Eight solutions for new brands to create content

The value of content to brands has been mentioned repeatedly in the past year, but this is not a one-way street. When you actually do it, you will find that there are countless deep and shallow pitfalls. Different controls on direction, timing, and strategy may lead to completely different results.

This is especially true in the field of cosmetics, which particularly needs to be displayed and expressed. For example, everyone praises Hua Xizi for its excellent grasp of oriental aesthetics and various values, but it also started from a very specific, popular hobby and habit and gradually extended.

Many entrepreneurs today are spending huge amounts of money on content to enhance consumer stickiness, but because the entire product closed loop has not yet been deeply connected, the final efficiency may be far from expectations.

In addition, content today is far more than just pictures, texts, and videos. How it is expressed based on all touch points with consumers and how better interactions are generated all affect consumers’ minds and actual choices.

In the face of these problems, more than 20 outstanding entrepreneurs and investors also conducted in-depth sharing and discussions at a closed-door cosmetics meeting held by Inspur New Consumption and Chenhai Capital not long ago.

The outside world of new brands always seems like a fleeting glimpse in front of us, but in the closed-door meeting of New Wave, everyone had a rare opportunity to feel the most real side of the actual brand operation, and many of the principles are worth following for a long time.

1. Make brand content more detailed and more focused on unified expression

1. Brand aesthetics requires breaking down content

A: We have been doing this for so long and feel that there is one important point, which is that when people are creating content, they may deviate from some aspects of continuity.

Including what XX just said, everyone should not focus on the formula.

Nowadays, consumers do not necessarily pay special attention to formula. We can divide consumers into many categories, including those who focus on ingredients and those who only care about efficacy instead of ingredients.

In fact, think about it, what age group are the target audience for makeup and skin care, and then think about their cultural level?

The users of La Mer are not necessarily highly educated. There are definitely some who don’t understand the ingredients and simply think that La Mer is expensive. I like it, so I buy it.

Therefore, when we are creating content, we should not think about consumer needs according to our own way of thinking. We should not think that we develop this product to convey something to consumers. We should really get closer to consumers.

For example, can you think of the first thing in your mind now, what is the oriental aesthetics conveyed by the Huaxizi brand?

My approach to content creation may be more Alibaba-like, which is about things like Tao, Fa, and Shu.

From this perspective, Hua Xizi did not intend to convey China's oriental aesthetics from the beginning, and it did not follow this theory when it launched its hit products.

Because conveying Eastern aesthetics is the "Tao" and belongs to the strategy. This is a big direction. The key is how to precipitate this concept through some methods.

In fact, Hua Xizi’s first product was air powder, and then it launched sculptured lipstick. Its strategy was to break down oriental aesthetics into things that consumers would buy.

Therefore, when we create brand content, we should not go so far and try to convey big concepts like oriental aesthetics to consumers from the very beginning.

In fact, Huaxizi’s first batch of seed users are more inclined to be consumers of ancient style clothing, and then it promotes its products through continuous fission among this group of people.

If it expresses beauty directly from the beginning, it is equivalent to no expression. For example, if you ask Hua Xizi what its oriental aesthetics is, people may not have this concept in their minds, and most people don’t know what its oriental aesthetics is.

But Hua Xizi breaks down beauty very clearly. The first concept it promoted was to use flowers to improve makeup, which was to convey the fact that flowers were made into skin care products in ancient China. Later, it made the lipstick into a sculptural shape, which was to convey things like dragons and phoenixes, which just happened to fit the cultural symbols of the ancient East.

So I think a very important part of creating content is to break the big picture into smaller parts before doing it…

2. Brand content delivery should be continuous and highly matched online and offline

In addition, there must be a continuous demand for content creation, and it must be highly matched anywhere consumers see it, including outside the site and even in reviews.

There is a saying that goes, if it appears once, you may quickly forget it, but when it appears many times, you will ask what it is.

So what we did at that time was that from the details page to outside the site, as well as some reviews, all of them were inseparable from the two words XX.

The essence of a brand is to deepen the impression on consumers. You want your first batch of seed users to know what you want to express anywhere they can see it.

For example, we are now making children's cosmetics. From all online pages, brand single pages to various offline exhibitions, everything is centered around the healthy growth of children.

2. Why should we focus on the efficiency of content when creating good content?

B: I think the definition of content can be further subdivided.

For example, some people believe that good content can sell goods, some have strong dissemination power, some can convey certain values, and some can create value for users.

In fact, in the early days, we created content centered around creating value for users, and we did this very seriously and with great intensity.

Our achievements at that time were indeed in the content area. We built the largest nail art community on the APP and accumulated tens of millions of users, with monthly active users in the millions. We also received financing because of this product.

