The essence of brand operation, using F4 to crack Steve Jobs' reality distortion

Today we are going to talk to you about how brand building can be divided into several levels?

To answer this question, we can start with a very interesting and classic business story, which you must remember:

This was the scene where Steve Jobs persuaded the president of PepsiCo to join Apple. Many people saw Jobs' eloquence with great reality-distorting power from this short sentence. When I first heard this, I was impressed. But later, when I learned more about the rules of branding, I couldn’t help but sigh: “Steve Jobs is so bad!”

The brand rules mentioned here are the different levels of brand building. Similar to Big Idea’s OBB model, we can also combine the brand-level tools of various 4A companies in the market and summarize them into this concise and clear F4 brand formula.

Don’t underestimate such a simple thing. It can be used to analyze almost all advertising information. Jobs’ reality distortion ability is also achieved by relying on this model. After reading this, you can also use it flexibly:

Here we are speaking from the manufacturer's perspective, and we need to state the core features of our products or services. These features are unquestionable, exist in fact, and provide differentiated competitive advantages. This is what advertising companies or brand departments often say: Reasons to believe, such as what exclusive technology you have, what high-quality ingredients you have, etc.

Here we need to change the perspective from the manufacturer's perspective to the user's perspective. For users, what kind of unique value can these product/service features of ours transform into for them? What practical problems can it solve for people and what practical needs can it meet?

For example, if you are a battery manufacturer, how do you convert your perspective to that of a consumer?

How does it make you feel when a practical need is being met?

This is what people often call emotional added value. Compared with the measurable rational value, the emotional value of this Feeling is not easy to measure accurately, which leads to differences in the brand's premium space. When you’re paying for a feeling, price considerations become irrational. Therefore, many advertisements of big brands or luxury goods are meant to create a certain desire or feeling for you, rather than to sell you a specific fabric. For example, many LV advertisements:

At this time, changing the perspective again, from the previous user perspective to the belief and faith shared by users and brands, is to truly bind users and brands together. If the brand can do this, users will change from consumers to your fans (true fans), and users will become your brand ambassadors and spokespersons. At this time, their loyalty is also extremely terrifying. Their loyalty can be expressed in one word - "ONLY":

• "Computers, I only buy MAC!"
• “Sneakers, I only wear Nike!”
• "Soda, I only drink Coca-Cola!"

The importance of Faith (brand belief) cannot be emphasized any further, because in addition to its huge value to consumers, it also has a huge motivating effect on the internal team. It will make team members have a sense of honor and mission when doing their specific work, which is the ultimate motivation for everyone to persist in innovation and work hard every day.

Of course, brand belief will also make the wider public have a more positive impression of the company and its founder. Just like many people don’t understand why someone as high-profile as Jack Ma is still so popular until now, while someone as low-key and honest as Robin Li is criticized everywhere. It is because no matter where Jack Ma goes, he always holds on to the F4 amulet of "making it easy to do business in the world", otherwise he would have been criticized to the sky long ago. Jack Ma always talks about faith (F4), while Robin Li always talks about technology (F1/F2)

In short, each F represents a progressive sense of value, because these different levels of value will also give consumers different reasons to pay:

If you want to write this F4 model convincingly, you need to have insights everywhere. To write a very good F4, you need four types of very good insights:

The issue of insight is enough to write a book to analyze, and I will talk about it again when I have the chance. To dig out insights, in addition to your life experience and industry experience, more often than not, you need to have the right methods to approach users and consumers and to enter the market. You cannot fabricate beautiful insights just by sitting in a clean office. In the words of my former American boss (who is also my teacher and good friend), excellent brand people should have the Dirty Feet spirit (working barefoot rather than sitting and daydreaming).

In addition to the Dirty Feet spirit, another spirit is to approach customers with an open mind and make full use of their professional knowledge to solve problems together. No matter how talented an advertiser is, it is impossible to complete a brand project without the professional support and high-value input from the client.

The challenge is how you spark conversations with your customers:

You need to have the right way to guide your clients’ knowledge and opinions so that they can be expressed more fully. The company I work for, Shi Li Advertising, has refined and invented a set of effective practical methods. This year, we designed and implemented a number of co-creation workshops with client management, which stimulated mutual discussion and in-depth communication, providing strong support for subsequent brand strategies and creative directions.

Well, now that we understand the structure, definition and creative program of F4, we can finally watch the classic dialogue between Steve Jobs and the president of PepsiCo. In fact, Apple and Pepsi are both great companies doing equally meaningful things.

Apple's F4 brand hierarchy:

PepsiCo’s F4 brand hierarchy:

But in that conversation, Jobs deliberately used an unequal level of dialogue, comparing his own F4 with Pepsi's F1:

Moreover, Jobs simply used "sugar water" to replace Pepsi's F1:

This is Steve Jobs’ secret to conversation.

Now, can you also use it flexibly in reverse? If you were John Sculley, the president of PepsiCo, you could say:

Now, in order to deepen everyone's understanding of F4 and its practical application, we use several advertisements that can be seen everywhere on the streets/subways recently as examples (the quality of the photos is limited, they were taken casually with a mobile phone):

The clever part about the final slogan is that it organically combines F2 and F3:

F2+F3 = Illuminate your beauty

This sentence not only brings out the function, but also the emotion.

This is where this Xiaomi advertisement fails. “On one side is technology, on the other side is art”, so what does it mean to consumers? Why not make it clearer? They spent a lot of money to hire such a good spokesperson and purchased such expensive media, but did not spend any effort to develop better advertising content.

It’s obviously not a good advertisement. I wonder which advertising company made it and whether it is worthy of the client’s budget?

The F4 of the brand mentioned by Zhang Sir:

F1 (Facts): In an environment where parallel imports are rampant, we provide the most proven brand methods, such as OBB and F4.

F2 (Function): We can help you work more efficiently and be promoted faster (achievements, positions, salaries, etc.)

F3 (Feeling): It can make you say goodbye to the embarrassment of being an advertising dog and a marketing dog, and become a high-value advertising gentleman (advertising lady) with more confidence and pride!

F4 (Faith): We all believe in the value of brands from the bottom of our hearts. China needs more excellent brands to influence the world!

2. Don’t try to put F1-F4 in one ad. It’s good enough if two of them can be highlighted in one ad. (The most confident clients only put one message)

3. When implementing an integrated marketing plan, you need to use a combination of methods based on the specific situation. Especially for new brands, it is basically necessary to use both soft and hard tactics to be effective. Even companies like Steve Jobs and Apple, although they place the most emphasis on changing the world, at the same time, they also place the most emphasis on "Innovation Experience"!

F4 is a sentiment and a beacon that inspires all innovations. But what makes your brand shine is the brand and product experience when you come into contact with hundreds of millions of consumers! In the end, actions speak for themselves!