How to avoid bad single-minded thinking when running an event?

I wonder if you have heard the story of [selling bras to men] ? If you have heard of it, you can take a quick look and recall what it is about; if you have not read this story, you can follow my thoughts and listen to it.

Here is the story: Five college graduates majoring in marketing applied for a job at a women's underwear company. Perhaps inspired by the idea circulating on the Internet, "Can you sell a comb to a monk?", the company had a test for salesmen before they officially took up their posts: sell a certain brand of the company's bras to male students in school and complete a certain sales task within the specified time.

Then the five salesmen started to sell according to their existing level of knowledge.

The first salesperson secretly visited several familiar junior colleagues, but was rejected by all of them. Later, I had an idea and bought 10 bras with my own money, and then reported back to the company within the specified time.

The second salesman visited many boys' dormitories and asked them one by one if they wanted to buy bras. Many boys denounced his behavior as "crazy! Perverted!", but he still persisted every day. Finally, he moved a boy who was also studying marketing. Out of sympathy for the difficulty of finding alumni's employment, he paid for a bra.

The third salesperson thought over and over again about several sales plans, and finally decided to develop some younger fellow students to become sales representatives to sell products to their female classmates. But because the sales were done by their junior apprentices, they lacked the necessary training. Even though the junior apprentices worked very hard, they only sold 30 bras in total, and most of them were sold to their girlfriends.

The fourth salesperson returned to his alma mater and found his former class teacher, saying that he wanted to conduct a sales practice exchange activity with the next few classes of students. He stressed that interaction and communication with younger students can broaden the horizons of students. He will also demonstrate sales on the spot using a vivid sales case. The head teacher thought it made sense, so he acquiesced and supported this small activity. Because several "insiders" were arranged in advance and under the enthusiastic leadership of a few close friends, many younger brothers and sisters were finally moved. Out of a sense of mutual sympathy, each of them paid for one. There were 80 people present at the time, 5 of whom were "insiders", so the salesperson sold a total of 75 bras.

The fifth salesman, after thorough analysis, returned to his alma mater and found the dean of the college who had a strong business sense. In the name of increasing work practice for students, he launched a sensational event: "Can you sell bras to boys? - A special lecture on practical training by an international brand marketing expert in the face of the employment situation!" The content of the event is: invite the general manager of marketing of an international brand to come to the school to hold a special lecture on practical marketing. Every student can voluntarily participate. Due to the limitation of the training venue, each participant needs to pay 60 yuan for the event organization fee. At the same time, as the last part of the training lecture, there is a very challenging practical exercise: each participant is responsible for selling 2 bras to boys within a week (free of charge), and the sales income will be used as compensation for purchasing admission tickets.

A summary and exchange activity will be held in our institute after the event. Due to the severe employment situation, such a creative project that combines theory, skills and social practice has aroused strong response in various classes under the planning of the college director. Later statistics showed that a total of 600 people participated in the event and more than 1,000 bras were sold. The company's general manager of marketing also attached great importance to this public relations event to establish the company's image. He personally attended the event and gave a wonderful speech. The participating students were very satisfied with the event!

After reading the above story, you may be thinking:

The first salesperson lacked the spirit of hard work and perseverance. When faced with pressure, he did not think about how to solve the existing difficulties. Instead, the first thing he thought of was how to cheat at work, deceive the company and customers, and get away with it. This type of salesperson has his own "routines". He likes to design small games of "painting cakes to appease hunger" for the leaders in exchange for time serving in the company. The ultimate goal is to cheat day by day and be good at embezzling travel expenses to make up for the shortfall in his income.

The second salesperson is a persistent salesperson who is down-to-earth and has an indomitable "bull spirit". The disadvantage is that they are not good at methods and techniques, and their business efficiency is low.

The third salesperson has a more conventional way of thinking and doing things, follows the rules, and is easily restricted by the knowledge structure of books. Even if there are creative ideas at work, they are not very good. However, one is good at learning and drawing lessons from other people's successful experiences. So even if one does a good job, the results are often mediocre and will not cause any big waves.

The fourth salesperson is a typical opportunist. He is good at observing things and seizing opportunities . He can make bold assumptions and judge the situation to achieve sales goals.

