Ten thousand words interpretation: The top ten brand marketing keywords in 2019!

Looking back at the marketing industry in 2019, I can only summarize it in one sentence: the marketing industry has changed!

The era of screen swiping is over, traffic on social platforms has peaked, old bubbles have been burst, and new bubbles are expanding. Various coined words are emerging, brand advertising budgets are tightened, and all kinds of wailing are everywhere. However, there are also new consumer brands that have emerged and turned things around during the crisis, such as Perfect Diary, Zhong Xuegao and other phenomenal brand cases.

It can be said that in 2019, the economy is in a downturn and the market is depressed. Brands are facing a reshuffle. Whoever gains new markets, new traffic and new marketing models will win the world. I have summarized this year's marketing industry observations into 10 key words, and today I would like to share and discuss them with you:

01 Generation Z

"Shall we go for Western food? 200 per person."

"go!"

"Let's go eat hot pot? 100 per person."

"go!"

"Want to go eat skewers? 50 per person."

"go!"

“Takeaway 20.”

"Robbery!"

1,000 yuan can be spent, 10 yuan must be saved, sour essence, boasting group, 00s jargon... These phenomenal popularity that make people confused and at a loss point directly to Generation Z who debuted in the center position.

Generation Z (referring to the young people born between the mid-1990s and 2010) debuted in the center position, gradually replacing the Millennials (referring to the young people born between 1982 and 2000) and becoming the main consumer force of major brands.

Data shows that my country's consumer market has expanded by 34% in 2019, of which more than 65% of the increase was brought by those born in the 1990s and 2000s, and the main consumers in the future will mainly be those born in the 1990s and 2000s. These generations have not experienced the pain of economic scarcity, enjoy higher levels of education and have broader horizons, so their demands on brands are completely different from those of the older generation.

They are the natives of the Internet. Although they don't earn much, they have not given up the pursuit of refinement. They "moonlight" and live in exquisite poverty for the life they yearn for and the things they like: they are clearly poor, but they live freely and comfortably.

This year, the consumer group of Generation Z has refreshed the public's perception with several phenomenal events: one is shoe speculation, and the other is blind box speculation.

It turns out that this generation of young people is not as “crazy cool and awesome” as many brands think they are. Generation Z is subverting our brand thinking logic.

Therefore, the way to understand young people is not just to see a phenomenon and go back to your own space to interpret it. Instead, we need to go back to the young people’s own growth environment, then find the common points of humanity between the brand and the young people, and walk on the same path with them.

Looking back at the brand, it is such a desperate thing when 190 million Generation Z become the mainstay of consumption but you don’t understand them.

02 Private Domain Traffic

“The world has suffered from traffic for a long time!”

If the first half of the Internet was an incremental competition, then the second half is a competition for existing resources, which is a hardcore and cruel competition. Why has private domain traffic been mentioned repeatedly this year?

My understanding is that during the Internet dividend period, people use large nets to catch fish, and they can catch whatever they want with just one cast and one scoop. There are too many fish to catch, and it is impossible to catch all the fish in the wild pond (public domain), so who cares about private domain traffic?

The fact that private domain traffic is so popular nowadays obviously reflects a problem, that is, there are too many people and too little porridge. The cake is no longer getting bigger, but more and more people want to have a piece of it. In addition, the low conversion rate of customers is driven by high costs. The Internet has entered the agricultural era from the nomadic era. Faced with the new reality, companies have to re-examine the value of their customers. In the past, they only sought conversions and purchases. We are also considering whether we can get customers to continue to repurchase, and even get old customers to bring in new customers.

Therefore, the rise of private domain traffic represents the beginning of a shift in corporate thinking from harvesting traffic to pursuing the business philosophy of "customer lifetime value."

03 Taobao Live

"All the girls! Are you ready?"

"Come on, get on the link!"

“3, 2, 1, sold out!”

If Taobao Live was creating a trend in 2018, then in 2019, this trend finally took off in a dramatic way.

In this year's Double 11 battle, Taobao Live has become the standard for merchants to sell goods and has been raised to an unprecedented height. Taobao Live even delivered a report card of 20 billion in Double 11 in 2019.

Taobao anchors represented by Viya and Li Jiaqi are redefining e-commerce and new retail.

The flowers are so numerous that they are dazzling. Under this national enthusiasm, various celebrities and stars have joined the live broadcast market to seize the dividends of the live broadcast trend. For a time, it seems that wherever there is Internet, there will be a live broadcast room.

But behind the prosperity, the other side of live streaming e-commerce is full of "constant crashes". Controversies such as false advertising, counterfeit goods, and celebrities’ inability to sell goods also followed.

