The battle between the two major advertising routes in China

When Hengshui approached us to help it with its brand strategy in 2006, we distilled a core value proposition for Hengshui: "Hengshui Laobai Gan, drink to reveal your masculinity."

This is based on China's liquor culture. In traditional liquor culture, especially in the northern region, being able to drink liquor, especially strong liquor, is a symbol of masculinity and a manifestation of masculinity. We use "masculinity" to convey the emotional value of Hengshui Laobai Gan and create a masculine and tough brand image for Hengshui. Based on this, Hengshui invited Hu Jun, who is famous for his tough guy image on the screen, to be the spokesperson, thus shaping a distinctive brand personality and style.

By 2010, Hengshui Laobai Gan targeted the business and political elite and launched a series of mid- to high-priced traditional vintage products, striving to upgrade the brand from a mass brand to a mid- to high-end brand. So I wrote another slogan for Hengshui at that time, which was "Time gives men flavor." Time is used to express the product value of ancient methods and years, and time is also used to convey the years of experience and precipitation on men, to shape the image of high-end consumers who are confident, calm, enterprising and responsible, and to express mature and rounded masculinity.

In a word, "masculinity" is our core strategy in shaping the Hengshui Laobai Gan brand.

Later, Hengshui Laobai Gan switched to the positioning consulting company Junzhi Service. Junzhi overturned the brand route we previously created for Hengshui and developed a new brand strategy. The core of this strategy is the brand slogan proposed by Junzhi, which is "Drink Laobaigan and you won't get drunk."

Junzhi hopes to make “no intoxication” the core selling point of Hengshui Laobai Gan and highlight the product quality. According to the requirements of positioning theory, a brand needs to create a letter of credibility to win the trust of consumers. The letter of credibility that Junzhi found is "The first-class gold medal liquor at the 1915 Panama World Expo was not Maotai liquor, but Laobai Gan."

"No getting drunk" has become the new strategic core of Hengshui Laobai Gan.

I have no intention of commenting on which is better, "masculinity" or "not getting drunk". Those who are concerned about this issue can do their own research and look at Hengshui's performance in recent years. What I want to say is that “manliness” and “not getting drunk” are both three words, and both are copywriting that cannot be simpler, but they convey the core strategy of a brand. Once these three words are changed, the strategic direction of the entire brand will change.

Moreover, "masculinity" and "not getting drunk" represent the two major routes of Chinese advertising over the past few decades: one is called the user route, and the other is called the product route.

The product roadmap answers three questions:

1. What does the product do? (mainly talking about the basic attributes and categories of products)

2. What functions does the product have? (Mainly talking about product selling points)

3. What are the advantages of your product compared to competing products? (Mainly talking about the differences and uniqueness of the products)

China's local marketing companies like to take the product route.

For example, Ye Maozhong’s representative cases in recent years are “If you have any questions, go to Zhihu” and Yiche.com’s “Know all the prices and you won’t suffer a loss when buying a car”. They all talk about the functional selling points of the product.

For example, Hong Production and BOSS Direct Hire’s “Look for a job and talk to your boss”, and Platinum Travel Photography’s “Go wherever you want to shoot”. They are all talking about the selling points of the products.

For example, Hua & Hua, representative cases include Hanting Hotel's "If you like cleanliness, stay at Hanting", New Oriental's "New Oriental, Hello Teacher", Mlily 0-pressure mattress's "Low pressure, good sleep", Bama Tea's "Recognize this horse, drink Bama for good tea", Xinchao Media's "Advertise at Xinchao and the whole family will see it", Ligo's "Go to Ligo for baking, every item will be more popular", Putian Restaurant's "Master the ingredients, authentic Fujian cuisine", Wallace fast food's "Whole chicken and hamburger, eat well at Wallace", I Miss You Dates' "Eat three dates a day, I miss you forever", Niu Xiao Zao's "For Guangzhou beef offal stew, just eat Niu Xiao Zao", Xuanma Egg Yolk Soup's "Without good egg yolk, Xuanma won't start work", etc.

