Check out the three common explosive points of “screen-sweeping” marketing!

The author reviewed and sorted out nine marketing cases that went viral in 2019 and summarized some of the common hot spots.

Compared with 2018, when there was a fierce battle between the gods, there were very few marketing cases in 2019 that could arouse consumers' empathy and go viral. The carnival of viral spread and fission in the circle of friends came to an abrupt end, and the brand marketing industry as a whole was in a state of collective silence.

Screen-sweeping, heart-breaking, 666… The spotlight that once was bright suddenly became dim, and you can no longer see the endless tide flowing, because the tide is receding.

Along with the brainwashing, sand sculpture, nostalgia, national trend... the online celebrity marketing that is flourishing everywhere, the crazy hawking and selling of goods, the "greed, anger, ignorance" traffic is prevalent, and most brand marketing cannot see the "human brilliance" that can truly move consumers.

I have selected several brand marketing cases that I personally like in 2019, hoping to gain a glimpse of the whole picture from these wonderful cases, find some commonalities, and give brands some inspiration and thinking in brand marketing in 2020.

1. What is Peppa Pig?

To a certain extent, "being sincere" means establishing emotional commonality. From 999's "Someone Is Always Secretly Loving You" to NetEase Cloud Music's music reviews going viral on social networks, companies playing the emotional card is an old tactic that has been tried and tested.

At the beginning of 2019, a "earthy and hardcore" "Searching for Peppa Pig" story became popular in our circle of friends. "What's Peppa Pig" struck a chord with the audience with its high scores, becoming the first phenomenal hit in 2019.

Why is "What's Peppa Pig" so popular on the Internet? I think:

First, tell a good story. Stories are a great way to connect emotionally.

While taking into account the texture of the camera, "What's Peppa Pig?" perfectly combines elements such as warmth, humor, reunion, and turning points into a short story in just a few minutes, presenting not only a microcosm of life, but also the various aspects of human life for all living beings. In addition, as the Spring Festival is approaching, the right story meeting the right time is more likely to trigger the audience's soft homesickness and empathy.

Second, the golden rule of leveraging IP.

This short film has increased its communication influence because it re-covered the big IP "Peppa Pig". The hardcore collision between the cartoon Peppa and the country grandfather also creates a strong contrast in "What's Peppa?". Coupled with the positive energy core, down-to-earth details and excellent quality, the popularity of "What's Peppa?" is not surprising.

2. UNIQLO x KAWS collaboration

Driven by dopamine, we often can't help but pursue exciting scene experiences. For the most thrill-seekers, dopamine can bring them to a state of true ecstasy. The more dopamine a stimulus releases, the more intense the stimulus feels.

Psychologists call this type of behavior "shock seeking."

The cross-border cooperation between UNIQLO and KAWS can be said to be the craziest case of dopamine sales in the first half of 2019. "Limited to two pieces per person", "last joint name", the hunger marketing played by UNIQLO made many people pay for it: fighting for a T-shirt, 99 yuan clothes were sold several times... It attracted enough attention and boosted sales, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

The medium that stimulates consumers' dopamine to reach a certain "threshold" is IP.

IP cross-border is essentially a traffic migration, achieving low-cost, cross-platform communication. For users who pay, the development of social networks has made the cost of "showing who I am" unprecedentedly low, but it is also easier than ever to blend in with the crowd - "I bought a certain joint brand" is one of the low-cost ways of self-realization, and the satisfaction it provides is also an order of magnitude higher.

Therefore, the cross-border cooperation between Uniqlo and KAWS, the unique cross-border thinking and creative products can easily hit the itch points of young people, more easily trigger market topics, and break through the traffic limitations of a single brand in the past when building scenes.

3. Starbucks Cat Claw Cup

Starbucks' 3,000 cups were sold out online in less than a second. A seemingly ordinary double-layer glass cup with a few cherry blossom paw prints dotted on the pink cup body, and a plump, white cat's paw appeared in the air, which immediately reminded people of the happiness of being caressed by a cat.

Why is Starbucks' cat scratching cup so popular?

In addition to limited-edition hunger marketing, Starbucks is also using "dopamine" to attract users. After the cat claw cup combines the two spiritual product labels of pink and cat together, the energetic pink girls naturally trigger the effect of high-value girlish hearts, and the money in their pockets naturally comes out.

