6 major trends in the development of Chinese advertising media in 2021

In 2021, the global economy is recovering and growing. The IMF’s latest “World Economic Outlook” in January indicated that the global economy will grow by 5.5% in 2021, while China’s economic growth rate will be 8.1%. China has not experienced a growth rate of over 8% for ten years (9.55% in 2011 and 7.86% in 2012). The shadow of the golden age of growth will reappear briefly in 2021.

China's GDP in 2020 was approximately 101.6 trillion yuan, and its per capita GDP exceeded 11,000 US dollars, very close to the high-income country threshold of 12,500 US dollars. In 2021, the possibility of China crossing the middle-income trap and becoming a high-income country is rapidly rising.

For seven consecutive years, consumption has become the primary driving force for China's economic growth, and consumption upgrading will remain an unchanging theme for the next decade. New brands will continue to emerge, develop and explode in the hotbed of economic growth. At the same time, the era of competition between new and old brands is coming.

With the disappearance of the demographic dividend, in the qualitative environment of stock game, the role of brands becomes more important. He who wins the hearts of the people wins the world, and the dividend of people's hearts has become the most important productive force.

Affected by the epidemic in 2020, the advertising market has been declining since February and continued to grow month-on-month. As of December 2020, the year-on-year growth rate of the advertising market has been basically stable, but there is still a big gap compared with 2019. In the context of declining advertising revenue throughout the year, only Internet media and elevator media saw an increase. They adapted to the changes in post-epidemic lifestyles, won the "epidemic bull market", and gained the hearts of the people.

Compared with 2020, there is bound to be room for growth in 2021. In many forecast reports, it is even an important node and may usher in the first 1 trillion scale of the Chinese advertising market .

What obvious new features and trends will there be this year? I think there are six aspects for you to discuss:

1. The new brand configuration pattern, “two Weibo, one Douyin and one Focus” has become the iron triangle.
2. Media differentiation is more obvious, with significant trends towards polarization and head-to-head competition.
3. From the pursuit of "product and effect integration" to "three-in-one brand marketing ".
4. Brand communication returns from fragmentation to centralization.
5. The traffic dividend has ended and brand advertising is making a comeback.
6. Brands must return to communities and neighborhoods to have a sense of belonging and security.

1. New brand configuration pattern: “Two Weibo, one Douyin, and one Focus Media”

In his 2020 year-end show, Wu Xiaobo proposed a major trend in brand development in 2021 based on the new characteristics of the consumer goods market in 2020 - the popularity of new categories will drive the rise of new brands, that is: the popularity of categories will be triggered by a single explosive product, and brands will rise rapidly through the popularity of categories. This is not only a typical phenomenon in 2020, but will also be an inevitable development in 2021.

He also proposed that brand explosion requires "two Weibo, one Douyin and one Focus". Once this term was proposed, it quickly became a high-frequency hot word in the marketing industry.

For advertisers and brands, efficiently combining online and offline, content and scenario, and igniting brands through "two Weibo, one Douyin, and one Focus" will become the most effective paradigm for future communication. The interaction and resonance between the two will be the core position to help brands recover and grow strongly in the post-epidemic era.

In people's daily financial management, there is the concept of asset allocation, including stocks, funds, bonds, financial products, real estate, etc. The concept of brand allocation is also proposed here.

Brands are deeply rooted in social media represented by Weibo, WeChat, Tik Tok, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu; brands in daily life scenes represented by Focus Media are widely ignited. This configuration plan is like buying stocks and funds at the same time.

Choosing to invest in social media is like choosing a few stocks. Once they go viral, there will be surprising returns, but there will also be huge uncertainties. Focus Media is more like a steady fund manager, covering 300 million mainstream urban people every day, with a wide influence, high certainty, and a strong ability to realize self-actualization through brand explosion.

Ipsos' research shows that among the TOP10 popular, highly recognizable, and mind-occupying slogans in 2020, 47% of consumer awareness channels come from TV advertising, 56% from Internet media, and 83% from elevator media. 83% of popular advertising slogans are created by “elevators”. If we compare it with last year's data, 54% came from Internet media, 50% came from TV advertising, and 81% came from elevator media.

