In 2022, re-understand brand marketing!

"Corporate brand marketing and national brand marketing seem to be two different concepts. In fact, the two are not separated or fragmented, but are mutually causal and interdependent. As the four major modules under the corporate brand marketing system, how do brand, public relations, marketing, and advertising divide their work? In 2022, all companies should have a new understanding of brand marketing."

I met with an investor last week, and after an in-depth conversation, he asked me two questions: How should companies build a brand marketing system in 2022? How should a company’s public relations business be carried out?

The advice I gave at the time was to analyze each company specifically. The marketing tasks for companies in different industries, sizes, types and growth stages vary greatly. For companies that take the capital route, it is not too late to do public relations after the A round.

Many days have passed, and the investor's questions are still lingering in my mind. Brand marketing is a non-standardized job. For enterprises, is it possible to create a highly applicable template that can be directly applied? Sadly, my opinion is still "no". This work relies heavily on brainpower, and brand marketing cannot be standardized and replicated like commercial projects.

So what is the connotation of brand marketing? Does traffic equal brand? Brand, public relations, marketing, and advertising, what are the differences in their work content and roles? In the era of mobile advertising media with fragmented information and networked distribution of social media, do companies that have already established brand marketing systems need to make timely adjustments based on the evolution of communication media?

This article will focus on answering these questions.

Traffic does not equal brand marketing

Today, when 20% of well-known brands own 80% of the market share, I believe that the vast majority of entrepreneurs and founders must have more or less brand awareness and public relations thinking. Building brand power is also something that companies have been willing to work hard to put into practice. In recent years, due to the combined influence of many environmental factors such as the global macroeconomic downturn, the double impact of the Internet epidemic, and bad media making a living by "exposing the scandals" of well-known leading companies, many companies have begun to have serious deviations in their understanding of brand marketing.

With the rise of new and old e-commerce, especially the rapid rise of live streaming e-commerce, many e-commerce companies, especially new consumer companies that have just entered the market, have elevated their e-commerce departments to unprecedented heights, and the already vague concept of brand marketing has been thrown out of their minds.

As a result, we have also seen that the well-known Internet celebrity brands that were once highly anticipated were unable to achieve real expansion of their businesses after simply copying the "marketing methodology" of others. After becoming an overnight sensation, they have entered a downward channel one after another. Some have no new stories to tell and have become abandoned by capital. Some are struggling to breathe under the shadow of the giants. Some have long disappeared from the market. And the vast majority are still racking their brains for how to become an overnight sensation.

As offline marketing channels shrink, pursuing short-term capital accumulation is the way for small and medium-sized enterprises to survive, which is understandable. However, it has to be said that it is a "strange phenomenon" that everyone is collectively trapped in unbearable traffic anxiety and simply perceives traffic as brand. The phenomenon of companies being kidnapped by traffic is also easy to understand and can be attributed to the disorderly expansion of capital and Internet commercial monopoly.

The deeper reason actually comes from the strategic laziness within the enterprise. The vast majority of newly established companies are unwilling to adhere to long-termism. They know that the huge gap between them and industry leaders cannot be caught up in the short term, so they have neither the desire nor the ability to fully invest in product research and development innovation, service improvement and brand building. This is the crux of why companies have never been able to break the "traffic first" mentality.

Traffic does not equal brand, and the amount of traffic exposure does not represent the brand’s true influence and reputation. Judging from a series of measures taken by the country, Wei Ya’s disappearance is a good thing. After the traffic dividend of the entire Chinese Internet disappears, rationality will eventually return, and business operators will definitely realize a deeper meaning of brand marketing.

Brand marketing requires strategic thinking

Everyone knows that the more famous and recognized a brand is, the faster the business will develop. Only by having a good reputation and a respected leader can one gather top talents and a large amount of short-term liquidity, which is true for both a country and a company.

In his book "National Marketing: Singapore's National Brand Approach", Xu Musong, chief planner of Singapore's national brand, discusses in detail Singapore's 30 years of national marketing approach. He put forward a novel view on brand marketing: in national brand marketing, not only the government plays an important role, but every enterprise is becoming a participant and contributor to national brand marketing.

