How to build an internet celebrity brand?

Here, I would like to talk further about how to build an Internet celebrity brand .

Some emerging internet celebrity brands that have emerged in recent years are facing a certain trend of differentiation:

First, many time-honored domestic brands have regained vitality thanks to Internet celebrities and big Vs, by upgrading and iterating their brand IP.

Second, many short-lived internet celebrity brands gradually become unpopular due to the lack of IP empowerment.

For example, the ice cream shop owner in Gulangyu who is very good at flirting, or the noodle-pulling guy in Huanglongxi, because of a short video and a few small actions, the audience found it fun, and it quickly brought popularity to the store consumption and gradually became an Internet celebrity brand.

However, because the brand lacked substance and was unable to produce sustained output, it quickly fell out of favor.

This kind of internet celebrity brand gives people the impression that it is short-lived.

On the contrary, with the recent rise of the "national tide", time-honored domestic brands such as White Rabbit perfume, Forbidden City lipstick, Liushen cocktail, Huang Cuixian fermented bean curd, etc., continue to be popular on the Internet because they have the blessing of IP, and no one is worried that these brands will be short-lived.

Therefore, the key to making an internet celebrity brand bigger and longer is to inject IP into the brand, not just traffic popularity.

A layer of paint cannot support a building, and IP empowerment is to give the brand a solid skeleton.

01 Brand is a circular game

IP is already an old word. It does not refer to the IP address of a website, but to intellectual property. For example, music, literature, various creative works, discoveries and inventions are all "intellectual property."

A brand is an intellectual property that is a combination of multiple creative elements, lasting confidence, trust and reputation.

Here, I would like to re-examine brand value from the perspective of game theory. There is a premise: the brand is formed in the game between sellers and buyers, the only difference is single-line game or circular game.

What is a single-line game? Let me give you an example:

There is a type of Internet celebrity store called a "pop-up store", which adopts a "raid" strategy, suddenly appearing in a place and then suddenly withdrawing, mainly to capture some consumers who are only interested in the store for a short period of time.

For example, after "HEYTEA" became an Internet celebrity brand, a satirical pop-up store called "Sangcha" also appeared, promoted by Ele.me and only open for 4 days.

After opening, the two most popular tea drinks were "Come on, you are the fattest black tea latte" and "Your life is an oolong macchiato". For example, on Valentine's Day on May 20, someone opened a "breakup flower shop" in Shanghai. It was only open for one day and mainly targeted singles who had experienced twists and turns in their emotional lives. It was also a pop-up store.

Quickly commercialize and monetize creativity, and then after the popularity has worn off, don’t expect fans and users to return. This is called a single-line game.

What is a circular game? Let me give you an example:

Suppose you go to a restaurant many times and if you like it, you will come again next time. But if you don’t like it once or twice, or the service is not as good as before, or the price increases significantly without reason, you will not come again.

Consumers always have the opportunity to punish the store. If the store does not maintain it well, this healthy interaction may be destroyed. This is called a circular game.

McDonald's has tens of thousands of franchise stores all over the world, but McDonald's does not allow franchisees in highway service areas.

Because on the highway, customers eat and leave, and are unlikely to come back next time, some stores may overcharge or neglect customers, treating this as a one-way game, and consumers have no chance to punish the store.

However, McDonald's is a global chain, and the brand and consumers are engaged in a long-term cyclical game. The brand must carefully maintain healthy interactions with every consumer at any time and in any place.

Generally speaking, most internet celebrity brands are single-line players, seizing a consumer hotspot and going from 0 to 1 to N in one go. After the heat fades, they don’t expect consumers to come back.

Consumer brands that have stood the test of time need to manage IP over the long term and use IP to lower everyone's cognitive threshold. This IP may be a golden sentence, a celebrity or even an emoticon package. This strategic combination can be flexible, but the purpose must be to maintain long-term consumer enthusiasm and lasting and positive interaction with consumers.

02 Three types of influencer brands, three strategies

In the process of Internet celebrity brands integrating into mainstream consumption, it is absolutely necessary to make good plans and deployments for brand cycle games.

At present, it seems that domestic Internet celebrity brands that have truly entered into long-term operations and circular games generally adopt three strategies:

One is to directly turn the CEO into a celebrity or IP;

The second is to cooperate with social platforms and KOLs at all levels to focus on the hot consumption period (Double 11 or 618);

The third is to take a long-term approach and constantly give new things to the brand IP.

There are several concepts that need to be distinguished here: only symbols that carry topics and content can be called IP, IP activates brands, and brands radiate products.

1. IP-based CEO (applicable to manufacturing and real estate brands)

Can ordinary people discover the differences between Gree’s air conditioners, Xiaomi’s mobile phones, and Vanke or Wanda’s houses? I'm afraid it's difficult. In the impression of ordinary people, there are only functional attributes of these brands (knowing that you are selling houses or electrical appliances), and the perceptual cognition is very limited.

How to add emotional perception to these brands? It is often the CEOs of these companies who personally become celebrities and influencers, creating buzz and guiding the direction of the topic.

Among them, the most classic is the "1 billion bet" made by Lei Jun and Dong Mingzhu. If Xiaomi's turnover fails to surpass Gree within five years, it will lose 1 yuan to Dong Mingzhu. Naturally, Dong Mingzhu will not want to be outdone and will bet 1 billion. In the end, the "bet money" was not redeemed when it expired, but Gree and Xiaomi frequently became hot topics on social media, greatly expanding the brand's contact with consumers.

