99% of blind box marketing is ineffective?

During the May Day holiday, major brands have been busy designing Labor Day posters. This year seems to be a little different. In order to better stimulate users' desire to travel, travel-related companies such as Qunar, Ctrip, and Fliggy all launched blind box marketing before the festival and successfully dominated the circle of friends of the majority of users.

In fact, as early as 2019, blind box marketing has become popular in China. Some people call it an important means of communication between brands and young users, while others say that 99% of it is ineffective marketing. Today, we will not discuss whether blind box marketing is worth doing, but how to do blind box marketing.

No.1 Good marketing, understanding human nature

People's minds are different, but their weaknesses are roughly the same. Since its birth, blind boxes have been based on the underlying motivations of human nature, stimulating people's curiosity, collecting addiction and gambler mentality, making consumers unable to stop.

1. Seize the flow experience of curiosity

Human ancestors made a living by hunting, and the love of hunting novelty has become a natural gene we carry. Unlike arousing temporary curiosity, blind boxes bring a curiosity flow experience. It not only stimulates users' desire to buy, but also gives users an immersive experience. After buying this one, they want to buy the next one.

Just like Pop Mart’s popular Molly blind box series, there are 12 models in a series. In addition to the basic models, there are also hidden models. In order to complete a complete set, we will buy them again and again, and even spend a lot of money on Xianyu to get the hidden models.

McDonald's is well aware of this and has launched 70 Minions toys at once, including not only regular models but also gold models. As long as users spend +15 yuan on any purchase, they can get a Minions blind box. With the combined potential of IP and curiosity, users have flocked to collect blind boxes, which has successfully driven McDonald's product sales.

2. Almost succeeded

We often say: "Never try to change a gambler, because if something happens once, it will happen a hundred times." Because everyone who is reluctant to leave the poker table is thinking in his mind "If I play one last time, maybe I will succeed." The temptation of "almost succeeding" is the booster that motivates people to try again and again.

It's like you ask friends on Pinduoduo to help you win a sofa. After a few friends help you, your success rate reaches 99.9%, but the remaining 1% may require the help of dozens of people. Then why are so many people willing to do this "hard job"? Because everyone is thinking, if one more person helps, I can get a sofa for free. The "Skinner Box" experiment in the new behaviorist learning theory has also proved that when people do not know when they will get the desired reward, they will continue to repeat their behavior. Blind box marketing is to awaken people's gambler psychology and attract users to become addicted.

When the Henan Museum launched the "Lost Treasures" creative peripheral products, it hid more than ten kinds of treasures, including bronzes, ingots, small bronze Buddhas, bronze mirrors, silver medals, silver dollars, etc., in blind boxes for sale, and occasionally set up hidden models and easter eggs in the blind boxes to attract users to experience treasure hunting again and again.

The rapid rise of blind boxes has a lot to do with circle culture. Nowadays, young users’ enthusiasm for pursuing circles is unprecedentedly high, and blind boxes are the currency of communication within circles. They can even become a capital for showing off and help establish their status in the circle. If we want to attract everyone to participate in blind box marketing again and again, it is not enough to just awaken the gambler's psychology. We need to use limited quantities to hit the user's showing-off psychology of "what others don't have is the best", so that the majority of users will become lemons, and then we can speed up the brand marketing communication.

Let’s take Pop Mart as an example. Anyone can buy the basic models, but those who can buy the hidden models are at the top of the pyramid and are worthy of everyone’s envy. Therefore, when engaging in blind box marketing, we must take into account two aspects: most people can get it and the best is left for a few people.

There is an interesting description in the air ticket blind box recently launched by Fliggy. It roughly means: If you give up your qualification after drawing the blind box, I will give you 6 big easter eggs, including a 210 yuan May 1st travel gift package (car rental voucher, ticket voucher, etc.), a 66 yuan take-off air ticket voucher, a 666 yuan first-class air ticket worth 1,888 yuan, etc. The probability of winning the 210 yuan May 1st travel gift package is 99%, and the others are 1% in total. The principle followed here is to leave the best for a small number of people.

