Stop playing "cross-border marketing"!

Jack Ma once said that this is an era of cross-border robbery.

Wu Xiaobo also said that we are facing a society of cross-border competition. In this era of cross-border competition, all products may be redefined.

Nowadays, cross-border thinking is not only constantly mentioned and deepened as a kind of business thinking, but also penetrates into the marketing circle, and then evolves into a marketing means to help many brands shine in the red ocean of traffic battle.

However, at a time when everything can be co-branded, co-branding seems to have become a social dance floor. When a song ends, people change to dance together, and the chaos can no longer attract attention.

01 “ Cross-border marketing ” has become a brand carnival

The once "earthy" Lao Gan Ma has stepped into the fashion circle, Luzhou Laojiao has begun to show its fragrance, Zhou Hei Ya has entered the makeup bags of girls, and Liushen Floral Water is not satisfied with occupying the skin, but also occupies your taste buds with RIO...

In recent years, the waves caused by the cross-border development of national trends have led many brands to expand their boundaries and engage in "cross-border marketing." A collaboration and a piece of writing can naturally bring two things that are not directly related together.

Among these cross-border collaborations, the Palace Museum can be regarded as one of the "veterans". Since 2017, the Forbidden City has "let itself go", successfully playing with its personal IP and creating a series of "must-buy hits" with excellent shapes and colors. From the Forbidden City cosmetics, Forbidden City cultural and creative products and other self-created series that showed their potential at the beginning, to the recently launched "very popular" Forbidden City ice cream and the Forbidden City smart speaker co-branded with Xiaodu. Along the way, the Palace Museum has been very successful in cross-border marketing.

White Rabbit, which has always been pursuing "brand rejuvenation", is also a veteran in cross-border business. Last September, during Tmall’s National Trend Season, two traditional domestic brands, White Rabbit and Maxam, joined forces to launch a new toffee-flavored lip balm, combining each other’s product characteristics. On the eve of Children's Day in 2019, White Rabbit collaborated with the "Smell Library" to launch a "Happy Childhood Fragrance Series" including toffee-scented perfume and its peripheral products - body lotion, shower gel, hand cream and car fragrance. The 610 limited White Rabbit fragrance gift packs were sold out in 3 seconds as soon as they went online.

For these time-honored brands, which were impacted by the big IP era, they have successfully made a splash through a series of cross-border marketing actions, launching new products, new packaging, and new peripherals, creating a sense of presence, increasing voice and consolidating brand memory, gradually emerging from the "midlife crisis" and successfully reaching Generation Z consumers with strong purchasing power. The originally accumulated brand favorability coupled with the highly creative cross-border collaborations make the brand invincible.

Perhaps the brands that were the first to "test the waters" seized the dividends of cross-border marketing. Many brands have begun to try cross-border collaborations, with a fierce momentum of "chasing each other".

The UNIQLO x KAWS co-branded T-shirts were snapped up by the public; the NetEase Cloud Music x Sanqiang co-branded underwear set off a wave of social networks; the new lipstick launched by 999 Pi Yan Ping made a presence felt; the "tube top autumn johns" of 999 Ganmao Ling successfully went viral... It seems that everything can be crossed and everything can be connected.

The crossover between Li Ning and People's Daily is one of the most eye-catching cross-border marketing cases in 2019. 30 years ago, the People's Daily published the winning entries of the Li Ning brand trademark solicitation, which was also the first media exposure of the Li Ning brand trademark. 30 years later, Li Ning, known as the "pride of domestic products", launched a number of co-branded trendy products, printing People's Daily all over the clothes to create a real "newspaper style".

Cross-border marketing has a special magic that breaks through dimensional walls and physical properties. It can successfully grab users' attention and attract attention in a short period of time, and the two brands themselves will produce different chemical reactions, stimulating users' desire to buy.

02Why do brands love cross-border cooperation?

Behind these seemingly "unprofessional" marketing behaviors, brands actually have their own calculations.

Generally speaking, there are two main purposes:

1. Use novel combinations to create contrast and break users’ fixed perceptions.

In fact, brand cross-border marketing is all about creating a sense of conflict.

For consumers, with the arrival of consumption upgrades, people are paying more and more attention to the quality and diversification of life. Brands hope to create a more fresh consumption experience to meet the needs of consumers.

The magic of cross-border marketing lies in this

In this era of excessive marketing information, it is unlikely that brands will rely on high-frequency advertising or didactic advertising placements to gain traffic and create user favor. At this time, the "sense of conflict" created by brand cross-border marketing increases the interest in marketing content and form, achieving the purpose of attracting consumers' attention.

People are curious. When a brand we are familiar with suddenly releases an incredible new product, our first reaction is often: WTF? Then find out what happened. This is one of the reasons why brands are keen on cross-border collaborations, namely to break consumers' habitual cognition, attract attention, and arouse curiosity.

