99% of companies ignore the importance of embedding chicken soup in their products

First of all, a good product must be in line with human nature, such as greed, fear, lust, sense of security, etc. In recent years, I have focused on the study of human nature in the field of commodity sales, and have gained quite a bit of experience. I believe that there is a human nature with great market value that has been overlooked: chicken soup.

A piece of news that has been going viral these days is that the account "Tongdao Uncle" was sold for 300 million yuan. Tongdao Uncle mainly produces horoscope content. For example, the following content has been the most popular for many years:

There are only two ways to learn astrology:

1. Speaks well of you
2. Rationalize your flaws

The most admirable thing about Uncle Tongdao is that he has used these two tricks repeatedly over the years, creating this kind of content all year round without repeating it. If he can do it to the extreme, it will be worth 300 million. In fact, astrology is a big and thick bowl of chicken soup, which is very suitable for the young people in today's society. Therefore, the valuation of 300 million is really too cheap. If it is well commercialized, it will be worth at least 1 billion!

Why do people like chicken soup?

The study found that the greater the social pressure, the more popular chicken soup is, and the closed circle of friends is the largest concentration of chicken soup in China.

Their loss, confusion and fragility stem from the problems they encounter in their work and life. The purpose of chicken soup is not to solve the problem, but to look at the problem from a different perspective, thereby converting people's negative energy into positive energy. This is the absurdity of chicken soup. ——Wan Fangzhong

In his book "Unreliable Pseudo-Psychology: Cracking the Myth of Psychological Ramblings", Stephen Blairs, a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the United States, said that faced with the complex modern society, people have found a way to simplify things in motivational psychology, which lightly blurs the boundaries between opinions, consciousness and reliable facts, giving readers a powerful sense of self-comfort. In other words, chicken soup for the soul caters to people's laziness and evasiveness.

Why do Chinese people like chicken soup so much? This is related to China's culture and communication environment.

The main reasons for the proliferation of chicken soup are as follows:

1. Social pressure : Whether it is information overload or economic transformation, it has led to greater overall social pressure. People feel breathless and subconsciously want to escape from reality.
2. Traditional education : Traditional exam-oriented education has led to the Chinese people generally not liking to use their brains. As the economic environment gradually improves, facing a materialistic society, most impetuous people like to find shortcuts.

Escaping from reality and finding shortcuts have led to a huge market for chicken soup in China, and Uncle Tongdao’s valuation of 300 million is just the tip of the iceberg.

A friend of mine had been having trouble finding a job and was very anxious. He then forwarded an article in his circle of friends titled “No one understands you because you are too special”. This article did not tell him how to solve the problem that every company looked down on him, but it solved his anxiety: I am a special person, so no one understands me for the time being.

Some videos like "Bombshell!" are often popular in the circle of friends. XX is boiling China again! 》《The Seven Most Promising Personalities》《XX Ways That Will Benefit You for a Lifetime (A Good and In-depth Article)》《12 Differences Between Generals and Commanders》《Ten Steps to Improve Execution》and so on. These articles are useless for changing oneself. The motivation for sharing is basically to talk about what you lack.

Therefore, I have doubts about the intelligence of people who frequently share articles on WeChat Moments. They usually lack the habit of independent thinking, and we must be wary of these people (but some smart bosses also like to post chicken soup for the soul. Of course, they themselves don’t believe in chicken soup, because using chicken soup to motivate employees is sometimes less costly than material incentives).

Precisely because there are so many people who don’t like to think but want to succeed, various entrepreneurship camps, success training and some so-called entrepreneurship communities are so popular. Someone once invited me to do this kind of business, saying that it could make money quickly and there was no need to talk about a lot of dry goods , just some dry goods inserted in the chicken soup would be fine. There are a lot of people who are full of desire but not so smart. You must let them know that they are visionary, ambitious, and unique people, that starting a business is their best destination, that they are destined to succeed here, etc., and then they will excitedly give you money.

In China, anything that sells knowledge that helps you succeed or teaches you how to make money is always very popular. This kind of business has a market worth at least tens of billions in China, which is much larger than astrology.

In fact, think about it carefully. Successful people share the core reasons for their success in public, and you will understand and learn them as soon as you hear them...

Who is more stupid? I am not that generous. I never share those killer tricks of popular science in my articles. And those bosses who share the secrets of business success on the stage never tell the truth. It’s all advertising.

The magical effect of chicken soup in the commodity sales industry

One of the shortcuts to making a product sell well is to embed chicken soup into the product. ——Daomingsi

Chicken soup can sometimes stimulate purchases more than the product experience itself. Many successful products do not rely on selling the original product attributes, because the original functional attributes of most products have no marketing value, and some functions are even anti-human.

For example, if you buy a bracelet for the purpose of running and health, is running a very comfortable behavior? Absolutely not. Only fools like running, and most people don’t have an urgent need for health.

But if your step count exceeds that of everyone in your circle of friends, you will be able to build a healthy social image, and you will also have a virtual sense of victory (if nothing else works), that you have finally made a name for yourself in the field of running, even though you have intentionally or unintentionally ignored the fact that those people who rank lower in step count all drive and have a healthier lifestyle than you.

Therefore, for products like bracelets, which are selling chicken soup, it is normal for the entire industry to decline because the product itself lacks sustained user value.