Blind box marketing is essentially gamification marketing, which stimulates users' curiosity and interest in participation through games and ultimately leads to purchases. If we want users to be addicted, we must first build a game mechanism that can make people excited.

1. Provide goals to pursue and increase the fun of the game

According to the categories, the game fun atmosphere can be divided into simple fun, difficult fun and other people's fun. Simple fun means that people can get the pleasure of the game through simple repetition. For example, to synthesize a big watermelon, we basically don’t need to think too much and we can get the joy of a simple game. Difficult fun is to provide a goal that can be pursued and break it down into small goals. By achieving small goals and finally completing the game challenge, you can gain a sense of accomplishment; other people's fun is to play with friends, demonstrate social value through group interaction, and gain a sense of belonging to the group.

Qunar.com’s travel blind box marketing increases the difficulty and interest of the game by building a mechanism through pursuable goals, and increases the interest of others in the game by combining the fission gameplay with the circle of friends.

Their game mechanics are as follows:

From April 21st to April 23rd, users only need to select the departure place on the Qunar App or mini program and invite 3 friends to help within 24 hours. They can then spend 88 yuan/66 yuan to purchase a travel blind box (88 yuan for air tickets and 66 yuan for train tickets), unlock unknown travel routes, and go wherever the blind box opens. If the user is not satisfied with the route unlocked for the first time, he or she can continue to forward it and ask friends to help unlock a new route. For every 3 friends who help, a new route can be unlocked.

In Qunar.com’s blind box marketing, the small goal is to invite 3 good users to get the opportunity to buy air tickets/train tickets. The bigger goal is to invite friends to unlock more routes. The ultimate goal is to unlock the ticket to the destination you want to go at a low price. Here, every link requires the participation of friends. After unlocking the desired air/train ticket, users will not only get a lot of surprises, but also have the opportunity to communicate emotionally with friends.

2. Provide immediate feedback

In games, people love instant feedback. Just like when we play Plants vs. Zombies, every time we press a button, we can kill a zombie. This shows that every action we take is valuable and we can get a full sense of accomplishment. In the blind box marketing mechanism, we can also set up instant feedback for users to bring everyone an immersive experience.

Let’s take the example of the Raccoon hero cards. When we were young, we were obsessed with buying Raccoon instant noodles just to get the hero cards inside. The difficulty of collecting 108 hero cards is comparable to drawing a hidden card from a blind box, although you are always just a little bit away from success. But users can basically get a hero card by buying a bag of instant noodles. At this time, we will think, I collected Hu Baoyi this time, what if I can collect Zhi Duoxing next time. This kind of instant feedback is the panacea that stimulates us to make repeat purchases.

We always emphasize that if you want to be remembered by users, you must provide them with a "WOW" moment. In blind box marketing, in addition to providing users with the joy of drawing "hidden items", we can also bring users more WOW moments by providing varied rewards.

After blind boxes became popular, Whole Bento, a private chef in the Chinese community in Southern California, replicated the blind box model in food marketing, launching a variety of malatang and fried skewers blind boxes, which became an instant hit on the Internet. With so many food brands selling blind boxes, how did Whole Bento break through?

Actually, there are 2 points:

These blind boxes contain different ingredients every day, so even if users order them every day, they won’t get tired of the taste, and they may even get super cost-effective ingredients;

The price of the combined ingredients in the blind box is definitely more cost-effective than buying them separately.

When customers buy things, what they care about is not whether the price is expensive, but whether they will suffer a loss. If we want customers to act quickly, we have to lower the cost of trying out their actions. The cost of trying something new includes the monetary cost and the cost of action. The lower the cost to people, the less conflict there is in their actions.

The first is the monetary cost

Monetary cost can be simply understood as product pricing. The prices of ordinary blind boxes generally range from 39 to 79 yuan. Even if you don’t get what you want, you won’t feel like you’ve lost anything. The pricing of today's blind box marketing products is basically controlled within 100 yuan, which shortens the user's decision-making time and makes it easier to place an order.

Author: Brand Reality Institute

Source: Brand Reality Institute