2022 Brand Outreach Guide

Under the influence of the Internet, brand marketing has entered the "user-centric" era. One-way delivery must shift to interactive communication, and event marketing has become an excellent choice for brands because of its strong topicality and strong communication capabilities.

However, after extensive observation, interviews and research, we found that although brands all understand that the purpose of event marketing includes increasing sales and enhancing brand image, they often fall into a dilemma in actual operations, that is, it is difficult to achieve true brand-effect integration in a single marketing campaign.

In fact, the fundamental reason for this dilemma is that it is difficult for brands to balance the two major marketing goals of "breaking the circle" and "precision". Breaking the circle focuses on increasing the number of people, while precision focuses on converting people. The traditional approach can easily lose sight of one while focusing on the other.

In response to this, Growth Black Box released the "2022 Brand Out-of-Circle Guide: Leveraging Social Leverage", hoping to use a set of structured and systematic theories to provide valuable references for brands to do event marketing.

On the basis of this report, in order to verify the rationality of the model we developed, on May 12, we jointly planned a roundtable live forum with Weibo - "How to Use Event Marketing to Win the Public" , and invited 4 authoritative practitioners in the field of event marketing - Fu Lu , General Manager of Great Wall Wine Brand, Li Qian , Chief Brand Officer of Wu Gu Mo Fang Group, Liu Dongkun , VIP Customer Sales Director of the Game Industry of Weibo Marketing Business Department, and Zhu Chenye , CMO of Anta, together with Black Box CEO & Founder Shimiao and Analyst Li Binchao , to launch a professional seminar on "How brands can use event marketing to go viral".

1. Strategy: About planning event marketing

1. What inaccurate stereotypes do people have about event marketing?

(1) The cost of event marketing is very high and the conversion efficiency is low

In fact, compared with traditional large-scale advertising, the cost of event marketing is greatly reduced. Generally speaking, the price of a brand-sponsored variety show ranges from 50 million to 200 million yuan, while the cost of event marketing is only a few million.

(2) Event marketing is not suitable for new brands

As we all know, emerging brands are good at using KOLs to promote content, place performance ads on e-commerce platforms and other traffic strategies. However, with the decrease in traffic and the increase in advertising prices, more and more new brands have begun to focus on event marketing that focuses on building brand power in order to break out of the circle.

2. How to correctly view event marketing?

In an era when media is becoming fragmented and UGC is emerging in large numbers, event marketing has become an important marketing tool that any brand needs to consider at any stage in order to focus user attention.

Event marketing is divided into marketing by leveraging the momentum and marketing by creating momentum.

• Leverage marketing: using some major events as an opportunity to convey brand information.
• "Creating" momentum marketing: is to create activities and persist in them for a long time, forming brand IP year by year.

The key to the success of event marketing lies in whether it can become commercial content that enters public opinion , because only when it is talked about by the public can the vision of PGC driving UGC be finally realized. This is also the most challenging and meaningful part for the brand.

After observing nearly a hundred successful cases, we found that, contrary to everyone’s stereotype, a successful event marketing can bring about a variety of marketing effects, such as triggering a large number of self-media + user self-propagation, the unit cost of exposure/interaction is much lower than conventional marketing activities, occupying the cognitive minds of circle/pan-circle users, etc.

3. Is brand-effect integration the only criterion for measuring the success of event marketing?

To be more precise, the combination of "brand, effect and sales" is the standard for measuring the success of event marketing.

"Quality" refers to the reputation and image of the brand, and "effectiveness" is not equal to "sales". The results of some event marketing can indeed be reflected in the sales figures very immediately, while some event marketing does not immediately bring about a surge in sales, but in the long run, the brand's growth is very stable. This is "effectiveness".

To put it another way, event marketing brings multi-dimensional changes to a brand, with both short-term effects, such as traffic generation and sales growth, and long-term effects, such as changing users' views on the brand and cultivating user minds.

In fact, brand building is accumulated through event marketing. Brand is always a combination of science and art, and we cannot just measure and judge it with some numbers.

4. At what stage is a brand suitable for event marketing?

We first divide the brand's growth stages into the following categories:

• 0-1: From nothing to becoming a relatively high-quality niche brand
• 1-10: From niche to mainstream
• 10-100: At this stage, the brand needs to ensure its growth and vitality as a mass brand

We believe that the second stage may be the most difficult time for the brand, because the leap from niche to mass requires breaking through the ceiling, achieving explosive growth, and moving from online to offline. At the same time, it also requires completing the transformation from selling goods to branding and establishing brand awareness.

