The purpose of brand naming is to empower "specific products and specific platforms" with more cost-effective communication value, rather than becoming a "burdensome asset." The essence of communication lies in "broadcasting". Without the influence of oral language communication, there will be no continuous "transmission". When "biological clock marketing" and "minimum unit brand resource package" are done well, public relations and advertising will be like a torch that will naturally burn when thrown over.

Brand building is a process of finding yourself, settling down, sticking to yourself, and perfecting yourself.

In my community, friends who work in branding or social media often ask me how to build a brand. If you change jobs to "Internet or industrial, single-brand company", the first thing to do is to make a "brand building plan."

But "the budget is not too large" , so even if you want to convince the boss to spend money, you have to find a suitable reason.

We should all be clear that when most people enter a company, it is impossible for them to grow with the company from 0 to 1. Many people enter a fast-growing company during the expansion stage of its business.

From an organizational perspective, what companies hope to see is "a brand director and a marketing VP" come in to "solidify" the entire brand foundation, allowing the business to grow exponentially.

Brand building doesn’t just exist at the “operational level”.

For example: "Use public relations to get exposure", "Use KOL to spread the word", "Shoot a few TVCs during the holidays" and it will be done." I have always believed that the exploration of brand building should start from the "cornerstone perspective and gradually improve."

So what is the cornerstone angle? You should observe the culture of the brand. Even if it is a startup brand, the boss has the original intention in his heart, and the original intention is to explore the culture. All of these are things of the past.

The second cornerstone is "things of the future" . Can the intangible assets left by this brand currently play an enabling role in future "communication", "marketing activities" and "social" ?

Some things left at the cornerstone level that cannot bring empowering value to users should be discarded. For example: your old packaging, your old VI, your old slgan. These things cannot become "user memory points" for a long time, allowing users to consume based on this memory point, so they need to be discarded.

01 Improve the symbol system

Design a simple LOGO with a matching background color and use it for many years. Maybe the founder discovered the potential pain points of an industry at that time, and then it was able to quickly "grow business very well."

However, as time goes by, when one player enters an industry, multiple players will imitate it , such as "Look at the Chinese mobile phone market, why are there brands such as Huawei, OPPO, vivo, Nokia, HTC, Xiaomi, etc."

Among these brands, there are many former giants and some are newcomers who entered the market later, but how do they want to capture the minds of users?

When the market reaches a certain size, you can no longer use “cheapness alone” to tell a story . At this time, you have to attract consumers from other aspects such as “brand value, culture, product details, workmanship details” and gain more market share.

1. Brand building must first improve the "symbol" system

If brand building is not done well, you will fall into self-satisfaction when upgrading. Even if you find many KOL public relations media to help you speak, it will only be "lukewarm" because you have not grasped the core lifeline. On the contrary, it will bring pressure to communication.

Until now, many people still believe that brand upgrading means upgrading the “LOGO” and the slogan. In fact, this is the most superficial way of understanding.

First of all, we need to understand the meaning of brand building. The answer is "reducing the cost of publicity and achieving the greatest variable effect" , attracting more users and deepening user recognition.

On a certain search engine, the definition of publicity is: "Publicity is a kind of activity that uses symbols to achieve the desired purpose."

Propaganda is a symbol that is not only expressed in logos, but also in text, music, gestures, medals, patterns, IP and many other aspects.

The first step in brand building should be to "explore symbols" and "perfect symbols" . The excavation of symbols is based on old assets at the cornerstone level. Some bosses may think, I have used my LOGO for 5 years and I think it looks good, so why should I change it?

The role of a LOGO is to make consumers remember it and pay for it. If five years have passed and your market share is gradually declining, I think that in addition to the business level, you should consider whether to replace it with a new mnemonic symbol, because this symbol can no longer bring added value.

Regardless of whether they are a "platform" or a single brand, their LOGOs represent consumer value, which is to guide consumption. To strengthen this value, the output of symbols is required . Symbols are not just for good looks but to enable "action value."

Let me give you a simple example:

When you see Lao Gan Ma, what scenes can you think of, "hot sauce, Lao Gan Ma's avatar" , these are its implicit action values.

What do you think of when you see bucket of instant noodles? Braised beef noodles, the scene of its packaging, "braised beef", the picture of hot cooking effect", these are all "action value".

There is still a lot of work to be done to build the action value of a single brand. For example, for Baijiahei, what can you think of from the packaging symbol level? The platform's action instructions are now mostly used in slogans, but often the slogans of many platforms are just self-boasting and fail to spread.

