The secret of a brand becoming popular at a low cost

Generally speaking, marketing will plan a series of activities around the product, but often the efforts fail to please the users. In the era of fragmented attention, how can you make users remember your brand?

The opposite of like is not hate, but indifference. Likewise, the opposite of a good brand is not a bad brand, but a brand that lacks feeling.

Young people today have lost interest in many old brands because these brands are unable to attract their attention, and thus lose the right for consumers to speak for them on social platforms.

In this sense, new consumer brands are growing rapidly as if they had taken stimulants. They give meaning to consumption through good-looking designs, memorable names, high-quality and accurate content, and unique consumption scenarios. They not only make consumers remember them, but also make consumers unable to resist and spread the word.

So, today I want to talk to you about the topic: How to build a self-propagating brand?

1. What is a self-propagating brand?

My understanding of a self-propagating brand is a brand that is in sync with consumers and has its own unique personality and values, making users willing to spread the word spontaneously.

In the words of Professor Liang Ning: Consumers are willing to take selfies for you.

Especially as digital media and social platforms have turned consumers’ daily lives into a stage performance for self-display, consumption has also been given narrative significance by the new generation and is worthy of sharing. When your product/brand becomes the object of consumer self-display, most of the brand communication work and interactions are completed spontaneously by consumers.

So, how to build a self-propagating brand? I broke it down into 3 steps:

1. Brands and products have their own communication genes.
2. Select core communicators (subdivided circles) for diffusion.
3. Design precise communication content and form.

2. Products have their own communication genes

Andreas Leckwitz says in The Society of Singularity:

"Functional goods are mediocre. They are only useful and sometimes become obsolete after use. What the post-industrial economy produces and consumes the most is not functional knowledge or information, but cultural products that are unique in narrative, meaning, identity, emotion and feeling, aesthetic experiences, goods with ethical values, games and designs."

From the perspective of human nature, self-propagation conforms to and satisfies human nature, so consumers spread information spontaneously and voluntarily. Back to the product, we need to inject the "three qualities and two feelings" communication genes into the product.

1. Identification

Only when it is recognizably memorable can it be the hook that attracts consumers.

There are many levels of interpretation for recognizability, but most of them are based on consumers’ senses: the product is visible, the product is knowable, the product is perceptible, the product is communicable, and the product is performable; of course, there is also a cognitive level: easy to feel and understand.

In a nutshell: to show your presence.

I don’t know if you have noticed that in recent years there are more and more products named “Daily”. In addition to Daily Nuts and Daily Dark Chocolate, this series also includes Weiquan’s Daily C Juice, Mengniu’s Daily Fresh Milk, and so on. Why are there more and more products named "Daily" nowadays?

First of all, the word "daily" is used in a very contextual way. It represents high frequency, low price, and very convenient acquisition. From price to context, everything revolves around "daily".

For example, Daily Dark Chocolate emphasizes the stress-relieving properties of chocolate in its packaging. Based on this, Daily Dark Chocolate’s product development not only reduces sugar, but also introduces the selling point of adding “dietary fiber”.

At the same time, Daily Dark Chocolate is packaged in small particles, which reduces the amount consumed at one time and strengthens its selling point of not making you fat. But most consumers don’t see so much. The name of “Daily Dark Chocolate” plus its healthy, nutritious and dietary advertisements will make most consumers think that this is a healthy snack that can be eaten every day.

Secondly, from the brand perspective, we need to see some trends that have been reflected in new brands, that is, the integration of content and brand.

On the one hand, the product itself needs to be content-oriented. Daily Black Chocolate is well aware that good packaging can better serve the product. In addition to being noticed at first sight on the shelf or on the page, it also needs to have the function of brand communication. Therefore, the product and packaging are designed as "materials" that can be content-oriented.

For example, a brand requires that the packaging design reflect the product positioning. The "Ultimate Small Square" series follows the "orthodox" dark chocolate route, so the design will be more rational and professional. When it comes to the presentation of the packaging shell, it will be mainly text-based, with fewer patterns.

In contrast, the new product launched in August 2020 has increased milk and sugar content, which is more in line with the characteristics of "candy", and will also use more vibrant color stripes in the outer packaging design.

All communication conversions begin with whether consumers can remember who you are? Then comes familiarity - trust - purchase.

