99% of brand promotions are just scams?

What brands should do is to open the "door" to consumers' hearts, put an end to blind self-entertainment, stir the hearts of young people, and hit the itch points directly. Where there is heat, there is marketing.

Jack Ma has a famous saying. He said today is cruel, tomorrow will be even crueler, but the day after tomorrow will be beautiful, but most people will die tomorrow night.

Sister Mulan deeply agrees with this statement. In the turbulent year of 2019, the companies that survived all had a common pattern, which was the courage to innovate.

Products and experience are the key to success

Mr. Drucker said that a business has only two basic functions:

• The first is to create differentiated products and services.
• The second is to become the first choice in the minds of customers through marketing, which is very important.

Therefore, if an enterprise wants to break through the first step and achieve from 0 to 1, you must do one thing right: product innovation.

The author believes that product innovation often starts with choosing another track: discovering a market demand that "must be met by me" (insight into an unmet need of users).

Why does taking a moment to do something refreshing?

Take a moment to base your flowers on everyday flowers, using a subscription model where users don’t need to select the flowers. From random, one-time, expensive holiday flowers to timed, multiple, cheap weekly flowers, the positioning has also changed from pleasing others to pleasing oneself.

For the traditional flower industry, this is a more convenient, transparent and stable way to provide flower services to users.

Product is strategy and strategy is product. Therefore , only when a product creates unique value for users can it make users scream and win their trust. However, in an era where innovation is constantly being pushed back between user needs and their satisfaction, many companies are easily caught up in anxiety, not knowing how to interpret the endless stream of phenomena.

From the beginning, selling the essence of the product - selling a sense of security - selling quality - selling "appearance" - what are you selling now?

The author’s answer is: what is sold is the added value beyond the product’s functions, such as: fun, content, and cultural value attributes.

For example, when many of us go out for a meal now, we don’t just want to be full, but more importantly, we want to see whether the meal makes us or our friends enjoy it - behind this enjoyment lies the different values ​​provided.

When buying a pair of sneakers, it is not just about durability. It is also about the value proposition behind the brand. For example, Nike’s “Just do it” advocates a spirit of daring to take risks and act.

Buying a mobile phone is not just about making calls and surfing the Internet, but also about other psychological needs that this phone brings. For example, buying an iPhone X or a Huawei phone is not just about its usability, but some people also buy it because of the sense of honor and identity that this phone brings.

Therefore, for many practitioners in brand marketing, product design and service experience, what is more scarce than the attention economy is understanding "consumer intention" and how to continuously give "meaning" to their product designs, thereby generating interactions and influencing consumer behavior.

For example: Coca-Cola, a 132-year-old brand, has a century-long innovation strategy that has made the brand not only look young but also maintain its youthful vitality. We may be able to find the rules for product innovation from the leaders in this innovation world.

How is Coca-Cola made? We firmly grasp the needs of users and develop dopamine products based on functionality to stimulate consumers' excitement.

As consumers' health awareness increases, Coca-Cola has become the "fat house happy water" that consumers love but resist at the same time. In response to this consumption trend, Coca-Cola has embarked on a healthy route of low sugar and low calories. From sugar-free to transparent, its products are gradually abandoning high sugar and high calories.

Coca-Cola's approach is incremental innovation. Its "significance" comes from the results of consumer insights, fully exploring the product's potential in a small bottle of carbonated beverage. Similar examples include McDonald's and Uniqlo, which carry out iterative innovation based on their original products.

You will find that McDonald's launches different flavors of ice cream every once in a while, which is what we often call dopamine products, while the classic chicken wings, French fries and hamburgers exist to fill you up.

△ McDonald's continues to launch new flavors of ice cream

In Uniqlo, UT is a dopamine product. Every new product is a hot topic and almost a monthly hot spot. It is mainly responsible for stimulating consumers' nerves and attracting you to rush into the store to buy.

△ UNIQLO 2019 Spring/Summer UT Series

The wind starts from the tip of the green duckweed, and the waves form from the ripples.

Once your product wins the favor of users, how can you use the momentum to better expand its influence?

Good products speak for themselves, but that doesn’t mean they will spread just because they are naturally contagious. But the diffusion model will create a scenario for users to talk about it. Therefore , you must create a medium for your users to spread the experience , which is the case for most Internet celebrity stores.

