How to design a hit product

Nowadays, we often see hot products from various brands on the market. Suddenly, a product becomes popular on the entire network. This also requires a long period of exploration and judgment, and design based on hot spots. The author of this article shares his thoughts on designing hot products. Let us learn about it together.

There is a colleague in the company who likes to drink milk tea very much. Once he ordered a cup of milk tea from a food delivery platform. After receiving it, he not only took a photo and posted it on WeChat Moments, but also recommended it to us one by one, saying: Look, this milk tea is called "Beaten Aquaman Lemon Tea". Look at this green milk tea (fresh lemon slices), it's so vivid, so much like Aquaman, Aquaman deserves to be beaten.

After saying that, he took another sip, as if he had beaten up Aquaman, which made him feel so relieved.

Recommended by a colleague, we also ordered a cup of "Beat Aquaman" each on the food delivery platform. When looking for "Beat Aquaman", we actually saw "Hand-beat Scumbag Man Lemon Tea" and "Hand-beat Scumbag Woman Lemon Tea". Like the Beat Aquaman Lemon Tea, they are all green and have high sales.

In this milk tea world dominated by Heytea, Nayuki, and Mixue Bingcheng, it is incredible that such a niche brand stands out.

What do these niche brands rely on to overtake others? It’s the ability to design hit products .

The first time I saw hand-beaten lemon tea was when I saw a video of Heytea. As a result, hand-beaten lemon tea was promoted by some newly opened milk tea shops that focused on lemon tea.

They do not develop new products, but only make micro-innovations to popular products on the market. The results are that they become more popular than the original ones. They seem to be imitations, but in fact they surpass them.

The market share in the milk tea world seems to have been settled, but an unknown small milk tea shop has the confidence to challenge these leading milk tea brands because of the emergence of a hit product. If I were a leading brand, I would also be anxious, fearing that I might be brought down one day.

So, how can we design such a powerful blockbuster product that can help small brands make a comeback?

01 Design hot-selling products based on hot topics

Students who operate self-media all know that they need to follow hot topics, and there are professional content creators who teach everyone how to follow the hot topics, especially the sudden appearance of hot topics after get off work on Friday night, which makes all editors feel headache.

The reason why it is called "following hot spots" is that you have to follow the news when it is hottest, so that you can get a taste of the hot stuff and get a lot of readership.

The "Beating of Aquaman Lemon Tea" mentioned above is also a form of stepping on hot topics. I don’t know why, but there have been a lot of gossips about Aquaman recently, including celebrities, executives, and ordinary people. As long as I see someone forwarding a chat record to a group, I know that it’s probably going to be another gossip about Aquaman.

In such an environment where everyone is condemning Aquaman, it would be strange if a milk tea that touches on the popularity of Aquaman didn't become popular .

Some things really require the right time, right place and right people. Lemon tea is green in color and needs to be typed by hand. Every point can be a metaphor for Aquaman. If mango sago is replaced with "sea king sago", it will definitely not be popular because the product does not match the hot topic.

When you choose a hot spot, you should choose the one with a long cycle, just like what Buffett Tiger said: When you choose a hot spot, you should choose the one with a long slope and thick snow, so that it can roll for a long time .

Do you still remember the hot topic of “the first cup of milk tea in autumn” last year? There was a milk tea shop that reacted quite quickly. Once the topic came out, it immediately modified the product description in the review and named it “the first cup of milk tea in autumn”. In the end, how many cups did it sell that day?

I stretched out my index finger and said a number: ten thousand cups! The KPI for the month has been completed, the hot spot has been hit, and the sales volume cannot be stopped.

02 Designing popular products with cute elements

If you don’t have the sensitivity to hot spots and are naturally slower than others, like me, who can’t touch the hot spots but still want to make a hit product, what should I do? I just have one thing to say: click on the cute points .

You have to know that people have thoughts, the ability to perceive everything in the world, and can experience joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. Everyone wants to be happy every day, so if you slap someone in the face, will they be happy? Only fools would be happy. So how can we be happy? See the good things .

From a psychological point of view, humans, as visual animals, feel pleasure when they see big heads, big eyes, and round things. For example, babies and kittens, in the language of us post-00s, they are cute and kawaii.