A brand is an instant association and instant recognition. There is no need to say a lot of words to introduce a brand. It is just a moment in people’s minds.

Especially for general small and medium-sized enterprises, it is actually very necessary for the boss to personally come out and guide the topic traffic. Many small and medium-sized startups do not have a large budget for marketing, so they will definitely choose low-cost, network-based product promotion methods. If you can become a celebrity and direct traffic to product sales, this will be more of a test of the marketing creativity of the entrepreneurial team.

If the boss itself can be operated as the company's IP resource, the marketing function will gain more emotional energy, and fan traffic can be directly converted into product sales. For consumers born in the 1990s and 2000s, it is much easier to accept an interesting person than a monotonous product.

2. Join hands with KOLs at all levels and focus on advertising (applicable to consumer brands)

One investor said bluntly: "If you want to start a business but don't have many resources, I would most recommend you to enter the cosmetics industry or the specialty food industry."

There are two main reasons:

First, the "product gross profit margin" is extremely high. Generally, the product cost of cosmetics or specialty foods is 7%-10%, but the marketing cost exceeds 30%. As long as you have marketing capabilities, you have great opportunities;

Second, the beauty and cosmetics industry or the specialty food industry has huge room for growth. Once user habits are formed, it will be an unstoppable rigid demand.

The most important thing is that this is the sub-sector where KOLs (influencers or opinion leaders) have the strongest ability to bring products, and there are also many opportunities for IP empowerment.

For example, Perfect Diary, which was established only two years ago, relied on its IP power and product reputation to thrive in the Tmall "618" battle, and even outperformed major international brands such as L'Oreal.

KOL is the biggest IP force. They dominate topics, create voice, and truly guide users' brand preferences.

Another example is Huang Cuixian, a specialty food brand with great potential to become an Internet celebrity. Relying on Yunnan's unique subtropical scenery, the fermented bean curd and small broad beans it launched are unique and interesting. Because of this foundation, with the help of the KOL’s voice, the brand IP can be easily activated.

One of the key actions is to cooperate with platforms and KOLs at all levels. Perfect Diary and Huang Cuixian selected KOLs at multiple levels:

Perfect Diary is not blindly seeking endorsements from big-name celebrities, but instead widely recruits niche KOLs below the mid-level. The top-down distribution ratio is 1:1:3:46:100:150:690. For the "passerby" type, it is basically spontaneous dissemination by users.

Based on the attributes of the food category, Huang Cuixian activated the diverse and multi-platform voices of celebrities and promoted content on platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and Taobao Live. For example, bloggers such as the phenomenal video celebrity @李雪琴, pet blogger @王白菜, and food blogger @大胃王鱼子酱 originally promoted content, as well as cross-border collaboration with major brands to interact with new media. This kind of wide-area self-propagation often has more brand energy.

3. Continuously give new things to brand IP (applicable to time-honored brands)

The real value of a brand IP lies in how much new things can be injected into it.

With the rise of national trends in recent years, it is hard for you and me to imagine that Mayinglong can be associated with lipstick and Liushen can be associated with cocktails.

For example, Mayinglong’s previous brand strategy was to build the brand into the “Hermes of hemorrhoid cream”.

However, the company was also surprised that Mayinglong lipstick became popular on the Internet. They said that this was not company hype, but rather internet celebrities saw the lipstick news and paid attention to and publicized it, which attracted market attention.

This is obviously the result of IP empowerment.

Mayinglong has been deeply involved in the field of hemorrhoid cream for many years and has deep public recognition and accumulation. When Mayinglong produces lipsticks and eye creams, the trust of Mayinglong Hemorrhoid Ointment customers turns into fan power, making its lipsticks and eye creams quite competitive in the market.

Just like Yunnan Baiyao back then, because of the IP blessing, it was able to cross over to sell toothpaste and become the best-selling toothpaste brand in China.

The key to a steady stream of improvement and continuous addition of new elements to the brand IP is to upgrade the taste.

Japanese master of life aesthetics, Yotaro Matsuura, once said that "taste" means "choice and judgment." Good taste means that when you get along with others, including the way you speak, how you spend time and money, etc., you can leave a good impression on others. These are included in the details of life, and only one or two of them are not enough.

The core employees of classic Japanese lifestyle brands, such as Daiso, do not just stay in the stores, but pay more attention to cultural heritage, visit art galleries more often, and read more. To hone your taste, you must be exposed to things that taste good.

In Japan, it is more worthwhile to visit art galleries than to visit shops in some fashionable places. In a space with good taste, people with good taste will naturally gather. You will be amazed at the elegant manners of these people, and you can also learn that "such things can be matched in this way."

03 Summary

IP empowers brands, and brands also need to empower IP. It is very important to inject new things frequently, and what is more important is to stick to the most fundamental things.

Once upon a time, the two bosses of Marlboro and its advertising company had worked together for 50 years. Both were old men. The Marlboro boss asked: "We have worked together for 50 years. I paid you for 50 years, but you used the first draft design you made for me for 50 years. Isn't this money earned too easily?"

The advertising company replied: "Is it easy for me? I have put in so much hard work and effort in the past 50 years to prevent your people from changing this design."

Managing a brand IP is a systematic project that requires a lot of resources. Celebrities at all levels provide you with more strategic options, but the most important thing is that you must be clear about what can be settled? This is the most fundamental thing about a brand.

Author: Li Meng

Source: Li Meng” (ID: imslimeng)