From these cases, we can see that H&H’s strategic thinking mainly answers the first two questions:

The first question is who is the brand? What does the product do? For example, Bama serves good tea, Ligao provides baking services, Putian serves authentic Fujian cuisine, and Niu Xiaozao serves Guangzhou beef offal hotpot. For new brands, it is indeed important to answer this question so that consumers know who you are.

The second question is to find the core selling point of the product and the functions of the product. For example, Putian sells "good ingredients", Xuanma sells "good egg yolks", New Oriental sells "good teachers", and Hanting sells "cleanliness".

For example, positioning companies. Although positioning is a foreign theory, the status and influence of positioning theory abroad are just so-so. On the contrary, it is extremely prosperous in China, so I call positioning companies local companies. Let’s take a look at the typical cases of three representative companies in the positioning department.

Trout China - Lao Xiang Ji "the leading fast food brand in Anhui/more than 800 directly-operated stores nationwide", Xiang Piaopiao "the leader in cup milk tea/the cups could be connected to circle the earth three times/1.2 billion people drink it a year", Guazi Used Car "no middlemen to make a profit/far ahead in national transaction volume/leader in the used car industry", Yuanfudao "over 400 million cumulative users nationwide", Jiaduobao "the leading red can herbal tea in terms of sales nationwide/for every 10 bottles of red can herbal tea sold in China, 7 are Jiaduobao/far ahead in national sales".

Reese China - Robam Electric Appliances "only chooses range hoods with strong suction power. For every 10 range hoods with strong suction power sold in China, 6 are from Robam", Junlebao "double-certified in Europe, leading in national sales", and Jinmailang boiled water "is more suitable for Chinese stomachs".

Junzhi-Feihe milk powder is "more suitable for the physique of Chinese babies", Bosideng is "the world's best-selling down jacket expert", and Yadea is "a higher-end electric car/far ahead in global sales".

It can be seen from these cases that the strategic thinking of positioning companies mainly answers the third question, highlighting the competitive advantages of products through endorsements such as sales volume, scale, category status, and awards.

Want to become a positioning master? Just remember these formulas and follow the prescription:

"XXX, the best-selling product in the country/world"

“Sales volume/transaction volume is far ahead”

“Leader/pioneer/pioneer in XX industry”

"XXX is more suitable for Chinese people"

"For every 10 XXX sold in China, 7 are XXX"

"The total number of users nationwide has exceeded X billion"

“XX stores/direct-operated stores nationwide”

…This is called “strategic positioning.”

After introducing the product route routines and representative cases, let’s talk about its pros and cons.

The advantage is that it is direct and straightforward, answering the product category, stating the product selling points and competitive advantages. This is especially important for start-ups and growing brands. Because these brands are still very unfamiliar to the public, companies must make a "self-introduction" in the shortest possible time. Therefore, we usually call this type of product-oriented strategy and advertising "sales-effective."

There are two disadvantages. First of all, from the above cases we can see that most product routes are self-promotion, self-boasting, and self-talk. In fact, consumers do not care and are not interested in this kind of advertising and brand communication at all. Therefore, companies can only use hard selling tactics to consumers, using big media and big budgets to brainwash consumers and force them to remember.

Most of the brainwashing advertisements in China are produced by these companies. But this is very expensive. It is impossible to successfully brainwash users without a budget of several hundred million. And even if consumers are forced to remember you, they don’t like you, they may even hate you very much. As the saying goes:

Whether the brainwashing is effective or not depends entirely on how much advertising is invested. If you say that positioning is effective, no one will pay attention if you don’t have money to invest.

Another point is that product lines are prone to homogenization (just look at the positioning routines), and it is difficult for corporate advertisements to stand out from the massive amount of information and leave a deep impression on consumers.

After talking about the product route, let’s talk about the user route.

