviors.

The rise and fall of this purchasing power is controlled by celebrities and their large number of fans, independent of the ability of brand public relations.

Third: The backlash of star traffic and the collapse of the personalities of many IPs; in response to these situations, more mature entertainment marketing models for small and medium-sized enterprises should be:

Celebrities lead the traffic and fans co-create content. In the process of content co-creation and circle breakthrough, the brand is deeply bound and spread.

Catalyze the most important chemical reaction in fan circle marketing, the conversion of fan energy from core fan circle to ordinary fans and then to brand fans; in summary: 1) bind with stars, 2) product customization, 3) core fans bring goods, 4) expand the circle of passers-by

#Weighing the pros and cons of three major strategies

How should brands choose a more suitable celebrity cooperation strategy? There are three dimensions here:

1) Scientifically evaluate the value of stars, 2) Evaluate and manage the effects of stars, 3) Unlock more ways of cooperation.

Brand and celebrity collaboration is a combination of two IPs. The two are not isolated but rather match in tone, which is a basic win-win situation. Beyond traffic and topics, the deeper consideration lies in the degree of compatibility between the two.

Secondly, it is necessary to clarify whether the appeal is to "bring image", "bring goods" or "bring topics"; brands need to consider the following questions when choosing to cooperate with celebrities: what type of celebrity is suitable for the brand?

1) What kind of value return do you expect from celebrities?

2) Massive exposure to improve, or improving youthfulness?

3) How to strike a balance between traffic and volume?

If the budget for cooperation is limited, it is not recommended to choose annual endorsements with large budgets, but rather small-budget project cooperation to maximize the star value.

For example, consider a short-term endorsement model, lock in stars with the potential to become popular, pay attention to their growth cycle and cooperate with them during their traffic dividend period, and use a small budget to leverage large traffic.

#High opening and low closing 10 billion effect

The entertainment marketing thinking of most brands is still stuck in the money-burning mode. They spend money to hire spokespersons, and then buy out, spread, display, and expose their products on major social channels. Such strategies may seem to have a lot of traffic, but they do not really reach the core fan base.

There are several strategies that MINISO can refer to for its collaboration with Lu Han Sports Season. The first step is to clarify the needs. What problem do we need Lu Han to solve? 1) Output of brand awareness, 2) Product promotion, 3) Content output;

Focusing on these three points, we have integrated resources on online new media platforms and offline stores across the country, opened up the entire chain, and used several killer features.

Killer weapon 1: Confession to Lu Han

During the warm-up phase, an H5 event was launched to fans to confess their love for Lu Han. Fans could enter the page by scanning their receipts when shopping at MINISO stores. The company used social media KOLs to post relevant tweets, quickly capturing a large number of Lu Han fans in the market and attracting attention.

Then, this was used as an endorsement to promote the information about the cooperation between MINISO and "Lu Han Sports Season", and "Lu Han Sports Season" was used to dominate the New York Times Square as a lucky draw gift to attract more user attention.

The final prize is linked to the incentive of dominating New York's Times Square and the consumer's ticket scanning and lottery draw, which encourages consumers to make transactions.

Killer weapon 2: Sports season poster

The cooperation period with Lu Han was three months. During this period, we replaced the window hangings and display screens next to the cash registers of all Miniso stores with Lu Han posters, and put up a new poster every week.

In terms of cross-industry cooperation, major shopping malls across the country have also given a lot of support. They have replaced the atrium advertising space in the mall with MINISO and Lu Han’s sports season posters; at the same time, they have played the VCR recorded by Lu Han in the stores on a loop.

Regarding the posters, we launched a series of promotional activities in our stores, offering a signed version for free with a purchase of RMB 138 or more. What’s surprising is that after getting the posters, fans will spread the word of mouth on Weibo and WeChat Moments, which greatly enhances the brand’s reputation.

Killer weapon three: customized gift box

The event takes place on Chinese Valentine's Day, and because Lu Han likes the number seven, we hold events in various stores. On Chinese Valentine's Day, 24 customers who go there before 13:14 and spend more than 177 yuan can receive a Lu Han sports season gift box. We also create a sense of scarcity by giving away limited quantities.

Judging from the final results, the event greatly stimulated the purchasing power of star-chasing girls. Two days later, all 1,000 limited gift boxes were sold out, much faster than expected.

Killer Four: Romantic Marriage Proposal Events

After gathering the power of fans, Miniso took the opportunity to create a real proposal marketing campaign on the Chinese Valentine's Day. It happened that the girlfriend of a colleague in the department was a loyal fan of Lu Han, and this colleague was about to propose during that time.

So the time, place and people were in harmony, and the team of his girlfriend planned a marriage proposal for him at Miniso store, which attracted a large number of people to watch.

We sent this couple custom gift boxes and blessings to related products, and used the live broadcast of Internet celebrity KOL to radiate the event to social platforms and capture traffic in turn.

#Operating stores trigger sales

The ultimate goal of entertainment marketing is not to treat fans as leeks, but to allow brands and fans to create new things together, retain younger customers, and ultimately convert fans into users of their own brands. Taking Miniso and TFboys' fifth anniversary activities as examples:

First of all, the first main line: the official detonation event preheating stage adopts the Lu Han sports season model to further package the image of Miniso’s national store.

Based on the background that the concert tickets are difficult to get, from the perspective of fans, more than 300 tickets are distributed to fans as benefits, and different lottery activities are launched through multiple channels.

Secondly, the second branch: to create topics by taking advantage of the situation; in order to undertake online traffic during the heat storage period, we use other social platforms to create a communication matrix and frequently exposed, allowing the communication to sink and involve more different circles.

Next, the third branch: fans strongly assist UGC; when the official ticket delivery event was officially released, tfboys fans responded quickly, and organized the event guides themselves, shared them in the fan circle, effectively assisting our promotion.

The last fourth branch line: at the concert site, use the star image to consolidate the brand image; during the concert, Miniso’s official Weibo outputs pictures of the live concert in real time, making full use of the popularity of the concert to interact and communicate with fans.

At the same time, I was immersed in the benefits of tfboy fans who were joined by Miniso, and began to feed back to the brand. I would also like to post photos of concerts on social platforms, which is the biggest recognition for Miniso.

The summary is summarized into three points : 1) Amplify the star effect, 2) Personalize the content, 3) Brand *star equals assetization; at different stages, whether the brand is holding hands with the spokesperson or other, and finding the most suitable marketing method is the key.

To summarize:

Miniso's marketing can be said to be a "duplex".

New media + new channels + new products = new brands. Although new is always emphasized, consumption is always inseparable from its essence: "product, price, experience".

From a product perspective, product innovations that cannot match consumer needs are meaningless innovations; high-quality and low prices are the world's pass.

The difference between good marketing and bad marketing lies in whether it can magnify the product's advantages and then be recognized by more people. As Sister Mulan said: Only by understanding young people can this business continue.

Author: Wang Zhiyuan

Source: Wang Zhiyuan