New brands use content IP as endorsement

Brands can find celebrities to endorse their products, but today I want to talk about how they can also use content IP as endorsements.

Content IP can be understood very broadly. If it has a clear creative direction and content role, sustainable creativity, and a stable user base, it can probably be called content IP.

Li Ziqi is considered a content IP, and Li Jiaqi is also considered an IP in the lipstick category. Chen Xiaoqing’s food documentary, or top fashion bloggers, etc., big or small, as long as they are high-quality content and real traffic.

In recent years, the way brands have cooperated with this type of content has mostly been short and quick, simply creating customized content or even just implanting the content and stopping there.

They often pursue breadth, purchase KOLs in bulk, and then only cooperate with them once to support a communication campaign. There is nothing wrong with pursuing breadth of dissemination, but the value of in-depth content is ignored.

Brands sign content IPs on a long-term basis as "endorsement" and the IPs appear in content scenes on a daily basis, settling into scene roles over a long period of time. This is much more valuable than a one-time collaboration.

Especially for new brands, they need to be deeply and long-term bound to top quality content IPs. Use content scenarios to endorse new products and allow the new products to establish a brand role in the scenarios, and they will basically be able to gain a foothold and take the first step.

Today we will talk about the value of "content endorsement", which may be a good strategy in the current process of the rise of new consumer brands and innovative brands.

Next, I will talk about content endorsement from three aspects: strategy, case, and trend.

Strategy: Deep binding, content endorsement

The current Internet environment is becoming increasingly fragmented. Our lives, the information we receive, and the brand advertisements we see are all partial information.

Users' attention is extremely scattered. It is difficult to do marketing for new brands without any basic users. I have seen many brands that spent a lot of budget on exposure but did not get user feedback and sales. It is very difficult.

For a new brand, take the difficult and dangerous first step, and then everything will snowball naturally. If you are the first marketing manager of a new brand (product), how do you customize a breakthrough strategy in the current environment and take the first step?

There will be many options: the 4A path, sorting out selling points and shooting advertisements; the gamble model, large-scale investment in celebrity endorsements; the sales mentality, results first; the community economy, operating Weibo, Weibo and Douyin.

All roads lead to Rome. Which one is the most cost-effective and most likely to succeed?

First of all, it’s the overall environment. Internet users and traffic are a maze. It’s hard to find a small group of users that belong to you, and the success rate of casting a wide net is extremely low.

Then there is the issue of new brands: there is no user base, no cognitive consensus, and no word-of-mouth feedback on the Internet. How can you let users place an order for a brand without any quality assurance? What if the product is not what I need?

What new brands need is precision and depth. Choose a precise traffic pool and go deep and thorough. Choose a product application scenario and go deep and thorough.

Deep bundling with content IP is almost the only option to achieve these two points and is the most cost-effective marketing method for new brands.

The first is to stabilize the traffic pool. New brands do not have a user base. Like the early Xiaomi phones, they built their own user communities, that is, they used their own traffic pools. But if you are making a new consumer brand like ice cream or craft beer, it is not appropriate to create a fan community. High-quality content IPs have ready-made, targeted users and can be used directly.

The second is the product scenario. In the new consumption environment, exposure is secondary. What is main is whether the product can establish a product scenario and create a brand role in the scenario. Establishing a solid product usage scenario is the core competitiveness of a new brand. The advantage of content IP, for example, Li Ziqi's personal kitchen knife can create a knife brand.

To put it more directly, new brands are deeply tied to content IPs with fan bases. The first wave of users comes from the user pool of the content IP. After this batch of users is converted and squeezed, and the marginal effect decreases, they will enter the next larger traffic pool.

From the commercial perspective of content IP, long-term binding is obviously more advantageous than short-term cooperation, with stable returns and greater acceptance by fans.

At present, this type of cooperation is still relatively rare, mainly because the brand side has not yet realized this method. Next, let’s talk about some cases and see how others operate.

Case: A beer and two content IPs

I have participated in the strategies of liquor brands several times, including Pernod Ricard's foreign liquor brand and the youth strategy of Chinese liquor, both of which are difficult to implement. Next, let’s talk about beer:

The brand is "Craftsmanship" beer, a new beer brand that has not selected a spokesperson and currently only cooperates with 2 content IPs.

The first is Chen Xiaoqing's "Flavorful Origins", which has been the title sponsor for two consecutive years and has also taken over the peripheral products of programs such as "Flavor Lab". It would be more appropriate to say that he is a content endorsement.

The second is the recent collaboration with "Zui'e Niang", which is the top content IP in the wine category. In the early stage, we shot a short video on Douyin and put it on Douyin. It was the only beer brand sold by Zui'e Niang's live broadcast on 618. It is said that there will be more collaborations in the future.

Very interesting, the two content IPs were found very accurately. One is responsible for scene construction, and the other is responsible for precise sales. Let’s talk:

Competition based on different scenarios

New consumer products themselves must have differentiated competition in order to transform from the original red ocean into a blue ocean.

For example, there are ice cream popsicles everywhere on the streets, but why are the more expensive Zhong Xue Gao so popular? There are beers selling for three yuan a bottle on the streets, so why does Jiangxin Zaocheng dare to sell them at a higher price?