User routes answer three additional questions:

1. Who is the brand’s target user? What kind of people are they? (Establish brand image by shaping user image)

2. What emotions, personalities, and attitudes do users have? (Establish user recognition through emotional communication)

3. What experience and psychological value does the brand bring to consumers? (Shaping emotional value, thereby increasing brand premium and grade)

4A companies like to take the user route. Among them, the 4A advertising companies I refer to also include creative hot shops. Although the hot shops are all local companies, the founders and core members of the hot shops basically come from the 4A system, and their operating systems are relatively consistent with those of 4A companies, so I count them all as part of the 4A system.

Representative works include Shengjia's B station "The Next Wave", "When I left, I was called Timberland, and when I came back, I was called Indestructible", W Company's "Every Step Counts" for New Balance, Douban's "Our Spiritual Corner", and major car brands such as Buick Excelle's "Resonate with the Enterprising" and JEEP's "Without stories, there is no life."

The creative concepts and brand concepts of 4A companies all start from the users, such as Ogilvy’s “the big ideaL”, Saatchi’s “lovemark”, and Leo Burnett’s “humankind”. As the names suggest, these concepts all emphasize starting from the psychological needs of users, adding humanity to advertisements, giving emotional value to brands, and allowing consumers to have beautiful associations and emotional identification with the brands.

After introducing the routines and representative cases of user routes, let’s talk about its pros and cons.

The advantage is that it allows consumers to identify with the brand. For example, Pepsi says "the choice of a new generation", Yinglang says "resonating with the enterprising", and SK-II does blind date corner marketing. You can immediately know who the target consumers of this brand are. Moreover, the expression of user emotions and attitudes can shape a typical consumer image and thus form a distinctive brand image. This method can effectively win the love and recognition of users.

There are also two disadvantages. First of all, it is not direct enough and does not intuitively reflect the functional selling points of the product. The user route's appeal is usually to imply functions, such as the previous "drink to show masculinity" which refers to strong liquor.

Ogilvy has a case in which they serve a client called Shunfeng Express. In May 2018, they helped Shunfeng Express to refine its brand concept, which is "Shunfeng Express, delivering with kindness". Taking "kindness" as the brand spirit is what Ogilvy calls the brand's great ideal.

This concept emphasizes the professionalism and dedication of Shunfeng Express, the perfect service experience, and the friendly service attitude. Ogilvy used a series of stories about users anxious to receive express deliveries to illustrate the “kindness” of Shunfeng Express, thereby demonstrating the brand’s warmth and kindness.

This is a great slogan, but it is indeed too far from the product and does not express the product benefits intuitively. What exactly does Shunfeng Express do? How is it different from other express delivery companies such as SF Express and ZTO Express? Including why Shunfeng Express is used instead of same-city express delivery company Dada Express, the brand strategy is not explained clearly.

Therefore, Shunfeng Express later switched to Trout China Service, and the new appeal it put forward was "One-to-one urgent delivery, no group orders!", emphasizing "If you need to deliver something urgently, use Shunfeng Express." This is the new "strategic positioning" officially announced by Shunfeng in July 2019.

The so-called strategic positioning, after all, is still a copy, a slogan, and this slogan is indeed more direct and intuitive than "deliver with kindness".

Secondly, companies choose to take the user route, appealing to emotions, attitudes and personality to build their brand image. The main reason is that the products are homogeneous and there is no differentiation between them, so we need to create an image. However, the communication method and brand building method of talking about attitude and personality is also full of routines, and it is easy to become homogenized if it is talked about too much.

Haven’t you seen that the copywriting of brands targeting young people is all the same: dare, be passionate, be true to yourself, love, and be yourself. When it comes to "passion", Chevrolet says "Love my love", 361 Degrees says "Love one more degree", JD.com says "Live up to every love", Watsons distilled water says "105℃ beyond passion" and Kuaishou says "Your love for life is very cute".