This is the first time that a scholar has talked about the similarities between countries and enterprises in brand marketing. Ten years later, I still agree with the author's ideas and discuss the three meanings in depth:

• Corporate brand marketing and national brand marketing seem to be two different concepts, but in fact they are not separated or scattered, but rather a causal and interdependent relationship. From enterprises to countries, the line extends continuously from points, and enterprises of all sizes are the participants and contributors on this extension line.
• An enterprise's own brand marketing work should be fully integrated into the overall framework of national brand building, and this should be regarded as an important and long-term strategy to be promoted. In the process of brand building, enterprises must not only demonstrate their independence and autonomy, but also always maintain the brand centripetal force and cohesion conveyed by the country invisibly.
• Especially for well-known medium and large enterprises and enterprises with state-owned backgrounds, they need to pay attention to current affairs when formulating brand marketing strategies. The role of public relations needs to adapt to the national brand marketing perspective, to understand and comprehend the policies and guidelines introduced by the country, and to sort out a unified external voice from these released signals, helping enterprises establish a good image as part of a socially responsible group.

It can be seen from this that corporate brand marketing, like national brand marketing, requires long-term efforts. It is a long-term project and cannot be completed overnight. Therefore, today's Chinese business operators might as well look further and further ahead. Why can't your business become a century-old business?

Due to differences in cultural concepts, currently in China, the vast majority of brands, public relations, and marketing do not participate in the strategic decision-making of senior management within the company. On the contrary, in Europe, the United States and other countries, the picture is quite different. Brand marketing teams are playing a vital role within companies.

Google's "PR team" has always enjoyed a high reputation in Silicon Valley. This team of 100 people has helped Google smoothly overcome various crises. In terms of competition, Google is not willing to be outdone by the aggressive Apple. In 2010, just as the iPhone 4 was about to hit the market, Google suddenly emerged and stole the limelight. By announcing the proud sales figures of Android phones, Google has successfully distracted attention from Apple. Today, the free lunches and employee shuttles promoted by Google have long since permeated Silicon Valley culture.

Elliot Schrage, who built Google's brand marketing team, once publicly shared his understanding of the team's role. He said, "Google is characterized by fast-changing situations, problems, crises or product launches. We have to deal not only with reporters, but also with others. We need people who can think strategically, react quickly, work under pressure and get results. There is a difference between treating PR as a strategic function and treating it as a tactical function. They are strategic partners."

It is not difficult to see how much importance Google attaches to the brand marketing team. Obviously, Google has long regarded them as partners with whom it has a tacit understanding.

How to divide the work among branding, public relations, marketing and advertising?

The role of brand marketing in enterprises is needless to elaborate. As the four major sections of the enterprise brand marketing system, how are brand, public relations, marketing, and advertising divided? What do they have in common? I believe this has always been a puzzle for many people.

First of all, from the essential purpose of a company’s business operations, brand, market, public relations, and advertising all belong to marketing. Although they have different focuses, their fundamental existence is still to bring sales growth to the company.

Secondly, if the brand is compared to a goal, then marketing, public relations and advertising are all means. The role of a brand is to shape the development prospects of consumer groups or enterprises, help enterprises have a differentiated image, and set a long-term goal. Success or failure depends on the synergy with the market, public relations and advertising. Only by working together can a company with brand power be created.

brand

Brand means positioning for an enterprise. What is positioning? Simply put, it is to create differentiation. Initially, a brand needs to output two sets of things. One set is the visual system, including VI, logo, outer packaging and other symbols that represent the corporate image; the other set is the intrinsic value, including the brand's unique concepts, values, slogan, etc. Through the above planning, design and output, the company can establish a personalized initial impression in the minds of customers.

For domestic small and medium-sized e-commerce companies, the brand department also bears the responsibility of operations. Brand operation, as the name suggests, is to help companies increase customer growth and maintain a positive corporate image through continuous operations.

The operation includes two aspects of work. One is the operation of official accounts, which is the company's official public channel for speaking out in the social media era. Domestic companies generally use platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, and Toutiao, while overseas companies mainly use Facebook+Twitter; the other is user operation. After entering the era of social e-commerce, traffic is particularly valuable for e-commerce brands. The general basic operation is to use the public domain of Taobao, JD.com, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu e-commerce + the private domain of WeChat together.

market

Philip Kotler, a professor at Northwestern University in the United States, defines "market" as a series of activities carried out to meet consumer needs. This sentence is a bit difficult to understand. In simple terms, the market is based on competition and provides target consumers with a constant stream of reasons and incentives to purchase products.

The market is often the core of a company’s brand marketing system, playing the role of the brain (doing things). The marketing department needs to know the products better than any other department in the company and always be highly vigilant and pay attention to consumer and market trends.