Similarly, the iPhone is also a huge bowl of brand chicken soup. Apart from being a little smoother, the experience, configuration, functions, and localized services of most Android flagship phones are much better than the iPhone. But the iPhone is just so high-end. Internet celebrities buy a Meitu phone and after taking photos they will still post the pictures on their iPhones and then post them on Weibo to leave a beautiful Weibo tail.

There are indeed many users who buy iPhones just to show off.

The value of embedding chicken soup in products lies in: when people do not have the ability to truly change their social image, the shortcut is to consume cheap and high-end things and then tell themselves: I am not living any worse than others.

Therefore, successful brands all come with their own chicken soup. If you buy an Apple phone, you are a high-end Apple fan; if you buy a branded bag, you are rich and beautiful; if you work out, you are a sports expert. You don’t need to put in much effort to optimize your social image (shortcut) and easily break down the pressure caused by others being so outstanding (escape).

This also explains why products that emphasize user experience, emphasize the usability of certain features, or even emphasize overall balance do not sell well, because impetuous users find it difficult to perceive the value of the product, while smart users look down on you.

The chicken soup embedded in the product is often more useful than the product features themselves. Really, don’t think that your product is powerful and users should pay for it. In fact:

Users are not in your industry, so they don’t know or care about the value of your putting so much effort into certain product features.

What users care about is what is good for them, not what the product manager thinks is good. If you think I should run more or I think you should eat shit more often, you won’t accept it.

A product that is powerful but lacks promotional content will most likely rely on employees to spontaneously share it on their social circles to spread it.

Embed chicken soup in the product

The psychological pressure caused by information overload and social transformation shows no sign of easing. There are so many stupid articles in the circle of friends, which shows that the IQ of this world is polarized, with a small number of people getting smarter and most people getting dumber. I think entrepreneurs should not hold on to the idea of ​​working to improve human IQ. Even if you really have this idea, you should first survive, make your product into a bowl of good chicken soup, and then change the world.

If you are selling bread, don’t emphasize nutrition, but emphasize the ritual of upper-class life. Add more baking powder and less milk, and then use the saved cost to make a stylish packaging. Let them go back to the office, take a photo and post it on WeChat Moments: A beautiful day starts with XXX. Then you beat the bakery that has real ingredients and special fragrant bread but is packaged in ordinary plastic bags.

Of course I totally don’t encourage you to do this. You should make the bread and then add chicken soup to sell it. I just use this example to tell you that the era of selling bread honestly is over.

If you are selling Niu electric vehicles, don't say that your battery is good and the power is strong. These selling points are completely useless. You should emphasize the sense of scene of using this car to pick up your girlfriend to watch movies and go to bars, and drive aimlessly on the river in the middle of the night with the sea breeze blowing. The atmosphere of freedom, passion and romance. The intimate feeling of your girlfriend hugging you tightly in the narrow seat and causing your heartbeat to accelerate is the passion you should have when you are young. Compared with your girlfriend sitting far away in the passenger seat of a BMW, this cold feeling is not love, it is just bread. Only old-fashioned middle-aged people use BMWs to pick up girls. NIU electric vehicles represent passion, romance, freedom and true love! You see, a Niu electric car allows the loser to defeat the BMW man. This bowl of chicken soup makes me want to drink it myself.

So, why do you go to Starbucks to drink coffee? Isn’t the coffee that costs hundreds of dollars a cup on the top floor of a skyscraper delicious? Drinking coffee while watching the clouds passing over the city, isn’t that a good mood?

The success of Starbucks lies in making most people feel that chatting in that space is more romantic than on the top floor of a skyscraper. Those coffee shops on skyscrapers are used to cheat mistresses! The success rate of discussing entrepreneurial projects with an Apple computer in Starbucks is 10 times that of discussing them in a cafe on the top floor of a skyscraper.

The distance between Uniqlo and Baleno is a bowl of chicken soup, the distance between Coca-Cola and Nongfu Spring is a bowl of chicken soup, the distance between Nike and Li Ning is also a bowl of chicken soup. There are countless examples of chicken soup being implanted in products. Anyway, chicken soup is nothing more than a shortcut for those who don't like to think under heavy pressure, making them think they are living a good life. Such people make up the majority of the crowd.

So you can’t just sell products honestly. Sometimes you have to lure people in by using chicken soup for the soul. Your products carry the passion that engineers have spent thousands and tens of thousands of days and nights working on, and users will have the opportunity to enjoy it.

But what I see is that the stronger the product department is, the worse the business is.

Correct understanding of business

The biggest misunderstanding the world has about Jobs is that he is a top product manager. In fact, he is the best businessman. The business strategies he implanted in his products, especially the chicken soup for human nature, were very successful. He obtained rich commercial returns by selling his products very well. Such returns kept his products at their peak and continuously changed one industry after another.

This world is essentially driven by business. If you want to change the world, you must first create value. Only with value can you drive things to be done with more passion. So chicken soup is not bad. It’s good to turn the great things in the product into chicken soup that users like.

Let's understand chicken soup from another perspective. Humans instinctively need to constantly optimize their social image to attract the opposite sex, and chicken soup can satisfy this need more easily than hard work, because chicken soup both lowers the threshold for showing off and relieves the pressure of incompetence.

A successful product first requires doing business correctly; the product is only a part of the business. You should make a good product, but you should also do a good job in marketing, and most of the time, marketing is just about making a delicious bowl of chicken soup correctly.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

This article was compiled and published by @Daomingsi (Qinggua Media) when it is reprinted. Please indicate the author information and source!