Analysis of the "Standing Broom" Marketing Screen-Sweeping Event!

In the past few days, a "performance art" of "standing broom" has successfully swept various social media. The author also conducted an analysis of this phenomenon and believed that "standing brooms" is nothing more than a collective noise caused by "boredom".

2020, a year often mentioned in science fiction novels, finally arrived as scheduled.

The world has not become cyberpunk like in "Blade Runner". Cars still cannot drive in the air, clones have not appeared, and utopian buildings and holographic projections have only lifted a small corner of the veil. There is no desert outside the city, artificial intelligence cannot replace lovers, and you can't just buy a plane ticket to Mars.

However, 2020 has been praised by technology enthusiasts for so many years, so how can it remain unknown? Just after the Lantern Festival, the broom became a spirit. The broom has become a mature tool and has learned to "stand at attention".

Epidemic, disaster, jokes, 2020 is such a magical realism, like a dream, like fantasy, and like lightning.

1. Standing on the shoulders of giants, the "lipstick effect" in the boring economy

From a marketing perspective, the broom screen-sweeping incident can be summed up in one word - the excitement belongs to the brooms, and we have nothing.

Just as Mr. Zhu Ziqing described in his article "Moonlight over the Lotus Pond" in July 1927, when the white terror was covering the land of China, and in his article "Moonlight over the Lotus Pond", he was in the middle of a family conflict with his father and wife during a night tour of Tsinghua University:

"The most lively sounds at this time are the cicadas in the trees and the frogs in the water; but the liveliness belongs to them; I have nothing."

Whether it is a broom brushing the screen or the moonlight over the lotus pond described by Zhu Ziqing, they are all external objects, they are all sustenance, and they are all external expressions of an inner surge and desolation that cannot be expressed.

Do you remember the popular reposts in your circle of friends or WeChat groups recently?

Today is Ultraman Tiga’s birthday. Wish him a happy birthday and forward it to 5 groups, then Ultraman Tiga will protect you secretly for three weeks and help you survive the epidemic. I tried it and it’s fake. But it’s better to be scolded than to sit at home doing nothing during the New Year.

There are many similar jokes to this. During the epidemic, everyone is very idle. Even though some companies have resumed work now, people either work from home or go to work in the company. There is a lot of work to be done, and it is not too busy to go to the company. Overall, it is a contrasting state of physical leisure and mental overload.

Douglas Holt once mentioned in his book "Cultural Strategy" that marketing opportunities often lie in ideological demands that are outside the dominant cultural expressions.

For those of us who have leisure time, although our bodies are idle, our emotions are tense. There is a mutually exclusive tension structure, which obviously constitutes a huge marketing opportunity.

In Zhigang's opinion, the so-called event marketing or leveraged marketing is ultimately emotional marketing, which resonates with users and achieves a ripple effect, spreading among the group like ripples, thereby maximizing brand exposure.

Before the broom screen-sweeping, it was Ultraman Tiga's birthday, and boredom permeated the social atmosphere. A good atmosphere of boredom had already been formed, and there was no suitable venting point. The broom screen-sweeping can be said to be standing on the shoulders of giants.

The hot sales of lipsticks due to economic depression is an interesting economic phenomenon, also known as the "trend of preference for low-priced products."

In the United States, whenever the economy is in recession, lipstick sales will skyrocket. This is because, in the United States, people think that lipstick is a relatively cheap luxury item. In an economic downturn, people still have a strong desire to consume, so they will turn to buying relatively cheap luxury items.

Many people are mumbling nonsense about using a broom to scroll through their screens, feeling bored, but at the same time they are experimenting with standing at attention with their own brooms. In Zhigang's opinion, this is a kind of "lipstick effect" in the boredom economy. When people are bored, their requirements for entertainment become extremely simple, showing a preference for low laugh points.

Another point that must be mentioned is that this atmosphere of boredom is extremely strong. If it were normal times, a large number of companies would have been scrambling to "release the air" in the hope that this airflow would blow their brands to the sky. But why has the boredom never been broken?