The essence of communication is to "broadcast" first and then spread. Most slogans always tell others what is the best platform, a professional mother-parenting platform, but these have nothing to do with users.

The essence of broadcasting is: "We should build a slogan for users. This slogan is an action instruction, allowing users to spread it themselves."

We should think from a different dimension, for example: "My wife told me to go shopping for groceries after get off work and remember to go with a certain tour group, which is cheap and affordable." This is an instruction of action value. The action instruction is not just a slogan. It is just an indirect instruction to reshape the user's mind and let the user tell it to another user.

The key thing to remember when doing action instructions is to be "flashy but not practical" and hit the vital points, otherwise it will be meaningless.

Action instructions can be used as slogans, or you can make it a "mission" because they all serve the phased strategy of the business. When the strategy for this phase is completed, it can be reshaped and upgraded. There is no brand in the world that does not need to be upgraded.

The broadcast instructions can be highlighted in various aspects, such as: "posters, detail pages, packaging, and TVC endorsements of your own platform." You may need to say these things yourself in the early cold start, and after you broadcast them for a long time, the "transmission effect" will be produced.

2. What aspects can the upgrade symbol be shown in?

LOGO update and iteration does not mean brand reshaping. Its essence is the "reshaping" of the brand's old assets, followed by optimization. There are many details involved in the optimization, and the first specific step is the LOGO identification.

Among competing products, the most important thing is whether your own LOGO can be placed in the most eye-catching place through simple reshaping so that users can remember it at once.

Remember that "a LOGO is not meant to look pretty to users" . Beautiful things often make people remember them for less than three hours.

Beauty is just a "shell" that cannot empower "products and platforms" . The essence of user-defined beauty is the "tone" and the ability to unify color combinations.

So how do we dig out memories and deepen them? We need to extract them from cultural history and then express them abstractly.

The excavation of culture comes from the "original intention of the founder" and "research on the industry". For example, if a founder makes an "ice cream product", he must have an understanding of this industry and the basic culture of "ice cream".

At this time, as a brand manager, you can dig for logos from the "culture of the era when ice cream became popular." The first person to make ice cream must have used a unique logo that had "cultural references and special auxiliary symbols," and these special symbols are the basis for your reference.

A special symbol has been used for hundreds of years. You only need to innovate it in combination with current culture. Its essential meaning will not change. What will change is only the "inheritance extended from culture" . At the same time, it will increase recognition and deepen the user's memory.

The next thing is to "integrate old assets with culture" . Our old assets are what is left over from the creation of the brand, and culture is what is inherited by the industry. How to make the LOGO logo simpler requires innovation in hand-painting and brand design.

The LOGO is an extension. Don’t just think of it as a logo. It is the most critical thing that can reduce “cost”.

You might as well give it a try. Three companies with a C-round valuation of 6 billion are competing in the same industry. They have the same business model and similar business models, but the corresponding "user groups are different". So how can you capture users at a lower cost?

In addition to short-term strategies and subsidy wars, there is the "brand strategy", which is to perceive users through everything extended from the LOGO, so as to increase LTV.

From the LOGO, to the shape, to the icon, to the color extraction, to the temperament and style, to the lines, the angles, sizes, contours and other details displayed in the overall package are considered the "smallest unit fundamentals" of a brand and the overall symbol system of the brand, and all of these things are in preparation for the subsequent "broadcasting".

02 Improve internal basic cultural construction

When it comes to external image display, I think you can think of things like “product packaging, after-sales cards”, LOGO exposure at offline events, etc., but I think the ignition point for external communication should be “internal”.

Because brands are self-media and individuals are also self-media, we should start from the cultural part of the organization as much as possible and let every colleague accept and integrate into this culture first , so that it can spread the company from the "employee perspective".

1. Internal badges, POLO shirts, culture, is the beginning of construction

Once your own brand symbol system is established, the smallest communication unit is the company.

Your company's facade wall, waist stickers, employee induction handbooks, resignation medals, employee badges, internal honor posters, T-shirts, paper towels used on the tables, and water cups distributed: all of these are the "foundation of brand building" and the first impression.

Just imagine that when a newcomer comes to the company and sees the IP extended from the brand LOGO you have established at the front desk, the first impression he or she has will be different, and he or she will think that "this company culture will be very good."

Secondly, when he took his position, the display of symbols on his "employee card" and "welcome manual" reinforced the company's mission and silently increased his status in his mind.

They may not be able to help but "take photos" and share their inner joy with friends around them, post them on WeChat Moments or even social networking sites. All of this dissemination is free of charge , which has a very good effect on the internal employee level.