We have done a very thorough job, covering all the nail art-related information that can be obtained, including training tutorials, interactive content promotion, product screening, and if you want to open a nail salon, become a nail art practitioner, etc.

Our form of monetization is still e-commerce, but in the end, no matter what method we used, we failed to break through a very high volume. At that time, the peak GMV was 160 million a year.

We have also considered other ways and means of monetization, including system training, etc. We are doing it in all aspects, but the only one that has a certain return is e-commerce, probably because the category is too vertical.

In fact, when it comes to creating value for users, we have done very deep and heavy content and provided so much information, but in reality it is far from selling products.

We still have a long way to go in terms of transformation in selling goods. Although we have the best content in the country, and we have the largest nail art matrix, the largest nail art community, and the most sticky nail art users in this field, many of them do not buy things from us.

So later when we define good content, we will pay more attention to the efficiency of the content, that is, what effect do you want your content to achieve, whether you want to sell goods or convey value, or just do some dissemination. Different efficiencies will result in different overall ROIs.

3. Operating a brand purely by selling goods will not last long

C: This is actually something that needs to be emphasized at different stages of a company’s development.

Generally speaking, to achieve growth, you need to sell more and more, but you cannot lose a lot in the process of selling. Losing a lot proves that your efficiency is very low.

The losses should at least be within your tolerance range and your capital should be able to support them. Then you can use these losses to exchange for a larger share of the growth.

This is a decision-making issue, but in the long run, operating a brand cannot be done purely by selling goods, as selling goods alone will not last long.

That is why we say that the path from content to consumer goods is a better one, because the brand brought by the content has already been implanted in the minds of consumers, and if consumers take another step forward, they will truly become fans.

The definition of a fan is that you buy whatever I tell you to buy, but the product conversion from good content to consumer brand can be done one step further, that is, the basic mindset is there, if you promote a good product, I am willing to buy it.

4. Making cosmetics requires natural endowment, and the product determines your structure

D: Making cosmetics requires talent. The content cannot come out of thin air. There must be a smooth logic.

For example, one of the fastest-growing brands in the United States in the past two years was created by two dermatologists themselves, so this thing itself has a natural endowment.

If you want to truly integrate the brands together, you still have to think about what the original starting point was. And another point is that product strength is very important, the product determines your structure.

We have also sought help from some professional organizations to produce reports. In fact, the final conclusion is still your product, and the product determines your structure.

5. Why is it necessary to pursue high growth when creating a new brand?

E: In fact, most of the brands we discussed today are still online-based, that is, the more popular DTC (direct to consumer) brands.

To build a brand now, you need not only products and content, but also rapid growth in the current hot consumer financing market.

From an investor's perspective, we are currently facing fierce competition from DTC brands and must pursue high growth.

Although there may be some short-term profit losses during the high growth process, or a short-term game between traffic and brand content delivery, I believe that high growth is still necessary.

Why? There are two main reasons.

On the one hand, everyone is still doing business in the Chinese market. Currently, many consumer investors in China come from the TMT industry, so investors view current consumer brands with a TMT Internet mindset, which is relatively better for investors.

On the other hand, from the perspective of the brand itself, the online traffic dividend is now in a relatively stagnant stage, and everyone’s competition means that the cost of acquiring customers or the cost of interaction will be higher.

According to this logic, the larger my scale is, the more investments I can make.

If I don't have bullets, no matter how good the content is, it will be meaningless if I don't have the money to invest in it and cover more precise data packets.

Back to ourselves, we are still an institution that insists on value-oriented investment...

We can be somewhat tolerant for the time being, but we still hope that the brand can enter the offline market after having a relatively good performance online, because Perfect Diary finally chose to enter the offline market by opening its own stores. Huaxizi has not yet entered the offline channels, but this is the path it must take in the future.

Therefore, we believe that the emergence of offline scenarios such as Colorist, WOW COLOUR, and Huamei can, to a certain extent, solve the interaction problems between online brands and customers, as well as the lack of intuitive experience scenarios.

6. How big are the barriers in the skin care product supply chain? It is essentially a combination of science + art

E: I am more concerned about the skin care product line because once a skin care brand has established barriers, its future growth logic and certainty are relatively easier for me to understand. On this basis, I will compare skin care and makeup brands.

The explosion of cosmetics brands is certainly due to the awakening of young Chinese consumers' demand for cosmetics. For example, the development of cosmetics has been promoted through the appearance of young men and women with beautiful makeup on some variety shows and auditions. But I think there is another core reason that lies in the supply chain.