The fifth type of salesperson is the type who is unconventional, creative, and effective in planning, and is good at using public relations events to integrate the resources and interests of all parties to achieve a "win-win" situation that is recognized by all parties involved. It is also what we often say in event planning that we have very strong resource integration capabilities. And the most important point is that this kind of people have two-way or even multi-directional thinking. When promoting a product, they will not push it just for the sake of pushing it. That is to say, they will not easily make the decision to operate a product. To a large extent, such people will assess the situation, see clearly the attributes of the product and the environment it belongs to, this environment includes the positioning of the product and the needs of the target group, etc., to save the situation in a roundabout way, especially when the target group itself does not have a strong demand for the product. They are also able to think in multiple directions to do things, which is truly a rare operational talent.

In many cases, we tend to fall into rigid thinking when doing activities, and we will cling to a certain point in the activity. This is typical one-way thinking in doing activities, which will lead to an unbreakable situation. A typical example is that everyone makes the mistake of following the trend when organizing activities. For example, a certain activity attracts millions of fans overnight, and then in the next six months, similar activities will definitely occur one after another, wave after wave, but what about the users? Users' aesthetic fatigue is getting higher and higher, slowly drowning their eyes. In the end, they will not even look at you, let alone participate in your activities.

But it seems that the planners seem to enjoy doing this, thinking that if others can organize such a successful event, we will definitely be able to achieve good results if we do it. But don’t forget that users will only remember the first place, and the second place will never be remembered by others. It's like what was said in the movie "Dangal", the father told his daughter that if you only come second in the Olympics, you will soon be forgotten by others, but if you come first, you will be remembered by people and worshipped as a role model.

Think about whether you have had this kind of thinking when you are doing an event, which event is popular, and which events your competitors have already done and achieved good results, and then you will imitate them step by step. In fact, there is nothing wrong in studying the marketing activities of competitors, but never follow others, because you will never catch up with your opponent. It’s like if your opponent is Xin Shixiang , and he has done a “Four-Hour Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou ”, and you also do a “Four-Hour Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou”, and he does a “Book Throwing Campaign”, and then you continue to follow behind him, without any innovation. Users can’t remember you, and even you don’t know where your sense of accomplishment comes from.

In many of our event operations , the activities that are loved and sought after by users are often those that have insight into the current macro-environment and the strong demands of the target population in this environment. Although this demand will not accompany them throughout their lives, it is the most urgent need for someone to alert them, warn them, and give them an epiphany. Such activities can often become an instant hit and have strong contemporary requirements.

Sang Tea was very popular before, not because it tasted good or because it was made so exquisitely. In fact, it was no different from Hey Tea , and it was even more unpalatable than Hey Tea. So why was it so popular? Many people know that this is because this mourning tea is related to the mourning culture that is popular among young people today.

Hidden behind the culture of mourning is the self-mockery of young people

Nowadays, Internet tools have become an outlet for emotional release. Some people release their inner personality through the Internet (here, personality refers to inner thoughts). They release their negative emotions and cynical ideals on the Internet. However, the "I" in daily life seems to have nothing to do with the "I" on the Internet. They look like two different souls sharing the same body.

In addition, there is another group of people who are young people who are unified inside and out - I am who I am, I am a complete, independent individual who dares to speak for myself. This group of young people who are united in both inner and outer qualities are happy to be themselves. They do not need to play the perfect role of a model young person in the eyes of others, so it is not difficult for them to admit that they are trash. They accept their imperfections, accept their flaws, live for themselves, accept themselves as such a person, and reconcile with themselves.

The insight behind "sorrow culture" is that it is a form of venting negative emotions for young people, sending a self-deprecating message that "I am already a waste." It is neither cynicism nor the portrayal of a "waste" who is incompetent and unintelligent in the traditional sense. Instead, it expresses the despair of some young people today who find it difficult to break the rigid class structure no matter how hard they try. The prospects for development are too confusing, the way forward is too tortuous, and we are aware of and trapped by our own incompetence. In that case, let us lie down for a while, just like that, until we die.

This is the current era context. Marketing seizes this point and amplifies it, giving young people who pursue this culture a sense of sustenance, a spiritual sustenance. So often what they buy and drink is not tea, but an emotional catharsis.