POLO shirts are a collective effect, and actually have very low costs. However, many "companies willing to do brand building are often unwilling to invest in these, as they believe they cannot create value for customers."

This is actually a completely wrong way of understanding. Employees are the company's stores. The quality of POLO and the display of its symbols determine whether employees like it and whether they like to wear it. If you put yourself in their shoes, employees are also users, and they are the minimized "broadcasting unit."

If your own employees feel that they are not presentable enough, will your customers choose it? I think even if they do, they may find it "shameful". I have seen many customers using other people's T-shirts as floor rags at exhibitions.

When using tissue paper, packaging bags are also a very important part. Users are willing to spend money to buy LV handbags because they are a symbol of dignity . However, when some handbags are given to others, others are unwilling to take them because they think they are too low-end. This is the effect of some details in brand building.

The badge is a symbol . Seeing a badge reminds us of the honor brought by a specific scenario. Alibaba awards badges to its employees every year, both when they join and when they leave the company.

As the saying goes, to understand a company’s brand building, you can interview former employees and get their feedback.

Employees should be allowed to leave in a dignified manner. An employee is the "chief spokesperson of a company." Just imagine, the industry is very small, but where can an employee go after changing jobs?

The words he spread after he left and the comments he shared with others are what a brand can never achieve through "spending money on advertising". Decency is also the most basic way a brand can leave itself.

I have seen many companies quarreling over final employee salaries or some minor factors. This is the most unwise approach. The only way to solve the problem is to “look it over head” rather than giving direct orders.

Fan Deng said something to share with you:

When letting an employee go, no matter how poorly he performs or if he is not in line with the company's values, I will write him a very "elaborate letter of recommendation, outlining his strengths" to maximize the interests of the departing employee, because you may become partners in the future and he knows your business well enough.

Think about it, if a brand culture can do this to employees who leave, what will the employees think? They will think that walking is so good, should I walk too? No, they will definitely do a good job.

If your customers say your brand is not good, some people may not believe it . But if a former employee says the brand culture is not good, others will definitely believe it.

It is really important to build a good internal reputation culture in brand building. Among the many brands I have seen, most of the former employees continue to cooperate with their former brands because they know you very well.

In this way, the brand culture will eventually be formed, and your brand will have people scattered in every corner who are loyal to this "brand" and will speak well of you.

2. Everyone is a brand PR, just need to get the tone right

When your employees say that the brand is good and are willing to share photos related to the logo or brand scenes in social circles, the brand is actually half successful from the perspective of communication.

At this time, for the customer, if the business itself is OK, the quality of your products is good enough, and the platform has a fast delivery time, then using public relations to communicate externally will be like adding fuel to the fire.

I said above that the “essence of broadcasting” is broadcasting, so how to broadcast? It is the manifestation of action instructions . What are action instructions?

For example, a designer in your company is making a design drawing, and you suddenly ask him: What kind of design drawing did you make? Tell me.

At this time, he can't say it, or express it to you, and you come and see it yourself, that's it, so it can't play the role of "broadcasting".

Besides the slogan being the first inspiration, what is the second inspiration? It is the "company's mission", the "mission" that others search for first through the search platform.

I have noticed that many missions are relatively empty in the early stages. I suggest that you directly change them to down-to-earth ones to make it easier to capture users. The vision is the place you want to go, and the mission is "I want to express it through strategy, make it feel to users, and kill what works in the industry in seconds."

For example: The mission of Xibei oat noodles : order with your eyes closed, every dish is delicious.

This sentence makes full use of it. You did what you asked. I ordered oat noodles in the northwest , and every dish was delicious.

Imagine a user walking into a store or seeing a slogan like this on a poster while shopping. What comes to the user’s mind immediately? "The food here is so delicious that you can eat it with your eyes closed. I have to try it."

What is the mission of some companies? We must be committed to building a good e-commerce platform, and we must be professional food consultants. This is actually contrary to the saying "it's useless to users". We must use our mission to penetrate the minds of users.

When a user suddenly receives a call, or is asked to take a photo of a dish, and you can't think of the copy, you look up and see the "slogan on the poster". You can order with your eyes closed, and every dish is delicious. Really, you can try it too.

So does it mean that it has been “broadcasted”? It will only be spread after it has been broadcast.

Regardless of visual symbols, olfactory symbols, or taste symbols, their final output is expressed in slogans, logos, and missions. If these three points are well done, everyone will be the self-media for disseminating your brand.