So how do we achieve this leap and transformation? Launching a premeditated and budgeted event marketing is the key to breaking the circle. Therefore, event marketing is an excellent way for new brands to move from 1 to 10 after achieving the goal of 0-1.

Of course, brands can find event marketing that suits them at every stage. For example, well-known mass brands also need to constantly use activities to strengthen user minds, maintain freshness, and maintain growth. We just believe that event marketing is the key to breaking out of the circle, especially for brands in stages 1-10.

5. In event marketing, does product category limit the brand’s ability to break out of the circle?

In fact, event marketing is just an outbreak point. The real basic skills lie in the brand’s usual deep cultivation. Whether it can successfully break the circle depends on the brand’s penetration in the mind and channels, and will not be restricted by categories.

Brand value is divided into three stages: functional value, emotional value and cultural value. Therefore, grasping the cultural value means realizing the highest value of the brand. Each category of products can have its own cultural value. In the process of continuous social and cultural changes, whether a brand can find its own point is the key to breaking the circle.

6. For pure online brands, will the effectiveness of event marketing be reduced?

The fact is just the opposite. The ultimate goal of communication is to use sales to catch traffic . Therefore, for online brands, since the entire chain of planting grass - conversion - purchase forms a closed loop online, it is easier to achieve this goal .

However, the overall online market is relatively small. In the entire domestic market, offline is the main market, and this is also where new brands need to break through in order to go from 1 to 10.

2. Tactics: About event marketing

1. How does a brand design the “starting point of an event”?

• Return to the original intention of the brand: that is, think clearly about the purpose of doing this and what the expected effect is, rather than doing it for the sake of doing it or simply to attract traffic.
• From the consumer's perspective: What are users interested in? What kind of content will prompt them to share spontaneously?

These two, one is the core of event marketing, and the other determines the feasibility of event marketing. Only by taking both into account can a true event marketing be formed.

For example, during the Winter Olympics, when Gu Ailing frequently appeared on hot searches and the audience was full of interest in her, netizens naturally also loved Anta, the brand she endorsed. At this time, the information output by Anta could be better received by users and resonate with them. At the same time, Anta also "strike while the iron is hot" and launched the same clothing as Gu Ailing, quickly achieving the goal of integrating brand and effect.

Of course, in this process, Weibo is a very good platform for event marketing. Being on the hot search list is the so-called "momentum". What brands need to do is to seize the hot spots and leverage the momentum for marketing.

Also during this period, Anta also realized that although the Chinese people were trapped at home due to the epidemic, they were very eager to arrive at the scene to cheer for the Chinese team. Therefore, it cooperated with Douyin to launch the "Metaverse Challenge" to attract netizens to join the team to cheer for the Chinese team.

Therefore, the starting point of the event must ultimately return to the consumers themselves and be combined with the goals that the brand wants to achieve.

Furthermore, the starting point of event marketing also exists in conflicting cultures . For example, Jiang Xiaobai started from the leisure culture of young people, and looked down on the business culture and success culture of drinking Moutai, thus finding a new ideology in the "cliché" traditional culture and amplifying it into the mainstream. This has therefore become a major entry point for Jiang Xiaobai as a new brand to leverage the old market structure.

2. How to make marketing events trigger widespread user dissemination and secondary creation?

There is a popular term nowadays, called "social currency" , which symbolizes a connection point from the origin to the spread, from inside the circle to outside the circle, from the niche to the masses. This connection point can be in various forms such as events and topics. And it plays a vital role in breaking the circle of event marketing.

First of all, the value and importance of tools are self-evident. For example, data can be used to capture the different attributes of KOLs, the interests of brand fans, the focus on keywords, etc.

Secondly, the communication power of good event marketing is ripple-like. In general, the grass-roots effect generated by celebrity resources is the first level of communication, the grass-roots effect and imitation of KOLs form the second level of communication, and the secondary creation of consumers themselves is the third level of communication. Seize hot spots, resonate with consumers, and trigger widespread, spontaneous and conscious secondary creation and dissemination behaviors, which will help increase the brand's traffic and voice.

Finally, first find the social currency that is a hot topic in public opinion, and then guide users to co-create with brands online and offline. For example, Jiang Xiaobai once launched a liquor mixed with Sprite called "Lover's Tears", which ignited users' emotions, became the focus of discussion in niche circles, and triggered a large number of secondary creations.

However, if you want to arouse public opinion in a larger circle, you must also pay attention to one issue - cultural gap. After all, the reason why people form countless different circles, large and small, is precisely because the mainstream culture they pursue is not exactly the same.