From the above research, we can see that seeing the essence, summarizing the condensed brand spirit in one sentence, delivering unique value, integrated control, and transmitting repeatedly are the essence of good advertising. Good brand building is inseparable from simple and direct repetition and the subconscious implantation of super symbols and super discourse.

"Weibo, Douyin, and Fenzhong" are clearly the value extractors, communicators, and promoters of products, services, and brands in the new era, and are core platforms that influence changes in consumers' lifestyles. "Weibo, Weibo and Douyin" are pioneers and front-line fighters, and are the discoverers and verifiers of the market; Focus Media is the cornerstone, and is the core position for brands to be orderly, well-managed, and to repeatedly influence consumers.

2. Matthew Effect: Polarization and head-to-head trend is obvious

Standing at the crossroads of history, everything is bustling and the old and the new are alternating. There are strong expectations for recovery in the global advertising market in 2021, but will it be an overall improvement or just a partial improvement? How do things change between quarters? What the final outcome will be is still unknown. Basically, it can be judged that this is a coexistence quadrant, with forces moving upward and downward, left and right.

Some trends have already emerged in 2020: the top media have grown against the trend, and the Matthew effect has emerged, which will continue in 2021.

According to the latest data in 2020, advertisements have focused on the top media. The top traffic media companies such as Alibaba, Tik Tok, and Tencent have grown by more than 20-30%, and the top brand advertising company Focus Media has grown by more than 20-30%. The entire advertising market fell by 10%, with traditional media falling even more.

Although affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the domestic advertising market demand in 2020 has declined to a certain extent compared with the same period in 2019, but with the expansion of the proportion of e-commerce, the traffic cost after the second half of the Internet has risen sharply. The revenue of traffic media represented by Douyin has still increased significantly. At the same time, the media in the core living space of consumers represented by Focus Media has grown strongly.

Due to the epidemic in the first half of last year, many small and medium-sized companies were hit hard, but stronger companies and brands regarded the crisis as an opportunity to seize their market share. Leading brands increased their investment in leading media, and their upward momentum and public image were better. When consumers feel more uncertain, they will be more inclined to choose brands that give them a greater sense of security and trust.

With the overall recovery of the domestic macro-economy in the second half of the year, the new consumer products track has grown rapidly. The successful cases of many brands such as Yuanqi Forest, Meiji Landou, Xiaoxiandun, and Qia Qia Little Yellow Bag on Focus Media have further established Focus Media’s core position in the rising wave of the new consumer industry.

In fact, the overall head effect of China's economy is becoming more and more obvious, and the stock market is full of legends and songs of leading enterprises. The two-tier and head-to-head effects of advertising media are also very obvious. This is the trend of the times. In the international market, the valuations of Tencent and ByteDance continue to hit new highs. In the A-share market, Focus Media's market value also hit a new high of 180 billion.

All of this is the result of active choice combined with the trend of the times.

3. From the pursuit of "integration of brand and effect" to "three-in-one brand marketing"

In 2020, with the popularity of live streaming and short video marketing, people have witnessed the power of conversion advertising and performance advertising. However, the "integration of brand and effect" that everyone talked about in the past focused more on transaction scenarios driven by traffic, which often obscured the value of the brand and ignored the importance of the brand as a mental resource. More and more brands have discovered through practice that simply pursuing traffic and focusing only on transaction channels is not a long-term solution, because traffic costs are getting higher and higher and cannot be sustained.

The essence of live streaming sales, which continues to be popular in the context of the 2020 epidemic, is also promotion. It seeks immediate purchasing response from consumers and allows them to make decisions quickly. Live streaming cannot build brand awareness, and there is no way to see consumers’ product reviews. For example, for a brand that people have not heard of much, it is very difficult to expect people to make a purchasing decision based on just a few words in a live broadcast or a few glances at traffic advertisements, because it has not established trust with consumers.