Compared with skin care products, we place less emphasis on concepts such as active ingredients in cosmetics. Therefore, after Intercos and COSMAX have established relatively large production capacity in China, the barriers of cosmetics itself on the supply chain have been completely broken.

So I have been thinking, are the domestic OEM resources for skin care products narrowing the gap with foreign ones in terms of formula, or is the gap already being narrowed?

Because one of the prerequisites for a skin care brand to succeed is to have sufficient product strength, and the prerequisite for sufficient product strength is that China has good OEM factories that can make these good products.

F: The skin care product supply chain mainly consists of two parts, one is the functional raw materials and the other is the formula.

Some large manufacturers will spend a long time accumulating experience and investing a lot of resources to thoroughly research something.

This area is also on the rise in China, especially some new concepts are also being worked on by very professional people, such as mitochondrial skin care.

At the same time, there are some interesting business formats, which are the combination of R&D and ODM. It not only provides effective raw materials, but also provides a set of information on how to use the effective raw materials and test the results on humans after use.

So I think domestic skin care brands will definitely have relatively good growth at present, but it will be sporadic.

On the other hand, the raw materials can actually be approached from a medical perspective.

For example, polypeptide is a very common pharmaceutical cooperation in hospitals. The hospital actually conducts complete quality control on the entire production line of polypeptide, but it does not receive the demand for fast-moving consumer goods.

China also has some more professional teams, for example, they have relatively rich experience in making medical cosmetics and can achieve a balance between ensuring high efficacy and reducing irritation.

Of course, this is still a process of accumulation over time. We have a label called "Scientific Skin Care Artist". I have been doing this for so long now, and I believe that skin care products are a combination of science and art, and this is indeed the case in the production and R&D stages.

It is not entirely theoretical science, it must be combined with practice. Some things can be deduced, but some need to be tried out.

Therefore, the accumulation of time and the experimentation are very important. In addition, it also depends on how much resources and capabilities your brand has invested, and whether you, as the founder, really want to do this thing.

My last entrepreneurial experience was also in the medical field. These two experiences gave me a deep feeling about what kind of people will do what kind of things. People who are good at traffic will continue to work on traffic, and people who think products are important will continue to study products. The core is the same, just the teams and capabilities are different.

G: The research and development of skin care products is actually a process of continuous accumulation of time and resources.

For example, L'Oréal has a huge sales volume and invests around 300 million yuan in research and development every year.

If we compare it with domestic skin care products, we can see whether they also have the determination and perseverance to continue to invest in such a high level of research and development.

So this really requires a certain amount of persistence and accumulation to achieve. If you just say that I will invest 3.something this year and reduce it next year, then this thing will not have any effect.

H: I think there is a lot of room to explore in the formula aspect of the Chinese cosmetics market, and more brands will definitely emerge based on this in the future.

Last year, we set up a research and development laboratory with professors of bioengineering from some universities in Tianjin. We provided the money and they provided the patented results. In the end, many of the results were transformed into our products.

For example, the pigments in many lipsticks nowadays are added chemical pigments, but the color in one of our products is produced by biological fermentation and is called prodigiosin.

It is completely non-toxic and harmless when eaten, and it has color. Now we are probably the only one that is actually applying it in China. It has a good effect in market conversion and has received high praise from customers.

So I think that for Chinese cosmetics brands, if they can do better in content expression and cultural shaping, and at the same time, as our R&D capabilities increase, there will definitely be a very good combination in terms of formula.

7. In the era of traffic fragmentation, it is even more important to do a good job in the people, goods and places of content

First of all, everyone knows that this is an era of fragmented traffic, and the price of traffic is getting more and more expensive.

Maybe at the beginning, fast-moving consumer goods giants could use the traffic to invest heavily in some large media channels and then reach consumers. But now that traffic has become fragmented, unified content will be particularly important.

Because the brand itself is about user recognition efficiency, having a unified content means that brand recognition is consistent at all touch points.

The second point is to create the content itself. Content is not just an article on Xiaohongshu or a video on Douyin. In fact, every touchpoint with consumers is a reflection of our content creation.

So if we make a horizontal cut of the content, according to the consumer's cognitive mentality, we can divide it into four different stages: AIPL (Aware, Interest, Purchase, Loyalty), and each stage can correspond to people, goods and places.

“People” refers to the KOLs you reach out to tell about your products, including what your selling points are and what your content storyline is.

"Field" is the carrier of content form, such as a media delivery platform like Douyin or Xiaohongshu. Different forms have different characteristics and can confirm the atmosphere.

So before you create content, you must think clearly about the purpose of creating this content and what value it will bring to the brand in the long run.

8. How do you think about the rise of cosmetics collection stores?

J: I have a small question. What do you think of cosmetics stores from an investor’s perspective?

