Uncovering the 6 “new” languages ​​of brand marketing

Six major trends and three values ​​interpret the communication methods of brand marketing in the first half of the year. The chapter begins in July and the first half of 2021 officially ends. As brands return to the stage of centralized expression, countless marketing events continue to refresh the brand's self-expression. Driven by multiple circles, diverse content, and various channels, there are more and more communication points between brands and consumers, and various brand concepts are pouring towards consumers like a wave.

In this process, how brands can transform their communication language system to directly face and impress consumers through continuous marketing innovation has become a top priority. Su Yu, general manager of Tmall Brand Marketing Center, once regarded it as the key to solving brand marketing problems in an exclusive interview with SocialBeta.

Based on observations from the first half of the year, SocialBeta focused on the potential changing trends of this communication language system and extracted three values ​​from it. Represented by Tmall, many brands continue to expand their communication radius with consumers through innovative discourse and get closer to all aspects of life.

1. Create new communication horizons

Trend 1: Product innovation and internal function upgrade

Every time a brand speaks out, it reveals its brand concept in its entirety. But this is not a unilateral expression of the brand, but a two-way communication clearly directed to consumers. In the rapidly iterating brand communication language, the unchanging core is the exploration of consumer demand, especially product demand.

Products are directly linked to purchasing behavior. With the rise of consumption power among the younger generation, brands’ product vision has been broadened. During the 517 Food Festival, Xiong Kun Kun coffee liquid, Alyso meal replacement milkshake, Buff X white kidney bean chewing candy, Li Ziqi rice sauce and many other delicacies were first launched as "food samples" on Alibaba's official trial platform Tmall U at a price of 0.01 yuan, and they were sold out immediately after they went on sale.

It goes without saying that the current product category has changed. The products that brands push to consumers are not the same as formal wear, and samples are gradually becoming a product form accepted by the market. In this context, Tmall U first realized the consumption characteristics of young people who love to try new things, and transferred the sampling concept in the beauty and skin care industry to the entire industry, and deeply operated the sample market economy.

With a "low threshold + high cost-effectiveness" approach, samples meet young people's experience needs for various types of products, while helping brands penetrate new consumer groups and complete product testing and new customer acquisition at the same time.

Behind the appearance of loving to try new things lies the consumption concept of the new generation: products not only have the functional use, but also have the emotional function of expressing personality and attitude, and are the only choice for expressing oneself. Individuality has become the aspect that young consumers look at when looking at products. They fully understand the intentions of brands and will vote for matching brands through their purchasing behavior.

During the just-concluded 618, Pop Mart’s newly launched MEGA collection series figures were featured on Tmall Little Black Box’s “HeyDrop Best Products Lottery”, and the event attracted the attention of young people as soon as it went online.

The scarcity of this product, which is limited to 3,000 pieces worldwide, coupled with the uncertainty of whether or not you will win the lottery, further highlights the luck of the ultimate successful buyer.

Prior to this, Tmall HeyBox HeyDesign also collaborated with the godfather of Harajuku, Hiroshi Fujiwara, to release custom-designed co-branded T-shirts and hoodies, and invited 42 top design masters to explore new product design concepts together, using different design thinking to turn new products into value symbols, highlighting the consumer personality of the new generation of young people.

It can be seen that the brand is carrying out panoramic in-depth development around the products, continuously thinking about the multiple functions and intrinsic value of the products, and matching diversified consumer demands with multiple types of products. When a brand gives its products a different "personality", it also provides consumers with a new channel for self-expression and helps them speak their mind.

Trend 2: Sharing the truth, planting and pulling grass "zero distance"

If a product is placed in the entire consumption chain, the actions closely related to it are the new product launch at the starting point and the purchase at the final point. Between these two points, the contact between the product and the consumer is "planting grass". As an important factor influencing consumer motivation, the key words for brand "planting grass" in the first half of the year were authenticity and effectiveness.

The great enrichment of material life has made consumers more open and inclusive, and also made them more cautious in making decisions. Compared with the past trust in a single source, today's consumers are more willing to listen to a wide range of authentic voices. We might as well regard the sample as the first step for consumers to come into contact with the product. Then, if we disassemble the logical structure of Tmall U, we will find that it has completed the four links of testing, sharing, promoting and pulling out the grass.

In Tmall's U-first channel, there is a content column called "U Show Report", where consumers share their real trial experiences with each other through pictures, short videos, etc., forming a grass-planting community dominated by the perspective of ordinary consumers.

On the professional consumer perspective, Tmall chose to work with celebrities to introduce products through live broadcasts and short videos. Since April this year, well-known actress Cecilia Cheung has served as Tmall's official information officer. She has been focusing on consumers, doing homework, and recommending her daily necessities, which are also selected as hot-selling products in Tmall's hot-selling list.

