Why are brands rushing to collaborate across industries?

1. Why are there so many cross-border and joint ventures this year?

Cross-border collaborations happen every year, and are especially numerous after the epidemic.

A very interesting phenomenon in the brand marketing industry this year is that cross-border and joint ventures have suddenly become more common. The path of cross-border collaboration is becoming more and more wild.

From the initial classic co-branded models between brands and IPs, it has gradually developed into cross-border co-branded models between brands, and even into scary co-branded models between unrelated brands.

The origin of cross-border brand collaboration can actually be traced back to celebrity endorsements. [Rent] Using the influence or style of a star to attract traffic to the brand and increase user favorability is actually the most common cross-border collaboration routine. There are countless examples of celebrity advertisements all over the streets.

Later, cultural IPs such as the Palace Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, LINE, Kumamon, and Aoyama Shuping began to cross borders, and collaboration with interesting and cultural IPs became a new trend. Even the People's Daily is eager to try it out with Li Ning.

— In 2019, People's Daily x Li Ning created the "Newspaper Payment" collaboration.

Later, brands began to support each other and engage in cross-border cooperation. For example, the Smell Library x White Rabbit Milk Candy, Hua Xizi x Luzhou Laojiao, etc.

Later on, the painting style became more and more diverse, and more and more confusing. Until I saw the cross-border cooperation between Mayinglong lipstick, Okamoto perfume, White Cat dishwashing liquid and Cool's soda, the cross-border cooperation between KFC and Liushen floral water, the cross-border cooperation between 999 Psoriasis Cream and lipstick...the world had exceeded my cognition.

— From left to right: Mayinglong lipstick, KFC Liushen coffee, Cool's White Cat soda

I have seen "Dabaitu", "Ma Yinglong" and "Wangwang" in various cross-border activities countless times. "White Rabbit" has been wildly crossing borders and seems to have become an IP brand that relies solely on "cross-border" for its survival.

Is this the result of marketers being afraid of losing their jobs after the epidemic and working hard to make things happen?

Maybe.

After all, there is not as much money as in previous years to make large-scale investments and launch high-end releases. The only way to save money or not spend money is to work together and exchange resources. All brands in the world are one family, and we have to do things even if we don’t have money.

In fact, there is a very clear logic behind this. As communication channels become more and more fragmented, platform competition becomes more and more fierce, and user stratification becomes more and more refined, the cost of acquiring and serving a single user has become increasingly high.

After all, we have moved from the era of crude CCTV advertising where everyone looks the same, to the era of precise Internet advertising where everyone looks different, to today's era of personalized operations where everyone looks a thousand different.

Each person has many faces, which means that a brand's maintenance cost for its individual users increases sharply. It even has to collect and gain insight into private information that even the user's own mother does not know in various dimensions such as time, geography, and emotion.

This would be tiring.

For a brand, the cost of brand building and communication has increased significantly. What should I do?

Therefore, companies in the ecological jungle came up with a better solution, which is to share the cost with their sister brands and other brands.

The most straightforward approach is to simply join a brand and jointly create a brand, such as the most common Xiaomi bamboo forest ecosystem. All supply chains share a brand system and work together to build a bigger brand. To some extent, the essence of this ecosystem is also a kind of brand collaboration.

In addition to the gameplay of the Bamboo Forest System, finding related brands with common values ​​and user inspiration points, and jointly targeting a type of user for precise marketing, is the main force of cross-border collaborations.

— The collaboration between Smell Library and White Rabbit Milk Candy is based on finding a common user inspiration point: [childishness]. As a perfume brand, Smell Library uses the olfactory experience concept of sensory brands and superimposes it with the sweet memories of the post-80s and post-90s nostalgic brand White Rabbit, jointly targeting a group of post-80s and post-90s users who are sensitive to memories and tastes.

Such cross-border collaborations amplify the influence and target audience of the two brands to an effect of 1+1 being greater than 2. Allowing both parties to gain greater influence than they could alone. This kind of cross-border brand collaboration model, using anthropomorphic thinking to correspond to the relationship between people, is like social interaction between brands, which we call [brand social interaction] .