By continuously creating events, we can increase public attention to our company/products/services and quickly influence target customers to take action. For a mature enterprise, the marketing department generally needs to organize and implement the following tasks: event marketing, new product launches/solution implementation marketing, media tastings, industry conferences/summits/roundtables and other circle activities, sponsorship, exhibitions, node promotions, information flow advertising, etc.

With the rise of digital advertising, marketers are facing increasing challenges. They need to understand where the company's target consumers are and be bold in trying emerging digital advertising channels and various new forms of communication.

Public Relations

Traditionally, the function of public relations is to promote brands through media communication in order to gain public attention and recognition. With the dramatic changes in media formats in recent years, the role of public relations has become increasingly important. It is not just a "hand" but also needs to play the role of a "brain decision-maker" like the market.

While helping companies improve their brand awareness and reputation, public relations must also help them gain as much public support as possible. This is particularly important in the context of increasingly fierce commercial competition and the fight against disorderly expansion of capital. Specifically, public relations should help companies establish closer and more cordial relationships with the government, customers, potential customers, and fans, and present a corporate image that meets social expectations and public recognition.

Like marketing, public relations work is equally complex and overlaps with many modules in branding and marketing. For example, brands need to undertake the operation of official social media accounts. In many companies, this part of the work is carried out by the public relations department. For example, event marketing, the most important work in the market, is often planned and completed jointly by the public relations department and the marketing department.

Within large enterprises, public relations is divided into PR, IR, GR and overseas public relations according to the different work areas they lead. PR refers to Public Relations, which is responsible for mass communication and public sentiment management; IR refers to Investor Relations, which is responsible for investor relations management and investor sentiment management; GR refers to Government Relations, which is responsible for managing government public relations/public affairs; and Overseas Public Relations is responsible for the communication and docking of the company's overseas news and public relations events.

advertise

Advertising in a broad sense includes branding, public relations and marketing. When a company publishes an introduction to its latest product in the media, invites a UP host from Bilibili to release a short video with product placement that suits young people's aesthetic tastes, or co-organizes an industry summit with the media, etc., these are all considered advertising.

Advertising in a narrow sense refers specifically to commercial advertising, which is the planning of simple visual expressions such as posters, promotional videos, TVCs, interactive videos, etc., and then placed on various channels, including outdoor, buildings, sports events, subways, buses, airports, traditional media, Internet platforms, and social media platforms.

In college advertising textbooks, the traditional definition of advertising is "paid media publicity." This definition was not wrong more than a decade ago, which was still the golden age of traditional media. But if you still define advertising in this way today, you would be a little belated. In the past decade, traditional media has encountered strong impacts from social media platforms and the Internet, which has also led to more diversified media channels for brand owners to place advertisements today.

Every industry has its changes and constants in the face of the times. Today, even though unprecedented historical changes have taken place in media and channels, advertising is still a highly challenging job in terms of content, requiring insight, brainpower, and creativity to impress people.

Finally, for the four major sections of the corporate brand marketing system, we will briefly sort out two differences and one trend.

the difference

• Marketing and Sales: Marketing is the closest to sales but is not sales. Marketing attracts and inspires potential customers, while sales completes the last mile and ultimately completes the conversion and facilitates the transaction.
• Advertising and public relations: Advertising focuses on creativity, while public relations focuses on planning. Advertising is only aimed at consumers, while public relations is aimed at all stakeholders. Advertising is about saying good things about yourself, while public relations is about saying good things about yourself through a third party. Advertising can differentiate competitors, public relations has stronger penetration, and focuses on long-termism, which can hit competitors.

trend

The boundaries between brands, markets, public relations and advertising are becoming increasingly blurred, and the degree of integration between them is becoming increasingly higher. Especially in social media communication, the four are integrated and intersected together, with more and more overlapping parts.

Taking Weibo as an example, when companies are running campaigns, they usually have clear and overlapping divisions of labor and coordination: advertising is responsible for launching heartfelt TVCs or posters for the company, and also needs to cooperate with public relations in the communication mindset; the brand is responsible for the voice of the company's official channels, and also needs to cooperate with advertising, marketing, and public relations to determine the unified external communication caliber of the official account; the market leads and promotes the implementation of the entire event and places paid advertisements to attract traffic, and also mobilizes internal and external parties of the company to complete the project together; public relations needs to participate in the early planning with the market, and control the voice of various channels on the communication side, invite media and big Vs to communicate with various audiences and track public opinion.

Among the four, who is best suited to lead the company's brand marketing efforts? Fireworks believes that public relations is undoubtedly the most suitable.