4 brand methodologies behind the practical cases of "Hua & Hua"

For marketers, "Hua & Hua" can be said to be the top organization in the field of marketing planning. With its strong enough professional capabilities, it has created one well-known domestic brand after another and helped these brands achieve remarkable business results. Therefore, the author has specially summarized its 4 brand methodologies, hoping to inspire you.

For marketers, "Hua & Hua" can be said to be the top organization in the field of marketing planning. With its strong enough professional capabilities, it has created one well-known domestic brand after another and helped these brands achieve remarkable business results. Therefore, the author has specially summarized its 4 brand methodologies, hoping to inspire you. Anyone who has worked in the marketing field must have known "Hua & Hua", a company with the title of the top marketing planning agency in China. With the theory of "super symbols are super creative", it has served well-known brands such as Jiu Mao Jiu, Haidilao, Zulijian, Chubang Soy Sauce, and Lao Niangjiu...

Some people say that the HUA & HUA method is outdated and less applicable to today's communication environment.

Some people also say that H&H’s marketing secrets are still useful, and that “you’ll learn it once you read it, and use it after you’ve read it.”

Of course, no marketing theory is absolutely correct and each has its applicable scenarios.

But there are several classic cases from H&H that are worth noting:

• It created a new image of "snowman holding ice cream" for Mixue Ice City. From 2018 to 2019, Mixue Ice City's terminal revenue achieved explosive growth from 3.5 billion to 6.5 billion.
• It designed a brand new logo for Lao Niangjiu, allowing this 20-year-old fast food brand to achieve a 23% year-on-year growth in single stores.
• It created "I Love O" for Xibei, helping a local brand of northwestern cuisine become a popular catering brand.
• It established the super symbol of "green checkered tablecloth" and the super discourse of "Chubong Soy Sauce is delicious and fresh, sun-dried for 180 days" for Chubang Soy Sauce, turning this brand, which was originally a brand in South China, into a national brand.

The success of these cases may seem accidental on the surface, but in fact they are inevitable.

In this regard, H&H once proposed a "sixteen-character brand mantra" - super symbol, brand parasitism, reason for purchase, and shelf thinking.

Recently, I studied the practical cases of H&H and found the brand methodology behind the "Sixteen-Character Brand Mantra".

01 Super symbol: the words should be big! The logo should be big! The color should be bright!

When talking about HUA & HUA methodology, we have to mention “super symbols”.

Super symbols are actually symbols that are already familiar and recognized by ordinary people and consumers.

Super symbols have their own energy and a certain degree of recognition. When people see super symbols, they can act according to their signals without thinking.

So where can we find these super symbols?

Hua & Hua mentioned public symbols and cultural symbols. The former refers to the men's and women's toilet signs, traffic lights, etc. that are familiar to the public, while the latter refers to the culture passed down from human history.

Just like lanterns represent joy, squares represent food and beverage, and the full moon represents reunion... these are our common understanding of the meaning of specific symbols.

Take the example of the "grid" symbol.

The grid designed by H&H for Chubang Soy Sauce and Xibei is a typical example of using super symbols to build a brand.

We know that green and red plaids mean "tablecloth and food" to the general public. Visual symbols such as grid are friendly and familiar to consumers and can instantly arouse their appetite.

Therefore, when consumers see bright symbols such as the green grid of Chubang Soy Sauce and the red grid of Xibei Soy Sauce, they will instinctively have a conditioned reflex of "eating" and quickly accept the brand.

Similarly, Lao Niangjiu’s new logo – a big “bowl” with a big “Jiu” character inside, Haidilao’s big red “Hi”, and Mixue Ice City’s “Snowman”…

These are public symbols that everyone recognizes and are eye-catching elements.

If we create brand symbols from the five sensory dimensions of sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch, we will find that there are many examples of "super symbols" among the brands around us.

Just like we know that Zhong Xue Gao ice cream is called "tile ice cream".

Because its most distinctive feature is the extra-large tile shape, its design is inspired by classical Chinese architecture, and "tiles" are the typical roof symbol of Chinese landscape.

