2020, Marketing Returns to Rationality

If you had to use one word to describe the marketing world over the past year, what would it be? This is a New Year's special planned by "New Marketing" at the end of the year and the beginning of the next year, attempting to summarize the gains and losses of the previous year and sense the direction of the coming year in advance.

"Get out of the way." This was the answer from Wang Lin, Chief Marketing Officer of InterContinental Hotels Group Greater China. Private domain operation, social fission, national trend style... many shining new models have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and the speed of flashing is getting faster and faster. "If you can catch it, the flash will become the sun. If you can't catch it, you will be blinded by it and it will become a blind spot."

Li Qian, marketing director of Eslion Group, calls it "chaotic". Too many emerging words cannot survive more than three days: on the first day, a group of people advocated “KOL is old, KOC should be popular”; on the second day, another group of people jumped out to refute “KOC, the biggest lie of the poor client”; and the day after that, the news broke that “3.53 million views, but the conversion rate was 0!” Both KOL and KOC were accused of being zombie stage plays directed by new media. The market is full of indicators pointing in different directions, and brands are at a loss as to where to go.

Ma Yao, co-founder of Yuanxiang Information Technology, felt "overwhelmed". Live streaming, young and handsome stars, chasing hot topics, for a long time, brands have been dizzy under the thousands of waves brought about by the digital economy, pushed around by trendy words, and only seek to sell a short-term wave of sales. However, those fundamental brand building truths - who the brand is, who it provides services for, and what its value proposition is - have been submerged, forgotten, and lost.

We also received many other similar answers, such as fast-moving consumer goods, change, subversion, noise... The common feeling of these front-line operators is that this year seems lively, but also a bit dazzling. After the superficial prosperity, the brand does not seem to have left much inner accumulation. The entire marketing industry urgently needs a pair of eyes that can see through the chaos and a rebirth that returns to rationality and origin.

1. A brief moment of excitement

Looking back at the dazzling year of 2019, if we were to select the hottest concepts in the marketing industry, live streaming and traffic endorsements would definitely be among the top.

The label figure of the former, Li Jiaqi, can sell 15,000 lipsticks in 3 minutes, more than 30 million people watched the live broadcast online on Double 11, and has annual sales of more than 1 billion, attracting countless brands to compete for it.

The latter is an addiction that people from all walks of life cannot quit. Young and popular celebrities are conquering the market, from fast-moving consumer goods to luxury goods endorsements. Taking the mobile phone industry as an example, OPPO signed Xiao Zhan, Redmi teamed up with Wang Yibo, and Huawei nova chose Yi Yang Qianxi and Li Xian as its honor spokespersons. The four top male stars in 2019 were divided up by several major manufacturers, and top-level traffic has become the standard for every leading mobile phone brand to catch up with the 5G replacement trend.

The root cause is all the conversion. When economic downturn becomes the new normal and growth becomes the keyword of business, the days when marketers are not directly responsible for results are gone. Back-end sales issues become a must-answer question for Marketing. These two methods that can most immediately bring in traffic and sales have become shortcuts for brands.

From the perspective of single-point effects, they have indeed brought huge attention to enterprises at key points such as new product launches and major promotions, and are an effective solution. However, from the overall perspective of the brand, if there is no value to attract these attentions, they are destined to be short-lived, and all the efforts spent by the company will be in vain.

This is obviously something Marketing does not want to see. As the locomotive, they are the group of people in the entire company who need to stay sober the most. They must not only stick to short-term ROI, but also continuously accumulate energy for the brand's future so that it can continue to generate value and premium steadily after several years.

Brands urgently need to return to rationality. "In this complex world, faced with the impact of endless new words, marketers must distinguish which ones should change with the times and which ones should be firmly guarded. They must keep up with the changes while finding the unchanging ones in the changes." Lang Jia, vice president of Coty Group's mass beauty marketing department, said, for example, returning to the brand, returning to the product, and of course ultimately returning to the consumer.

2. The truth that is repeatedly emphasized

“Marketing will return to its roots and develop along a healthy line centered on consumers.” - Ma Yao.

"The most significant change in new marketing is from starting with products to starting with consumers, with products and services moving closer to them." - Huo Jing, Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, Ford Motor Company Greater China

"Compared to celebrity endorsements, we now pay more attention to consumers and put them at the core. The real experience of each consumer is more important than working with so-called celebrities." - Luo Weiqian, Chief Marketing Officer of L'Oréal Taiwan

If you had walked into the venue of the 6th GDMS Global Digital Marketing Summit in December, you would have noticed that the marketing leaders from the world's top brands all emphasized one word - Consumer Centricity.

The simplest, most fundamental and most widely known truth in the marketing circle is to focus on consumers. This is a deeply rooted truth that should be integrated into the blood of every marketer. However, it is being mentioned again and again at this time.

Because the situation is urgent and because the conditions are ripe - in the traditional marketing era, the slogan of focusing on consumers and retaining more customers meant the two hours that CEOs and CFOs spent at consumers' homes every year. True Consumer Centricity means that Marketing can obtain support from consumer data insights at every important decision-making node. The empowerment of the digital age brings about true consumer-centrism.