For example, Zhou Hei Ya x Yu Ni Fang’s duck neck flavored lipstick, although not everyone likes this strange taste, it satisfies users’ curiosity to a large extent. There is also the previous Liushen x RIO floral water cocktail. Although you can imagine the smell of floral water just by looking at the packaging, it still couldn’t resist the enthusiasm of users. The new product was launched on the Tmall flagship store and sold out in 17 seconds.

2. Create topics, trigger traffic, and output a youthful image.

For users, the more unimaginable something is, the more topical and spreadable it is.

Whether it is Liushen or Zhou Hei Ya, their image has long been deeply rooted in the minds of users. Moreover, such contrasting combinations as daily necessities and pre-mixed cocktails, marinated products and skin care products can well mobilize users' interest and trigger word-of-mouth communication.

At the same time, this "disruptive" brand attempt has also left users with the impression that it is "fun", which has well captured the needs of young users and driven the brand's younger development.

Therefore, the essence of cross-border marketing is to use the chemical reactions between different brands to create topics and help each other, with the aim of solving the problems that exist in the brands, which may be problems with brand rejuvenation, users, or application scenarios.

03 The marketing rule of “everything can be cross-border” fails

The essence of cross-border marketing is that the influence of brands promotes each other, but in fact, cases that can really sweep the screen and attract the attention of a large number of users are rare. What's worse, there have been major failures, such as the cross-border marketing between Samsung and the trendy brand Supreme at the end of last year, and the collaboration between Durex and Heytea in April last year.

As wave after wave of cross-border joint marketing continues to emerge, hidden disadvantages are also becoming apparent.

1. The proliferation of joint brands has led to aesthetic fatigue and consumer desensitization

On October 17, 2019, the "Forbidden City Rosewood Skin Care Products" launched by the Forbidden City were sold on multiple online and offline platforms. Although it became a hot topic on Weibo as expected, the sales performance of this product was disappointing.

This shows to a certain extent that even national-level IPs are facing the embarrassment of failing to bring goods, and the reason behind this is that cross-border marketing rules have been over-exploited and the public's aesthetic taste is close to fatigue.

The user's surprise threshold will gradually increase with the layout of marketing actions, and slowly decrease over time. Frequent use of marketing techniques such as cross-border marketing and IP collaboration will constantly increase users' expectations of the brand, but expectations obviously cannot be satisfied endlessly, which will eventually lead to users' aesthetic fatigue.

The process of user aesthetic fatigue is the process of the brand marketing input-output ratio continuously shrinking, that is, the process of routines gradually failing.

Therefore, brands should grasp the core needs of consumers for self-expression, focus on the delivery of brand spirit and values, and achieve emotional resonance. In addition, cross-border marketing needs to maintain a good promotion rhythm. Dense arrangement is not very desirable, and a balance should be struck between user freshness and brand promotion demands.

2. Product quality is substandard and consumer reputation declines

Although cross-border collaborations can bring a sense of freshness to consumers, product quality is also a major risk point in brand marketing.

At the end of 2018, the Forbidden City’s lipsticks were all over WeChat Moments and quickly sold out, but this was followed by many users complaining on social networks. The Palace Museum also announced the suspension of all production in January 2019 due to "quality issues". The much-anticipated White Rabbit Milk Tea also has some negative reputation due to its “average taste”.

In fact, it is not just the Forbidden City. Many cross-border products of well-known food brands can be heard with many “average quality” reviews and user complaints.

Generally speaking, brands are not professional in the production of co-branded products. In addition, customers of co-branded products are already impulsive buyers and have higher expectations. Therefore, they will inevitably be more sensitive to the quality of the products after receiving them. If the product quality is mediocre, the brand will suffer backlash from the co-branding.

3. Marketing gimmicks, diluting brand value

Today's brand cross-border activities are showing signs of becoming gimmicky and curious.

The abuse of cross-border marketing by brands has resulted in IP cross-border becoming only a means to attract the public's attention. It can cause a lot of social discussion, but it may not be beneficial to the brand's reputation. More and more cross-border marketing is gradually diluting the brand's unique tone, users' favorability towards the brand is decreasing, and its value is constantly being consumed.

Brand value can be divided into three dimensions: awareness, reputation, and loyalty. Good marketing should meet the brand goals of all three dimensions at the same time, rather than simply attracting traffic through gimmicks and thus quenching thirst with poison.

After all, IP cross-border is just a brand marketing tool, not a panacea. If you want to create influential marketing events, you fundamentally need to return to brand building.

04 Conclusion

As a marketing tool, behind the noise and popularity of cross-border collaborations, we should think more calmly.

Brands cannot expect cross-border marketing to solve all problems. Instead of trying every possible means to establish joint brands, it is better to inject recognizable connotations into the brand, like the playfulness of Oreo, the fun of MM beans, and Coke becoming the water for happy fat otakus.

Because there is no product support and no brand connotation, no matter how much trouble you put in, it will only consume the original brand sentiment and goodwill. After consumers go from initial expectations to final boredom, it will be completely forgotten in the Internet's 7-second goldfish memory!

Author: Marketing Front Page

Source: Marketing Front Page (MKT2000)