I have always wanted to sort out and summarize the brand marketing methods of Alibaba and Xiaomi. After more than half a year of preparation and research, it finally took shape today.

Why combine Alibaba and Xiaomi? Because the underlying logic of the brand marketing of these two companies is very similar, both are driven by the continuous iteration of product experience, dominated by potential energy and culture, and are all-round closed-loop marketing that goes beyond the traditional marketing model ...

All-round marketing + ecological closed loop are the two essences of Alibaba and Xiaomi's marketing .

Let’s talk about all-round first. Of course, it does not refer to the 360-degree integrated communication marketing mentioned by traditional 4A advertising companies. In fact, the latter does not have true 360 ​​degrees, only 180 degrees , because it often only emphasizes communication between brands and consumers and abandons products... and the all-round marketing of Alibaba, Xiaomi, and many new consumer brands now is the real 360 degrees, because it fully includes product differentiated experience, self-media, IP creation and ecological construction.

Let’s talk about the ecological closed loop, which refers to the construction of an ecological system that integrates product and effect . Marketing not only sells goods directly, but also builds brands and ultimately generates self-traffic. It does not rely solely on advertising and external traffic, fully improving the ecological system of Alibaba and Xiaomi.

The following figure is the brand IP full marketing system of Alibaba and Xiaomi that I have sorted out and summarized:

This is a closed-loop system consisting of six steps, namely: 1. Product (innovation) drive; 2. Six-wheel all-wheel drive (all-round); 3. IP lighting (self-generated traffic); 4. Build momentum and spread (leverage momentum); 5. Integration of product and effect (product IPization); 6. Improvement of the ecosystem.

The following is a detailed description of each of the aspects around this all-round marketing + ecological closed-loop diagram .

In this six-step closed-loop diagram, only the first point is different between the Alibaba system and the Xiaomi system. The other five points are the same, and the process is also the same.

Product innovation is the first step of the six steps. It is the driving force behind an enterprise’s growth and development. Only through product innovation and leveraging momentum can an enterprise grow and develop.

The product (innovation) drive of the Alibaba system is the continuous innovation of the shopping experience, from the earliest Alibaba (B2B) to Taobao (C2C), Alipay (solving the convenience of payment), Tmall (B2C), Double 11 Shopping Festival (creating China's shopping festival), Cainiao (logistics), Xianyu (exchange of idle items), Hema Fresh (fresh food), live streaming (real-time shopping), and so on.

The development of Alibaba as a whole has been driven by the continuous enrichment of new shopping experience applications (products). Looking back now, those who have successfully innovated and led the trends have brought the greatest value to Alibaba. Pure imitation and following often have little effect, such as group buying.

Xiaomi’s product (innovation) is driven by new technological experiences. Since it is difficult for Xiaomi to achieve meta-innovation with its own technology, it can only focus on micro-innovation, simple design and cost-effectiveness. From Xiaomi-Redmi-Xiaomi Mall to the various technological products in the Xiaomi ecosystem, Xiaomi has created a new kingdom of digital smart product ecology.

From this step on, the underlying marketing logic of Alibaba and Xiaomi became quite consistent.

The second step is six-wheel drive.

Traditional marketing is generally driven by four wheels: "product-public relations-events-advertising". Traditional brand building focuses on the last three. This is due to the bias of the traditional 4A concept, which insists on separating products and brands.

Alibaba and Xiaomi’s overall marketing has also added two new gears: “people-culture”.

The picture above is the model we drew, and it can be clearly seen that -

The "people-culture" of the new dual gear is not the traditional people and culture, but refers to: creating personal IP and cultural IP. Personal IP can achieve the fastest, most direct and effective dissemination, while cultural IP can capture the subculture crowd and form its own online culture.

Let’s talk about personal IP first. It is obvious that Jack Ma and Lei Jun played a huge role in the early development of Alibaba and Xiaomi. Moreover, due to the differences in the times, Jack Ma's era mainly relied on large media, but in Lei Jun's Xiaomi era, Weibo had already appeared. Therefore, Lei Jun's cost-saving efficiency is much greater than Jack Ma's, and Xiaomi's rise is also faster.

