Trends, from traffic to content

I talked to many brands in 2019 and everyone admitted that life was difficult. Budget size is one thing, but it is certain that people will be more cautious with spending money. What should small and medium-sized brands do if they have little marketing budget? For leading brands, how should they spend money in the face of a complex marketing environment?

It seems that overnight everyone has stopped doing marketing and has become more and more timid. What if the money is spent without any effect? ​​Everything is uncertain.

The only thing that is certain is the marketing that combines product quality and effect, so overnight everyone has plunged into the marketing trend. Until the end of the year, everyone found that the ROI of selling goods seemed to be getting lower and lower, and they fell into confusion again.

In this economic downturn, people are becoming more cautious about spending money, and the communication environment is becoming more and more complex. Both ends are facing difficulties. How should brand owners allocate the budgets in their hands and what should they do? Here are some ideas to inspire you:

New brand carrier - short video

Let’s first look at the content trend. With the rise of Tik Tok and Kuaishou, the usage time of short videos in users’ online time in 2019 was second only to social communications, and short videos have become the most important information carrier.

For the general public, they have been domesticated and become more and more accustomed to short videos. Everyone likes this fragmented climax. A short video is less than a minute. In this short period of time, the creator counts the seconds and frames to allow viewers to go from the beginning to the climax, like a love that ends abruptly. But the public is increasingly loving this fast-paced climax - simple and hassle-free.

Speaking of brands, in the past, when we talked about the changes in information carriers, we usually talked about text, pictures, and videos. But before the arrival of short videos, the carriers of brand information were still mainly text, supplemented by pictures. Video TVCs were mostly also carriers of text and pictures to convey brand information.

What short videos bring is a change in the carrier of brand information.

In the past, our advertising costs were very high, and we strived to be the most exquisite, concise, and economical with every word. For decades, brands have been trying to convey a truth to the public, a noble lifestyle in the secular world, a kind of teaching. However, in the process of information transmission, an abstract text message enters the brain, and the brain then turns it into a concrete scenario, which will cause deviations and losses, and everyone's understanding will be different.

The cost of short videos is getting lower and lower nowadays, which means we can make more than one TVC. We can make many and don’t have to be frugal with words. This is a change in cost structure.

The core is the change in information carriers. In the past, we were told what the product was, but as for how to use it, every thousand people had their own way of using it, and everyone was free to use their own ideas.

Short videos go a step further and directly tell you how to use the product. One usage is a product usage scenario. You don’t have to think about how to use it yourself, you can just feel it directly, and there is almost no loss in the information transmission.

One scenario is a "model room". For one product, we can make 10 brand model rooms, which are 10 basic usage scenarios. For the remaining 10,000 scenarios, everyone can play freely.

For example, a mobile phone has the function of dozens of times zoom. We know that it can capture distant scenes, but what is it used for? At what moment is there a demand? Brands can develop some basic scenarios for this problem and teach them directly to users.

Therefore, the changes brought about by short videos are relatively fundamental. They have evolved the form and method of carrying brand information, and even the definition of brand information itself has changed. If text carrying brand information is likened to 4G, then the brand information carried by short video scenes is 5G.

Next is the question of how to play short videos.

Use content to drive traffic

For mature brands, the marginal effect of brand exposure is very limited. For example, a brand like vivo has long been well-known nationwide and has no shortage of exposure. Without incremental information, exposure and traffic are worthless. Most mature brands are facing this problem nowadays. They see a lot of traffic, but it is difficult to say how much value this traffic has.

Therefore, for mature brands, the core issue is what content to create. In 2019, vivo seemed to have figured out this issue. Regardless of whether the outside world is promoting the products or KOCs, it always has its own determination and confidence. In the Internet environment, it finds strategies and ways of playing that suit it. I will try to summarize it.

First, the marketing position has shifted online, with more emphasis on young people. Then short videos became the main content carrier, and the content strategy focused on user empathy and product scenarios. Next, let’s talk about how this marketing giant uses short videos for brand marketing.

Content innovation

From traffic value to content value, this trend has just begun. There are many brands that are still obsessed with the illusion of traffic. The traffic dividend has passed, and the era of information asymmetry has also passed.

Today, the public's perception of a brand is based on what the brand has done and what it outputs, rather than its brand exposure.

Vivo made great innovations and investments in content in 2019. When I saw everything Vivo did in a year, I found that they worked harder than the 996 Internet companies and did a lot of things.

On the content side, we have invested in a lot of brand short videos. I also talked about this when I talked about vivo before. Brand short videos are not TVCs, brand films, or viral videos. It is a video based on the current short video environment that integrates the three elements of brand, content, and the masses to convey brand or product information in a scenario-based manner.

