Brand Communication Perspectives for 2022

As long as it involves business, there will be market competition, and there will inevitably be competitive results that determine the success or failure of the enterprise. Therefore, market competition is a very important and serious matter for any enterprise.

But competition has always existed in "two markets". One is the tangible business market in the real world, where competition is mainly driven by "enterprises in the business sense", which is a market that many companies have been very familiar with in the past. But it's just the A-side of the competition.

The other market is the invisible "heart market" in the virtual world - a market that has long been despised, ignored, and even misunderstood in the past. Because in this market, traditional competition rules are invalid! An enterprise’s opponents are no longer just friendly competitors, but impressions, concepts, views, opinions, and even stereotypes and prejudices that permeate the cognitive landscape of various social groups; an enterprise’s competitive drivers are no longer just “enterprises in the business sense,” but also “enterprises in the value sense” and “enterprises in the social sense.” The market for people’s hearts is the B-side of competition.

Today, the B-side market for people's hearts is becoming more and more important and is profoundly affecting the A-side business market. Market competition has entered the stage of the market for people's hearts. This also means that the previous competition models and communication routines will no longer be effective. Every entrepreneur and senior decision maker of an enterprise needs to have a deep understanding of the changes in the underlying logic of the times, attach great importance to the people's market, and the corresponding market rules and communication rules.

In an era of great change and conflict, the underlying logic of competition and communication has changed

We are living in an unprecedented era of "great changes and great conflicts."

The term "great changes" is a highly concise summary of the current situation the world and China are experiencing. The original words were "great changes unseen in a century", meaning that the world and China are experiencing unprecedented periods of profound adjustment, turbulence and change in many important areas such as politics, economy, science and technology, culture and security. The "big conflict" includes all aspects of conflict brought about by the above-mentioned major changes.

From the perspective of the development trend of human society, it is the arrival of an intelligent society; from the perspective of the global economy, the global economy is shifting from "industrialization, urbanization and globalization" to "green re-industrialization."

Looking inward, we are all on the road to realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and moving towards the next centenary goal. From the perspective of economic development, the shift from high speed to high quality, China's dual carbon strategy under the background of global "green re-industrialization", and China's independent scientific and technological innovation strategy under the background of national security will become the most important directional choices for China's economy in the future.

From the perspective of the overall social development approach, the main contradiction in our society in the new era is "the contradiction between the people's ever-growing needs for a better life and the unbalanced and inadequate development." Adhering to the development idea of ​​"people-centered" and "satisfying the people's yearning for a better life" will become the new underlying logic of society.

Market competition has entered the stage of competition for people’s hearts

Under the new underlying logic, the logic of competition and communication has also changed! "People" will be at the center, and "public context" will become the largest context for the enterprise.

In the past, simple "business-sense enterprise" competition factors such as price, service, and channel can no longer help companies gain a competitive advantage. The competition among enterprises will also shift from the past competition in dimensions such as products, brands and marketing to the stage of competing for people's hearts and minds to build a "brand people foundation".

What is the “human heart”? It is by no means the argument about "mind" in "positioning", but the original meaning of the word is "supported and yearned for by the masses". In the stage of competition for people's hearts, competitive factors such as products, services, and channels become the basic foundation of corporate competition. The choices of people's hearts determine the success or failure of a company's competition. People's hearts become the key factor influencing the competitive landscape.

The support of the people determines the success or failure of a company's competition and influences the competitive landscape

About a hundred years ago, Lippmann, the father of public opinion studies, proposed the concept of "two environments", namely the real environment and the simulated environment. He believes that people will indirectly understand the real environment through the simulated environment, and under certain circumstances, they will react violently to the simulated environment and perform real behaviors as if they were in the real world, thereby truly affecting the real environment.

Currently, the business market and the people's heart market are showing similar patterns - especially since the end of 2018: the people's heart market is becoming more and more obvious and is deeply affecting the performance of the business market. Competition in the domestic market has also entered the stage of competition for people's hearts and minds from conventional business competition. Only those who win the hearts of the people can win the world. Especially large-scale business giants must be deeply aware that the larger their business radius, the larger their social radius, the more people's hearts and minds they have to consider, and the support of the people becomes particularly critical.