The consumption influence of celebrities in a wide range not only helps consumers to have a comprehensive and detailed understanding of products before placing an order, but also establishes a new path for brands to integrate product quality and effect: by leveraging the way celebrities share their own good products, fans and consumers can have more trustworthy and in-depth connections with the celebrities themselves, achieving new model innovations for celebrity-endorsed products, and then using celebrity live broadcasts and short videos to promote products and complete order conversions.

Tmall brings together and displays the product experiences of different groups of people, making recommendations more authentic and reliable, providing solid support for consumer decisions, and thus guiding brands to adapt to consumer needs.

More importantly, from the perspective of the consumption chain, the operating modes of Tmall U-first and Tmall's hot-selling list have integrated the two links of planting grass and pulling grass into the logical structure. Grass can be planted and quickly pulled out at the same time, shortening the consumption chain and effectively increasing the purchase rate.

2. Building a new communication discourse

Trend 3: Stand with consumers and extract consumer insights

In the communication language system between brands and consumers, brands are not the only one-way voice. Consumers also play a key role in interactive communication. It can be said that to some extent, it is the continuous flow of consumers who are providing feedback, supporting and interpreting the brand's expression.

This new dialogue and communication between brands and consumers is deeply rooted in every consumption behavior and continues to occur at different consumption stages. In mid-May, six brands, including Moco, Specialized, Vanderan, Handing, Zhunzhe, and Yongpu Coffee, brought out the theme of "wild luxury" with five small outdoor scenes, using products across multiple categories such as sports, clothing, and beverages to interpret "wild luxury is popular."

This event, planned by Tmall Zhenghong, was initiated based on Tmall's observation of strong growth in various data of outdoor brands and categories, and based on Tmall platform data to gain insights and predict consumption trends.

Tmall and other brands have created a new consumer culture circle for specific new scenarios. Through the repeated purchasing support of consumers, it has been able to explode from a niche circle and move towards the mass consumer market.

On the other hand, hot topics of public concern have also become the direction of brand expression. Trendy Dragon Boat Festival, life-saving staying up late, scientific pet raising, hot summer exercise, new luxury... During the 618 event, Tmall summarized the top ten hot topics on social media in the first half of the year and launched the slogan of "Top Ten New Ways of Life", matching topics with consumption scenarios, and then connecting brands and products, leading hot consumption to break through the circle.

This approach of catering to public concerns has led to a deep connection between hot topics and brands, opening up a new arena for brands to communicate with consumers across categories and scenarios.

Of course, consumers are not entirely behind the scenes in the co-construction of discourse with brands. At the Trendy Coffee event on Tmall Super Category Day, six people who seemed to have no overlapping identities, including a hand-brew barista, a cross-border illustrator, and a travel expert, told their stories about coffee in front of the camera, shared tips on drinking coffee, and introduced the characteristics of different coffee brands.

Tmall uses more professional and rational insights to segment consumer groups and consumption scenarios from multiple dimensions. On this basis, it collaborates with senior experts in the field to popularize knowledge about products and product culture, truly allowing consumers to stand at the forefront of interactive communication with the values ​​advocated by brands.

Whether observing general consumer behavior or engaging with professional consumer groups, brands already regard consumers as peers in their communications with consumers. Based on real-time attention and insights into consumers' needs, Tmall continues to lead consumption trends and create an ideal life together.

Trend 4: When brands meet each other, they jointly create a "new" consumption trend

In this digital information age, a fact that cannot be ignored for brands is that the traffic dividend is declining, while the cost of acquiring customers is rising.

Faced with an increasingly competitive environment, brands urgently need to expand new consumer groups and new consumption scenarios. As a platform, Tmall is striving to promote joint cooperation among brands and create greater potential for cross-circle communication.

Driven by the context of consumption upgrading, more and more niche consumption trends are being amplified. Since the first half of this year, Tmall has launched special events for maternal and child care, storage, coffee and other categories. Among them, the coffee category day has exploded for three consecutive years, helping the new category of coffee liquid to become the second sub-category in the Tmall industry, and the transaction volume exceeded Double 11 to become the top 1 of the whole year.

It is not difficult to find that Tmall is focusing on the consumption psychological needs of new groups driven by more markets, linking more captain brands to accelerate the development of segmented tracks, leading the upgrading of category consumption trends, and driving the upgrading of national category structures.

In addition, Tmall, which is currently very popular, is also entering into new consumption scenarios, promoting both new customer acquisition and activation through "one big theme + multiple small scenarios + multiple categories".

