Insights into 5 new trends in brand marketing from NetEase Yanxuan’s screen-sweeping ads

In 2020, with the complex changes in the social, economic, cultural and other environments, brand marketing has also ushered in changes - abandoning impetuousness and noise, and shifting to marketing for kindness, tolerance and care, cultural identity and cultural confidence.

These two days, I have been flooded with messages about NetEase Yanxuan ’s outdoor “discouragement” advertisement.

During the epidemic, consumers' emotions on the Internet were exposed to high temperatures and were easily ignited in the public opinion field where information was complex and the truth was difficult to discern. How to stay rational and insightful beyond trends and burst the myths and bubbles around hot topics is a question that all brands should ponder. NetEase Yanxuan chose to retreat in order to advance, and temporarily replaced the promotional advertisement originally scheduled for 2.23-2.29. While showing its care for consumers and society, it also concealed commercial aggression. This sense of proportion and creativity can be said to be well controlled.

So, today I would like to start with this topic and talk to you about the five new trends and changes that will emerge in brand marketing in 2020 after the epidemic.

01 Marketing for Good

If you ask me what will be the hot marketing topic in 2020?

My answer is: There is only one hot demand in 2020 - the China we live in will get better and better.

In the past, the starting point of brand marketing may have been product acquisition and brand exposure. This epidemic has awakened people's thinking about the essence of life and has cultivated everyone into "cleanliness freaks". Consumers pay more attention to and are more eager for health and a better life. For brands, actively embracing social responsibility has become a consensus among major brands.

This trend will not change in the short term. Therefore, in the post-epidemic era, what brands need to do is to convey emotional and humanistic care content that consumers cannot express, resonate with consumers in terms of life attitude, and gain consumer recognition.

Take, for example, a recent Burger King ad that impressed me:

In its latest ad, “The Moldy Whopper,” Burger King recorded the process of a burger going bad over 34 days, and in the end called this usually unappetizing image “The beauty of no artificial preservatives,” conveying to consumers that Burger King’s products are healthy and do not contain any preservatives.

The entire marketing logic is built based on users, and the brand values ​​are delivered from the user's perspective. Although it is expressed through self-deprecation, it can quickly attract consumers' attention, establish a connection with the product, and make consumers willing to actively try it.

There is also the NetEase Yanxuan #Advertisements That You Are Not Recommended to Watch# mentioned above, which sacrifices some interests to convey social responsibility to the outside world. At this time, the brand benefit generated by brand investment is far greater than attracting new products, and the outcome is undoubtedly a win-win situation.

Therefore, I always believe that in 2020, the sensational content of "greed, anger, ignorance and stupidity" will become a thing of the past, and marketing for good that shines with the "glory of humanity" will begin to take place.

02 Consumer desires dominate demand

During the epidemic in the first half of the year, the objective environment of not being able to go out severely restricted consumers' various desires. This also means that all corporate products or marketing strategies will start from the user's "desires" and use "desires" to control consumers' future retaliatory consumption "demands."

Taking catering brands as an example, what the brand needs to do in the early stage is to continuously accumulate consumers' irresistible desires, help them recall the spicy, sour and sweet tastes of the past, and make them feel how sour and bitter they are now. Only after the epidemic, they can feast on hot pot and restaurants late at night.

As the epidemic develops, it is certain that the virus will be controlled and gradually disappear. The long-suppressed consumer power will return to the market, and brands will need to make some contingency plans during this sedimentation period. Once the consumption ports are opened, a new round of land grabbing will begin. Whether you can make thorough preparations during this period and seize the initiative at the explosion point of the opening depends on your accumulation.

03 Omni-channel marketing takes the lead in promoting products

"Which traffic depression do you want to blast?"

Starting from 2020, I believe that few people will ask this kind of question anymore - because market pressure forces brands to conduct omni-channel marketing.

The so-called omni-channel marketing is not a new term, it is similar to the integrated marketing in the past. But the difference between the two is that integrated marketing emphasizes a stunning creativity that can cover all media channels; while omni-channel marketing should focus on the value of three-dimensional traffic, no longer distributing the same creative content across all channels. What should be pursued is circle effects and penetration rates, and personalized marketing can be achieved through detailed insights and matching of people, touchpoints and content.

