Repetition and iteration of brand strategy

Repetition is the enemy of creativity, but it is also the friend of strategy. Today we will talk about marketing strategies, as well as the repetition of strategies and the iteration of creativity.

Last year, I attended a closed-door seminar for a big brand and brought together five or six people to discuss a topic: How should we spend the 300 million yuan marketing budget? Should we put it all on CCTV, or go directly to performance advertising, or something else?

Similar things have happened many times, and many CMOs or marketing directors have confided: we make annual plans every year, but every year is different. We shoot micro-movies for one year, do performance advertising for another year, and then do some live streaming to sell goods. It seems that we are always following the trend, and we don’t know if it is right.

Ultimately it is a question of strategy. In the past, brands faced a limited number of paths, and the question was whether to choose the main path or the small path. Now there is a wasteland ahead for the brand, and the question is how to cultivate a path forward.

When brands are overwhelmed by many choices, they need customized market solutions. Analyze the specific brand and find out what path is suitable for it.

Today we will talk about customized market solutions, as well as the repetition and iteration of solutions. How brands can find their own way in the wilderness, below:

Customized market solutions

Previous brand strategies probably included basic brand elements such as positioning and packaging. The market solution we are going to talk about now is how the brand can grow and develop and how to do marketing.

The strategy should be result-oriented, setting goals based on the brand vision, outputting market solutions based on the goals, and allocating resources and personnel structure based on the market solutions.

The strategies of each industry and each brand are different. Each solution may be strange and may not seem like marketing. This is normal. We need to understand and break through.

For example, Alibaba, which I am more familiar with, is an e-commerce platform. It does not have any products of its own, so how to build a platform brand is a problem they have to solve.

The solution we finally found was to create an IP, which was to shuffle and reorganize products from different brands and package them into a fixed topic. The products did not belong to the platform, but the topic IP belonged to the platform. So there are currently dozens or even hundreds of marketing IPs in different industries and with different attributes, and these IPs are still being iterated.

The solution that works for Alibaba doesn’t work for other brands, or the effect is not as good. If it is a fast-moving consumer product, such as a bottle of Coke or a box of milk, their solutions will be completely different.

There is almost no reference value between solutions of different categories or even different brands. They all look for Li Jiaqi to live broadcast. Some brands do it to sell goods, some do it for exposure, and some simply need Li Jiaqi’s content materials for secondary dissemination. Think about the strategy first, then decide on the content format.

For marketing decision makers, if they cannot think through the solution clearly and do not have a firm strategic direction, they will feel guilty about spending money. With a budget of several million or tens of millions, should they buy CCTV or Focus Media, do live streaming or build a brand? But if you have the right solution, you should be bold in spending money, so that you can feel at ease when spending money.

Next, let’s talk about how a brand’s solution is formed, how it is implemented, and what should be adhered to and repeated through cases.

Repetition and iteration of strategies

What is a good solution? It can serve as a guiding ideology for marketing, a criterion for measuring creativity, and can be implemented in the long term. It has a large room for error tolerance and can be implemented in a specific way.

Last year, we talked about a case about the cross-border customized packaging between GuLiDuo and One Piece. The product is the medium, and the packaging is the marketing. The most essential information is disseminated to the maximum extent to maintain communication with young people.

Recently, Guliduo and Shanghai Animation Film Studio made a customized barrage bottle for the Chinese comic IP, featuring Sun Wukong, Black Cat Sheriff and Calabash Brothers. This is the first time that multiple IPs have been contracted at the same time.

I talked to them again and asked them, is this the only marketing trick you have? They really only have this one trick, and it is Gu Li Duo’s market solution. Let’s talk about the strategic thinking and insights behind this solution

Set long-term goals

Before deciding on a solution, you should first determine the purpose: what problem does the brand want to solve and what goals does it hope to achieve.

The marketing problem with a box of milk is that product iteration is too slow, the selling point is single, and there is really nothing to talk about, so the brand manager needs to find something to do. Then there is the necessity of marketing. A box of milk can be sold as long as it is put on the shelf, so why do we need marketing?

GuLiDuo still works hard on marketing every year. Its purpose is not to sell products directly but to maintain the vitality of the brand.

A mass consumer product, if it only stays on the shelf for a long time and has no brand voice, will gradually lose its vitality and be forgotten. For example, the craze for herbal tea a few years ago seems to have cooled down now.

GuLiDuo’s consumer communication point is “encouragement”. It has become a companion for young people in their struggles and a “big brand for resisting hunger” that helps people quickly replenish nutrition during overtime work and staying up late.

By crossing over youth culture, products are integrated with youth culture. From customized product packaging, to cross-border IP advertising, to mass communication. By crossing over with youth culture, a box of traditional milk can enter the lives of young people. If you keep doing it for a long time, the grain will always be there in the life of young people.

