Do you really know how to leverage brand marketing?

Tracking Hotspots

First of all, you need to accurately judge which hot spots are suitable for you to follow. For example, the influence of the hot spots, brand relevance, risk, and communication power are all factors that should be considered.

If the influence and communication power of a hot spot are not enough, it will be difficult to reap good results by leveraging the momentum, resulting in a lot of hard work but only a very low input-output ratio.

A weak correlation will make people feel confused and at a loss, which will be futile in promoting the brand and will ultimately make things difficult for others and make you happy.

The risk is something that brands need to focus on. Blindly jumping on the bandwagon can easily lead to negative influence and public opinion. If the exposure gained is damaging to the brand image, it is obviously not worth the loss.

Recently, the Zheng Shuang DY incident has caused a lot of controversy. Zheng Shuang has become the target of public criticism and was labeled as a bad artist by FS; a certain APP conducted an exclusive interview with her father and released an apology video, but an advertisement for a certain APP appeared in the background of the ten-minute video.

This borderline operation is indeed cost-effective in terms of product investment. One interview + one video can get a huge amount of brand exposure and traffic. However, this outrageous operation aroused the disgust and negative public opinion of netizens, further tarnishing the brand image that was not very good. The company's public relations department is probably crying in the toilet.

The comments section was filled with criticism for the APP’s behavior.

Create a connection

Finding the connection point between the key elements of a brand and the key elements of a hot topic is the most core, time-consuming, and brain-consuming task in planning a leveraged marketing campaign. This connection point will determine the theme concept and general direction of the leveraged marketing campaign.

First, you need to extract all the key elements of the brand. Generally, you can inventory and sort them out from four dimensions: brand awareness map, service characteristics, product types and advantages, and user portraits.

Then the key elements of the hot spot are extracted, including key landmarks (representative landmarks such as symbols, culture, customs, history, people, places, time, food, etc. related to the hot spot) and key discourses (slogans, proverbs, poems, stories, songs, etc. derived from the hot spot that are familiar to the people).

Finally, you can write all the key elements of the brand and the key elements of the hot spots on the same piece of paper, and find a common connection point with strong communication power to point out the direction for the next step of leveraging content and activities.

Durex, a textbook example of leveraging marketing, launched a set of gift boxes called "Sun Cakes" during the Mid-Autumn Festival last year, with the accompanying copy "May we ___, and share the beauty of the moon together even though we are thousands miles apart." The common connection point found by this theme is "lasting". Durex has a condom product called the Lasting Series, and Su Shi's "Water Melody" has a very popular Mid-Autumn Festival poem "May we live long, and share the beauty of the moon together even though we are thousands miles apart". The word "lasting" was excavated to achieve a perfect linkage.

Combination of features

After sorting out the content and features related to the hot topic and finding the places where they are combined with the key elements of the brand, continue to develop creative ideas based on the connection points, and use creativity to package the connection points into content or activities that are easy to spread.

Baidu Boiling Point Buzzwords of the Year

Emotional resonance

Gain insight into user psychology, extract key elements of brands and hot spots, and find the emotional connection points among users, brands, and hot spots. This method is an upgraded version of the combination of characteristics, focusing on the emotional connection points.

Nike uses this short film to oppose racial prejudice, hatred and inequality, inspire people to take action to solve deep-seated social problems, and create more spiritual resonance and emotional connection with consumers.

Creating a topic

Based on the native culture of the Internet, create topics that can trigger users to actively spread, imitate, and actively interact (such as jokes, Internet words, brainwashing songs/dances, etc.)

This clever handling not only made the young heroes put down their swords, but also successfully broke the circle and triggered public discussion on social networks; it retreated to advance and became a classic public relations case.

It is common in Internet companies to design interest incentives to trigger fission sharing. Internet companies such as Luckin Coffee, Pinduoduo, and many knowledge payment platforms have achieved great success by relying on fission marketing.

Common fission gameplay includes MGM, invitation challenge, fission red envelopes, sharing benefits, group formation, relationship fission, product distribution, and friend support.

2. The strategic thinking process cannot be skipped: analyze and gain insights into the brand, product, environment (culture, holiday nodes, industry, etc.), and population, and propose the most appropriate methods and models to achieve the goals.

3. Establish the core concept of marketing: The theme should include a communication concept that incorporates brand appeals, or brand interest points that attract audience participation.

4. Develop a detailed implementation plan: Refer to the brand's cognitive map, product selling points, available corporate and media resources, feasible gameplay forms, etc., to plan specific creative content, interactive forms and media combinations.

The correct opening posture of brand leverage:

Understand the underlying logic of leveraging trends, don’t try to jump on every hot topic, look for common connection points, output creative content, cause fermentation and dissemination, and think about the overall strategy.