For Alibaba, the creation of cultural IP includes "Taobao Dolls", "Ali Zoo", "Double Eleven Shopping Festival", etc. Alibaba is a shopping experience, which is easier to form a culture and relies more on emotions; while the technological culture that Xiaomi wants to create is naturally much more difficult.

Xiaomi also has its own shopping festival and a series of cultures. Of course, they are far inferior to Alibaba. This is determined by Xiaomi's technological attributes.

Xiaomi's six-wheel drive is mainly reflected in individuals and products, and is driven by public relations. Coincidentally, public relations is also the core driving force of Alibaba’s marketing.

Using public relations as the driving force is a common feature of marketing in the new era, and this public relations is very traditional, including a large amount of online event marketing, word-of-mouth management and big data.

In short, the six-wheel drive upgrades the dimension of marketing, forming a high-dimensional attack on the low-dimensional traditional marketing, which often has an overwhelming communication advantage, especially - it can form more self-propagation and cultural energy precipitation.

The third step is to light up the IP and create your own traffic.

Behind every product innovation and six-wheel all-wheel drive, there is a process of building a brand IP.

The "brand IP" mentioned here is a concept that goes beyond tradition and combines commercial and cultural attributes. It can be understood as injecting cultural and emotional values ​​into commercial products and brands , becoming the axis of marketing in the Internet era. Building IP is to build a brand of a higher dimension .

Looking back at each new drive of Alibaba, a new IP is created with the mission of building a successful brand IP.

“Alibaba

Jack Ma

Internal martial arts culture

Taobao Dolls

Double 11

Ali Zoo

Each partner IP

Zhang Dayi

Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi, etc.

Virtual IP

Meow, wait."

The earliest name Alibaba is a classic cultural IP that comes from the story of One Thousand and One Nights. "Alibaba, Open Sesame" has a very deep cognitive foundation among the people. Therefore, the Alibaba Group started by leveraging culture and taking the cultural symbol of "Alibaba" for itself.

Then there is Jack Ma’s personal IP, which has greatly promoted the development of Alibaba, especially in the early days.

Also very important is: the martial arts cultural identity within Alibaba . Every employee who joined Alibaba in the early days had to take a code name from the martial arts culture, and call each other by the code name internally. This could help form an internal value recognition community and form a cultural group that was different from the outside world.

As Alibaba grew and expanded, we ran out of Jin Yong's martial arts names, so we moved on to other martial arts names, and then to names of people from other similar cultures, and finally we had to come up with new nicknames...

The martial arts culture within Alibaba is not only reflected in the names of people, but also in the names of various conference rooms and venues. The center representing Alibaba's highest technological research and development is also named after the martial arts culture - Damo Academy. The highest educational venue in the Alibaba system - Lakeside, also actually comes from martial arts novels.

Taobao’s Taobao doll is Alibaba’s first cartoon IP image. It was Alibaba’s early attempt at an animated IP. At that time, a large number of joint creation activities with artists were carried out. My own IP Zhang Xiaohe once worked closely with Taobao dolls.

Then came the Double Eleven Shopping Festival, which is the most successful brand IP created by Alibaba. Its influence even goes far beyond Alibaba itself and has become a national shopping festival. In ten years, China's e-commerce industry has created a real national shopping festival out of thin air, with the participation of the entire nation, and even formed a cultural system.

With the emergence of Tmall, the first animal appeared in Alibaba’s IP image. After that, it became unstoppable and eventually formed the “Ali Zoo” that spread to all Alibaba applications.

Ali Zoo has become a general term for various applications and services of the Ali system, including Tmall Mall, Cainiao Network, Shenma Search, Ant Financial, Fliggy Travel, Hema Fresh, Xianyu, etc. Each product uses a cute animal as its image, and is nicknamed Ali Zoo by netizens. It is said that there are now 26 species of animals.