When a brand does not have a certain level of popularity, it is difficult to build consumer trust because trust comes from familiarity and recognition. The more well-known the brand is, the better the results will be from live streaming or performance advertising or traffic advertising. Internet advertising space of the same price will have different effects due to different brand potential. The once popular live streaming sales is a way to monetize brand potential through traffic. Only by laying a solid brand foundation can you achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Promotional activities such as live streaming are one-time actions. If the product itself does not have brand power, it is difficult to have real sales conversion. Brand is the continuous accumulation of long-term value, and traffic and live streaming are short-term realization and harvest of brand value. In the short term, brand advertising may not necessarily lead to immediate sales growth, because branding is a process of quantitative change to qualitative change, and it is necessary to cross the inflection point to bring about sustained growth. Once consumer awareness is established, brand and effect will inevitably be able to work together.

A brand is a guarantee of quality, a premium capability, and an emotional resonance with consumers. A brand reduces the cost of communication and transactions with consumers and enhances value perception and expectations. Whether it is retaining old customers or attracting new customers, increasing sales or raising prices, a brand is the cornerstone.

Therefore, a more scientific and effective trend should be - "Brand marketing should be three-in-one" . Specifically:

1. Brand advertising reaches users directly at high speed with the purpose of building brands. The core factor is to let consumers know who you are? What's the difference? How do you know?
2. Use social media to promote content marketing. The key factor is to let consumers know what value you have? What are the advantages compared to your competitors? What's your comment after using it?
3. Shopping guide harvesting, guiding users to quickly make purchases in physical terminals and e-commerce terminals.

In modern marketing, brand advertising, social media promotion and traffic harvesting are three essential elements.

Looking back at 2020, although live streaming sales were very popular and discussions about "private domain traffic" and "product and effect integration" were very lively, there is no doubt that all brands are facing the dilemma of disappearing traffic dividends. The balance between performance advertising and brand advertising is placed before marketers, and different companies have made different choices. However, judging from the final results, whether it is the leading brand or the new consumer brand, those that occupy the cognitive advantage of consumers' minds, adhere to brand long-termism, and are good at seizing opportunities have become the winners.

4. Brand communication returns from fragmentation to centralization

The fragmented nature of Internet communication once enabled the internet celebrity economy and the long-tail effect to enjoy a golden period of development lasting more than five years, but now its drawbacks are slowly showing. Fragmentation even turned into dustification at one point. In the vast information galaxy, information is like dust and cannot stand out.

It has gradually become a consensus among veteran Internet people to say that Internet traffic has entered the second half; for Internet traffic, live streaming mainly relies on discounts and promotions, which not only cannot build a brand, but may also cause damage to the brand. Brand building is returning from the fragmentation and pulverization of the Internet to the centralized media in life. Building brand trust and social consensus through brand explosion and repeated reminders is becoming a new communication trend.

When social media promotion becomes a marketing standard, the benefits of large-scale promotion have ended, and the visibility rate of promotion on the grassland is getting lower and lower. It is becoming increasingly difficult to promote brands through social media, and the benefits of social media promotion are coming to an end.

In other words, fragmentation makes brand building increasingly difficult and consensus increasingly difficult to reach. How to deal with it? When others are still planting grass, you should plant a big tree and make your brand well-known. In this way, everyone can pay attention to the big tree and the grass planted under the tree.

In other words, a brand is originally a forest with an extremely rich ecology. It is far from enough to just plant grass. The brand must first be ignited in a concentrated manner and at the same time, a large amount of grass must be planted on social media. We cannot only see the grassland and ignore the forest. Forests can produce their own oxygen, but brands need to generate their own traffic (note: traffic that consumers actively search for) in order to attract more traffic.

Brands also need to enter people’s daily life scenes, repeat and cycle, and continue to explode, because after the social dividend ends, centralized explosion is the only way for brands to become bigger and stronger.

Nobel Prize winner in Economics Kahneman believes that the way to make people believe in a concept or thing is to repeat it over and over again. Because it's hard for people to distinguish between familiarity and truth. Familiar things make people relax their cognition, making them feel comfortable and easy to judge. The essence of advertising is repetition, and the essence of users is forgetfulness.