I don't know much about this myself, but from a pure consumer's perspective, I have visited XX in a boutique shopping mall before and had a very bad feeling after entering. Because I originally wanted to go to a cosmetics store, but when I entered I felt like I was going to a vegetable market.

It's hard for me to see the differentiation between different products. When there are so many eyeshadow palettes in front of me, I really can't tell any difference.

Moreover, from the perspective of user experience, this store cannot guarantee that every product is presented in a good way. For example, its eyeshadow palette is very dirty, which will actually affect women's experience of trying the products offline.

So I am very curious about how you view XX and other cosmetics stores from a capital perspective? How does it perform and does it really help the brand?

K: This is actually a typical channel model, which belongs to the new retail channel distribution and is a chain channel. For all channels, whether selling products, content or services, ROI is very important.

So it is very simple to measure its efficiency. Just add up all the costs paid by a store every month, including fixed and variable costs, and then see how much revenue is realized in the end.

In fact, it all depends on the data. Some things don’t necessarily need to be displayed very well, they just need to sell well.

For example, Japan has two very typical channels. One is a drugstore called Matsumoto Kiyoshi. It was a mess in there, with things placed all over the place. Each item had all kinds of strange labels on it, and each one had a highlight. But that didn't stop Matsumoto Kiyoshi from working very efficiently.

Another one is Don Quixote, which also has a lot of things placed densely and randomly, but that doesn’t stop Don Quixote from being very efficient. So ultimately we have to use data to judge the efficiency of a channel.

At the same time, you can look at its growth rate, expansion speed, the cost required before expansion, and the difficulty of expansion.

But I think it is generally difficult to invest in the cosmetics channel because the users of cosmetics stores change very quickly.

Each wave of users has different tastes in products and different consumption habits. In the past, some of them may have appeared in street shops and some in shopping malls. This is closely related to the rise of China's urban commercial forms.

Cosmetics collection stores actually took advantage of an ancillary opportunity brought about by the rise of business models, which is channel changes. This makes it difficult for the original channels to adapt to the new business model.

In the past, the oldest shopping malls had a group of corresponding channels to lead the way, but after urban renewal, the new shopping malls have a different form and will face a new audience, using a new batch of products in the new shopping mall scene.

Therefore, the cosmetics channel itself is changing at a very fast speed. In addition to measuring efficiency, we also have to measure how long this thing can last.

You have to predict whether this group of consumers will have rapid changes in their concepts and aesthetics. If there are rapid changes, their product choices and shopping habits will be different, and everything will change again.

It would be very difficult for you to invest in a channel in this way, because the products, displays and decorations of the channel would all have to be changed before they could be sold. But if everything has to be changed, isn't it equivalent to building a new channel? So I always feel that it is difficult to invest in the cosmetics channel.

L: In fact, when we say that offline collection store channels such as XX, XX, and XX are not good, it may just be because we have a deeper understanding of the industry and are more discerning about these things.

However, in terms of generational changes in consumers, younger consumers may be more willing to shop at this type of store.

What I am more concerned about is the sustainability of the channel. The consumer may visit the store for the first time because it has a very strong visual impact, so will he go again the second time? Is it true that cosmetics stores need to make frequent changes?

M: We cooperate a lot with new CS channels. From the perspective of GMV, the data performance of these stores is good, but I also feel that the shopping experience there is relatively poor.

I think there may be two reasons for the current popularity of CS stores.

First, consumers’ shopping habits have changed. Customer traffic in traditional department stores has been declining for many years. Regardless of whether there is an epidemic or not, the department store channel is going down, and more and more people like to visit experiential shopping malls.

Therefore, these stores were first opened in shopping malls, which has already outperformed traditional CS stores such as Tang Sancai and Guerlain.

Second, in terms of differentiated consumer positioning, the cosmetics consumer group is getting younger and younger, and some girls are even still in junior high school.

The first eye shadow these people buy when they first enter the store may be the first in their entire makeup category, so they are category entry consumers. They have little experience in the makeup category, have a relatively lower threshold, and are more easily attracted by the store’s exaggerated visuals.

In addition, I think the rise of CS stores is also due to demand from the brand side.

The cosmetics supply chain is now very developed, and many new brands have a great opportunity to be created at a very low cost and easily come out.

After these brands come out, instead of doing it online where traffic is so expensive and requires building a relatively complete marketing operation team, it is better to choose to enter such an offline collection store channel.

Moreover, the goods in XX store are sold on a fixed-price basis. If cosmetics were to adopt a buyout system, it would be a very attractive highlight for the brand.

Author: Inspur New Consumption

Source: Inspur New Consumption (lcxinxiaofei)