"Unity, love, cuteness and wildness, together, doing valuable and meaningful things"

These cute animal images can effectively enhance the emotional connection between Alibaba and consumers, weaken the utilitarian nature of marketing, and are easier to be perceived and accepted by consumers.

They not only represent their respective platforms, but as an independent "Ali Zoo" IP alliance, they have opened up a new area for Alibaba's industrial ecology in the form of cross-border cooperation, and built a complete Alibaba Zoo universe through content filling, human setting improvement, and systematic business operation and maintenance.

Alibaba Zoo Members (2020.06.01 Edition)

Alibaba Zoo X Decathlon

Master Kong x Alibaba Zoo

Costa X Alibaba Zoo

,

Offline blind box peripherals

Offline pop-up store

Simultaneously with the creation of the “Ali Zoo”’s own IP, Ali is also creating IP for its partners.

From Zhang Dayi in the early years to Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi and others in the past two years, the linkage between IP+industry ecology has been brought to the extreme.

Alibaba’s latest IP creation has entered the stage of “virtual digital people” and “virtual idols”.

Take a look at this very colorful promotional video made by Tmall for Women's Day, which has brought together the virtual idol Miaojiang, the real person Li Jiaqi, and the classic IP HELLOKITTY——

At the same time, Alibaba's DAMO Academy is also working hard to develop artificial intelligence and other technologies behind virtual humans, moving towards the future of virtual human IP fully representing reality...

In short, Alibaba’s IP lighting strategy is:

Internal martial arts

Foreign Zoo

Star-making in all aspects

Compared with Alibaba's IP universe, Xiaomi is of course not as rich because it is a technology product.

The IP lighting of Xiaomi started with the very figurative name Xiaomi. The name Xiaomi is very friendly, which greatly helped its subsequent development of combining technology with humanity. If it were a cold and abstract name, its impact would be greatly reduced.

Then there is the effectiveness of Lei Jun’s personal IP, which needs no further explanation.

Another important personal IP is Li Wanqiang, co-founder of Xiaomi. The book he wrote, "Sense of Participation", once had a very large influence and played an important role in enhancing the interactive connection between Xiaomi and consumers.

Not many people may know that Xiaomi introduced an IP image called "Mi Rabbit" in its early stages.

Mi Rabbit played a significant role in Xiaomi's early days, especially in increasing the brand's affinity and making technology more warm.

The person in charge of the development of Mi Rabbit derivatives once told me personally that the sales of Mi Rabbit derivatives had reached more than 100 million yuan a year. This is actually a very good number for an IP image. The annual sales of many specialized IP images in China may not reach 100 million yuan. Therefore, in terms of derivative product revenue, MiTu has entered the first-tier camp of domestic IP.

It was only later, with the further development of Xiaomi's ecosystem, that the need to accommodate more and different products from other Mi family members under the Xiaomi ecosystem led to the gradual fading of Mi Rabbit.

The IP image of Mi Rabbit is actually very consistent with the current mainstream cultural trend, and it can be done again at any time.

Since Xiaomi emphasizes simplicity and minimalist style in product design, it does not leave much room for IP. This also makes Xiaomi's IP development more focused on personal IP and partners.

It is said that Xiaomi's latest product strategy will strengthen IP collaboration, including the recent invitation of Hatsune Miku to be the spokesperson, in order to strengthen the emotional connection with Generation Z. If this is the case, Xiaomi will have more IP products in the future, and there will definitely be more IP marketing.

In short, the meaning of "IP lighting" is that when launching marketing, the innovation of products, services and activities will be presented through IP, making them perceptible, symbolic and spreadable.

If you can only use one word to summarize the biggest feature of Alibaba and Xiaomi's marketing, that word must be: "creating momentum . "

Being good at taking advantage of trends, using potential energy, and then being good at turning other people's potential energy into one's own, making one's own potential energy stronger and stronger, is the key to the marketing success of the Alibaba and Xiaomi groups.