Therefore, the inevitable trend is to find scarce centralized scenarios and establish brand consensus in a fragmented environment. Anti-fragmented communication is a trend and also a way of thinking. Many new brands will surely be born in 2021. The more new brands are in a period when the bonus of planting grass is over and planting grass is a standard but not a decisive force, the more they need centralized detonation positions, and they need concentrated detonation in the core scenes that consumers must pass through every day.

The key elements of returning to centralized media are "pushing one force into one place" and "focusing all efforts on one thing." As resources become scarce, they must be more concentrated. When people cross a chasm, they don't take a small step, they take a big step forward, run or even take off. When building a brand, you cannot just adopt a try-and-see or “tasting” mentality. You must choose centralized media of this era that combines scene characteristics. You must gather all resources together. If you cannot conquer the entire country, then conquer a city or even a district. You must have enough potential energy and firepower.

Advertising is not a gentle breeze or drizzle, but a torrential rain, because a person encounters too much information and advertisements every day. Without sufficient strength, it is impossible to break through the consumer's blood-brain barrier. But once it breaks through, it will solidify in the mind and be difficult to forget. Just like the slogan "Nongfu Spring is a little sweet", it was changed to "Nature's Porter" in 2013, but this sentence has already entered the mind and become an integral part of consumers' memory.

5. The traffic dividend has ended, and brand advertising is back

On the one hand, the epidemic has made the top brands stronger and stronger. On the other hand , new domestic and new consumer brands in segmented categories have continued to rise. They have become popular products through "Weibo, Weibo and Douyin", and then dominated the screen and seized the mainstream.

From pictures and texts to videos and live broadcasts, the Internet has created massive amounts of instant information, and the information is becoming increasingly rich. But is the efficiency of communication between brands and customers getting higher and higher? Just the opposite. Consumers' choices are more dependent on brands. As information becomes more and more abundant and communication channels become more and more developed, everyone on the Internet can make their own voice heard. When the amount of information explodes, consumers with limited energy are overwhelmed. Brand is an information reducer. Consumers can use brands to reduce information and lower their own selection costs. The role of brands will only become more and more important.

Against this backdrop, brand advertising is making a comeback. The traffic dividend has ended and traffic costs have continued to rise, making brand advertising a new priority. The essence of traffic advertising is to understand that it is a channel. The dissemination done through it is just like the tasting and promotions we used to do in supermarkets. Therefore, you will see that on the entire traffic platform, the vast majority of advertisements are promotional in nature.

In fact, live streaming sales, which has been popular throughout 2020, has also, to some extent, promoted companies' attention to brands. Because there is one essential thing that will not change: consumers make their choices based on brands, and brands are the real lasting traffic. Promotion is a one-time thing, but once a brand is recognized in your mind, it will last for a long time. The next time you see the product in a channel, you will be more inclined to choose it.

Therefore, companies are increasingly aware that the roles of traffic advertising and brand advertising are different. Performance advertising makes people "buy", while brand advertising makes people "love". “Purchase” without love cannot last.

You must build a brand. If you don’t, you won’t be able to operate because the traffic cost will become higher and higher and will not be sustainable. Building a brand means continuous free traffic. Only with a brand can traffic be more effective, traffic costs be reduced, and products have the ability to command a premium.

Therefore, as long as advertisers are willing to see their brands continue to grow, brand advertising is a must. The role of brand advertising is to achieve mental pre-sales, and the role of channels and traffic is to achieve transactions.

China is a huge consumer market with huge productivity and imitation capabilities. After any new product is launched, someone will make the same product and then conquer the market with the strength of a strong brand. It doesn’t matter who is the first to make it. We should be pioneers rather than martyrs.

Under the backdrop of domestic and international dual circulation and internal circulation, there is huge room for development for Chinese local brands. With the further breakthrough of the threshold of high-income countries and the dual upgrade of consumption capacity and willingness, new categories and new brands have become the common pursuit of entrepreneurs and consumers, competition between new and old brands has intensified, and brand advertising will surge.

6. Brands are increasingly demanding attention to communities and groups: a sense of belonging

A famous stock and financial expert wrote "Strange Stories in Shopping Malls" on his official account, talking about how one has to queue for an hour at Haidilao, while there is no one at the Huang Jihuang next door, and the Hao Shang Hao steak house next door has gone bankrupt. Those who are thirsty will die of drought, and those who are flooded will die of floods. Catering brands will also develop a social attribute and form a brand barrier.