Think about it carefully, don’t the world-renowned IPs such as Mickey Mouse, Garfield, Teddy Bear, and Hello Kitty all meet this characteristic ?

No matter whether you are in the fast-moving consumer goods or catering business, if you design your products to be cute and hit the cute point, the probability of them becoming a hit product will definitely be much greater.

In layman's terms, it is skeuomorphism, which is to make inanimate objects into images that already exist in the user's mind. By touching the user's sore spot, the user will actively spread it and add a sentence: Look, this thing is so cute!

Remember the scrambled eggs that were pierced through the heart? Teppanyaki eggs, break the eggs and arrange them into two heart shapes, then the egg white turns into a Cupid's arrow passing through them, it is quite beautiful (and expensive). Just like what netizens commented: taking an ordinary thing and making it look so good that we can’t afford it .

The scrambled eggs with an arrow piercing the heart have been widely circulated on the Internet. If I went to see it, I would really be letting down the chef's craftsmanship if I didn't take a video. Not only can you gain publicity by tapping into cuteness, you can also get a high premium. It's really like killing two birds with one stone, killing two birds with one stone. If I were the boss, I would wake up laughing in my dreams.

Next, I’m going to share with you a way to become popular by stepping on cute points. There is a very well-known IP that has no copyright. Whoever steps on it will become popular. After all, the restaurants I know that step on this IP’s hot spots are basically all popular. As for which IP it is, I can’t say more, otherwise I will be blocked by my peers.

03 Designing hot-selling products based on cultural trends

The hot spots and cute points mentioned above are all pleasing methods that can bring temporary popularity. The life cycle of such popular products is relatively short. No matter how delicious the melon is, everyone will get tired of it after a long time, just like Tesla. I am too lazy to comment on it now.

So what kind of points can last long? It's culture, or in popular terms: cultural and creative industries, such as the Palace Museum's cultural and creative industries, national trend cultural and creative industries, etc.

There is a tea bag brand that recently launched a tea with the theme of "Shanhe Jinxiu". Each word in "Shanhe Jinxiu" represents a flavor. Four words represent four flavors. You may think, I can do this too, it’s just four words, I can come up with a “Jinluan Kasaya”, also with four flavors, and after drinking it you can become a monk.

Back to the topic, four flavors of "Splendid Mountains and Rivers" were specially designed by landscape painting artists, with different theme colors used according to the colors of the four teas. The outer packaging is so beautiful and the cultural level is high. The product sold 7.11 million on the day it was launched .

When you get a product like this, not to mention drinking it, just holding it in your hand and looking at it is a pleasant experience. With the recommendation of various amateur experts, this product became a hit overnight.

Stepping into the cultural point has high requirements on the cultural literacy of the founder. Look at how great the cultural and creative products of Cha Yan Yue Se are. Although I haven’t studied the resume of their founder, I guess he is a literati with a petty-bourgeois temperament.

We have 5,000 years of cultural heritage, and our cultural assets are inexhaustible. However, there is one thing I want to remind everyone: the works of the ancients from hundreds of years ago cannot be used casually.

Last time, a friend found a painting by Tang Bohu on the Internet and asked if it could be printed on a product? I am a tiger, not Tang Bohu, so how can I make the decision? Then I asked Baidu and it said: Ancient paintings are all copyrighted, so don’t use them indiscriminately .

To tap into cultural elements, you can collaborate with illustrators to create some original illustrations or new takes on ancient paintings, or redraw ancient paintings using modern techniques. For example, you can travel to the Qingming Shanghe Tu while playing with your phone. There are cultural elements and points of criticism. When a product wrapped in such culture is launched, the probability of it becoming a hit will be much greater.

04 Last

Designing a hit product is not as difficult as everyone imagines. There is something called "feeling". As long as you have been in the product business for a long time and have designed more product styles, you will have the feeling of designing hit products.

Just like I have been writing manuscripts for more than ten years, I know the result as soon as I write the title as to whether the article will become popular .

The above discusses three theories for designing hit products. It is feasible to follow them, but it is better to have your own experience. With experience, you can create a hit product as soon as you open your mouth.

Last time someone asked me, how to open an internet-famous milk tea shop? I said it’s too simple, the name of the store is just “Mistress’s Tea”, it will definitely be a hit!

Author: Tiger Talks Operations

Source: Tiger Talk Operations