Last year, Xin Shixiang planned an event called “Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou”, which also reflected a certain demand at the moment. This demand is also called “menstrual demand”. It is not always there, but may occur once every few months or once a year. Marketing also seizes this point and amplifies it. "Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" reflects the need of front-line white-collar workers to "regain a sense of control due to external pressure." This is the contradiction in the hearts of white-collar workers in first-tier cities. This contradiction corresponds to the endless opportunities, huge space, cutting-edge information and rich vision, and is accompanied by soaring prices, congested traffic, bad air and high-pressure life. On one hand, there is irresistible excitement, and on the other hand, there are problems that we don’t want to endure; and many of us choose to stay here, simply because our threshold of tolerance is high enough and we are always looking forward to the excitement. Whether it is “the world is so big, I want to see it”, or those “roads that cannot be walked in high heels, air that cannot be smelled with perfume, people who will never meet in office buildings”, the sense of freedom created is exactly what we want, but we cannot escape from it. Because there are always only a few people who actually "quit their jobs and go to Lijiang to become a youth hostel owner" or "sell their houses and move to Dali", so for most of us, this kind of escape naturally becomes a long-term and periodic need to find oneself. Therefore, Xin Shixiang’s “Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in Four Hours” immediately touched the hearts of this group of young white-collar workers and became the root cause of the outbreak of this event.

In fact, event planning does not necessarily need to be done according to "menstrual" needs. We often say that to operate an event, we must know what the target users are thinking. In fact, it is to understand people's hearts. The above is also a kind of insight into people's hearts, but this human heart is a certain demand that arises in a larger environment. Many times, we do not have such a large background when doing activities. What should we do? Do I have to be the second best forever and follow behind others? The answer is definitely no. Think about it the other way around, why can others plan such an event, but you and your team can't? Often, we don’t pay enough attention to users, because users won’t tell you what their needs are. Because he doesn't know what he wants, as an operator at this time, you must have insight and observation. Superficial things are often not real needs. It's like buying clothes is not a basic need, but covering up and keeping warm is a basic need. Buying good-looking clothes is to meet derived psychological needs. So what we see are all unreal needs. Only by digging out the real needs behind them can we touch the hearts of users.

The way to touch the user's heart is to find the user's original needs, which are nothing more than physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs. For example, physiological needs are mainly the desire for food, warmth and sex; safety needs are mainly the need for protection and stability; social needs are mainly the need for a sense of belonging; respect needs are mainly the need for respect for personality; self-actualization is our highest level of human needs, mainly a need to realize self-ideals and realize potential. After knowing that they have these needs, the next step is to exploit the weaknesses of human nature for marketing. For example, an e-commerce product mainly sells goods related to food, clothing, housing and transportation. At this time, we should grasp the user's needs in this regard, that is, the mentality of being greedy for small profits. So we will set "traps" everywhere on the platform. For example, get 200 off for purchases over 500, 500 off for purchases over 1000, make a reservation for 99 yuan, grab a deal with 1 point, etc., all in order to get users to spend more money. For example, the discount and flash sales events such as Tmall Double Eleven and JD 618 that we see every year actually take advantage of consumers’ greed.

Therefore, after grasping the psychological needs of users, this activity is not far from success. After all, activities need people to participate, right?

Therefore, don’t imitate many activities just for the sake of imitating, because you may only imitate his appearance. In fact, he has done a thorough investigation behind the scenes. His target group does have such a demand, and your copying can only be a copycat.

The fifth salesperson we mentioned above knew very well that he could not do it on his own. The most important thing was that the demand was not valid, so he would definitely fail if he tried to push it hard. He knew that if he wanted to expand the publicity of the event, he had to empower it and not promote it for the sake of promotion. He could use the wisdom of others to improve himself. Changing the way to do promotion actually means avoiding impulsive promotion. The ultimate goal remains unchanged despite the twists and turns.

So, many times, when we are planning an event, we must not only have insight into the environment, but also into human nature. Human nature and the environment are the key to the success of an event. Otherwise, the marketing scope of your event will always be so small, and the number of participants will always be the same.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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