3. Two Wings of Technology and Humanity

"Brands are all solving problems through the data middle platform, and daily work is like watching stocks," joked Wang Yue, senior marketing director of Papa John's International in Asia.

Although a lot of data is still incomplete or inaccurate, data feedback has become a necessary condition for channel delivery. "We used to invest in many channels that didn't have much data feedback, but this year we've reduced our investment or even stopped doing so."

Second, brands began to pursue real-time optimization. People no longer wait until a campaign ends and then use monthly reports to optimize the next campaign. Instead, they would like to take the first step of optimization from the first day.

"Data and technology are wonderful, but at the same time, brands must be upgraded and updated to make them more humane and develop in a direction that is touching, moving, and understanding," said Tuopai Shi, chairman and president of P&G's global skincare and personal care category.

Because the influence of human nature is far-reaching, when other means of growth reach their peak, warmth will become the only breakthrough for the brand.

P&G's North American women's antiperspirant brand Secret is a typical example of touching people with emotion. It aims to promote equal pay for equal work between men and women and has sponsored the U.S. women's national soccer team for many years. But in the United States, the women's soccer team, which has more impressive results, earns much less than the men's team. SECRET decided to take practical action to solve this problem - it took out 529,000 US dollars and distributed 23,000 US dollars to each female football player on average, just making up the salary gap with the men's football team. This incident earned Secret praise from the American people and media, and also led to considerable business performance.

"If there is no human touch, the brand will be considered isolated. Therefore, marketing is not only about selling products, but also about telling the stories of people's lives, and looking beyond the brand to see what the entire society is experiencing every day." Shi Tuopei emphasized.

4. Double-arrow narrative structure

The stories need to be more heartwarming and the way of storytelling needs to be innovative. Because the people who listen to the story are different.

"Over the past three decades, China's younger generation of consumers has experienced a process of budding individual consciousness and rapid labeling," said Tian Dian, marketing director of Mars Foods.

The post-80s generation is called the "guinea pig generation". As society changes rapidly and existing experiences are completely shattered, they are confused and at a loss as to what to do with the unknown future. When brands communicate with the post-80s generation, they act as guides and provide instructions.

The post-90s generation has abundant material resources, affluent life, and innate power resources, and they are more concerned about themselves - what do I want? Do brands really understand me? At this time, the brand is a fellow traveler, and what we need to do is to understand them and empathize with them.

As for those born after 2000, their pursuit of freedom and self in individual consciousness has reached a higher level. You should not only understand them, but also help them maximize their personal value in the shortest time. This requires the brand identity to transform into an achiever, providing conditions and materials for young people to help them explore more possibilities.

The difference in roles brings about adjustments in the narrative structure. The one-way output of brand storytelling is obviously not enough. The two-way arrow content co-creation is the right way to open up the imagination of this generation of young people - invite young people to join and create interesting content of their own with the brand to better adapt to the diverse individual needs.

M&M doesn’t have an official account on Xiaohongshu or Douyin.
But there is a large amount of imaginative content created by consumers on these social platforms using official brand assets.

5. Hidden Strength of Operations

The fourth keyword of this return is refined operation. The senior executives of brands and media companies interviewed said that consumer operations aimed at maximizing LTV (user lifetime value) will become the main line of the entire new marketing and the direction that every brand will face in the future.

"We never mentioned the concept of 'operating users' before, we just talked about doing marketing. But now brand people need to act like operators. By operating users, they can shorten the process from initial exposure to final decision-making and bring traffic closer to transactions," said Luan Na, vice president of Tencent.

In her opinion, refined operations mean dealing more with people. Communicate more with people, discover new opportunities in the process of communication, and bring greater imagination space for the company. In this regard, major media platforms have provided a wealth of theoretical frameworks and tool assistants, such as mini-programs and official accounts.

"But the real hidden strength lies in companies actually using these tools." She said that some companies already have a lot of mini-programs, while others are still in the initial stage. "The problem faced by many companies in 2019 is that they cannot seize new opportunities that arise during user operations. There is no shortcut at this time. Only by establishing their own mini-programs and running more models with the accumulation of time and experience can companies build a moat to distance themselves from competitors."

At the end of the interview, we asked each interviewee to express their expectations for 2020 in one sentence:

“Don’t lose yourself in the process of riding the wind.”
“Peel away the clutter and find more efficient ways to achieve your marketing goals with determination.”
“Don’t rush or overtake others, build your own chariot, follow your own pace, and insist on doing things that are more difficult and longer-term, and you will definitely get better returns.”

"When faced with new ways of playing, don't rush into them, but stay focused," said Chen Chuanqia, general manager of The Trade Desk China. "It's like you want to have 100 girlfriends to see which one is better. I don't agree with this value. When you have a good model, you should be loyal to it and focus on your own track, instead of being attracted by new things in the world and taking many detours."

Author: New Marketing

Source: New Marketing