When it comes to product promotion, are you a domineering president or a stingy boss?

The author of this article will share with you 4 cases in product promotion : at the critical moment, the decisions of spending money and not spending money adopted by the "domineering boss (domineering president)" and the "stingy boss (stingy president)" respectively, will bring about completely different final effects. enjoy~

As you all know, I have been working tirelessly to promote self-propagation, telling everyone " how to embed marketing into products so that the products can speak for themselves, or find ways to make marketing activities attractive and inspire users to share and forward spontaneously ."

In my self-propagation methodology, I do clearly despise and oppose all practices of "only competing for media coverage and simply spending money on advertising" as ruthlessly as autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves, but I do not absolutely prohibit spending money .

What I mean is, you can spend money, but spend it wisely and maximize the utility of every penny. We are pursuing self-propagation, but sometimes giving some money can make the dissemination more powerful.

However, I have met many bosses who go to extremes, always thinking “without spending a penny, becoming popular overnight, and quickly reaching 100 million users”.

Therefore, when the marketing department works hard or comes up with some amazing marketing ideas by sheer luck, and when the company encounters a once-in-a-lifetime marketing opportunity, the best opportunity for brand communication is missed because the boss is stingy and indecisive when it should be bleeding.

The typical scenario is this. The stingy boss only thinks about ways to save money, so he will tell you: This is a good idea, quickly Photoshop a few pictures, post them on Weibo or WeChat , and test the effect first.

Unfortunately, in many cases, "as he expected", the effect was not earth-shattering, and even Mr. Wang next door was not surprised. As a result, the boss will be proud of his accurate judgment and will not help but fall at the feet of his charmer.

However, the truth is this : for some good ideas, whether it is print or video type, posting the same content on your official Weibo and WeChat, and spending some money to put it in newspapers, subways, and outdoors, the two approaches will produce completely different effects.

The former is often lukewarm, while the latter may become popular overnight. As the saying goes, "The timid will die of starvation, and the bold will die of gluttony." Sometimes it is really true.

There are two reasons why the two are so different:

• The two channels create different contrasts . The essence of marketing is to create contrast. The greater the contrast, the more self-propagating it is. A slightly out-of-the-ordinary print advertisement or viral video, placed in the ever-present online environment, is like a drop in the ocean and no one will pay attention to it. This is like injecting glucose into the body of a netizen who has already developed severe drug resistance, and the reaction is mediocre. But putting it on traditional media channels that cost real money will make people "surprised and exclaim in awe". This is because the latter will create a huge contrast. We have seen that in traditional media channels that lack novelty, 99.9999% of the advertisements previously placed were conservative and bland. In this context, when your content is slightly different, it is easy to attract attention and stimulate self-propagation.
• Two channels, different sense of ritual . Of course, traditional media such as "newspapers, television, subway, and outdoor" are not completely useless. They have a unique value, that is, "sense of ritual" , which is something that the grassroots Internet environment and those slightly higher-end so-called Internet portals and circle of friends advertisements do not have. Therefore, even if the content is mediocre in creativity, it will give people a different feeling when placed in these places with a sense of ritual. Therefore, we can see that many companies that do not like to place hard advertisements on weekdays will also choose to spend money to place brand image advertisements during the prime time of the Spring Festival Gala every year. On the one hand, the ratings are high during that time period, and on the other hand, it has a sense of ritual. On the contrary, if you watch this kind of uncreative film on your mobile phone, the effect will be much worse.

Below, we will combine several cases to experience the huge difference in the final effects brought about by the decisions of spending or not spending money adopted by the "domineering boss (domineering president)" and the "stingy boss (stingy president)" at critical moments.

1. NetEase Cloud Music launched in Hangzhou subway

In March this year, NetEase Cloud Music posted touching and sharp user reviews of its products on the Hangzhou subway, triggering a huge self-propagation effect.

The WeChat index of its "NetEase Cloud Music" soared from around 80,000 before the launch to nearly 14 million. This hugely successful marketing campaign is also an excellent example of what I advocate: “mining marketing materials from products.”