There are also some brands that lack influence or tone, but hope to cross-border with other emerging brands that are more trendy and smart. The purpose is to enhance the influence of one's own brand, or to refresh and change the aging status of one's own brand. For example, there are many cases of cross-border cooperation between many brands and the American fashion brand Supreme, and there are also many cases of cooperation between traditional enterprises and some new consumer brands and two-dimensional IPs that are popular among young people.

This kind of cross-brand cooperation has some inequalities in relationships. One of the parties is a popular brand, and the other party is engaging in leasing-style cooperation by leasing the brand tone, brand influence and brand target audience of the popular party. We call it [brand leasing] .

In fact, whether it is social networking or rental, the essence is still to fill in what is lacking.

What is the most important thing that our brand is likely to lack?

I believe that the ability to extract and express value emotionally is one of the abilities that Chinese brands currently lack the most. If we examine this conclusion from the perspective of cross-border brand collaboration, we will find that a large number of rental brands that are at a disadvantage in cross-border collaborations are due to the lack of clear expression of values, lack of user emotional love, and lack of the brand's own personality and emotions. As a result, they have to use resources through brand leasing to replace the brand value they lack.

Let me put it this way: this round of crazy cross-border brand collaborations just shows that our companies are too lacking in brands.

Remember the brand golden triangle model? If there is no [sales volume], you can go to the platform to solve the problem of sales channels, or even solve it by bringing goods. If there is no "hot product", the problem can be solved through event marketing or even hype (although this is a temporary solution and many companies are still doing it). However, if there is no [brand value], it is difficult to find a quick way to solve it. Currently, the fastest and most practical way is probably cross-border brand collaboration.

Therefore, what is actually reflected behind the cross-border brand collaborations is that a large number of brands lack the ability to sort out their values, lack the ability to express their values, lack the patience to cultivate emotional brands, and are eager to make up for them quickly.

In fact, I have always had a metaphor for "filling in what is lacking" in brand marketing: some of our brands are too eager for quick success and instant benefits during the creation process, and are unwilling to spend time to refine their own brand values ​​and sort out their own brand values, always hoping to achieve success overnight.

As long as Viagra is available, I will never take Liuwei Dihuang Pills. Sooner or later you will have to pay the price.

In fact, even a cross-border collaboration needs to be based on a very reliable understanding of the brand value in order to truly achieve results. Otherwise, if you try to cross boundaries with a short-sighted mindset, it will end up being a mess.

Many bizarre cross-border transactions occur because people do not understand why they need to cross borders, cooperate, socialize and rent. Instead, they simply engage in crude traffic replacement and influence merger. Some of them even resort to gimmicks and make fools of themselves in order to attract everyone's attention. A good value exchange turned into a gamble.

After seeing so much of this kind of cross-border business, I begin to doubt that marketers are not using their brains to be tactically diligent, and are constantly messing around with cross-border business as a zombie action.

2. Summary of the above discussion

1. What is reflected behind the crazy cross-border collaboration is the dramatic increase in [user development and service costs]. The purpose of the collaboration is to share costs and rob together.

2. Cross-border collaboration is essentially [brand social networking] or [brand leasing] between brands. When the two parties are at the same level, it is called social networking, and when the two parties have a huge disparity in influence, it is called leasing.

3. Brands with clear culture and emotional support are popular in the cross-border joint venture field because other brands need to [make up for what they lack].

4. Many cross-border collaborations are messy, with few brilliant ideas and many ineffective [weak social interactions]. Cross-border collaboration has become an old trick in the brand marketing industry that seems innovative.

3. How to correctly carry out cross-brand collaboration?

What are the bottom-line precautions and methodological suggestions for cross-border collaborations?

1. Always confirm the main purpose of the cross-border collaboration

If it is just used as a marketing topic, try to highlight its fun, imagination and topicality as much as possible. If it is business growth and product development oriented, repeatedly consider the possibility of repurchase and user reputation. If it is a cross-border brand value-added, special attention should be paid to whether the brand tone is suitable.

— When we see a detergent brand and a soda brand collaborate, the above review is probably what comes to mind.

If this crossover is topical, does this topic have a big impact on the brand's attention? If the business is growing, will sales and repeat purchases increase? If it is cross-border value-added, do the tone and target audience of these two brands give people the same feeling?