In the communication chain, the core of Panda Doesn’t Walk Away Cake is the experience link. When users see a cute panda singing and dancing in front of them to celebrate their birthday, this dopamine stimulation will almost 100% make users unable to help but take out their mobile phones to take a photo or a video and post it to major social platforms, which will affect hundreds or even thousands of people.

When consumers spread the brand for the second time, according to the theory of six degrees of interpersonal relationships, six times the number of people as consumers will be spread and shared.

Therefore, product innovation is not a sudden whim, it also requires a strong support point. Product innovation that cannot match consumer needs is meaningless. We must study useful products based on consumer needs and make strategic plans.

Tell him I understand you

Many brand marketing strategies and plans now seem to be produced on a whim. There is no help except self-satisfaction, why?

The temperature of a brand measures how far it can go.

So, what kind of marketing can impress people? To borrow a phrase from marketing guru Philip Kotler: Marketing is both an organizational function and a way of thinking that creates, disseminates, and delivers customer value.

So how to create value? ——Establishing long-term and stable emotional communication with customers is an essential skill for a successful brand.

If you want consumers to rely on your brand, the brand must be like a person, with personality and ideas, so that it can touch people's hearts.

Take Nongfu Spring as an example. Quality, design, creativity, when all these commercial factors are put aside, what else might motivate you to pay for a bottle of water?

The author’s answer is: sentiment is one of them.

Whether it is "The Last Mile" or "Spring, Summer and Autumn in Changbai Mountain", Nongfu Spring wants to use the camera to restore a touchable and perceptible ecological scene to consumers.

We don’t see direct praise for the products, nor do we see the communication of the brand’s environmental values, but we see Nongfu Spring’s sincerity. This is where good marketing can impress consumers. You may not remember the brand because of the products, but your feelings will not deceive you.

At the same time, consumers are forgetful, which requires brands to appear in the information flow or scenes of people's lives in a creative way at all times. So you can see that Nongfu Spring is deeply cultivating its audience and playing with social youth marketing. For example: Nongfu Spring took the "Forbidden City" as its creative idea, incorporated elements of the Forbidden City into the bottle, and launched 9 limited edition "Forbidden City bottles".

Through a carrier like "Forbidden City culture", the "sense of historical weight" it gives people can, to a certain extent, bring out the "sense of time sedimentation" of the Nongfu Spring brand itself, and re-stimulate consumers' sense of freshness about the Nongfu Spring brand. This is the author

It is often emphasized that what is sold is not the product, but the story that provides insight into human nature. It can either be so igniting that it explodes, or so painful that it resonates with people. In short, if you can stir up emotions, you will be the winner.

On the other hand, since when, many brands have taken advantage of hot spots and applied gameplay as the mainstream of creativity. However, the result is often just like what Lu Xun proposed as the "onlooker culture". In the process of chasing hot spots, they lose themselves and become cannon fodder.

The author would like to say that yes, the era of chasing hot spots is over, but we can choose to create hot spots!

For example, the body spray of MINISO that became popular some time ago, because its scent is similar to Jo Malone and it only costs 10 yuan, it has attracted word-of-mouth from the whole nation. Users spontaneously discovered alternative ways to play with this product and spread it across all platforms. MINISO took the opportunity to deepen its hunger marketing strategy and strengthen the concept of out-of-stock + madness, which led to a buying frenzy for this body spray in stores.

The same goes for Starbucks' popular cat claw cup. Even at a 3-5 times premium, consumers' enthusiasm for buying it remains unabated. If you carefully study all of Starbucks’ cup marketing, you will find that behind the hot sales and crazy rush, its essence is to constantly create “show-off points”.

It can be said that Starbucks’ purpose is not to sell popular cups, but to help consumers create a “show-off point”. Consumers do not buy “cat claw cups”, but hope to show off their wealth, fame, class and status when using this product.

Therefore, what brands should do is to open the "door" to consumers' hearts, put an end to blind self-entertainment, stir the hearts of young people, and hit the itch points directly. Where there is heat, there is marketing.

I particularly like this sentence from the Bible:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many go in through it. But narrow is the gate and small is the way that leads to life, and few find it."

The same goes for brand innovation. If you want your brand to occupy the minds of consumers, you must pass through the "narrow gate" and nail "a nail" in the hearts of consumers.

Only by polishing the product well can you have a chance to break through, and play and chat in the way that young people like... Finally, think clearly before doing it, and don't follow the trend blindly.

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)