As we all know, the traditional way of generating ideas is for the marketing department to brainstorm repeatedly behind closed doors. If you can't come up with a breakthrough, find some external brains or experts to continue to come up with the breakthrough, or just be lazy and hand it over to the other party and abuse the advertising company to do it. But most of the time, I can’t find any touching content like the ones above.

Let’s change our thinking. Internet products have accumulated so much data and content. Why not dig for treasures directly in the products?

For NetEase Cloud Music, since the highlight of the product is its community attributes, users can comment on songs and there is also a like function. So, with tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of people writing comments in it, there must be some wonderful content.

This is easy: ask the technical department to find the top 1000 comments with the most likes, and hire a few interns to look at a few hundred comments each. Moreover, there is no need to formulate any sophisticated selection principles. Just select those that make children cry or laugh, and they will be the best distribution materials.

Ok, now that we have the ammunition, let’s look at two different approaches:

Boss : Great! Book a subway station and sweep it inside and out. Make it a river of blood! I want people to be stunned as soon as they enter the subway, and I want to turn the advertisement into a tourist attraction so that everyone can take selfies!

Mr. Kou : These comments are indeed good. Xiao Wang, quickly edit a few pictures and post them on Weibo or WeChat to see the results first.

Obviously, if we do what Mr. Kou said, the effect will be hundreds or thousands of times worse. What a pity!

2. Tencent Cloud won the bid for Xiamen government cloud project for 1 cent

Around March this year, the news that "Tencent Cloud won the bid for Xiamen Government Cloud for 1 cent" almost dominated the screen.

While competitors such as China Mobile, China Telecom , and China Unicom were struggling to offer prices between 1.7 million and 3 million, Tencent Cloud unexpectedly did not follow the rules and directly quoted 1 cent. This extreme and inhumane price instantly killed everyone else and ultimately won the bid.

As we all know, the cloud computing market is highly competitive, and brands such as Alibaba Cloud have already gained the upper hand.

Under such an unfavorable market situation, facing the bidding for the Xiamen Government Cloud project worth about two to three million yuan, Mr. Ba and Mr. Kou would do the following.

Domineering Boss : You can’t catch a wolf without sacrificing a child. How could our great Tencent lack such a small amount of money? Just don’t take these millions, brothers, give me 1 cent! Make Tencent Cloud popular!

Mr. Kou : This project is very important, we must win it, but we can’t lose too much money, the minimum offer is 1 million!

Obviously, if we follow Mr. Kou's thinking, let alone 1 million, even if we grit our teeth and offer an ultra-low price of 500,000 according to his style, it will not cause any spread.

The boss's extreme and domineering "1 cent offer" may seem to make him earn two or three million less on the surface, but the advertising effect he gained cannot be exchanged for 20 to 30 million or even hundreds of millions.

I have conducted research on different occasions and found that many people know this case, which shows that the advertising effect is indeed very good.

The best plan is the one that can be imitated by others. After this incident, some cases of 0 yuan bidding appeared.

PS If you want to continue to innovate with this routine, I suggest that you not only not charge money, but also give Party A a refund according to the subject amount. That will definitely be a success.

3. Uxin Used Car Ghost Video

On October 7, 2015, the fourth season of The Voice of China came to an end at the Beijing National Stadium Bird's Nest. That night, the Uxin used car advertisement, which set the record of "China's most expensive advertisement" with 30 million, finally appeared.

This 60-second video ad features 11 celebrities including Wang Baoqiang, Du Haitao, Tian Liang, Sun Honglei, and Hu Jun. However, what impressed the audience at the scene and in front of the TV was the ghost-animal video editing style used in the ad. The slogan alone, "Best, best, best, best Youxin Used Cars," has been sung more than 20 times by celebrity spokespersons. The entire advertising clip is highly repetitive, and has the charm of Hengyuanxiang’s “Sheep Sheep Sheep” advertisement back then, and can be called another magical “brainwashing song”.

In this highly anticipated live broadcast program, amidst the "most expensive advertisement in history", such an Internet-style video was actually broadcast, leaving many people "confused" and causing an uproar on the Internet. The Baidu Index of "Youxin Used Cars" soared from 16,000 on October 6 to 160,000 on October 7 and 230,000 on October 8.