With its powerful integration capabilities, Tmall is helping brands break free from the constraints of categories, connecting different brands and categories horizontally, and helping them to extend external scenes, so that hand-brewed coffee is not exclusive to high-end office buildings, but can also appear at wild luxury camping sites.

Under the layout of the new consumption scenario, Tmall has, on the one hand, reintegrated brands and products to achieve cross-penetration of different consumer groups and enhance consumption conversion; on the other hand, it has created consumption trends to help brands complete the transformation from popular items to mature categories, and promote the upward development of the entire industry.

In recent years, domestic trends have emerged and domestic products have become popular, which fully demonstrates the changes in local consumer psychology and the shift in the consumption environment - it is time to shape a consumption trend that belongs to the local area.

Therefore, brands should pay more attention to the demand segmentation and refined operations of different consumer groups, and explore the "leading consumption upgrade" after fine-grained analysis of young people's needs. With the joint efforts of brands and brands, categories and categories, they can provide consumers with fresh marketing solutions and new consumer supplies.

3. Leading new communication value

Trend 5: Return to centralized expression and create brand super symbols

In the current context where new brands and new products are constantly emerging and consumer supply is greatly enriched, competition among brands is shifting from tangible products to intangible values.

Looking back at the marketing cases in the first half of the year, we can see that more and more nodes are becoming important opportunities for brands to output their brand value. At the brand’s biggest voice node of the year, Tmall Super Brand Day chooses to help brands return to their own values, and help brands complete their internal value sorting and external consumer expression.

On Women's Day this year, Tmall Super Brand Day teamed up with 26 super brands to present a "Twenty-six-line Poem to Women", which further interpreted the value propositions of the 26 brands in the discussion of "women's issues".

In an environment where women's issues are becoming more diverse, individual and realistic, Tmall Super Brand Day brought about a sincere communication through the "Twenty-six-line Poem". In the short film, the 26 brand names also refer to any ordinary woman. The 26 diverse daily cross-sections allow a wider range of individuals to gain recognition and inspiration.

In the subsequent 520 super project, Tmall Super Brand Day linked up with six major super brands including Bulgari, Dove, Fotile, Kérastase, Longines and vivo, and joined hands with Li Yinhe to bring "The Golden Age of Love".

In this set of "Golden Age of Love" themed posters, in order to interpret the value of love, each brand combines brand tone and product characteristics, adding some more delicate descriptions and concrete product references, allowing the brand's presence to be further magnified.

Under the dual potential of "nodes + topics", brands continue to convey the brand voice of "who I am, what I want to express, and what I want to become" to consumers, further strengthening the brand's own influence.

If product power is the direct externalization of brand power, then value expression is more like the implicit internalization of the times in brand power. Standing at the height of brand value, the brand continues to innovate and move forward with the help of topics and language that are relevant to the times, resonating with concepts and consumers' minds, and thereby gaining more resonance and recognition.

Trend 6: Maintain a forward-looking vision and reconstruct a "new" consumer lifestyle

In the decades of rapid development of the Internet, every online purchase actually records the changes in ordinary people's lives and consumption concepts, and also carries the mark of the passage of time. From some perspectives, the commercial force represented by brands is also the driving force and creator of social progress.

In May this year, Tmall Heybox and Alibaba Design Institute jointly released the "Tmall Heybox New Design Product Trend Report". Relying on its powerful data network, Tmall summarized four major trends: "Freedom of Nature", "Tide Surging", "Playful Personality" and "Technology Opening Up", which pointed out the direction for the new design product market in the future. At a time when experience and spiritual consumption have become the new mainstream, Tmall Hey Box is more concerned with injecting a more "interesting soul" into new products and showcasing the personality and passion of Generation Z.

As a platform creator for continuous innovation among co-brands, Tmall Super Brand Day provides brands with a better centralized marketing stage and continues to explore ways of communication between brands and consumers; Tmall Little Black Box brings new product design trends; Tmall is currently popular and leads new trends; Tmall Super Category Day taps into insights into consumer potential.

It is not difficult to see that Tmall Brand Marketing Center is starting from "people, goods and places" and through forward-looking layout, it is constantly exploring and promoting an innovative language system between brands and consumers, helping to connect new demands and new supplies and redefine new consumer life.

As consumers continue to grow, the language system for brands to communicate with consumers also needs to be continuously optimized and iterated. In SocialBeta's view, continuously upgrading the language system for effective communication with consumers is one of the sources of brand vitality.

As rejuvenation becomes a common, industry-wide, long-term brand marketing issue, brands are striving to achieve more effective communication with target consumers over a longer life cycle. In this long-term communication race, continuous innovation is the only way to enable a brand to stand higher, go further, and win in the end.

Author: Natsumi, Rosy

Source: SocialBeta (ID: hisocialbeta)