The underlying logic of brand leveraging marketing!

Many brands are accustomed to using the marketing calendar as a reference to select some appropriate nodes to formulate the annual marketing plan, because by reviewing the marketing calendar, the marketing rhythm of the whole year can be basically set (excluding some unpredictable sudden hot events).

The marketing calendar can fully cover predictable important nodes such as traditional festivals, solar terms, international festivals, important anniversaries, major brand events, popular film and television releases, historical events, etc.

Under such planning logic, it is not difficult to find that most marketing activities abide by the law of leveraging momentum.

During important holidays and hot events, brands will do everything they can to compete for user attention and traffic. The KPIs and performance of departments such as brand marketing operations throughout the year also mainly depend on these nodes to be completed.

• So where is the magic of leveraging marketing and why is it so effective?
• What are the core principles of leverage marketing?
• What are some effective ways to leverage momentum?
• How to output high-quality creative ideas?
• And how to stand out from the massive amount of leveraged content and cause it to ferment and spread?

To become an excellent marketing operator, you must know the how and why. This article will break down in detail some of the underlying logic and paradigms behind brand marketing.

1. Why are brands keen on leveraging marketing?

The most favored leveraging nodes for brands can be roughly divided into three categories: "popular festivals and events", "emergency festivals and events", and "exclusive festivals and times". They each have their own advantages and characteristics, but their essential purpose is to make marketing tasks easier to accomplish.

1. Festivals, solar terms and events that people pay attention to

Such as important festivals such as New Year's Day, Spring Festival, Valentine's Day, National Day, solar terms such as the Beginning of Spring, Great Cold, Beginning of Summer, Winter Solstice, and major social events such as the Olympic Games, World Cup, College Entrance Examination, and solar eclipse.

These festival and solar term events have a mother culture rooted in the hearts of ordinary people, such as celebrations and texts and graphics handed down from ancient times to the present. In such an atmosphere, people are in high spirits, active in behavior and with strong consumption desire. Brands take the opportunity to launch marketing activities to satisfy everyone's rising consumption desire.

At the same time, through years of market education and habit formation, brand promotions during important holidays have become a default consumer mentality, which can save a lot of brands the cost of active promotion activities.

2. Unpredictable breaking news and events

Common ones include celebrity relationship announcements, popular characters, film and television dramas, variety shows, internet buzzwords, major social news, etc.

These hot spots that suddenly emerge can often instantly trigger discussions and attention across the entire network. If a brand can find an entry point that is strongly related to a hot topic at the right time, it can take advantage of the situation to gain massive attention and traffic. This is a typical marketing strategy with small investment and high returns.

3. Brand-specific festivals and events

They are more of marketing IPs created by brands on their own initiative, such as company anniversary celebrations, Tmall Double 11, Taobao Maker Festival, JD 618, etc.

The threshold for self-made marketing IP is relatively high, and it usually requires a lot of money and time to educate users in the early stages. It is more suitable for large companies with superior strength and abundant resources. However, this is a one-time thing. Once you successfully cultivate the user's mindset and habits, you can obtain a steady stream of natural traffic and business.

Therefore, brands can develop a suitable marketing strategy based on their own industry attributes, brand product advantages, user characteristics, corporate strength, etc., so as to continuously output the value of the brand and products and efficiently complete marketing KPIs.

2. Core Principles and Methods of Leveraging Momentum

The underlying logic of brand marketing can be summarized into eight words: track hot spots and establish connections!

1. Tracking hot spots

First of all, you need to accurately judge which hot spots are suitable for you to follow. For example, the influence of the hot spots, brand relevance, risk, and communication power are all factors that should be considered.

If the influence and communication power of a hot spot are not enough, it will be difficult to reap good results by leveraging the momentum, resulting in a lot of hard work but only a very low input-output ratio.

A weak correlation will make people feel confused and at a loss, which will be futile in promoting the brand and will ultimately make things difficult for others and make you happy.

The risk is something that brands need to focus on. Blindly jumping on the bandwagon can easily lead to negative influence and public opinion. If the exposure gained is damaging to the brand image, it is obviously not worth the loss.

• The Zheng Shuang DY incident caused a lot of controversy before, and Zheng Shuang became the target of public criticism and was labeled as a bad artist by FS.
• A certain APP conducted an exclusive interview with his father and released an apology video, but an advertisement for the certain APP appeared prominently in the background of the ten-minute video.

This borderline operation is indeed cost-effective in terms of product investment. One interview + one video can bring massive brand exposure and traffic.

However, this outrageous move aroused the disgust and negative public opinion of netizens, further tarnishing the already bad brand image. The company's public relations department is probably crying in the toilet.

The comment section was full of criticism regarding the APP’s behavior.

2. Create associations

Finding the connection point between the key elements of a brand and the key elements of a hot topic is the most core, time-consuming, and brain-consuming task in planning a leveraged marketing campaign. This connection point will determine the theme concept and general direction of the leveraged marketing campaign.

