How much reference value does Durex’s copywriting have for you?

A friend came to complain, saying that his boss asked him to follow Durex 's Thanksgiving copy and come up with something like thanking XXX. He wrote it very seriously and published it as quickly as possible. However, the circle of friends did not lead to crazy forwarding of their content as the boss imagined. The boss was angry and put all the previous failures in chasing hot topics on him. Now this friend has been suspended...

In fact, what is so good about Durex’s copywriting ?

Unless I’m just following it for fun, I never follow this kind of hot topic. Because I know clearly that the brand I am working on is far from the stage of interacting with big brands and playing with copywriting.

In other words, there are prerequisites for playing with copywriting.

From the perspective of brand development , Durex has completed the first two steps of brand accumulation, that is, from establishing category awareness to establishing basic brand awareness.

In other words, the Durex brand has firmly occupied the mental high ground of the condom category ( a typical sign is that when people think of condoms, they think of Durex ). For Durex, its current marketing task is to strengthen cognition and establish brand image, so it has the capital to play with copywriting ( and its brand tone is also suitable for this, which may not be suitable for an expert brand such as McKinsey ). As long as its copywriting is good, it will be very easy to spread.

But for most followers of Durex copywriting, the stage their own brand is at is completely different from the stage Durex is at , and they are essentially not the same thing, so you cannot achieve the same effect as Durex.

There have been many negative examples of failure in the history of business competition where attempts to imitate big-name marketing were made. For example, when Jianlibao first launched its fifth season beverage, it also imitated Coca-Cola's competitive image advertising, but it ended up failing . Why? The essence is to incorrectly define the starting point of corporate marketing work.

As a mass consumer brand, Coca-Cola has long been recognized in the minds of consumers. When consumers see Coca-Cola advertisements, they will automatically classify them into the "cognitive shelf" in their brains . They will consciously and automatically know that Coke is a carbonated beverage, what category Coca-Cola is and when they need to consume it. As for the new brand "Fifth Season", there is no cognitive basis in the consumers' brains. Even if the screen is filled with image advertisements, consumers don't know what you are talking about, and accordingly, it is difficult for them to generate purchasing behavior.

Therefore, directly imitating the marketing behaviors of successful big brands will not bring you much help , and may even lead your own marketing into a pit.

If you really want to do marketing like a big brand, what you need to study is not the copywriting bionics of the big brands after they succeeded, but

Brand archaeology .

For example, what is worth learning from for the fifth season is not what Coca-Cola did after it occupied the minds of users, but what Coca-Cola did when it first entered the market .

Start by establishing category associations and answering the three questions of the brand: "What are you?" and "How are you different?" Only then will it be possible to connect to the minds of consumers and make consumers think of you in certain purchasing scenarios.

Similarly, if you want to learn from Durex, you need to go back to the earliest Durex and get new ideas from its earliest practices.

From the higher level of imitating Durex, the imitator's original intention was to attract the audience's attention. But what the imitators did not take into account is that while you are chasing Durex, others are also chasing Durex, and everyone is chasing Durex. At the same time, so many brands are chasing and imitating the same hot spot, from text to layout, which will lead to a more serious problem: stimulus adaptation .

To put it simply, if you keep saying "wolf", no one will pay attention to you after you say it too many times.

This also answers everyone’s doubts:

• Why is everyone using this copywriting, but I don’t see any results?
• It worked fine some time ago, why doesn't it work recently?
• It works well in this city, why doesn't it work in that city?
• …

The reason is that there are too many of the same things, users are tired of seeing them and don’t want to read them anymore, so your copy is useless.

The "quotation style" that was very popular in information flow advertisements before is a typical example. Judging from the advertisements I have seen myself, at least six industries, including decoration, loans, used cars , wedding dresses, and investment and franchising, are using this hot routine.

The result of frequent stimulation of users is that the cost for advertisers to obtain customer leads through these popular copywriting is getting higher and higher. Some advertisers in some cities have even been "forced" to find other ways out due to the high costs.