Therefore , smart brand marketing has never been about simply selling their products. They have always been selling their values, selling labels, and linking any product with a good lifestyle, thus creating an illusion that by purchasing a certain material thing, one can live a beautiful and happy life from then on.

4. Mercedes-Benz CEO retires, BMW pays tribute to him with advertisement

When Mercedes-Benz's global president Dieter Zetsche announced his retirement, BMW took the opportunity to make an advertisement "Congratulations to Mercedes-Benz's president on his retirement."

The film begins with a scene of Zetsche bidding a sentimental farewell to everyone and leaving the Mercedes-Benz building, but ends with a big twist - Zetsche goes home in a Mercedes-Benz, and then drives a bright BMW sports car out of the garage... This twist is amazing.

Of course, after the spoof, BMW did not forget to pay tribute to Zetsche: "Thank you, Mr. Dieter Zetsche, for our inspiring competition over the years."

Mercedes-Benz was not to be outdone. It not only reposted BMW's Weibo, but also swapped the front and back sentences of the copy, changing it to "BMW by your side, Mercedes-Benz for a lifetime." This kind of love-hate relationship is really like love!

Consumers also like to see these brands fighting with each other. On the one hand, if this kind of tit-for-tat marketing is done in the right way, it can appear humorous yet decent. It is also an entertaining performance for consumers and can better ensure the public's curiosity.

On the other hand, high-end brands have long realized that in addition to being direct competitors, they are actually characters that share the same fate.

Just like McDonald's and Burger King, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, the interaction between the brands not only attracted a lot of attention, but also stimulated the creative promotion of the two competing parties, thus achieving common publicity.

5. JD.com 618 "Universe Guide to Planting Grass"

In order to promote products to consumers, JD.com launched a 618 advertisement in 2019 - "The Best Product Promotion Guide in the Universe", which continued its previous sand sculpture style.

The entire advertising narrative rhythm is more compact and concise; the advertisement is short in duration but contains a huge amount of information.

Compared with directly implanting products in front of the audience, JD.com chose a funny way to push different products to the audience in combination with plot design, making people buy things with a smile.

In this commercial, JD.com does not talk about promotions, brands, or even attitudes. There is no indoctrination, which is exactly in line with the self-awareness of young people. They don’t listen to big principles and only see the world in their own eyes.

Thailand’s surprising twists, Japan’s dry humor, South Korea’s healing sadness… these silly ads challenge mainstream culture. Times are changing, market environments are changing, marketing methods are changing, and consumer mindsets are changing, but the only thing that remains unchanged is that behind every brand marketing hit, there is deep insight and exploration of pain points.

6. Kindle: Cover Kindle, the noodles are more delicious

No tablet can escape the fate of being played with TV series, just as no Kindle can escape the fate of being covered with instant noodles.

The joke of "covering instant noodles with Kindle" was originally a new function discovered by netizens in their daily lives. But when the official Kindle took the initiative to stamp the stamp "Cover Kindle, the noodles are more fragrant", the matter became funny.

"Cover with Kindle, the noodles taste better" is an important step for Kindle in China to shift from focusing on functionality to emotional connection. The seemingly "self-deprecating" words actually narrow the distance between the brand and young people in an entertaining way. Therefore, for brand marketing, only interesting and fun things can make young people buy into it.

It can be seen that brands sometimes dare to "self-deprecate" to respond to Internet memes related to the brand, and use netizens' UGC content to form interactions. Netizens are very happy to spread it again and it becomes popular again, which also completes a two-way communication between the brand and consumers.

7. Keep: This is all considered keep

If "Self-discipline gives me freedom" is about mastering desires and gaining freedom; "It's OK to be afraid" is about letting you attack fear with fear and step out of your comfort zone; then, the new song "This is all considered keep" launched by Keep in 2019 is about integrating exercise into daily life and making exercise more "easy".

This advertisement does not talk to you about the spirit and significance of sports. Instead, it starts from life and gives 10 examples from daily life to present the "tiring" task of sports in a dramatic and interesting way.

I'm the best at rush hour.

I practiced without going out, and smashed all the balls with one shot.

Exercise with music, no matter how tired you are, you won’t feel tired

Dad helps you take care of your baby and keep fit at the same time

How good is your best friend? Check in until old age

It's hard to avoid the embarrassment of Mercury retrograde, so just show your wit

It doesn’t matter who swipes the card when eating, what matters is whether the calories are swiped

The video consists of 10 daily scenes, and each form of movement will give you a surprise. The copy at the end of each scene stretches the brand to a higher level.