My point is that brands should not be obsessed with Taobao Live. What Taobao Live can provide is "an extra piece of firewood". It cannot provide timely assistance, but more of a icing on the cake. Its ability to bring goods is not a myth. As a step in the closed loop of the marketing ecosystem, it is just a part of traffic conversion in the brand solution.

04 National trend is coming

The national trend is here, it’s really here.

When you wear a Lao Gan Ma sweatshirt, apply Zhou Hei Ya lipstick, carry a Yunnan Baiyao shoulder bag, sit on the Wangzai steamed bun sofa, eat the latest ancient style mythical beast ice cream launched by the Forbidden City, and watch the oriental fashion Li Ning New York Fashion Week as a scene, the world seems to have broken the dimensional wall.

As the younger generation's aesthetic tastes shift toward Chinese elements, the charm of Chinese fashion is no longer inferior to that of European and American fashion brands.

"Taking the country as the trend" has become a new trend in current consumption. Buying, using and showing off domestic products has become a new fashion among contemporary young people.

However, consumers who are "planted with grass" may "step on landmines", and there are hidden concerns behind the hot "national tide fever".

What we see more is "pan-national trend" or even "pseudo-national trend". Many brands only use "national tide" as a gimmick and culture as a shell, piling up elements and symbols without deepening their core values.

For example, they change the product packaging to a Chinese style, bring in another incompatible brand to do a cross-border business, and then forcibly bundle two completely unrelated products together, and then do their best to create topics and attract some public attention, and then nothing else happens.

So, how can we make the national trend go further? I believe that the national trend can only be a profile, and should not be the entire picture of the brand. Otherwise, it is easy to fall into the trap of losing sight of the big picture at the audience level, picking up sesame seeds and losing watermelons.

05 New Consumption

Everyone says that 2019 is a difficult year, but don’t you see that there are opportunities in crisis? New brands are growing explosively, and new domestic products are rising. While you are working diligently, others have already emerged and blown up the whole place.

For example, Luckin Coffee.

After 18 months on the market, the store turned losses into profits in the third quarter, fully demonstrating what "China speed" means.

For example, Perfect Diary.

In less than three years since its launch, it has surpassed old classics, overtaken overseas brands, and ranked No. 1 in domestic cosmetics.

For example, sports brands such as Li Ning and Anta.

Who would have thought that domestic sports brands such as Li Ning and Anta, which were once synonymous with rustic and straight male aesthetics by consumers, have transformed themselves into fashionable and "glamorous" domestic fashion brands. While gaining a strong presence and returning to the center of the market, they have also successfully "broken out of the circle" and triggered a wave of lively national style trends.

For another example, pandas don’t eat cake.

In less than two years, Panda Cake has quickly covered 10 cities including Huizhou, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Xiamen, etc., has nearly 5 million users, monthly revenue of over 30 million, and received tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round of financing.

When many people were still questioning and using empiricism to make final judgments about them, their speed had already broken the ceiling of the industry.

Plus some not mentioned, these brands are rising against the trend and are rewriting the script of the new consumption wave.

Of course, every industry has its own excitement and advantages; behind the advantages is the hard work of polishing each link, improving efficiency, and continuous iteration, so that you have a higher probability of success and finding growth points.

From the love-hate relationship between first- and second-tier cities in the past to the competition for the market in lower-tier cities now, it is inevitable that you need to have good content and good services while making good products... otherwise it will still be difficult.

06 Integration of brand and effect

For brands struggling in the sea of ​​​​suffering, the eternal marketing problem is that half of the advertising budget is wasted and no one knows where it is wasted.

As a result, brand-effect integration was put on the table in 2019, and the concept was promoted loudly, with a tendency to reconstruct the marketing model.

At present, there are many mainstream conclusions in the advertising and marketing circles regarding brand-effect integration, with different opinions and different views:

1. Brand-effect integration is a false concept;
2. Fast-moving consumer goods brands do not believe in the integration of product and effect;
3. The integration of product and effect only exists in the packaging of KOLs and the second party;
4. Brand-effect integration has ruined the entire Internet advertising;
5. Brand-effect integration is a core skill that only a small group of people can master;
6. The integration of brand and effect is the latest pretentious manual for Internet people;
7. Brand and effect integration is a fence-sitter, making different judgments based on different scenarios.

(The above summary comes from the Internet)

It is also based on this that the boss and the brand department, and Party A and Party B, have tacitly established a new ROI standard. Whether it is branding or performance-based advertising, if there is no revenue growth, it is tantamount to hooliganism.