It's a waste of resources to cross the border without any purpose .

2. Cross-border product [parallel transplantation innovation] method

It would be best if cross-border cooperation could truly bring refreshing innovative value to the product side. It is prohibited to just stop at the poster and packaging level for self-congratulation.

We have seen that many so-called cross-border products have no innovation at all. At most, they add a logo of a cooperative brand to the outer packaging. Some even the outer packaging has not been changed. At most, it is just a poster posted on WeChat Moments to cheer themselves up.

Real cross-border innovation should be carried out on the product side. Here is a method: parallel transplantation innovation. The so-called parallel transplantation innovation is taken from the innovation theory proposed by Edward de Bono, a famous innovation theorist. That is, between two things, the characteristic elements of each are extracted and replaced and transplanted, so as to achieve an innovative effect.

— For example, the smell library x White Rabbit in the previous example

When a bottle of perfume and a piece of candy are undergoing product innovation and development, we might as well extract their respective product characteristics, and use the sweetness, nostalgia, and irresistible craving for White Rabbit's product features, and transplant them in parallel to the new category of perfume. The characteristics of perfume include sprayable, smellable, fashionable and personalized trendy surroundings. The next step is to transplant and combine these two characteristics. For example, can we add sweet, nostalgic, and irresistible olfactory characteristics to the smelling perfume? This may become an innovation on the product side. Make a girl who buys it smell even sweeter.

The parallel transplantation innovation here needs to take into account the audience's conventional human associations and aesthetic acceptance.

Otherwise, it would create a weird proposition where consumers have to choose between eating [shit-flavored chocolate] or [chocolate-flavored shit].

For example, we saw the parallel transplantation and innovation of the visual and packaging elements of dishwashing liquid and the taste elements of lemon soda. The combination of the two innovations creates a challenge to normal people's tastes.

3. Don’t just follow the trend

Over the years I have always had a principle in my work, which is not to [chase] collaborations. When a popular partner is at its peak, it is not the best time for you to cooperate with him. The cost is the highest at that time. At the same time, because his cooperation frequency is very high, your cooperation may be overwhelmed and may not necessarily have a good effect.

In other words, if we don’t have strong financial resources, we should be cautious about avoiding an IP or brand that everyone is scrambling to collaborate with.

But why are there still so many big IP, well-known brands and large self-media that are willing to cooperate with them? This was a question that always puzzled me, but I finally figured it out.

Because a large number of corporate brand marketers are professional managers, and the bosses basically don’t understand brand marketing. In this case, what better suggestion is there to report your progress at work to a boss who doesn't understand brand marketing than to a bigger and more well-known brand?

First of all, the boss knows the brand, so it’s easy to make the decision. Secondly, if you spend a lot of money, there will basically be some effect. Thirdly, even if there is no effect, you can blame it on the "partner" not being helpful. (This is what happens when the boss doesn’t understand the brand)

4. Always pay attention to [Brand for Good]

In recent years, there has been a hot word in the technology and Internet circles called "Technology for Good". Following their example, I would like to specifically mention [Brand for Good].

As a corporate brand marketing activity, cross-border collaboration is aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the company's brand marketing. On the other hand, there is another social significance that we have not yet discovered.

The corporate brand marketing department itself also plays a great role in the dissemination of social values. In recent years, we have seen some very explosive and speechless views, some very annoying brand marketing rhetoric, and extremely ugly guiding words in order to increase sales or conversions. I won’t give examples here one by one, as I think everyone has encountered them.

I am not saying this because I want to be a moral hypocrite. Instead, I want to tell you that if a brand does not insist on doing good, then in the future when it encounters a public relations crisis or any time when people may misunderstand the brand, all the marketing content that is not in line with the truth will be dug out and criticized by netizens.

After all, the Internet has memory.

Cross-border brand marketing collaboration is a good opportunity to test a brand’s ability to do good. For example, what kind of brands would you choose to collaborate with? During the collaboration process, what have you done to influence netizens? For example, what kind of values ​​and concepts are output in the process of cross-border collaboration?

Being kind is actually a kind of ability, and its value will become increasingly prominent.