Including "Luckin Coffee" using a deer as its logo, it also follows the cultural meaning of deer that has been passed down since ancient times. As a gentle and lovely animal, deer has always been a symbol of auspiciousness, representing longevity, friendliness and beauty.

Let’s look at it from the perspective of smell.

Take Starbucks as an example. When you walk into every Starbucks store, you can smell its unique rich caramel aroma. This coffee aroma exclusive to Starbucks is an olfactory symbol.

In the field of advertising and marketing, designers must often be brainwashed by a jargon from their bosses and clients, which is "The fonts must be big! The logo must be big!".

We also often see brainwash advertisements that the client likes, which also implement the principle of "loud voice".

This is also the essence of the super symbol. Whether it is the "square" or the "bowl", they are actually using the "big-character poster" thinking to create brand symbols.

The font should be large, the logo color should be bright, and the flavor should be strong, so that people can remember and recognize it at a glance, prompting consumers to make a collective and common response.

02 Brand parasitism: using familiar things to spread brand names and logos

The concept of "brand parasitism" sounds a bit high-sounding. In simple terms, it means using familiar things that we repeat and often come into contact with in our lives to design all your brand elements.

Therefore, the essence of building a brand through brand parasitism is to integrate the brand into the common spiritual activities, common cognition, and experience of human beings to spread it and influence consumers' behavior and concepts.

This can improve the brand's marketing efficiency, allowing consumers to quickly accept you and become old friends with you.

In the book "Super Symbols Are Super Creativity", Hua & Hua explains "brand parasitism" as follows:

Grafting culture can also be grafting life, implanting the brand into consumers' lives and parasitizing on their daily behaviors.

In a nutshell, brand parasitism requires finding a cultural matrix with life prototypes and cultural prototypes. Being familiar and well-known is the key to being a good "brand parasitism". Don't do those things that are obscure or unknown.

For example, the slogan customized by H&H for the Tianqi toothpaste advertisement - "Tian...Qi" - also has an insight into everyone's photo-taking habits - "always shout 'cheese'".

H&H has parasitized the Tianqi toothpaste brand on the action of "taking a photo and shouting 'cheese'" and designed an auditory super symbol for Tianqi, so that people will think of Tianqi toothpaste when taking a photo.

Xibei’s brand logo is also a typical example of brand parasitism.

Everyone must be familiar with the phrase "I LOVE YOU". H&H combined the public's behavioral culture of expressing emotions - "I LOVE YOU" and New York City's city logo "I Love NY", and cleverly transformed "I Love NY" into "I Love You".

From the perspectives of vision and hearing, "I Love Ox" not only enhances the brand image of Xibei's Northwestern cuisine, but also reduces the communication costs of the Xibei brand. It may seem uncreative, but it actually brings the brand closer to consumers.

The window buttons on the Apple computers we use also use people's collective understanding of traffic rules - stop at red lights, go at green lights, go at yellow lights, etc. The buttons are designed to the colors and shapes of traffic lights. Red "closes" the window, green "opens" it, and yellow "hides" it.

It can be seen that whether it is the Apple computer window designed by Steve Jobs or the "I Love You" symbol established by H&H, both of them parasitize the brand on certain cultural archetypes. There is no need to further explain the meaning of the symbols to consumers, and they can generate clear behavioral instructions in the minds of the audience.

When you explore human culture in depth - traditional festivals, folk customs, thinking habits, behavioral patterns, etiquette, etc., and find specific cultural archetypes, you can achieve brand parasitism by integrating your brand into them. The creativity of brand parasitism is the new combination of old elements.

03 Super words: advertising slogans should be persuasive and spreadable

The so-called super discourse is an advertising slogan that can move consumers in one sentence, provide trust endorsement for the product, enhance the attractiveness of the product, and thus move consumers.

In H&H's methodology, super discourse has two elements: one is "persuading consumers" to make them consume products and services, and the other is that consumers are willing to spread the word to others.