Due to the demands for brand communication and growth, this epidemic has forced many brands to diversify and innovate in their marketing methods and channel selection, and to fully commercialize in areas such as short videos, live broadcasts and social networks, taking up the banner of "planting grass and promoting products".

For example, the well-known men's clothing brand Mark Fairwhale has carried out mutual traffic diversion through all channels by rapidly upgrading and iterating live broadcasts by internet celebrities, short videos, content co-creation marketing, online and offline communication to attract fans and traffic, offline experience scenarios, and accelerating the opening and content dissemination of accounts such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili.

Before this, marketing was usually done on a first-time basis, and brands knew that consumer management was a very simple concept, but it remained at the conceptual level.

It can be said that this epidemic is a catalyst for user operation education for brands, allowing more brands to adopt omni-channel marketing strategies and generate more interactive content between users to maximize social communication.

04 Circle effect: a small group of people are celebrating and the public is watching

In fact, circle economy has been growing wildly for a long time. The emotions of niche circles formed due to interests have a cumulative energy that is even more turbulent than the mainstream trend. In the Internet age, it has further helped niche circles to truly achieve popular expression.

How can niche culture break through its circle? I think niche culture circles can be divided into two categories.

The first category is the two-dimensional subculture. For example, during the epidemic, one thing that impressed me the most was that the live broadcast supervision of Huoshenshan and Leishenshan hospitals became popular.

During the on-site construction of Leishenshan and Huoshenshan, the concept of live broadcast was innovatively introduced. At the peak, there were 75 million people online supervising the construction. These cloud supervisors affectionately named the camera the Regent, the welding team the Emperor Wu of Han, and the pile driver the King of Chu.

Another case is cloud disco, these are all typical two-dimensional features. Maybe not everyone will understand and participate in it, but they will watch it. This is what is called "niche carnival, mass watching."

The second category is the core fan group, who will unconditionally support their idols and favorite IPs.

For example, the fan girls who became a hot topic for their amazing efforts to help Hubei during this epidemic, responded to the power of their idols' donations, reacted quickly, were highly organized, and had transparent accounts. They used the fighting power they developed in chasing stars in the action to help Wuhan.

This epidemic has allowed the two-dimensional world to once again break through the circle effect and enter the public eye.

What brands need to do in the future is to establish its genes when intervening in niche culture for marketing, so as to convert its fans into brand users and resonate with its values.

For brands, this value resonance is sustainable, long-term, and can infect more people. When niche culture becomes popular culture, brands play a certain role in promoting it, thereby enhancing their own value.

05 National trend culture is heating up

Looking back over the past few years, with the "Light of Chinese Comics", "Captain China", and the rising power of "Chinese Confidence", the interpretation of the national trend will once again be fueled.

5G", from Made in China to Smart Manufacturing in China to Created in China, every hot event has aroused people's inner national pride and sense of pride.

I believe that the experience of national unity protest during the epidemic and common home isolation, that is, when suffering and glory coexist, we will give the greatest release to this emotion with the saying "a country prospers in times of adversity"!

Reflected in brands, countless young consumers have a natural liking for brands labeled "Made in China" and "national enterprises".

For example, Bosideng, a Chinese brand that has been focusing on the production of down jackets for 43 years, appeared at the London Fashion Week during the epidemic, holding the five-star red flag against its face and shouting "Go China" in unison, winning a full response from audiences around the world.

If the new domestic products are the material basis of this fashion trend, then broad cultural identity and strong cultural confidence are the spiritual core of this popular trend, which makes the "national tide" have great penetration among consumers, especially young people.

"The plum blossoms are delighted by the snow all over the sky, so it's not surprising that insects are frozen to death."

A crisis is a reshuffle, a reallocation of resources and a reassignment of positions. No matter how unpredictable the external environment is, we must make new changes in a timely manner. The greater the crisis, the more opportunities we have. Whether we can seize it depends on the internal cultivation of the enterprise.

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)