Don’t ignore “visibility” when promoting product fission

Whether it is an Internet product or a consumer product, whether the product has "visibility" and can be seen by others and actively shared on social media is the key to the fission and dissemination of our creative products.

In recent years, there has been no shortage of new ways of playing at the headquarters of Internet products. For example, during this year's Taobao Double 11, cultural elements of various provinces in China were made into creative posters with the word "Tao", which has a unique urban style. As the core identification of the brand, the word "Tao" is particularly easy to recognize and see, and has also become an important material for advertising fission dissemination.

There are also the helmet designs of the couriers from Meituan and Ele.me - bamboo helicopters and kangaroo ears, which not only convey the brand's affinity, but also attract great social attention. This effect is especially amplified when couriers drive electric bikes around the city.

When it comes to the "visibility" of a product, that is, "whether the product is easy for people to see", it is a very important factor. It provides an important basis for our precise marketing and communication and for grasping the focus of marketing.

They are all digital products, such as desktop computers and laptops, mice and headphones. What are the differences in their advertising appeals? These can all be answered by looking into the product’s “visibility”.

01 Why do instant noodles have more brands than dried noodles?

Regarding this issue, Mr. Xiaoma Song once gave a brilliant explanation. Here I would like to add an important reason:

Instant noodles are more likely to be seen by others when they are eaten, such as when friends and family eat them while traveling, or when colleagues eat them while working overtime, or when college students eat them together in the dormitory on weekends, or when young people eat them while playing games in Internet cafes. These scenes all happen when people are together, or eating outdoors where they can be easily seen by others. In order to appear unique and impressive in front of others, it naturally needs a brand to give it unique appearance and personality.

When eating noodles, they are eaten at home, and the packaging is completely removed and the noodles are made into finished products. They are also eaten indoors and are unlikely to be seen by people other than family members. There is no need to care too much about other people's opinions. Therefore, consumers will not care so much about its design or tone, but are more concerned about the actual price discounts. In this way, there is less room for product differentiation, and naturally there will be fewer brands in the industry.

It can also be seen from the above examples that different products have very different possibilities of being seen by others during or after use.

Based on the degree of product "visibility", products can be roughly divided into two types: "explicit" and "implicit".

An explicit product is a product whose effects can be easily seen by others during or after use. Generally speaking, products that are used externally, can be carried or moved, are used outdoors, or in social situations are often explicit products, such as clothes, cars, mobile phones, and gifts.

In order to "show off", consumers will pay more attention to the appearance, style and symbolic meaning of explicit products. This is to enhance their own image, show their own tastes and interests, social status, and enhance social relationships. Therefore, it has a stronger aesthetic premium and emotional premium space.

For example, you like to take photos and upload them when you drink Cha Yan Yue Se to show your taste; when you are hungry, you eat Zihaiguo instead of Master Kong, maybe not because there is no hot water, but to show your coolness; the rich buy Mercedes-Benz instead of Volkswagen to show their wealth and status, or to raise their own value when meeting clients... It is foreseeable that there is still room for innovation in product appearance for products with strong external appearance, such as umbrellas, masks, and trolley cases, and may even create some new brands.

On the contrary, the effects of implicit products during use or after use are not easily seen by people around them, and sometimes even consumers themselves do not deliberately pay attention to and perceive them. Generally speaking, products that are purely for indoor use, difficult to move, semi-finished products, and purely for personal use and are rarely discussed and shared are more likely to be implicit products, such as mattresses, electric lamps, hardware products, etc.

Since implicit products do not have strong attributes in displaying image, flaunting identity, and strengthening social interaction, product design and symbolic value (but high emotional value is not ruled out) are relatively unimportant. Consumers will pay more attention to practical functions and prices.

However, whether a product is visible is subtle and sometimes not easy to distinguish.

Both are digital products. Desktop computers are mainly used in companies and homes and are rarely moved. They are implicit, and functions and configurations are the first priority. However, laptops are sometimes taken to coffee shops to work or to meet clients. This is related to your personal taste and even the client's judgment of the company's strength and professionalism. It has a strong external aspect, so its brand and design are also very important. The difference between a mouse and headphones is that headphones have a stronger appearance.

The same goes for furniture. For example, living room furniture such as sofas, tables, and televisions, since you often entertain guests, guests will often judge your taste and social level based on your home furnishings and decoration. Therefore, it is more external, and design style and quality are very important. However, bedroom furniture such as wardrobes and beds cannot be seen by others, so consumers pay more attention to whether the product is high-quality, comfortable, and good for health.