Through this advertisement, the Keep brand slogan was upgraded from "Self-discipline gives me freedom" to "Exercise is free and can be customized by you."

What counts as keep? As long as you want! Such brand positioning makes more people who want to exercise but are lazy feel more relaxed, brings more consumers closer to Keep in their hearts, and makes the brand more youthful and down-to-earth.

8. Estee Lauder x Xiao Zhan Lipstick Micro Film

The day before the Double 11 pre-sale started, Estee Lauder officially announced Xiao Zhan as the brand's Asia-Pacific makeup and fragrance spokesperson, and launched a Xiao Zhan lipstick reversal micro-film, directly pointing to the Double 11 pre-sale site.

I think this advertisement is worth learning and reference for many brands. Why?

Because most of the current cosmetics brands' lipstick advertisements are nothing more than showing the lipstick color, texture, etc., and they all focus on the direct display of the lipstick products. However, this time, Estee Lauder has given the advertisement a story, and the main "reversal color" and "rejection color" lipsticks are more vivid and concrete, and are integrated into the workplace situation.

What Estee Lauder conveys behind "reversal color" and "rejection color" is the brand's new interpretation of women's confidence. Through a series of stories about women in the workplace, it conveys the core concept that "confidence breeds the most solid beauty."

The story is short and powerful, leaving consumers with enough room for imagination. And in this short video, the product benefits are also well embedded.

Facts have proved that Estee Lauder's huge investment in hiring Xiao Zhan as its spokesperson was not in vain. For example, it took advantage of the opportunity to launch a limited gift box selected by Xiao Zhan, which sold 8.52 million in one hour. The pre-sale amount of products recommended by Xiao Zhan exceeded 40 million in one hour, and the spokesperson's traffic effect was successfully detonated at the Double Eleven pre-sale time node, bringing an impressive return on investment.

9. Quark: Advertising without advertising

Some time ago, I was successfully recommended to download the search engine app Quark by an advertisement that said "Don't see ads".

In terms of content, Quark directly addresses the core pain point of too many search engine advertisements, directly breaking through the window paper of the search industry and leaving the words "don't watch ads", which forms a sharp contrast with conventional offline advertisements.

What’s even more outrageous is that while proving that it has no advertisements, Quark also cleverly and cunningly dissed a wave of other brands in its advertisements, and successfully went viral through its marketing operations.

Quark's reverse operation not only pointed out the user's pain points, but also established an emotional "united front" with users. Quark is simply a newborn calf that is not afraid of a tiger. While causing trouble for its peers with its creativity, it also occupied the minds of users. How cool!

at last

Looking back at 2019, it was a process in which brand marketing routines failed and their wild growth came to an end. It was also a process in which bad money drove out good money, filtering out the shell of routine bonuses and leaving behind the enduring essence.

After tearing off the fog, what kind of essence can we absorb from these good cases? I summarize it into the following points:

First, in brand marketing, the role of value to the brand will be reiterated and amplified. Based on resonant communication, the connection between brands and consumers will not only be limited to the exchange of interests, but will also rise to moral coordination and emotional bonding.

Therefore, brands should not only return to value realization in terms of marketing purposes, but also find a point in the marketing direction that can arouse a high degree of social resonance among users. Only in this way can the influence and vitality of the marketing plan be determined. Starting from emotions, brands should find values ​​that are in line with social values ​​and accurately get the public's "G-spot".

Second, the popularization of personality circles may shine in 2020. Whether it is emotional marketing, hunger marketing or sand sculpture marketing, the corner of the marketing circle revealed in 2019 has implicitly pointed out a direction for brand rejuvenation - popularization of personality.

Therefore, while satisfying young people’s psychological needs for “enhancing social capital,” brands must return to the young people’s own growth environment, and then find the common ground between you and the young people’s humanity and walk on the same path with them.

Third, it’s not enough to just do content marketing, it’s about doing extreme content marketing. The gap between content and extreme content is the gap between the mountain at your doorstep and Mount Everest.

When we create popular content, we are reducing the user's time cost. We want users to find it fun, interesting and even useful, and have a strong desire to forward and share it, rather than "wasting some time again."

Author: Sister Mulan

Official account: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)