Durex brand communication analysis!

The quality of Durex products themselves is not the best in the field of condoms, but in terms of communication, it is indeed well-known. (This is an old article. I think it is worth analyzing, so I post it again to discuss with everyone.)

Next, we will try to analyze the Durex product from the aspects of market, content dissemination, activities, and competitive products.

1. Market

Since sex toys are related to the privacy of users and influenced by traditional concepts, users tend to purchase sex toys anonymously. The rapid development of e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, and JD.com has rapidly promoted the sex toy market.

According to incomplete statistics, China's annual consumption of pornographic content accounts for 27.4 billion US dollars, ranking first in the world, but the per capita consumption is one-nineteenth of the highest in South Korea.

China remains the world's largest market for sex toys.

From the online shopping data, we can see that the main consumers are young and middle-aged people, of which 2/3 are male and 1/3 are female.

2. Content dissemination

To help us have a clear understanding of the logic behind Durex. Next, I will talk about it from the following sections.

1. Full network contact

1. Baidu Index

According to the demand map index that Baidu Index can display recently, Durex’s recent hot topic (taking advantage of Apple’s momentum but not as good as the joke tellers) has attracted a lot of attention, followed by Durex’s official website, advertisements, Weibo and functions.

The search indexes for bilibili and dnf (Korean online game Dungeon & Fighter) were the highest, with over 1 million searches. Related entertainment terms included popular words such as live broadcast and video.

It can be seen that Durex pays great attention to young entertainment platforms and popular games, and carries out dissemination and interaction. 42% of Durex's active search population is concentrated in young people aged 20-29, followed by 30-39 years old, accounting for 30%, which is consistent with Durex's brand positioning: young, passionate and energetic.

Overall, Durex has a high level of attention and search.

2. Marketing channels

So as a high-quality brand, what are Durex’s social marketing channels like? Take a look at the following picture to understand the three major sectors of Durex that connect consumers based on the unique attributes of the platform:

Durex Social Marketing-By Fat Whale Think Tank

Content creation and interaction: Mainly Durex’s official Weibo, which was founded in 2011 and is also Durex’s earliest content creation base, the original site that receives the most attention and is the most widely disseminated.

Service platform: Actively explore segmented vertical platforms and content presentation forms, such as Yixin's voice social networking, Himalaya's radio, Meipai's short video social networking, etc.; take advantage of the live broadcast, and lead the live broadcast of 6 major video websites such as Bilibili and Douyu, which caused a sensation and uproar.

Not only did it reach audiences in vertical communities, but the special content created by the platform was also used on the WeChat platform.

E-commerce platform: Durex focuses on directing traffic to its flagship stores on JD.com and Tmall, including the Durex official mall, vertical e-commerce platform TaQu and other mainstream e-commerce platforms.

2. Weibo

1. Introduction

Durex’s official Weibo account was launched at the end of January 2011. The basic information on the official account includes brand introduction, WeChat account recommendation, original statement, store link, etc.

Weibo is mainly used to promote brands, link service platforms and e-commerce platforms, and emphasizes creativity and originality. It expresses the brand's stance and establishes a good brand image.

Durex official Weibo information profile

2. Image positioning

When Durex's official Weibo account was first launched, it positioned itself as a "nerd" account, publishing some product-related or online chicken soup-style content. However, this kind of content has little appeal to users. In short, this kind of self-entertainment content is irrelevant to users, and is neither interesting nor useful.

Later, I realized this and started to make adjustments. Based on the product itself, I positioned it as a gentleman who is a bit bad, a master of jokes, and an "old driver" who understands life and has a sense of humor. I spread popular knowledge in a light-hearted and humorous way.

The content also began to become "implied" and "dirty", especially by combining hot topics to make associations and transforming them into one's own content. These points are increasingly relevant to the high demands of netizens for content in this era. This is also Durex's high sensitivity to the changes in marketing methods and strategies in response to the changes of the times.

3. Weibo content

The frequent updates and continuous insistence on high-quality output are the most important reasons why Durex is widely recognized by the public.

Copywriting content classification

Durex’s Weibo copywriting content can be roughly divided into the following categories:

1) Solar terms and festivals

Durex does not miss any festival throughout the year, including the Spring Festival, New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, Women's Day, April Fool's Day, May Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Father's Day, Chinese Valentine's Day, National Day, Christmas, etc., and even rare days such as World Wetlands Day, February 2nd Dragon Raising Day, and World Water Day.