2. Contrast

Recognizability alone is not enough, after all, there are too many "perceptible" products nowadays. The emergence of a large number of homogeneous products is bound to reduce the relative recognizability of the brand, causing it to be submerged in the vast sea of ​​​​markets.

Therefore, the product must not only be recognizable, but also establish a sense of contrast with similar products.

Focusing on the birthday party scene, Panda Never Walks Cake uses "Panda Dancing" to provide users with a differentiated birthday service experience, breaking the cognition and creating a contrast that makes users' eyes bright.

During the entire service experience iteration process, they went through dozens of iterations from product research and development to game design. Each path was designed to provide users with materials for them to spread.

In this way, a series of warm, fun and interesting visual elements were added to the videos and photos of users' Moments, Weibo and Tik Tok, minting social currency for users and bringing 100% spontaneous dissemination by users.

Therefore, what Panda doesn't sell is not cakes, but a "happy life formula" full of ritual. And this process makes users feel very comfortable. It is not a traditional hard push, but a mutual achievement of both parties willingly.

3. Storytelling

A good brand story is the "emotional" entry point between consumers and brands, which gives the brand spiritual connotation and spirituality, infects or shocks consumers, fully stimulates consumers' potential purchasing awareness, and makes consumers willing to "be loyal to the brand."

The reason why Huaxizi has been able to establish a profound "national style" brand image in the minds of consumers is that it has created a complete image story, while other brands have only achieved a chapter or a few paragraphs.

While many domestic brands are blindly pursuing to keep pace with international brands in terms of fashion sense, Hua Xizi's brand vision is to pursue the creation of a unique positioning of "Oriental cosmetics" that the Chinese people can be proud of, and with this as a guide, it began the journey of building its brand image.

In terms of products, Hua Xizi has incorporated the gene of "Oriental aesthetics" into every aspect of its product name, appearance, type, color number, and description. Classical elements such as carved designs, floral rouge, and camellia essence permeate every aspect of the product and even become brand symbols.

There are also Silk Road embossed powder, West Lake imprint, Miao impression and so on. All of these perfectly match the "Oriental", "natural" and "elegant" connotations of Hua Xizi and complement each other.

A brand story with meaning and charm can be deeply rooted in people's hearts and give the brand more cultural heritage. In the long run, it can subtly improve consumers' favorability and satisfaction with the brand, allowing consumers to become "super users" with high stickiness to the brand, or even become the brand's tap water "ambassadors."

4. Sense of participation

In today's communication environment, the shift in discourse power has resulted in today's users being more willing to participate rather than simply being reached passively, compared to the past when users passively sat in front of the screen.

The external force that lifts the bottom is determined by "sense of value".

The so-called "sense of value" is "visible value." The "value" here can be both the input of material labor and the input of spiritual labor.

I think the “Return Plan” designed by Sandunban is the most successful project in Sandunban’s brand building.

The return plan is actually the "empty can recycling" campaign launched by Sandunban. That is, designated recycling points are set up in each city. After users bring their empty cups to the on-site recycling point, they can get small gifts from Santonban for free and exchange them for new coffee.

In addition to setting up "return points" in San Dun Ban stores, San Dun Ban has also cooperated with some offline spaces such as specialty bookstores and shopping malls. Users can go there on their own, and the recycled empty cans can be "stored with energy" and used to exchange for coffee or other peripherals.

For example, in Suzhou, we chose to cooperate with Eslite Bookstore. What are the benefits of doing so? It strengthens the user's perception of the tonality of three and a half. This activity allows users to enjoy benefits, participate in environmental protection, enhance their sense of significance, and increase their stickiness to the brand.

In the Santonban activity, “visible” means that consumers’ efforts can be directly visualized. In particular, the more extra energy and time consumers invest in the participation process, the stronger the sense of ritual, the higher the expectations, the stronger the sense of value and happiness brought about by the final emotional release, and the stronger the desire to share.

5. Scarcity

As the saying goes: Scarcity makes things valuable.

The scarcer and more irreplaceable it is, the more hurricane-like the spread effect it triggers.

For example, every year Starbucks will launch a batch of limited edition themed cups during the cherry blossom season. The elements of cherry blossoms and pink, which are very girly, coupled with the brand effect, almost always trigger a purchasing boom, and countless "hot-selling products" are born during this period.