If we go back in time to October 2015, the domineering boss and the stingy boss would say this respectively.

Boss : The Voice of China is so popular, we want to be even more popular. We’ll spend 30 million for a 60-second ad, creating the most expensive ad in history, and we’ll have an all-star cast! They also want to show off their dominance and turn celebrities into devious animals in advertisements!

Mr. Kou : Ghost animal videos are so popular, why don’t we make one ourselves? Don’t spend money to hire someone. I have my own IP and I can act it myself. The marketing department will write a script, and we can just record it with our mobile phone and put it online to see the situation first!

As a result, the former was a huge success because it created a huge contrast: the most expensive advertisement + all-star lineup + solemn moments + ghost-like style.

The latter is so shoddy and the boss's IP is so bad that it gives people goosebumps. Under the high pressure of the company's management, the number of video views just approached the total number of employees, ending in a dismal failure.

4. China Auto Rental “Beat U”

On June 25, 2015, Shenzhou Private Car launched a set of posters with the slogan “Beat U, I’m afraid of black private cars!” At least 10 celebrities, including Wu Xiubo and Hai Qing, served as spokespeople and held up yellow cards that read "Beat U", pointing the finger at the popular Uber.

It is not new for competitors to compete with each other, but it is the first time that they do so in such a straightforward manner, on such a large scale, and with the involvement of big stars. Therefore, this set of posters was widely circulated on social media such as Weibo and WeChat, and also triggered heated discussions among professional media, opinion leaders, and ordinary netizens, among which criticism of Shenzhou Special Car was endless.

Although many people despise UCAR because of the "Beat U" advertising incident, overall, UCAR has made huge profits and became famous overnight. This can be confirmed by the surge in UCAR’s Baidu Index and the improvement in its App Store ranking.

Although both are planning to use fraudulent marketing and use small to defeat big, the styles of the domineering boss and the stingy boss are different.

Domineering Boss: Invite all the popular celebrities, scholars, internet celebrities , etc. to come here, let them stand up for us, express their stance, and fight a good battle!

Mr. Kou: Gather all the company management to the conference room, take a photo each, photoshop it and push it strongly on the official Weibo! We speak for ourselves! We are declaring war on Uber!

The result is obvious. Mr. Kou’s investors and friends in the circle sent messages of condolences and asked with concern: Is everyone in good health?

Conclusion

There is no free lunch in the world. Everyone wants to achieve great things with little money, and they are all using "self-propagation, viral marketing , social marketing , and new media marketing." However, it is difficult to really "instantly go viral and become popular all over China," and the chance of success is very low. On the other hand, if you have money, you can just spend a few hundred million to promote it and the effect will not be bad.

Self-propagation is certainly a direction to strive for, but to achieve success in one fell swoop, it requires both good creativity and good timing.

If you are smart and lucky enough, when you have good creative content like NetEase Cloud Music, and when you are faced with a great marketing opportunity that you can take advantage of, you must not be as stingy as Mr. Kou, who ultimately worries about gains and losses and misses the opportunity.

Although you may say that you have good cards in your hand and that you can generate a communication effect of 1 million yuan without spending a penny. But if the boss spent 1 million to put the creativity into a media that can create more contrast and has a greater sense of ritual, and promoted it vigorously, he could achieve a communication effect of 100 million.

At first glance, since Mr. Kung has no investment, his rate of return is infinite times, which is even more awesome, whereas Mr. Domineering’s rate of return is only 100 times. But the problem is, if you want to achieve a total effect of 100 million and expand the user base large enough, you need to encounter 100 such good ideas and opportunities in a row - and this is impossible. Maybe Mr. Kou insists that he is capable and lucky, but I guess he hasn’t even accumulated 10 of them yet, and his company has already celebrated its third anniversary - well, three years since its bankruptcy.

Money is not everything, but without money is nothing.

Money is a good thing, money is an amplifier.

The money belongs to the boss and it needs to be spent.

When faced with good cards and opportunities, bosses and stingy bosses, cherish every moment you have!