It would definitely not work to make another popular beer and sell it in barbecue stalls, small restaurants, etc. Craftsmanship beer is a higher quality beer that is brewed at low temperature with 100% pure malt and has a mellower taste. It chooses to take a differentiated route, only entering mid- to high-end catering scenes and becoming a part of quality life.

On the table for entertaining guests, there are almost always Chinese liquor and red wine, no whiskey and very little beer. What needs to be done to create beer with craftsmanship is to integrate it into the dining scene.

In terms of strategy, Jingxin Chuangzao has abandoned the mass beer route and does not make niche craft beer, but instead pursues a scalable high-quality beer route. Enter the guest table in the scene and become a part of quality life.

Content endorsement, scene consensus

If the product strategy for this beer is done as described above, and then an advertisement is shot to spread the word, telling the public that beer can be more advanced and can be used to entertain distinguished guests, will anyone listen? I feel uncertain.

A new product with new selling points and new scenarios needs not big exposure but "scenario endorsement." So there was a deep crossover with "Flavorful Origins".

Chen Xiaoqing's "Flavorful Origins" basically represents the best Chinese food content. The deep connection between craftsmanship and quality food is achieved thereby. As a derivative content, "Flavor Lab" has a few guests and a few side dishes, accompanied by beer and food discussions, which is almost a customized content for Jingxin.

"Flavor Lab" invited Douyin's million-level wine tasting expert Zui E Niang to be a guest, and give an in-depth introduction to the product selling points of crafted beer, how to drink it, and how to pair it with food.

Jingxin Zaocheng Beer uses Zui'e Niang as a connecting point to connect the documentary IP with the short video content IP. After that, Jingxin Zaocheng and Zui'e Niang have deeply crossed borders and tried new ways of playing such as short video traffic diversion and live streaming. On June 7, Zui'e Niang released a short video and put it on the Douyin website, while also conducting traffic diversion and conversion. On the day of June 18th, Zui’e Niang live-streamed on Douyin, saying that the only beer created with craftsmanship drove sales conversions for targeted groups of people.

After two years of scenario education, there is a preliminary consensus among the gourmet crowd that a glass of good beer can be paired with delicious food to entertain guests. "Flavorful Origins" serves as the scene endorsement, and "Drunk Goose Lady" is responsible for the conversion of precise groups of people. One word evaluation - stable.

Trend: New products seize scarce content IP

New products include new brands and new products. What new products need most is scenario education and precise target groups, and top content IP can just achieve these two brand goals.

Choosing the "endorsement" method of cooperation means long-term cooperation, integrating into the daily content of this content IP, reducing the abruptness of the advertisement, increasing its integration into the scene, and making it more acceptable to users.

However, high-quality content IP endorsements can create scenarios for products, shape brand roles within the scenarios, and communicate with targeted users.

The first battle of a new product is definitely not to face everyone, but to penetrate a core scenario.

Then what? What brand value does this bring?

First of course is the scene. Occupy a core scene, which is the base camp of this new product. For example, quality beer paired with high-end food, a beer that can be served on the table. Long-term cooperation on content IP is the best way to innovate new scenarios.

Then there is the targeted population. While shaping the scene, Flavorful World also covers a large number of people who love gourmet food, and the scene has reached a consensus among the gourmet community. Zui'e Niang's target audience is people who pursue quality beer.

User reputation brought by precise groups of people. The quality of the first batch of user word-of-mouth feedback is almost the key to whether a new brand can gain a foothold, and even determines the future life and death of the new brand. Because most of the subsequent buyers will look at the previous user reviews to see whether it is really as advertised and whether it can really entertain guests.

Scene, crowd, and word of mouth are the fundamentals of a new brand. Once this fundamental is established, the rest of the road will be much easier.

Back to the perspective of content IP, in the current Internet environment, it is not an exaggeration to describe content IP that has a clear creative direction and content role and can be created sustainably as extremely scarce. If we only count the top IPs that can support the user base of a niche brand, they are even more scarce.

So the current situation is that there is an imbalance between supply and demand for scarce content resources and a large number of new consumer brands. For new brands, if there is a content IP that fits the brand scenario, sign it quickly.

The general guide to action is that even if a long-term contract cannot be signed, the cooperation between brands and content IPs should be as in-depth as possible.

The value of content is to bring incremental growth to the brand, expand new scenarios, propose new ideas, or gain endorsement from the crowd. If you buy content purely for exposure, you are putting the cart before the horse.

All things are difficult at the beginning. The first battle of a new brand is difficult to fight, and it is not something that can be solved by budget. There is too much money that we don’t know how to spend.

Make good products, formulate good strategies, establish core product scenarios, and target the first batch of precise groups of people. Once a new brand wins the first battle, the rest will be much easier, just like a rolling snowball that will only get bigger and bigger.

From its establishment to its rise, a brand needs to make several key decisions and fight several core battles, and the rest is daily life.

The same is true for the decades of life, there are only a few key nodes.

above.

Author: Yang Buhuai

Source: Yang Buhuai

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