So where is the way out?

The way out lies in the minds of consumers.

We say that the prerequisite for writing good copy is to accurately grasp the cognitive basis of the target consumers . What kind of copy consumers will pay attention to, understand, remember, believe, follow, and spread depends on their existing cognition and current status.

For example, when we explain to northerners the rice noodles that southerners eat, we can say that they are noodles made of rice. Because noodles are something northerners already know about, the word noodles can simplify the information and reduce the cost of understanding .

So the advice I often give is that copywriters should think about content planning from the perspective of the recipient of the information.

There is a saying in the art of war: "There is no constant state of war, and there is no constant shape of water." It means that the situation of war cannot be fixed. What we need to do is not to use one routine to deal with all problems, but to use the Tao to control the tactics and respond to each move. In this way, your copywriting can take advantage of the situation and fight without slacking.

Ultimately, the purpose of copywriting is to arouse your audience's interest in your product, not in your copy itself. For copywriters, instead of blindly imitating big brands and chasing hot topics, it is better to spend more time understanding your own brand/product/service, recognizing the stage your brand is in, and matching the brand with appropriate promotional copy, that is, writing the right copy at the right time.

People who have just started writing copywriting often feel anxious when they take over a project. After being anxious, they become panicked and seek help everywhere, sending their questions to various groups to see if anyone can help.

To be honest, I understand everyone's anxiety very well. However, although I understand, I do not advocate or support asking for help. So, usually when answering questions, I won’t just give you a ready-made copy. There are two reasons:

First, I don’t understand the full picture of the projects these questioners are involved in, just like if I don’t know a person and you ask me to write a resume for that person, I can’t do it.

Due to my professional habits over the years, I couldn't just hand him a template and tell him that he could use it just by changing the basic information - this would be unprofessional and irresponsible in marketing work.

Correspondingly, my suggestion is that you should understand the premise before thinking about anything. Only when you understand the limitations can you think more freely.

Second, if you plan to continue working in this industry, you must at least have some basic knowledge about this industry.

For example, if you are investing in information flow advertising for restaurant franchise investment, then you must at least have some basic knowledge (you need to learn more advanced knowledge) about these four aspects: the restaurant industry ( i.e. industry background ), investment and franchising ( i.e. marketing tasks ), information flow advertising ( i.e. promotion methods ), and potential franchisees ( i.e. advertising audiences ). If you have no idea about these four aspects, even the best experts may not be able to help you.

" The Art of War by Sun Tzu - Use of Spies" says: Therefore, the reason why wise kings and wise generals can take action and defeat the enemy and achieve success beyond others is because they are prophets. The knowledge of prophecy cannot be obtained from ghosts and gods, cannot be symbolized by things, cannot be verified by measurements, but must be obtained from people, who are the ones who know the enemy's feelings.

In simple terms: the business world is like a battlefield, and research is the basis for writing good copy and the key to winning the business war.

Copywriting is what the brand ( also known as advertisers ) says to consumers. So what to say, how to say it, and in what tone are the key challenges that copywriters face.

For example, if you are also doing vocational skills training for junior high school graduates, while your peers are all focusing on how the skills themselves can bring high income to the candidates in the future, you learn from the survey that this kind of training is more often decided by the parents, or the candidates' older brothers and sisters, and the parents, or older brothers and sisters are more concerned about whether these certificates can be recognized by the country, whether the training is formal, whether the school conditions are good, etc. Then, the copy you make for these contents that they care about will be more likely to impress users than simply talking about high income. In other words, because of the survey, you can grasp user needs more accurately, and you can also say what users want to hear, thereby achieving better advertising effects.

Therefore, we say that the reason why good copywriting can become good copywriting and can be widely disseminated is because it penetrates into the hearts of users and even understands what they care about more deeply than the users themselves. Otherwise, why would users listen to you?

The author of this article @杜江 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, information flow advertising, advertising platform