In fact, it is not just catering brands. After the epidemic, only brands that are common in people’s daily lives, highly rated, and full of topics and talk have increasingly gained social capital.

Why is Moutai so delicious? Some people say it’s because you won’t get drunk even if you drink too much. But some experts analyzed that it was because Moutai was expensive. Because Moutai’s advertisements have been talking about the national liquor Moutai for a long time, using Moutai to entertain guests or give gifts represents respect and decency. Moutai has thus become a kind of social currency. The older the Moutai served, the more expensive it is, which represents the higher the standard of the hospitality and the more proper the etiquette and friendship.

In the post-epidemic era, people need more sense of security, identity, and belonging. The community actually includes interest groups, WeChat groups, member groups, social circles, and friend circles on your mobile phone. The community is the company where you live, office buildings, living communities, and real-world organizations and areas where you live and work every day.

How to establish this sense of belonging to the brand?

The probability of urban mainstream people watching TV is declining, and news information has shifted to Weibo, WeChat, and news clients. On mobile phones, consumers have choices in clients. Everyone is watching the content and rarely pays attention to advertisements. In fact, we scroll past hundreds of ads every day, but we really remember very few of them. Judging from entertainment programs, most of the mainstream population has switched from traditional television to online videos, but most of the mainstream urban population has purchased memberships to watch online videos and removed the interstitial ads.

Mainstream people don’t watch TV much, and they pay to remove ads when watching videos. When they read news on their phones, they mainly read the content and rarely pay attention to ads. So here comes the challenge for customers: how can ads reach mainstream people? How to ignite the mainstream crowd?

Therefore, we should return to the basics and return to the people-oriented sense of security and belonging of customers. Advertising is both a science and an art, and it aims to occupy the circle of friends and the circle of life.

Back to the core information model of the mainstream population, which is WeChat Moments, WeChat groups, Weibo and news clients. When you repeatedly see the almost perverted service of "Humanity can no longer stop Haidilao" in it, when you repeatedly see Chibi Maruko-chan constantly recommending to you how to use various cosmetics to draw your beauty in the Perfect Diary WeChat group, when you see everyone in the community group buying WeChat group frantically buying certain products in the group, your cognition is being invaded and your emotions are being mobilized, because people are gregarious, and their thoughts, behaviors, and cognition are all affected by the group.

When a person is in a community, his attitude is often deeply influenced by the opinions of others. When you are watching a movie in a theater and see a scene that others laugh at, you will also find it funny. This is the group effect.

The living circle refers to office buildings and communities, which are places where the mainstream population of the city must pass through every day. For example, if you always hear an advertising song called "Miaokelando" at the elevator entrance every day, then in the following period of time, your sensitivity to the brand "Miaokelando" will increase, and you will be more likely to notice it in the supermarket.

This phenomenon of behaviors and emotions being triggered unconsciously is the exposure effect and priming effect in psychology that Nobel Prize winner in Economics Kahneman has repeatedly mentioned.

Consumers feel safe in communities they are familiar with and in community office buildings they are familiar with. In these social groups and community spaces, repeated brand broadcasts will effectively influence users, subtly giving the brand a sense of familiarity, security and trust, and then becoming the consumer's unthinking choice in a certain category.

Kahneman believes that the way to make people believe in a concept or a thing is to repeat it constantly, because it is difficult for people to distinguish between familiarity and truth; because the more familiar something is, the more we relax our cognition and make comfortable and easy judgments. When people see a piece of information repeatedly in a familiar environment that they enter and exit every day, they will gradually develop a sense of security and belonging, and they will tend to like it when they become familiar with it.

This kind of influence is often silent, from quantitative change to qualitative change. Once the inflection point is crossed, the brand will be deeply rooted in people's hearts and achieve sustained high growth. People’s hearts are actually about a sense of belonging and loyalty. The brand’s capital all comes from this.

Author: Erwan

Source: Erwan