Internal repetition

Then there is the question of how to do it. I remember that GuLiDuo was the title sponsor of "The Debaters", becoming a big brand for young people to satisfy their hunger. Last year, it made customized packaging for the IP of One Piece, and this year it made customized packaging for Chinese comic barrage.

Different projects are essentially repeating cross-border youth culture. Perhaps the next cross-border project, Bilibili or art, will be the same repetition. Just like Alibaba’s Double 11 and Tmall’s National Trend, they are essentially the same projects.

Back to the issue of cross-border work, a lot of cross-border work involves joint posters or communications, which are superficial. There are also some limited editions, which have very limited influence.

GuLiDuo has crossed over to Shanghai Film Studio, and the first thing it did was product packaging. It made a customized version of the barrage bottle. This packaging will be put on the market in all channels for a period of time, and it is likely to sell millions of bottles.

Then, the IP customized video at the communication level, with Black Cat Sheriff, Sun Wukong and the Calabash Brothers in the same frame, will evoke the memories of young people, and the video will be exposed on a large scale on social platforms.

However, IP dissemination is not enough to break the circle, and more popular content is needed. Therefore, they invited Teng Geer, who is more popular among the people, to cooperate with Xin Xiaomeng, a well-known UP host on Bilibili, to adapt three national comic IP golden songs and release a retro disco MV, so as to break the circle and achieve greater long-tail dissemination.

The three-part theory of IP cross-border marketing: product cross-border marketing - core brand content - breaking the circle of mass communication.

In the end, the impression left on the public is that Gu Li Duo is quite young and energetic, and that's enough.

External Iteration

GuLiDuo can continue to implement this solution. By crossing over one or two well-known IPs every year and doing one or two large-scale publicity, the brand vitality can be maintained. What we need to think about is, what youth culture do we cross over with every year?

This requires continuous iteration, which is commonly known as chasing hot spots, but it only chases hot spots over a longer period of time. For example, in recent years, domestic trends and domestic animations have been sought after, and brands have also taken advantage of the trend to enter the field of domestic trends and domestic animations. For example, many veteran artists have been resurrected on Bilibili in the form of ghost videos. Like Teacher Tengger, they will also be sought after by brands.

Maybe many years later when literary poetry becomes popular among young people, Guliduo might become a poetry bottle. If we look at many international brands with a long history, whether they are luxury brands such as Tiffany or fast-moving consumer goods brands such as Nike, all of them have followed the iterations of popular culture and have remained relevant over time.

I hope that in the future there will be no time-honored brands in China, but only young brands that last forever.

The purpose of a brand is not to sell products directly, but to maintain long-term brand vitality and sell products in the long run; a solution is to cross the boundaries of popular trend culture, do customized packaging and mass communication, and give encouragement to young people on their road to struggle;

The internal repetition is that different IPs across borders are essentially the same thing. Do it repeatedly and keep doing it. External iteration means following the trend of the times and social sentiment, maintaining emotional resonance with today's young people, and making the brand timeless.

To sum up, there is no "homework" to copy

All along, I have talked about many cases, but my purpose is not to let everyone imitate them, or to praise how great the creativity is or how good the results are. These are not the purpose. The purpose is to inspire and think, explore the strategic purposes and methods behind the cases, and locate the present in a longer time dimension and a larger spatial dimension.

The same is true for market solutions. Other people’s strategies are only used for observation and thinking. When you know enough about other people’s strategies, it will be easier to find a unique solution for a brand.

I met some brand owners who asked me, do you have some applicable methodologies or your own strategic model? I said I didn't. In today's colorful and complex environment, any model is futile. We can only deal with issues at hand and identify and solve them. No single answer can answer multiple questions.

Nowadays, how to find your own solutions in a complex environment?

The first thing is to set goals. Why do marketing? What stage of brand growth has it reached and what are the key tasks at this stage? Newly established innovative brands, mature brands, digital 3C, FMCG, B2B brands, etc., if the goals are set wrong, it will be useless no matter how many screens you scroll.

The next step is to formulate a strategy. As brands are wondering, should they do live streaming to sell goods? Should we do private domain traffic? Should I make short videos? These are all forms. The key is whether the solution requires these forms. If it does, do it; if not, don’t do it.

When a solution forms a consensus within the team, it will become a criterion. The CMO no longer needs to worry about whether it is right or not, and the brand manager no longer needs to figure out what the boss wants. After reaching a consensus, grassroots staff will also dare to make decisions, which will greatly improve work efficiency.

Next is execution, do the right things repeatedly, don’t be obsessed with innovation and tricks, the greatest innovation is to achieve the goal. Alibaba continues to create marketing IPs, and Guliduo continues to cross-border youth culture IPs.

From a longer time dimension, in order to continuously iterate, the public needs newer and stronger cultural stimuli, and brands need to establish brand roles in popular culture and continuously iterate to keep the brand fresh and lasting.

I wish you to be a thinker.

Author: Yang Buhuai

Source: Yang Buhuai