First, you need to extract all the key elements of the brand. Generally, you can inventory and sort them out from four dimensions: brand awareness map, service characteristics, product types and advantages, and user portraits.

Then extract the key elements of the hot spots, including:

• Key landmarks (representative landmarks such as symbols, culture, customs, history, people, places, time, food, etc. related to the hotspot);
• Key words (slogans, proverbs, poems, stories, songs, etc. derived from hot topics that are familiar to the general public).

Finally, you can write all the key elements of the brand and the key elements of the hot spots on the same piece of paper, and find a common connection point with strong communication power to point out the direction for the next step of leveraging content and activities.

Durex, a textbook example of leveraging marketing, launched a set of gift boxes called "Sun Cakes" during the Mid-Autumn Festival last year, with the accompanying copy "May we ___, and share the beauty of the moon together even though we are thousands miles apart."

The common connection point found by this theme is "lasting". Durex has a condom product called the Lasting Series, and Su Shi's "Water Melody" has a very popular Mid-Autumn Festival poem "May we live long, and share the beauty of the moon together even though we are thousands miles apart". The word "lasting" was excavated to achieve a perfect linkage.

3. Creative output direction of leveraging momentum

Finding the common connection points between brands and hot topics is the first step to successful leverage marketing, and how to turn the connection points into creative ideas with spreadability determines the upper limit of leverage marketing.

Here I would like to strongly recommend several commonly used and proven effective ways to leverage creative output.

1. Combination of features

After sorting out the content and features related to the hot topic and finding the places where they are combined with the key elements of the brand, continue to develop creative ideas based on the connection points, and use creativity to package the connection points into content or activities that are easy to spread.

(1) Durex Mid-Autumn Festival "Sun Cake" Gift Box

The Durex "Day Cake" gift box mentioned above is based on the connection point of "durability". A very clever hollow design is used in the gift box design. When the condom product box is stuffed into the gift box, the two missing words are just filled in, forming the copy "May we be durable, and share the beauty of the moon together even though we are thousands of miles apart."

(2) Mengniu College Entrance Examination Question-Predicting Milk

Predicting the college entrance examination questions is an important part of helping candidates pass the exam, and Mengniu can also provide physical nutrition and spiritual encouragement to candidates. By finding the common point of "cheering for candidates", the college entrance examination and Mengniu's brand proposition are linked.

The milk carton was transformed into a prediction for the college entrance examination, with encouraging copywriting such as "you'll be good at guessing anything, and you'll be right at everything you do". The college entrance examination scene was used to awaken the youthful memories and emotional resonance of the majority of netizens, making it very topical.

2. Hot Topics Analysis

Conduct in-depth analysis, put forward opinions and make comments on hot topics in a professional tone, and naturally implant brand and product features in appropriate places.

(1) Durex International Day Against Domestic Violence

In recent years, women's awareness has gradually risen, but the phenomenon of domestic violence against women still exists widely.

Durex spoke out to the public, citing common acts of violence to advise and warn perpetrators, and at the same time called on women not to remain silent and to bravely resist domestic violence.

Durex naturally brought up gender issues such as sexual violence through its declaration of justice, successfully integrating the brand attitude and products, and winning praise and favor from netizens.

(2) Baidu Boiling Point Buzzwords of the Year

Baidu summarizes the buzzwords of the whole year and provides detailed explanations and application examples, which makes it easy for netizens to understand and practical. It also lets people know that Baidu Boiling Point is a product that does big data inventory and rankings.

There is also a tried and tested method for hot topic analysis, which is to design a long comic picture with a story or interesting content, and then use a clever reversal at the end to implant brand or product information.

Many public accounts use this method to advertise, which has little interference with users' reading and can also induce readers to laugh at and interact with the advertisements.

3. Emotional resonance

Gain insight into user psychology, extract key elements of brands and hot spots, and find the emotional connection points among users, brands, and hot spots. This method is an upgraded version of the combination of characteristics, focusing on the emotional connection points.

(1) OPPLE Lighting lights up Wuhan

In the early morning of April 8, 2020, Wuhan, which had been under lockdown for 78 days, closed all exits from the city. This announced that the people of Wuhan, together with medical rescue teams from across the country, had successfully controlled the spread of the epidemic and stabilized the situation.

The citizens of Wuhan have experienced months of panic and struggle, and the helplessness and pain of separation from their loved ones. The whole city seems to be shrouded in dark clouds and filled with sorrow.

The Gif poster of Light Up Wuhan, with a visual presentation of the Yellow Crane Tower changing from darkness to light, coupled with a simple sentence "Wuhan, long time no see", deeply touched the hearts of Wuhan citizens and people across the country, conveying a complex feeling of panic, sadness, confidence and hope.

Opple Lighting's brand mission and concept of "creating value with light and illuminating life with light" are also perfectly interpreted and reflected through a series of touching Gif posters.