Because all brands are very honest, the Internet Jianghu team wrote in "Some Cold Thoughts During the Epidemic: Should Companies Take Advantage of the Situation? 》 There was a detailed description in the article "The Charity Endorsement of Han Hong's Personal Brand", whether it is the charity endorsed by Han Hong's personal brand, the donations of money and materials from major companies, or the "hardcore epidemic prevention" in Henan Province, they actually provide a "healing solution" for the public in the epidemic, that is, while "taking advantage of the situation", they solve the pain points of some public concerns that arise during the epidemic, thereby increasing the credibility capital of individuals, groups or organizations without causing public resentment.

If we take advantage of the situation carelessly, it might be seen as profiting from the national crisis. Brand owners are more nervous than us, so they are naturally very cautious in marketing. The atmosphere of boredom and anxiety is becoming more and more intense.

Just like Jackie Chan's "Duang", it also happened just after the Spring Festival holiday. The Spring Festival Gala was fading away and no annual buzzword was produced. In such a vacuum period, Duang was born. It was somewhat tricky, but although there are thousands of marketing tricks, 99% of theories are not as good as that 1% of luck.

The broom, a lone man, harmless to humans and animals, without any burden, fell from the sky at the right time and won the first prize this year. Such a "Stand at Attention" with a slightly sci-fi element actually complements the sci-fi year of 2020. Isn't it? Is it fate?

2. Curiosity kills the cat, from planting grass to pulling grass

In addition to the boost of the overall environment, the curiosity that kills the cat is also at work.

Many people in the circle of friends took photos to participate in this event, but Zhigang believes that many people, although they did not post on WeChat Moments, were also experimenting with their own brooms (don’t look, I’m talking about you who are reading this article).

Arousing users' curiosity is a common marketing tactic.

Or, during the Chinese New Year, on February 14, 2016, Valentine's Day, Weibo user @深圳李宽 posted a picture and said: "I kiss you goodbye and see you off to the village entrance. Our shadows grow long in the sunset, and from now on we will go our separate ways!" The "Photo of Two Geese Kissing Farewell" quickly became popular on the Internet.

On the one hand, it is Valentine's Day, and on the other hand, it is the curiosity of users, who have been discussing the final outcome and continuing to track it.

The most popular marketing term last year was “planting grass”, which is also a kind of curiosity marketing.

"Cosmetics are a deep pit", "The speed of iteration of electronic products makes people have the ability to eat dirt", "I am most afraid of hearing 'personally tested and effective', and I can't stop buying"... "Planting grass" has become a symbol of consumerism in the new era. Netizens said it well: "If you fall in love with a grassland, you will be afraid of having no money in your pocket.

Successful seeding requires igniting people’s curiosity.

Whether it is a star, internet celebrity, or grassroots person on various social platforms, no matter whether the carrier is text, sound, beautiful pictures or video, the effective ways of selling goods have a common logic: it must be beautiful, pleasant to listen to, and fun to play, highly appealing, with high emotional saturation, able to trigger people's emotional G-spot, and come with ten thousand reasons to buy.

For example, the reason why "Answer Tea" on Douyin is so popular is not only because people are curious and rush to experience a new product, but also because this "you ask me and I answer" gameplay touches people's private and vibrant emotions. “

Where is my him? ” “How is your fortune in 2018? "——A cup of milk tea, to some extent, becomes a carrier of people's emotions, giving people a moment of spiritual joy and comfort.

There are countless cases of KOLs creating hit products. Not only has Yang Mi made countless fashion styles popular, and Fan Bingbing made countless beauty products, clothing and phone cases popular, but KOLs such as Xue Li, Zhang Dayi, and Yu Momo, who are at the top of the list of native internet celebrities, also have amazing throughput capabilities.

It relies on curiosity, allowing users to imagine what they would look like wearing the clothes and what the milk tea tastes like.

Creating brand awareness is one thing, but creating curiosity is far more powerful. Don’t expect your brand to be top of mind when your users make a purchasing decision; curiosity means they’ll seek you out.

Let’s talk about another recent successful marketing event that used curiosity:

A few days ago, your circle of friends must have been flooded with a short video titled "Everything about the New Coronavirus." Amid the pandemic, when the WeChat Moments are dominated by emotional content, this video is indeed a breath of fresh air. It explains rationally, thoroughly and easily how COVID-19 occurs, spreads and infects, and netizens have called it the "hardest core" popular science on COVID-19.