03 Reshape “biological clock marketing”

Now most of the S-level single -brand marketing is done by following other platforms, and the S-level marketing of emerging platforms, such as the 618 and Double 11 promotions, are also limited to imitating the "head players", but after the festival, they have not reshaped the minds of their own brands.

Why does there is a "one-hour power outage" in society ? Why do every family excitedly watch the Spring Festival Gala together during the holidays? Why do we need to be with our loved ones on Valentine's Day ? These are essentially biological clock marketing.

1. Hitting the user's psychology, what is biological clock marketing

Excluding regular activities, I believe that all special marketing is an experience service . We cannot just let users stay at the point where “the price of its platform has been reduced”, which makes the “marketing very weak”.

In an era of material saturation , what users lack at all is not "commodities". Instead, they hope to give themselves or their loved ones something more commemorative and symbolic through certain specific times and specific symbols . This is the only way to capture the minds of core users.

Otherwise, your own brand or platform will gather traffic during the 618 and Double 11 holidays.

But from an operational perspective , you have ultimately overlooked a key indicator, which is "LTV", the user's life cycle . If you don't have anything set to retain the user, and someone else's product is cheaper during the next 618, they will leave.

Shopping on e-commerce platforms is as frequent as eating, but why is there a sense of ritual in it?

Xibei Oat Noodles’ “Kissing Festival” has been held in the catering industry for many years. You can get discounts by kissing while dining offline. Does it add some special feelings to couples, lovers, and family gatherings? Not only does it give users a sense of participation, but it also allows users to get discounts from the store by kissing.

During Tmall’s Double 11, most girls always set their alarms at 23:59 on the evening of the 10th. The tighter the time, the more excited they are. Isn’t this a kind of “biological clock marketing”?

Even if one day, Tmall stopped advertising on Double 11 and only carried out certain on-site marketing activities, I think many users would still remember the excitement during the Tmall 11 nights, such as "husband didn't allow shopping, wife secretly used husband's mobile phone to pay, etc." These famous scenes happened.

It is not only a festival, but also a symbol of beautiful expectations and inner joy.

2. How can platforms achieve deleveraging effects for niche brands?

Many friends may ask, how can a single brand and a newly established platform leverage itself with minimal cost?

It’s actually very easy. The Hardcore Fan Theory tells us that we need to start from the “user’s perspective” when organizing activities, and think about what else users can participate in besides the consumption level?

For example, if you want to buy this thing, you have to make specific gestures, post selfies in specific scenes, and take photos with your family . You don’t have to refer to others to set these poses. You can also create your own festivals, such as "Baby Day, the Most Beautiful Mother's Day."

Through refined operational means, platforms or brands can compile these Baby Day photos and the most beautiful "mom photos" of parents, and spread them through public relations. I think the voice it brings will definitely be more convincing and have more "brand endorsement" than just relying on "we have lowered the price again."

Xiaohongshu’s early slogan, “Mark my beautiful life”, is essentially a communication method that combines slogans with action instructions. It directly gives users mental imperative guidance . “Check in to mark your life” is one way.

The content produced by checking in will spread on its own. At the same time, if the photos taken by users are good enough and satisfy their psychological characteristics in some aspects, they will share them to "show off" . Then its community will gradually become stronger. This is also the "core reason why C-end brands should be the community" that I have always emphasized.

Because the community is the most important part of cultural output after brand building . It is not only low-cost but also able to retain users. It is the process of screening "super users" from private domain traffic.

So how is biospecies marketing different from other traditional “activities”?

Circadian clock marketing is about creating a sense of scarcity. Many platforms I have seen doing membership days actually don’t go very deep and are still at the “activity level”. Membership days are like circadian clock marketing, which can be leveraged in the early stages, but must have distinctive features in the later stages.

And it has its own "brand tone". It does not need to echo others and form its own cultural value proposition. It needs to be constantly reshaped and strengthened from all aspects, including vision, smell, poster copywriting and action instructions. Only in this way can it be differentiated and more easily find its core users.

The closer users get to a certain moment and the closer the time is, the more excited they will be psychologically, and the more successful your marketing will be.

If a brand can achieve this level of "marketing", will you still advertise extensively every year to compete with top players for traffic?

I don't think so, because at that moment, your core users will remember the "happy scene", "look forward to the arrival of that scene" , and "look forward to themselves or their family being the one chosen and blessed by Santa Claus."

The essence of a brand is "communication". When we package the VI visuals, slogans, gameplay and other elements and integrate them into the "biological clock marketing", magical effects will appear.

No matter whether this festival has passed for 3, 5, or 10 years, users will still quietly open your platform APP, find your store, and buy your products, because you have left a deep memory for it.