What is the people’s support? In short, human hearts are choices, which are the emotional responses made by the public after receiving complex information in a complex communication environment. In the communication competition, what companies have to compete for is how to construct a communication environment through information, topics, details, stories, etc., to establish a close relationship with consumers on a psychological level, and thus influence consumers to make emotional responses.

The battle for people’s hearts is essentially a war of communication

The competition for hearts and minds of enterprises is essentially the expression of the enterprise's "enterprise in the sense of values" and "enterprise in the sense of society" to gain widespread emotional resonance and social recognition. In an era of great changes and conflicts, the "public nature" of enterprises will be the fundamental prerequisite for enterprises to reach social consensus and form social resonance.

In terms of connotation, the "public nature" of an enterprise refers to its mass base. This attitude and value requires not only a clear expression of position and an appropriate posture, but also the company's real actions and the verification of results. That is, the company must have a high degree of consistency between words and deeds. In addition, from an operational perspective, the battle for the market of people's hearts will also be a long and silent battle, in which the opponent is not the brand, not the competitor, nor the user, but time.

On the user side, companies must have keen social insight, empathy for all social classes, focus on the users' real living conditions, and avoid falling into traditional elitist thinking. On the brand side, companies should start from the "people" and elevate their corporate values ​​and brand ideas in order to build a partnership among all people; in terms of conveying values, companies should have both the strategic determination for long-termism and the strategic patience for a protracted battle to win hearts and minds.

Communication warfare is a full-factor war for enterprises, requiring global linkage

The battle for people’s hearts and minds is essentially a war of communication.

Communication warfare is not the single application of public relations, advertising and other communication methods in the previous sense, nor is it a single action of creativity, events, topics and other techniques. Instead, it is a full-factor war for the enterprise that requires global linkage.

Throughout the historical evolution of corporate communications, corporate communications have always been in a state of "matching upward with corporate strategy" and "being compatible with corporate marketing downward". With the advent of an era of great change and conflict, the competitive dimension of corporate communication warfare has become broader.

From an operational perspective, communication warfare includes: propaganda warfare that links to the mainstream ideology of society, mobile warfare that builds a broad mass front, resource warfare with deep interaction of positions, resources, and technologies, content warfare that builds and expresses the company's own story, and system warfare in which products, brands, and companies work together. It is a comprehensive application of various forms, resources, and means, starting from the top-level planning of communication to a global linkage battle that requires careful preparation of every detail.

Content is the starting point of corporate communication, and the company's story is the soul of content. For a long time to come, the starting point of the corporate communication war will be to try to build its own story framework and find its own narrative method. Nowadays, every company needs to tell its own story well. A company should choose a story that suits itself and play the protagonist in the company's story in its true colors to attract audiences and win people's hearts.

The construction of a communication system is the key to the effectiveness of communication warfare. The communication system includes product communication, brand communication , and corporate communication, and the three must work together as a trinity. They are respectively responsible for building the advancement of the business, integrating it into the mainstream narrative system and social value system, and responding to key issues such as Reason to Buy , Reason to Believe and Reason to Respect .

In addition, the corporate communication war is also a war of attrition of corporate resources. Corporate communication must adapt resources and reduce connection losses in order to achieve great results with small efforts.

In short, the corporate communication war for people's hearts and minds requires strategic thinking that involves the entire enterprise, and the use of communication wisdom to gain a competitive advantage in an uncertain environment of complex minds.

Today, a new trend from the business market to the people's market has been formed, and no enterprise can isolate the business market from the people's market.

For a considerable period of time in the future, enterprises must complete the transformation from "enterprise in the business sense" to "enterprise in the value sense" and "enterprise in the social sense", inherit ideology upward and create a public opinion foundation downward, and actively enter the "public context" from the "business context". By winning the hearts and minds of the people, they will further consolidate and expand their own business market, enhance the competitiveness of the enterprise in the business market, and achieve the dual occupation of "business market + people's market".

Author: Shangcheng Tongli

Source: Shangcheng Tongli