Although both are underwear, bras and thermal underwear are essentially different. The use of bras is not only related to one's own comfort and health, but also to the relationship between husband and wife, as well as the social perception brought about by body modification. It has a strong external attribute, so its styles are diverse and there are many product appeals, such as the sexiness of Victoria's Secret, the absence of underwires inside and outside, and the size-freeness of Ubras. Thermal clothing, on the other hand, is a purely functional product. It is difficult for others to see it when you wear it. Consumers pay more attention to quality and warmth function, so there are relatively fewer styles.

In fact, even for implicit products, the degree of implicitness varies.

For daily necessities like mouse and tableware, although they are not highly visible to others, they are seen and used by users every day, and are as close to them as friends. Therefore, they are designed with great emphasis on humanization, and their high appearance is mostly for self-pleasing. However, for rarely used tool products like wrenches and pliers, design sense and emotional value are not emphasized too much, but product quality is more important.

The same is true in the Internet field. The success of some apps is largely due to their natural strong visibility. For example, like fitness apps like Keep and running apps, people like to show off when they are working out or running. Shopping software like Pinduoduo is also inseparable from the acquaintance society in third- and fourth-tier cities. People’s strong urge to share on WeChat can be seen and joined by more people around them.

02 Use product visibility to innovate marketing strategies

Knowing the principle of product "visibility", we can make targeted marketing optimizations to promote product dissemination and sales more accurately. Here, I have summarized two common ideas: one is to distinguish between implicit products and explicit products and adopt different marketing methods; the other is to increase the "visibility" of the product as much as possible to make the product easier to perceive and spread.

1. Distinguish between “inside and outside” and defeat them one by one

From the previous analysis, it can be seen that the demand focus of explicit products and implicit products is different, and the logic that causes product dissemination and sales is also different. For example, if you describe a high-end sofa as "noble and successful" in an advertisement, that makes sense; but if you describe your high-end "range hood" as "noble and successful", that's nonsense, because other people can't see your range hood at all, and they won't use the range hood to talk about or show off your nobility. It's better to say that it's a call for deeper care for your family.

For external products, we should pay special attention to the appearance and style of the products, and constantly ask ourselves: Can it help consumers establish their own "personality", can it stimulate them to post pictures on social media, can it help them show off their wealth and status, and can it become a silent medium to enhance interpersonal relationships?

An effective approach is to select relevant “reference groups”, that is, benchmark groups of people who can influence others. For example, experienced baristas in the coffee field, winemakers in the red wine field, fashion gurus in the clothing field, entrepreneurs/CEOs in the high-end product field, and large-scale growers and breeders in the agricultural product field. If these people's exemplary behavior can be seen by others, it will cause imitation and follow suit.

Another effective idea is to make the product "mediatized", that is, to make the product itself have content and topics, and have its own fission characteristics. There are many specific implementation methods, such as: product packaging with thoughtful copywriting or cultural and artistic works (such as Jiang Xiaobai's "Expression Bottle"), providing interactive and interesting functions (such as Oreo music box cookies, Wanglaoji customized surname cans), products containing special gimmicks (such as Zhong Xuegao's Ecuadorian pink diamond high-priced ice cream), product packaging is beautiful to the sky (such as Cha Yan Yue Se), and cross-border product collaborations (such as White Rabbit perfume).

For implicit products, you can focus more on product differentiation selling points, thoughtful services and affordable prices. At the same time, this type of product can also use emotional appeals, but this appeal is more inclined towards inner self-expression rather than external identity display. For example, when it comes to a high-quality bed, you can describe it as “living a comfortable life” instead of following the crowd and saying it is “a noble enjoyment”.

2. Improve product visibility and trigger social fission

There is a famous saying in marketing, "It's not the fact that matters, it's the perception that matters." When it comes to product quality in marketing, special emphasis is placed on "perceived quality." Whether the product quality is intrinsically good or not, and whether the brand itself has a tone, it is not enough to just have it. Consumers will only recognize it when they see and experience it with their own eyes.

Whether the product is explicit or implicit, improving the visibility of the product will be of great benefit to product dissemination and sales. This requires combining the consumers' five senses to make the products sensory and visual. Here, I summarize the following three tips:

1) Establish core visual symbols

The visual symbols I am talking about here are not just logos. They include the core visual elements of brands and products, such as logos, auxiliary graphics, visual movements, symbols, mascots, packaging images, etc., which are close to the "visual hammer" mentioned by Reese and the "super symbol" mentioned by Hua & Hua.