In fact, the essence of leveraging is to borrow other people’s IP, such as celebrity endorsements.

The essence of building momentum is to create your own IP so that you can form your own potential energy. Therefore, the key to creating momentum and spreading it is how to introduce your own IP and then develop and spread it.

# Take advantage of the momentum first, then create momentum

Several of the most important publicity campaigns by Alibaba and Xiaomi all started with leveraging momentum.

Alibaba's initial rise was based on the first major wave of the Internet entering China; while Xiaomi's rise began with Lei Jun's leveraging of that wave.

Taobao later rose to prominence. Since the leader at the time, EBAY, was very powerful and monopolized the advertising on all major portals and did not allow competitors to advertise, Taobao could only rely on various entertainment marketing and event marketing to gain momentum, which also gave Alibaba a strong public relations ability and the ability to self-propagate events.

The subsequent Double Eleven first took advantage of the singles culture, because Double Eleven was originally a singles festival created by netizens. In the first five years of the development of Double Eleven shopping, shopping for singles to escape their relationship has always been the main marketing content. It was not until later, when Double Eleven became strong enough, that it surpassed and even replaced the concept of singles.

# Start from a niche circle

The marketing campaigns of Alibaba and Xiaomi often have the typical characteristic of starting from a niche market.

Different from the mass taste of mass communication, niche communication is often niche non-mainstream taste. Although it seems to have a narrow audience, it actually has a very good word-of-mouth communication effect, which is particularly conducive to early communication.

Because only content and products that have been verified by a niche audience are worth promoting. The things that become popular at the beginning are often common goods rather than trend-setting products.

All trends start from a small group of people.

Alibaba’s Double Eleven started with singles, Taobao started with second- and third-tier cities, and live streaming started with Generation Z. These were not so popular in the beginning, but they provided a good incubation period for product dissemination.

Xiaomi started out as an enthusiast company, which built up a very good reputation for the early Xiaomi.

Afterwards, Xiaomi launched a large-scale cost-effective campaign and quickly brought it to the general public, perhaps a little too quickly.

But at the same time, Xiaomi still maintains its tradition of developing avant-garde products, and regularly launches some avant-garde products that are more suitable for enthusiasts rather than the mainstream, such as full-screen products.

# Expand the circle, break the circle, and become a mass audience

After being tested in a small niche testing ground and having a good reputation established, it entered the stage of spreading layer by layer and expanding the circle and breaking the circle.

Since the basic potential energy has been accumulated in the early stage, it is easy to build your own potential energy at this time.

This is a process of stimulated diffusion, which is extremely obvious in Alibaba's promotion of live streaming: initially, only a small number of people watched live streaming shopping, but as several superstar live streaming stars were created, the number of people participating in live streaming shopping expanded like a snowball, and sales continued to hit new highs.

In the end, live streaming became a hot topic that attracted national attention, and the trend was set.

Among Xiaomi's technological products, there are also very clear classifications. There are some products such as sockets and power banks that are suitable and needed by everyone, and there are always some products that are very suitable for niche groups to buy, and they also have quite stable sales volumes.

These niche products are actually Xiaomi's technological experimental fields, which are famous for continuously launching new, unique and special products. They will continue to incubate products that can reach the general public, and reach thousands of households through increased publicity and full marketing.

What is the biggest difference between new marketing and old marketing?

That is, new marketing starts from the niche and then breaks through the circle to spread to the masses; while old marketing always starts from the pure masses, only considering mass communication and ignoring niche communication.

The biggest difference between the results of new marketing and old marketing is that the former can easily produce very sexy hits, while the latter can only produce passerby products that are not sexy enough.

Product and effect integration is actually a process, which is the process of combining products, brands and sales together. The key is to use " differentiated product experience to create different brand value ."

All of Alibaba’s successful brand marketing is driven by an innovative product that provides something different and solves consumer problems. For example, the difference between Taobao and eBay in the past; the difference between Alipay and traditional payment; the difference between Double Eleven and no shopping festival; the difference between live shopping and traditional shopping.