(2) Nike: For once, Don’t Do It

Nike advertising video: https://v.qq.com/x/page/m0975lwaewf.html

After Floyd, an African American man, died after being violently enforced by a white police officer, large-scale anti-racial discrimination protests broke out across the United States. Nike, which is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people with its brand slogan "Just do it", changed its slogan for the first time in 32 years to "For Once, Don't Do It" and released a 1-minute short advertisement.

The video uses white text on a black background to create a serious atmosphere, allowing the audience to focus on the text expressions such as "Don't ignore racism", "Don't accept innocent lives being taken away from us", "Let's make change together", etc.

Nike uses this short film to oppose racial prejudice, hatred and inequality, inspire people to take action to solve deep-seated social problems, and create more spiritual resonance and emotional connection with consumers.

4. Create a topic

Based on the native culture of the Internet, create topics that can trigger users to actively spread, follow suit, and interact (such as jokes, Internet words, brainwashing songs/dances, etc.).

(1) Tencent executives set up a stall to recruit

In 2020, the Central Civilization Office no longer listed roadside vendors as an evaluation indicator for civilized cities. Premier Li Keqiang also explicitly expressed his support for the street stall economy and small store economy. For a time, the street stall economy became popular across the country and became a hot topic among the people. Many companies responded to the policy and joined the street stall economy.

First, Wuling Hongguang took advantage of the opportunity to launch the street stall car and became an overnight sensation, even causing the stock price to hit the daily limit.

Soon after, a photo of a Tencent executive setting up a stall to recruit people appeared on the Internet. Netizens couldn't believe that recruitment at a large Internet company was possible in this way. With the help of media reports, netizen reposts, and social media hot searches, the matter fermented like wildfire. Tencent made its presence felt with almost no investment.

(2) Dingding released a song begging for mercy online

Video link: https://v.qq.com/x/page/b306701uvwi.html

After DingTalk was selected by the Ministry of Education as the online teaching platform for primary school students, it provoked a joint boycott by primary school students because it took up winter vacation time, and they gave it "one-star reviews" one after another. It was supposed to be a good thing to be officially recognized, but I didn't expect it to bring me so much trouble.

Dingding is well aware that preaching to primary school students will only attract more opposition, so it did not choose to issue a statement or appeal in an official capacity. Instead, it used a "kneeling and begging for mercy video" to express its innocence and ask the young heroes to show mercy.

This clever handling not only made the young heroes put down their swords, but also successfully broke the circle and triggered public discussion on social networks. Retreating in order to advance has become a classic public relations case.

4. How to spread the content through leveraging the trend

We cannot equip every marketing campaign with abundant media resources, so designing clever creative content and planning effective interactive mechanisms to induce fermentation and autonomous dissemination are issues that must be considered in the creative planning stage.

Designing benefit temptations and creating social currency are two relatively effective ways to induce users to spread content on their own.

1. Design benefits

It is common in Internet companies to design interest incentives to trigger fission sharing. Internet companies such as Luckin Coffee, Pinduoduo, and many knowledge payment platforms have achieved great success by relying on fission marketing.

Common fission gameplay includes MGM, invitation challenge, fission red envelopes, sharing benefits, group formation, relationship fission, product distribution, and friend support.

2. Social Currency

Social currency is something that can satisfy people's needs for image building and identity showing off. For example, checking in at popular restaurants/attractions is to create an image of a lover of life, snapping up Dyson curling irons and Starbucks cat claw cups can show one's taste in life, NetEase Cloud Music's year-end inventory can win the attention and discussion of others, and luxury cars are to show off economic strength and social status.

Scarce products, distinguished services, novel and interesting things, empathetic viewpoints, controversial topics, and achievements are typical examples of social currencies.

NetEase Cloud Music Annual Listening Report

4. Extra things to do

In addition to mastering the methods mentioned in the article, planning a wave of leveraged marketing also requires additional consideration of the following things so that leveraged marketing can maximize its potential and help the brand and business while meeting the company's strategic requirements.

• Think clearly about the goals you want to achieve: which group of people to target, which products to promote, and what results to achieve (such as brand image, exposure and communication, conversion effect, user reputation, etc.).
• The strategic thinking process cannot be skipped: analyze and gain insights into the brand, product, environment (culture, holiday nodes, industry, etc.), and population, and propose the most appropriate methods and models to achieve the goals.
• Establish the core concept of marketing: the theme should include a communication concept that incorporates brand appeals, or brand interest points that attract audience participation.
• Develop a detailed implementation plan: Refer to the brand's cognitive map, product selling points, available corporate and media resources, feasible gameplay forms, etc., to plan specific creative content, interactive forms and media combinations.

The correct opening posture of brand leverage:

Understand the underlying logic of leveraging trends, don’t try to jump on every hot topic, look for common connection points, output creative content, cause fermentation and dissemination, and think about the overall strategy.

Author: Lao Pao

Source: Laopao OG (ID: laopaostrategy)