This determines that super discourse must not only construct sufficiently persuasive reasons for purchase, but also focus on popular, interesting and colloquial expressions in order to facilitate dissemination.

H&H once set a super statement for Beijing Gu'an Industrial Park - "I love Gu'an Industrial Park, 50 kilometers south of Tiananmen Square in Beijing." This super statement sounds like a jingle.

This is to use the popular song "I Love Beijing Tiananmen" to package the unique geographical advantages and cultural connotations of Gu'an Industrial Park and stimulate the audience's patriotic sentiments.

In addition, let’s take Xibei as an example. Anyone who has ever eaten at Xibei must have been impressed by its advertising slogan - order with your eyes closed, every dish is delicious.

what does that mean?

That is to convey a clear consumption promise to consumers - as long as you go to Xibei, every dish you order is guaranteed to be delicious.

The essence of this is to reduce the risk for consumers when shopping at Xibei, improve everyone's decision-making efficiency when ordering food, and establish the perception that "Xibei is the first choice for dining" in the minds of the public.

There are many examples like this. H&H also designed the slogan for Chubang Soy Sauce: "Chubang Soy Sauce is delicious and fresh, sun-dried for 180 days."

From the perspective of communication characteristics, this slogan is fluent, unforgettable and straightforward.

Looking at the reasons for purchase, the specific and clear number of "180 days" is used to tell consumers that good soy sauce is dried in the sun. Chubang Soy Sauce has the traditional process of natural fermentation under the sun and dew at night, so the audience will naturally feel more at ease when consuming it.

Therefore, from these two points of analysis, this sentence has the power of super discourse.

Therefore, super discourse design should run through the entire process of consumer consumption behavior. In the short term, it can reduce consumers' decision-making costs and stimulate their desire to buy.

In the long run, the goal is to encourage them to become active disseminators of the brand and let more people know about it.

04 Shelf thinking: "The more, the longer, the better" is the hard truth

The shelves defined by H&H do not simply refer to the ordinary supermarket shelves we are familiar with, but rather the "media" for displaying product information and all marketing touchpoints for communicating with consumers.

Supermarket shelves, mobile phone screens, computer screens, etc. can all be called shelves. So we say that shelves are a concept with a broader meaning: including physical display shelves in retail supermarkets, e-commerce display shelves, etc.

For example, for e-commerce products such as Tmall and JD.com, the banner on the homepage of the e-commerce store is the shelf for the goods; for another example, for a popular restaurant, the streets and shopping malls are its shelves.

The shelf is not a museum, but an advertising space for products. The shelf display determines the sales volume and display effect of the product, so it is an advertising channel to gain user attention.

What are the display techniques with shelf thinking?

Regarding shelf display techniques, H&H mentioned a six-word principle: "the more, the longer, the better."

How to understand it?

The purpose of shelf display is not to "look good" or "standard display", but to enhance the overall visual display effect and grab the consumer's attention as soon as possible.

The insufficient number of merchandise on display means that the quantity of merchandise is insufficient, giving consumers an experience of insufficient inventory and poor sales.

On the contrary, the larger the number of products and the larger the display area, the closer you will be to consumers and the farther you will be from competing products, and the easier it will be to sell the products.

05 Conclusion

There is a lot of marketing knowledge about H&H’s super symbol. This article mainly shares some key points. Finally, let’s briefly summarize:

• Super symbols and brand parasitism solve the problem of brand recognition and memory. Only familiar and eye-catching symbols can attract consumers' attention.
• Super discourse solves the problem of product selling points. Only simple, powerful and direct slogans can quickly persuade consumers to buy.
• Shelf thinking solves the problem of product sales. The more and the longer, the better. Only simple and crude display can make you invincible in competition with peers.

But as mentioned before, any marketing theory has its own usage environment. When we build a brand, we must also choose corresponding brand solutions based on actual conditions in order to adapt to changes.

Author: Yang Yang (Advertising Creative Writer)

Source: Advertising Creativity (ID: idea1408)