Xiaomi is in a different market, and the differentiation of its technological products is difficult to present through hardware because they are all general platforms. This is also the reason why Xiaomi uses cost-effectiveness as a means of competition. But there is still product differentiation, which is formed through software, services and user habits.

Whether it is Alibaba or Xiaomi, success lies in creating differentiated and innovative products first. If the products cannot be differentiated, then the services will be differentiated. If differentiation is still not possible, then create unique IP content for the products and turn them into a kind of cultural IP presentation. This can also achieve a differentiated product experience.

No matter how you do marketing, only marketing that can create a differentiated product experience will lead to a good brand.

This is also the fundamental reason why traditional advertising companies are gradually losing their voice in the new marketing environment: the irrational obsession of traditional advertising companies to separate brands and products will cause great marketing difficulties in the new era.

Why do we have to believe that products will eventually become homogenized and only brands can be differentiated?

In fact, if the products are really completely homogenized and outdated, the company has already lost its development potential. What is the point of creating a brand? The brand will surely decline.

In short, brand-effect integration is the integration of brand building and product differentiation, which is determined by the degree of product differentiation and the temperature of IPization. The more obvious the differentiation and the more popular the IPization, the better the effect of brand-effect integration will be.

The first five points actually talk about: creating momentum + all-round marketing + IP energy pool. The sixth point is about improving the ecology, thereby achieving a closed loop and upgrading the ecology.

What is the closed-loop upgrade of the ecosystem? That is, every product innovation, through hype + all-round marketing + IP energy pool, ultimately leads to the company's leading or even crushing position in the industrial ecosystem.

What is a better ecology? Ultimately, it comes down to whether consumers can get more value, including convenience, connectivity, community, emotional satisfaction, cultural significance, etc. These are all ecosystems, and in the Internet age, these can all be reflected in big data.

In other words, every all-round marketing campaign of Alibaba ultimately achieves the continuous transformation of Alibaba’s shopping ecosystem.

In the past, Taobao marketing improved the e-commerce ecosystem; Alipay marketing improved the payment ecosystem; Double Eleven achieved a large-scale integration of promotions and also improved the shopping ecosystem for consumers.

Now, why we need to promote the IP system of "Ali Zoo" is actually to realize the large ecological environment of various shopping applications; why we need to switch from real-person live broadcast to virtual live broadcast is also to make the live broadcast ecosystem evolve...

Every all-round marketing campaign of Xiaomi ultimately achieves the continuous improvement of the ecosystem of Xiaomi's technology products. From Xiaomi mobile phones to Xiaomi Mall, from single mobile phones to full-tech products, the ecological environment will become stronger and stronger.

Xiaomi's rapid development lies in combining new technologies with the fastest speed and applying them to the most common needs. In this process, it has changed from leveraging momentum to creating momentum, from external traffic to independent traffic, and through its own products + its own stores + its own IP, it ultimately continuously improves its own ecosystem.

This is 360-degree closed-loop marketing , which can incorporate product innovation, self-traffic and ecological development. The 360-degree integrated marketing mentioned in the past is really just a pure communication level.

Marketing without ecological upgrading will lead to the following result: winning every battle but ultimately losing the war.

Finally, here are seven sentences summarizing this article and the entire marketing ecosystem:

1. All-round marketing + ecological closed loop are the two essences of Alibaba and Xiaomi's marketing;

2. Product innovation is the first step in all-round marketing and the driving force for enterprises to grow bigger and stronger;

3. The six-wheel drive adds people and culture, which upgrades the dimension of marketing and forms a high-dimensional attack on the low-dimensional traditional marketing;

4. To achieve six-wheel drive, an IP needs to be lit at startup;

5. Be good at turning external potential energy into your own potential energy and expand the circle;

6. Marketing that can create a differentiated product experience can achieve product-effect integration;

7. Omni-marketing can not only achieve sales and branding, but also achieve ecological leadership

Author: IP Fried Rice

Source: IP Fried Rice