04 IP extension, increasing brand cycle

There is a very famous joke in the Internet circle that all the brands acquired by Alibaba have their own pet IPs, and then people mock Alibaba for opening a "zoo".

So why do brands need to use IP extension to promote themselves after a certain number of years?

First, IP is more conducive to building emotional connections with users. Second, the extension of IP is unlimited , and it can be used in any scenario, while the brand's LOGO is cold, and it will appear "inconsistent with the tone" if placed in the wrong place.

1. IP empowerment, from the perspective of human and animal

In recent years, when we go shopping, we often see big "dolls" in shopping malls, such as internet celebrities Naughty Bear, Pikachu, Peppa Pig, Super Mario, and Despicable Me.

When these IP images appear in shopping malls, they always attract adults or children to take photos . From the perspective of brand building, these are essentially free public relations communications.

Every brand has IP attributes, and the key lies in how to explore them. The homophonic meanings of some brand names are linked to IP extensions , such as Yunji's "Little Chicken", Tmall's "Cat", Fliggy's "Pig", and Xiami's "Xia Zai".

The founders of these brands may have been aware of IP at the beginning of the brand creation, but in the later extension, it just became a matter of course.

The image of IP lies in the fact that it can break through the user's consumption defense line in one second, quickly bring people closer to each other , make people like it, and never get tired of watching it. It is naughty and slightly cute.

So how do we discover brands whose names don’t match their IPs? It starts with the brand’s culture, the industry it is in, and the founder’s original intention.

The prototype of human beings is "advanced animals". There are many kinds of animals in the world , some are cute, some are funny, and some are adorable. Sometimes, the "original image" can be found by analogy through the founder's personality and daily style of doing things.

Then, based on the "original image", we need to optimize it through hand-drawing to create the simplest, most intuitive and acceptable visual objects, and continuously polish it so that it can be shown as an avatar, LOGO, or cartoon, and then it will gradually evolve from a brand to an IP.

(Pictures from "Zhaocool")

2. Give IP life and maximize its value

IP is a "salesman" that brings traffic. We need to give it life , set up its personality, and configure its character and temperament so that it can show its vitality. If there is no personality, an IP image becomes a simple decoration.

The brand-extended character is just a symbol of IP. The personality, thoughts, character, behavior, etc. behind it can attract different users.

Suppose we extend a brand into the image of a dog. If we don’t inject values ​​and other relevant things into the dog, users’ understanding will be biased.

Because dogs have multiple personalities, Huskies are uninhibited and cynical , while Corgis are serious, focused and love life.

The golden retriever is docile and has a very high IQ, the teddy bear is lively and cute, but also spoiled and willful, the scabby dog ​​has wrinkles all over his face, is lazy and stupid, etc.

These are all extensions of the brand that need to be shaped. Of course, from the prototype, every hand-drawn line and symbol must be similar to the overall feeling and tone, and have its specific meaning.

From the ears, eyes, tail, posture, mouth, etc., the core of all this is not to create an IP that everyone likes, but to only serve people who match the tone. Of course, if the brand wants to expand its market share, it can work on the personality of the IP.

Then the transmission of personality needs to be extended through TVC, short videos, posters, and pictures . Most brands like to leverage large-scale festival marketing. We also often see some brands using cartoon pet photos to spread their brands, such as Huawei and Shudan Dog, which are typical cases.

If the IP image extended from the brand does not please users at the beginning, the subsequent operation and promotion costs will increase.

It is important to remember that the posture of the IP is also very important. An IP will show different forms in different scenes, such as sleeping, drinking coffee, etc. These can all be shown on the poster. The poster is the smallest unit of communication.

At the promotion level, if IP has no creativity, all brand strategies are zero , whether it is subway, topic, community advertising, Weibo search, these are all cold methodologies, and what inspires human nature is the "personality traits brought by IP."

Therefore, the easiest way to reshape the brand, enhance the brand, and save communication costs is to "find specific symbols", "make the smallest unit of the brand", "sort out internal culture", "establish biological clock marketing", and "increase innovation in IP", so that your subsequent communication will be easy.

Core Viewpoint

The purpose of brand naming is to empower "specific products and specific platforms " with more cost-effective communication value, rather than becoming a "burdensome asset."

The essence of communication lies in "broadcasting" . Without the influence of oral language communication , there will be no continuous "transmission".

When "biological clock marketing" and "minimum unit brand resource package" are done well, public relations and advertising will be like a torch that will naturally burn when thrown over.

Author: Wang Zhiyuan

Source: Wang Zhiyuan (ID: Z201440)