The Christian cross, the Buddhist tonsure shape, the Taoist Buddha whisk, the totems of various ethnic groups, Japan's Kumamon, the V-sign representing victory, as well as the red ribbon, pink ribbon, rainbow flag in modern public welfare are all classic visual symbols that embody profound cultural connotations and have played an important role in spreading religion, culture, and public welfare.

In the business world, visual symbols can help consumers clearly identify products, form a vivid impression, and in the long run, they can become enduring brand assets. For example, McDonald’s golden arches, Coca-Cola’s bottle, Michelin’s mascot, and Starbucks’ cup have all become brand assets.

The bear paw coffee mentioned above, the clear visual symbol of "bear paw" carries the connotations of cuteness, sincerity and warmth, highlighting the brand's unique tone, making the brand more concrete and personalized, making netizens unable to help but post on TikTok.

There are many other successful visual symbols, such as Ecovacs’ lemon, Santonban’s digital can, Xiaoxiandun’s glass bottle, Wang Xiaolu’s cartoon image, and Huaxizi’s traditional Chinese pink color, all of which have become the brand’s “visual ambassadors”, allowing more people to see them clearly.

There is another approach. For fast food brands like Kongke and Ramen Shuo, all the packaging styles and compositions of their products are highly unified, forming a distinctive series of products. The packaging of different flavors maintains a consistent image, just like repeated slogans that are reinforced again and again and drive each other, which undoubtedly reduces the cost for consumers to identify brands and products.

For service brands such as banks, training institutions, and medical beauty, since the products themselves are intangible and the service locations are fixed, the use of visual symbols for communication can turn the intangible into tangible and the static into the mobile. If used well, it can achieve unexpected results. For example, China Merchants Bank’s “red umbrella” has continued to play a role in enhancing its brand image.

2) Provide sensory hints about product performance

Many times, consumers can only judge product quality simply by looking at it with their naked eyes. Therefore, when we are developing, researching and designing products, we must be good at making the product selling points more intuitive, so that consumers can associate the good quality of the product just by looking at the product's appearance.

For example, large fruit particles are added directly into fruit juice drinks to make the "real fruit particles" selling point visible; the size of the family value pack is made very large to make middle-aged women feel that it is super affordable; the special additives in fertilizers are dyed in colors so that people can see them at a glance.

In response to the situation where urban residents often throw away bottled water without finishing it, the LifeWater brand designed a "charity water" that is really only half a bottle of water. The packaging is printed with the image of a child in water-scarce areas. The empty half bottle of water will be donated directly by LifeWater to children in water-scarce areas. The packaging of half a bottle of water directly highlights the public welfare concept of the product.

There are also some sunscreen products that have a sensing area on the inner packaging. When the sun's ultraviolet rays exceed a certain value, they will turn purple to remind consumers that the sun is too strong and they need to apply sunscreen.

This idea can also be used in product promotion and e-commerce page design. For example, if a certain foreign liquor comes from France and its selling point is its origin, then when you promote it, you can give it away with a gift that has a unique French style, which can strengthen the awareness of its origin. Alternatively, you can add French elements to the product page design to give the entire page a strong French style.

3) “Externalization” of implicit products

If an implicit product is reasonably "made explicit", it will be very beneficial to product dissemination.

For example, express the functional selling points of the product using concrete and tangible language, such as Robust’s “27-layer purification”.

Or use intuitive and easy-to-understand icons to visualize technology, selling points or formulas. Chips like Intel and Core have specially designed icons, which we will see when we buy a computer. Internet products are also icon-based as much as possible. These icons are intuitive and easier to remember, which can help these chips successfully become "element brands."

(Figure: ICONization of Internet Products)

There are also some products that seem to be difficult to show, but if they use clever creativity, they can also cause a sensation on the Internet.

For example, the wardrobes of celebrities and internet celebrities and the refrigerators of food anchors are originally very private. If brands cooperate with these people and let them call on fans to show off their wardrobes or refrigerators, it is possible to achieve a screen-dominating level of communication.

For example, to celebrate the opening of a new store, IKEA transformed a subway station in the center of Paris into a small model room, with 1,500 high stools, bed sheets, table lamps, storage boxes, etc. hung on the walls, allowing these products that are usually hard to see to be seen by all citizens taking the subway.

03 Conclusion

Visibility is an important attribute of a product. It is directly related to the source of the product’s value and the focus of demand. It is also the creative foothold for product fission dissemination.

For a product, we must first determine whether it is explicit or implicit, and then give targeted strategies to make marketing more targeted.

At the same time, we also need to improve product visibility and promote product social fission through visual symbols, intuitive hints and implicit product explicitness.

Author: Brand Xin Viewpoint

Source: Brand Xin Viewpoint