The standards can be summarized into three dimensions: first, starting from the perspective of consumers, creating interesting, emotionally-projected, and user-interactive content; second, core functions are scenario-based and narrative-enabled, that is, "model rooms";

The third is the continuous accumulation of brand awareness. Each project is based on a certain product or even function, but all the content is accumulating the overall brand temperament of vivo. From the S series' "light up your beauty", to the X series' "discover more beauty", to the NEX's "the future is boundless". vivo uses different products to achieve aesthetic resonance with people from different circles.

For example, at the end of the year, X30 launched the "Discover More Beauty in the City" campaign, which invited Li Dan, Jiang Sida, and Mr. Turtle to perform brand short videos. The production level is definitely at the TVC level, and the cast is young but not superficial KOLs or internet celebrities. However, in terms of content, plot and form, there is no trace of "business". It is a more daily narrative and integrates product functions into the scene.

Many of the short video contents produced by vivo in 2019 are similar to this methodology, with the production level and cast of TVC, and scenario-based hard advertising presentations, but the use of social daily narratives to make the products more lifelike and on par with consumers.

To sum it up in one sentence, it is a traditional advertising team with social content presentation. Then the next issue is communication. This is neither traditional advertising nor social content. How to reach consumers?

Communication end integration

Communication strategies will become increasingly important. The more complex the environment, the more precise the strategy required.

With the same 10 million exposures, different communication strategies will bring completely different results. I even believe that the wrong communication strategy will waste all the advertising costs.

All communications are based on content. Different brands will use different communication strategies for different contents produced. Vivo has made many branded short videos. If we use one word to summarize the dissemination strategy of these contents, it’s integration.

It is important to allow advertising to enter the environment. For many years, advertising and content were in opposition. Advertising was pure advertising, and content was pure content. Advertising could only interrupt content as a patch. This format made everyone feel bored. Even if it was a good-looking advertisement, it would be annoying if it interrupted the good-looking content.

Now advertisements can be the content itself, and people can simply have fun watching advertisements. For example, vivo’s advertising on Douyin chose to open the third native advertising position of Douyin. The interesting content and the lack of advertising signs made people think that they just happened to slide to vivo’s content during the climax of scrolling. This is the integration of content into life.

For example, vivo will find KOLs who produce high-quality content to create content, and then pay for the distribution of their content and inject commercial traffic. In other words, KOLs are responsible for content production, and the traffic problem is solved by the brand.

For example, this year vivo has cooperated with New World View many times, from "Live in Summer All Your Life" to the emotional story "Say It with Expressions" at the end of the year. As a bridge connecting brands and urban youth, New World View is using its influence to help brands and consumers reach a consensus on values.

Integrating advertisements into the content environment does not mean self-propagation. Perhaps these contents have a certain degree of self-propagation ability, but you cannot rely on luck. I don’t like the argument that “good content is more important than anything else”, and I don’t like the myth of low-cost screen-sweeping. Vivo has thought very clearly about this aspect. If it creates good content, purchases traffic, and adds a certain degree of self-propagation, the effect will definitely not be bad.

The content dividend has just begun

Over the past few decades, the core of brand communication has been budget, and behind the budget is traffic. It is important to be able to afford CCTV and hard advertising. In other words, if the budget is in place, the effect will not be bad.

But now, when it comes to brand marketing, money is no longer everything. Brands that fail to figure out their strategies will feel deeply powerless over money.

In 2019, I talked with several companies with large advertising revenue, and we all had a simple consensus, which was to shift from selling traffic to selling traffic through content. The next step is to provide brands with more content, not just traffic. For example, Tencent Advertising has begun to customize content for brands, Douyin has become increasingly dependent on content, and Kuaishou’s Laotie UGC is also a focus.

From platforms to leading brands such as vivo, they have all begun to shift from traffic value to content value. This is a trend that is visible to the naked eye.

In 2019, there were a total of 1.135 billion mobile users, who used their phones for an average of 6.2 hours a day. All of this data is traffic, with 1.135 billion daily active users. The end of the traffic dividend means that there will be no more growth, not that there is no traffic. The current traffic level is the highest in history.

So from the user's perspective, we are living in a social environment of information explosion. A person is exposed to countless information and sees countless advertisements every day. In this torrent of information, 99% is spam. It is ignored by the public, not seen or forgotten once seen, and is a waste of advertising fees.

Traffic is at its peak, but the screen is full of junk content. This is a contradictory scene, but also an opportunity for huge content dividends.

So don’t sigh about the end of the traffic dividend, it should have ended long ago. Only when the traffic dividend ends will the content dividend truly arrive, forcing brands to invest more budget in content and create more good brands.

Finally, I sincerely suggest that everyone abandon the traffic logic and switch to the content logic, insist on making the right content, shape the brand with content, and become a respected brand.

I wish the content will be evergreen.

Author: Yang Buhuai

Source: Yang Buhuai