My point is that if the previous market structure allowed "quality" and "performance" to be separated, when one mobile phone can be used all over the world, the integration of quality and performance has become the natural choice of survival of the fittest in this business society, especially in the context of brands generally paying more attention to "performance". "Quality" is not high and mighty, but it must stir up waves and even stir up the situation at the level of "performance". "Performance" is no longer a supporting role in the corner, but has moved to the center of the stage to become the protagonist.

07 Downstream Market

If Taobao opened the first door to China's e-commerce, then Pinduoduo broke the rule that retail resources have always been concentrated in the top cities, allowing young people from offline small towns who were once not valued by e-commerce giants to become emerging upstarts in the consumer market, and also set off a fierce battle for traffic in the offline market.

We know that the consumer groups and scenarios in the sinking market have changed. What changes do brand owners need to make in their marketing in the sinking market?

This is what I wrote on the Knowledge Planet, and I’d like to share it with you today:

Different from first-tier, second-tier and new first-tier cities, users in second-tier and third-tier markets have a shorter overall online experience and are the main force of new Internet users.

Their characteristics are: relying on acquaintances for social interaction, being sensitive to prices, having a lot of free time, having a large demand for entertainment, and having only recently been exposed to the Internet. Activities that are easy to operate are more conducive to their quick integration.

So what we need to do in brand marketing is: marketing goes down to the grassroots.

When doing marketing in the sinking market, you must not just fantasize about consumption power based on income levels, but truly understand the needs and consumption habits of local people. Only by conducting good consumer insights and deeply understanding the cultural environment and pain points of low-end users can we produce marketing content that resonates with people and meet user consumption needs.

On the other hand, in first-tier cities, brands may be more willing to adopt "online marketing" methods, while in the sinking market, people are more willing to participate in some major city events, one to join in the fun, two to kill time, and three to maintain personal relationships in the acquaintance society. Unless it is closely related to a topic that local people are concerned about, online marketing can easily be "ignored".

Therefore, when doing marketing in second- and third-tier cities, it is necessary to appropriately break away from the "online thinking" of first-tier cities and appropriately create some major events to attract participation from the entire city, thereby igniting word-of-mouth throughout the city.

08 Personal IP

In the Internet age, personality = IP, IP = reliability, reliability = whether it can be monetized.

There is no doubt that commercial value is shifting to people, and the rise of individual power is a long-term trend that has already happened. As WeChat said, even the smallest individual has his or her own brand.

The Internet has magnified the value of everyone, including paid knowledge, public account influencers, influencers who sell products... It seems that everyone has the potential to realize fan economic monetization by building a personal IP and become an overnight sensation.

But I want to tell you seriously: not everyone is suitable for IP.

First of all, the road to becoming an IP is like a marathon. There are not always flowers blooming along the way. Sometimes you may still feel lonely and deeply hurt with no end in sight.

Moreover, the path to IP will not lead to success just because you work hard, nor does it mean that you will become an IP just because you work harder than others.

Many people ignore the time and cost required to become a personal IP, and often hope to see immediate results and monetize them immediately. This mentality happens to be the enemy of personal IP. When you see no signs of hope for a long time, do you have the courage to persevere?

09 Stop updating Weibo and Douyin

It has been 7 years since the birth of WeChat Official Accounts, 10 years since Weibo, and nearly 3 years since the birth of Douyin, but everyone has found that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do new media. Especially for enterprises, they have entered the "menopause" of new media ahead of schedule.

Especially in the first half of this year, with the "Queen of Self-Media" Mi Meng being banned, and HUGO also being banned in the second half of the year, the situation of public accounts has become increasingly severe, and more and more people have shouted:

Public accounts have become a red ocean, so don’t use them anymore. The company has stopped updating its Weibo and Douyin accounts.

Are public accounts really going downhill as everyone says? Is it that new media editors have no way out and have to pack up and change careers?

I don't think so.

Official accounts are the first battlefield for corporate brands and a key platform for mainstream trends. They occupy users’ time and attention to a large extent, and they still have a natural advantage in both brand communication and user pool cultivation. If a corporate official account is missing, it means that the battlefield in the entire circle of friends is gone.

10 Difficult

To sum up, there is no doubt that there is only one keyword for marketing in 2019: difficult.

"The plum blossoms are delighted by the snow, and it is not surprising that insects are frozen to death"

A crisis is a reshuffle, a reallocation of resources and a reassignment of positions. The colder the winter, the more opportunities there are for some people, but this is just as I said in the Mulan Sister Brand Community:

After the hibernation of winter, will it be a bright and sunny spring or a chilly cold wind for you? It depends on the company's internal strength and brand power.

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)