Everyone is extremely panicked about the epidemic, and rumors are spreading online. Professional articles are difficult to understand, but users are very curious and want to know what it is and how it spreads. "Everything About New Coronavirus" can be said to have satisfied users' curiosity, and it deserves to be extremely popular.

Normally, we rarely pay attention to whether a broom can stand on its own. Now, there is a rumor circulating on the Internet that "NASA said that because of the perfect gravity angle of the earth today, it is the only day that a broom can stand on its own." Naturally, it can arouse everyone's curiosity and they have to imitate it.

3. Strong sense of participation, UGC marketing forms a self-circulation

NASA said that Venus, the planet closest to Earth, and Jupiter, the most massive planet in the solar system, exert the greatest gravitational pull, and strictly speaking, this can be attributed to a natural phenomenon.

There are many natural phenomena every year. On December 26, 2019, an annular solar eclipse occurred in various parts of Asia, and a partial solar eclipse occurred in many places on the mainland, commonly known as "the solar eclipse caused by the heavenly dog."

However, this is the third solar eclipse in 2019. The first occurred on January 6, and a partial solar eclipse could be seen in some parts of China. The second total solar eclipse occurred on July 2, but it was not visible in China.

Why didn’t these famous natural landscapes, which are rare only in a century, cause a sensation on the Internet? - The cost of participation is too high, either a high-power telescope is required, or the weather conditions at the time just don’t allow for a clear view.

In marketing, if you want to resonate with the audience, you cannot do without the user's sense of participation, which is the "IKEA effect" in marketing.

The IKEA effect was discovered by several professors from Harvard Business School and Duke University a few years ago. The specific process is roughly as follows.

They gave three groups of people three types of furniture, such as chairs:

• Group A directly received the assembled chairs;
• Group B was given some tools and chair parts and needed to assemble them themselves;
• Group C is similar to Group B and also requires assembly, but the difficulty of assembly is much greater than that of Group B, so people may become discouraged and want to give up halfway through the assembly.

The subjects were then asked what they thought the chair would cost?

As a result, the price offered by Group A was much lower than that offered by Group B, and the price offered by Group C was also lower than that offered by Group B!

It is not difficult to understand why Group B gave a high price, as their finished product includes the value of their own labor.

This can be described by a function, with the vertical axis being value and the horizontal axis being friction.

American behavioral economist Dan Ariely said that the more labor (emotion) you put into an item, the easier it is to overestimate the value of it.

He called this phenomenon "The Ikea effect"

When people buy IKEA furniture, they have to spend a lot of effort to assemble it when they get home. When you see furniture that you have assembled yourself, you will like it more than other furniture of the same quality. This kind of personal contribution will cause people to distort their perception of the value of the item itself.

IKEA effect, IKEA is like a huge toy castle for adults. I like to buy IKEA furniture that I need to assemble myself, because when people make a product themselves, they will develop a sense of attachment and pride in the product.

Compared with some solar and lunar eclipse events, users are only visitors rather than participants, and even visiting requires luck and high-end equipment, so it is naturally not popular among the general public.

When it comes to sense of participation, Xiaomi must be mentioned. The book "Sense of Participation" introduces how Xiaomi used the media resources at the time to interact with users, enhance brand awareness, and gather fans in the early stages of its development. Xiaomi built its own brand through interactive means with almost zero investment.

Not only should there be a sense of participation, but it is also best to have strong UGC attributes.

August 1, 2017 is the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army. The H5 of military uniform photos on the People's Daily new media client and the subway screen-sweeping campaign on NetEase Cloud Music are both examples of UGC marketing.

If the advantage of brand communication is only to convey brand information to consumers, then the moment the advertisement ends, it means the interruption of communication. In order to gain additional exposure and promote consumption, brand advertising promotion needs to mobilize user enthusiasm for participation, realize the self-circulation of UGC content, add new elements to the brand, and thus form new content with user imprint.

UGC is also an important “trust chain”—people trust what others say more than what brands say themselves. The correct way to open UGC marketing is to continuously enhance the communication potential and form a self-circulation during the communication process.

Author: Liu Zhigang

Source: Internet Jianghu (ID: VIPIT1)