From the above analysis, we can see that

The product route is a sales mentality, which emphasizes the need to tell the story of the product well, including its functions, selling points, and competitive advantages.

The user route is a customer acquisition mindset that emphasizes telling the user story well, the user's experience, emotions, and psychological value.

Of course, both of these routes have their rationality. Because in the achievement of marketing, "people" and "goods" are the basic components.

Dear viewers, when you see this, you may be thinking, since both the product route and the user route have their own meaning and advantages and disadvantages, can the two routes be combined?

That’s right. I have been working in an advertising company for more than ten years, and what I fear most is hearing clients say this. For example, when we are working on a brand plan, we come up with two sets of ideas and two sets of works. After reading them, the client looked left and right and thought that both plans were good, but he also felt that they seemed to be missing something, so he said to the advertising company: You should combine the two ideas and come up with a plan.

Well, a bad ad was born. Because the combination of two completely different ideas is bound to result in a compromise, the personality and characteristics of the original plan will be obliterated. It requires both rational appeals and emotional communication, and it requires talking about both products and users. In the end, what is produced will definitely be very mediocre.

So how do we combine the product route and the user route? In fact, the answer lies not in combination, but in opening up a third route. That is, the scene route.

The logic of new retail is called people, goods and places. People, goods, and place. People, goods, and place. In fact , "place" is the hub connecting people and goods. Scenarios are of great significance to both products and users.

From the product's perspective, only in specific scenarios can the functional value of the product be clearly perceived by consumers, and the product value can be effectively transformed into consumer experience. Just as Wanglaoji’s “fear of getting angry” is most perceived by consumers in the hot pot and barbecue scenario, it represents the most consumer pain points and is most likely to impress users to buy. Scenarios help products find their place in consumers’ lives. Without scenarios, there is no product positioning.

From the user's perspective, scenes can attract people. When it comes to marketing, we all know the importance of finding consumers, but if companies want to know who their consumers are, they can either rely on demographic factors and understand the user's age, gender, income, education level, region, family structure, etc. Or they can rely on interests and lifestyle factors. For example, if a company knows that its consumers like sports, it can invite sports stars to endorse the product and advertise on sports channels and sports communities.

In the e-commerce era, companies can also rely on behavioral factors. If I were a business selling meal replacement shakes, then people who have searched online for weight loss, browsed for weight loss foods, and have a fitness habit in the past few months would be my target audience. However, these methods either rely on market research to understand the characteristics and needs of consumers. Either you have to rely on big data, or directly capture user behavior for analysis and precise reach, which is not an easy task.

Another way to lock in users is through scenarios. For example, if I want to make a high-end wine, I will target business banquets, and I don’t care whether the consumers are male or female, old or young. Anyway, the needs of different users in business banquets are similar. In terms of promotion, the channels and media I use to reach users are also in this scenario. That’s the value of the scene.

Therefore, in my book "Essential Copywriting", I proposed four basic concepts of brand marketing: scene, label, social, and circulation. Copywriting should be created in accordance with the guidance of these four major business logics.

I put the scene at the very beginning of the book because finding the scene is the starting point of marketing. The book puts forward the three major values ​​of scenes: scene creation, scene positioning, and scene experience. Scenes can stimulate user demand, scenes can help products find a place in consumers' living spaces, and scenes can turn product functions, benefits and selling points into brand experiences that users can perceive, participate in and be immersed in. In addition, it also includes four major variables for applying scenarios to marketing and copywriting: timing, occasion, action, and frequency.

When it comes to copywriting, how to write copy? I think the most important thing is to find the scene. Advertisers often talk about insight, emphasizing that one must first find insight before writing copy and that the core criterion for evaluating whether a copy is good is whether it contains insight... Insight is the inner skill that copywriters cultivate. So what exactly is insight? Insight is actually scene dialogue. In specific scenarios, use copywriting to write out the dialogue with consumers, so that the copywriting can play the role of touching people's hearts and boosting sales.

Author: Empty-handed

Source: Empty-handed