A careful study of all of Starbucks’ cup marketing will reveal that Starbucks’ goal is not to sell popular cups, but to help consumers create a “show-off point”.

Consumers don’t buy cups, but hope that when using this product, they can secretly show off their Versailles on social platforms: showing off their wealth, fame, class and status.

3. Circle Communication Effect

In today's objective situation where demands are becoming increasingly segmented, it is easier for brands to create "explosive" products for segmented circles. The pursuit of becoming popular is no longer about penetrating age groups, but about hitting specific target groups.

Therefore, among the three "golden rules" of user operations (circle, emotion, and participation), I put circle first.

Because it is the cognitive basis of user operations, only with circle awareness can we effectively mobilize emotions and sense of participation and achieve word-of-mouth explosion.

It is an obvious trend that most new consumer brands are now targeting niche circles with a kind of "taking only one scoop from the vast ocean". However, niche circles never mean low consumption potential. On the contrary, the more brands are recognized by them, the more loyalty they can bring and the more powerful they will be.

In other words, they are always favorable to content that is consistent with their values. While recognizing the brand, they are also willing to pay for it and may even spread it spontaneously.

Compared with mainstream culture, people in circle culture do not care too much about the price, they care more about the label attributes behind consumption behavior.

For example, Jiang Xiaobai has been deeply engaged in the industry for many years, from "music live" to "youth culture festival", from simple rap performances to graffiti, skateboarding, street basketball and other youth culture events that integrate niche cultures loved by young people. It truly focuses on niche young culture, explores the connection with young people from the level of brand culture and product personality, and salutes young people based on young people.

To this end, Jiang Xiaobai has made its own way into the young market by leveraging niche culture, breaking the stereotype that liquor is only consumed by middle-aged and elderly people.

When a brand intervenes in niche culture for marketing, its goal is to create a taste barrier, and then achieve secondary dissemination by influencing a third person and using social media, thus forming a circle of effects.

Therefore, just like the sinking market, circle culture provides more possibilities for brand building. If you cannot invest more than 10 billion yuan in advertising fees a year like Hongmao Medicinal Wine, then starting a niche market and causing circle vibrations can also be a way to leverage the big market.

4. Design precise communication content

If content marketing is done well, it will inject stimulant-like attention into consumers, and the impact will grow like a snowball.

For new brands, content marketing is a traffic entrance with no ceiling. It makes the granularity of consumer attention very small and plays an extremely important role in attracting traffic .

In the past, only big brands could afford large-scale investment and media layout, but today, new brands can achieve excellent brand communication on social media.

In this regard, Bananain is a benchmark in the underwear industry.

In terms of product copywriting, Bananain's product copywriting is concise and concise, expressing the characteristics of the product in a succinct manner. There are no high-sounding words, only plain and simple words. It uses a lot of puns and repetitions, which makes it sound rhythmic when read.

You can go through every article published by Bananain’s official account. The tone may be self-deprecating, cool, or unique, but they all cannot be separated from Bananain’s own brand attitude of “focusing on the inside”.

Every article is very original. As the brand itself said, "neither humble nor arrogant, neither hurried nor slow, neither close nor distant" - have an attitude and be yourself.

At the same time, as one of the most popular underwear brands, Bananain excels at using visual memory symbols and IP cross-border cooperation to continue to "speak out".

Among them, Bananain has also had in-depth cooperation with brands, IPs, and artists such as Tai Er, MissFresh, pioneer brand MINI, Xiao Hei Ni, FANSACK, Sun Lu, ViViCat, etc. The brand's own unique aesthetic elements are integrated with IP across borders to create unique symbols, which not only attract consumers, but also allow them to spread spontaneously.

The reason why Bananain's content is so outstanding is inseparable from its precise insight into consumers. It focuses on the pain points of young people's daily lives and uses interesting, vivid or resonant copy to impress the audience, allowing consumers to have an emotional identification of "this is talking about me", igniting consumers and allowing them to actively open the valve of communication.

To sum up, brand building is centered on products. Segmented circles are like the "skeleton", and content is like the "flesh and blood". They work together to make the brand seen by more target users and gain more lasting combat effectiveness.

Therefore, my suggestion is that to build a self-propagating brand, you have to be a little “stupid” or even a little “slow”, and achieve four excellences: excellent products, excellent user communication, excellent brand language, and excellent user value.