3. How to find cultural gaps at the level of consciousness?

To be precise, the subculture we are looking for has two characteristics. One is cultural power. Cultural power is reflected in the ability of this circle to constantly produce new ideas. For example, rap, rappers themselves are people who love to express themselves.

The second is that it has vitality and cohesion, which is reflected in the potential for expansion of the circle. Brands can take advantage of this opportunity to grow together with it and achieve content co-construction. There have been many such subcultures in recent years, such as talk shows.

Finally, it is important to note that there is no fixed pattern for brand operation. The so-called routine is actually a bit of experience that suits you that you have explored after countless failures, and there are always newer, more trendy, and more high-end cases in the industry.

4. Can event marketing be reused?

Reuse refers to the areas that can be replicated in event marketing.

Just as building user mind is a long process, event marketing also needs to have sustainable and repeatable genes around an origin, so as to gradually form a consensus with consumers.

But it is worth noting that the specific ideas of event marketing need to keep pace with the times in different scenarios. For example, Oreo conducts event marketing every year with its own products as the core, and the creativity is constantly changing. It launched white cookies during the Winter Olympics and pink cookies during the cherry blossom season. It has played the IP to the extreme and has a large number of fans who are "waiting for new products."

5. How to generate compound interest value?

Compound interest refers to prolonging the duration of the effects of event marketing.

Regarding compound interest, a good event marketing will actually push the brand forward, find the value points and continue and amplify them. For example, during the Winter Olympics, Anta used event marketing to establish connections between the brand, the Olympics, and technology, and in all subsequent marketing, Anta will continue to consolidate and strengthen such user minds.

For some brands, sometimes changing the operator will change the overall style, but in fact, good ideas need to be passed down from generation to generation like culture, thus bringing about reuse and compound interest effects.

6. With so many celebrity scandals, how do you choose a suitable spokesperson?

First of all, the spokesperson’s traits need to be highly tied to the brand’s own marketing goals. The brand can get clear marketing ideas from him or her. It is not “have ideas first, then choose people”, but “choose people first, then have ideas” .

Secondly, the spokesperson’s personality needs to be consistent with the brand’s own tone, or consistent with the direction the brand wants to develop in the future . For example, the positive and challenging spirit of Generation Z embodied by Gu Ailing coincides with the sportsmanship advocated by Anta; Guan Xiaotong's image of "national girl" is consistent with Anta's title of "the light of domestic products".

Finally, for some brands, it is also necessary to conduct multi-dimensional analysis of celebrities through big data to confirm the negative reputation of their fan base and their ability to bring products .

It is worth noting that nowadays, celebrity marketing cannot just stay at the “old three” of TVC advertising, print advertising, and press conference platforms, but should be combined with social media, such as Weibo, to give full play to the topic value of celebrities and inspire fans to co-create.

Of course, hiring celebrities to endorse a brand is not the only way forward. Back to event marketing, there are many other ways to leverage communication and sales.

3. Conclusion

As shown in the above discussion, the dilemma of brand marketing basically exists in two dimensions: in terms of dissemination content, it is highly dependent on PGC content, which is high in cost and small in quantity; in terms of dissemination channels, the channels through which users receive information are fragmented and their attention is fragmented .

Therefore, the solution needs to be targeted: in terms of content dissemination, use PGC to drive UGC and encourage users to participate in creation; in terms of dissemination channels, build a main battlefield based on events and use social media to detonate.

The "medicine" of these two dimensions can be combined into one and implemented simultaneously through event marketing.

Growth Black Box believes that as long as the correct marketing strategy for event marketing is mastered, it can help brands save investment, maximize profits, and achieve the effect of "moving a thousand pounds with a single move", which brings us back to the "social leverage" model we proposed.

The function of a lever is to pry a larger object with smaller force. Analogizing to marketing, we regard the effect of event marketing as an object to be pried up, and what brands need to do is to extend the "lever" as much as possible with limited marketing investment. The method includes focusing on the derivative value, emotional value, social value and exposure tools of event marketing. For details, please see "2022 Brand Out-of-Circle Guide: Leveraging Social Leverage".

Weibo's public plaza nature and social attributes have made it an important platform for event marketing today. It can not only help brands take advantage of the momentum, but also create momentum for the brand itself, and it can also give full play to the value of celebrity cooperation. These are the values ​​of leveraging small to achieve big results. Brands at different stages should consider using Weibo to break out of their circle and build higher brand potential.

We hope that more and more brands will carry out successful event marketing, and while going viral, prove their brand value to consumers and the market.