The solar terms include Rain Water, Waking of Insects, Qingming Festival, and Great Heat.

Durex-Festival Case

Durex-Solar Terms Case

2) Take advantage of current affairs/industry hot spots. In fact, if you study Durex's copywriting, you can still find some routines, such as

One month before "DiDi+Uber=DUDU" attracted the public's attention, there was a similar copywriting "Durant+Klay+Stephen Curry=Durex Warriors".

Durex-Current Affairs

At Xiaomi's press conference, the notebook was compared to a one-cent coin in a serious and joking manner.

Durex responded immediately. The focus was no longer on the picture of thinness, but on the copy "Just thinner". These few short words were exquisite and hilarious. They made good use of Chinese polyphones and combined with the English translation of celebrities to vividly express the event itself. Justin Bieber was shot even when he was lying down.

Durex vs Xiaomi

3) Use entertainment news including movies, celebrities, etc.

Durex-Movie Case

Durex-Celebrity Case

4) Teaching, popular science knowledge, communication, etc.

Durex-Popular Science Knowledge

5) Poetry, literature, and classic adaptations

Durex-Classic Adaptation

Classic adaptation case

4. Copywriting skills and techniques

1) Borrow the appearance, relevant features and attributes of the product

Durex-Product Appearance

Product appearance case

2) Use graphic associations/associations

Graphic association

3) Ingenious processing, grafting, association and other graphic illustrations of static or dynamic graphics

Durex-static and dynamic image description

4) Emoji spoofs and re-creations

5) Evolution of numbers, changes in text symbols, etc.

Durex-Symbol Number

Durex-Symbol Case

6) Homophonic or homophonic connection

Durex-homonym

7) Analogy/contrast/parallelism/personification

Durex-Analog

8) To be mysterious and to hide the secrets, which makes people imagine

Thought-provoking copywriting

9) Fixed columns and labels

For example, in Weibo posts about solar terms, the content and pictures of the Weibo posts usually include the tag “#作作好时季#”; Durex’s classic blue background + text also appears frequently; the most popular picture templates are fixed, etc.

5. Weibo interactions and activities

The interactive form generally adds classification or topic attributes, such as "Stop Nonsense", "Most Fans", "Dudu Gym", "Dudu Wetland" teaching content, to improve interaction with users.

"Stop talking nonsense" and "Best fan" are the question-and-answer style fan interactions that Durex often uses.

After each question, Durex will randomly select an answer from the audience for interaction, and will add a professional picture of the fan, plus the fan's avatar and Weibo name.

This method allows users to participate, and answering questions + waiting to be drawn is a pleasure in itself.

If the fans who are drawn get exquisite gifts, such as limited edition Durex, the effect may be even better. As shown in the figure below, the number of reposts and comments on the Durex & National Assault campaign design is quite popular. Overall, the interactive design of Durex’s official Weibo account is not outstanding.

Fan Interaction

Durex & National Assault

Summary of the official Weibo operation keywords: quick response, leveraging the situation, focusing on fun, easy to understand, predictable, interactive and humane.

Durex's ability to respond quickly and leverage momentum is obvious to all. Secondly, focus on content creation rather than pure hard advertising.

Durex often places its products in life scenes, knowing how to take advantage of the situation in a short period of time. In familiar scenes or events, it is very conducive to the imagination or association of copywriters.

However, Durex's copywriting is not very direct, and contains some speculation or plot points, which requires some thinking to determine the complete meaning. After all, male users account for 77%.

Durex can bring social currency to everyone: telling jokes with friends around you, or being able to understand the hidden secrets in Durex's copy in seconds, is also a sense of accomplishment.

Durex's copywriting is mostly concise and brief, serving as a reminder, while the pictures are to the point and interesting. Every time, the copywriting pictures can find some clever ways to implant some functions and features of their products, making people remember the brand naturally.

Finally, Durex calls itself "DuDu" and tells self-deprecating jokes, which are witty, humorous and very friendly. Durex also pays close attention to fan interactions and selects some users for interaction from time to time.

One netizen changed the slogan of the Extra gum advertisement to: "Brother, fill up your gas tank... and your Durex tank is full too."

At that time, Durex responded with one sentence: "Durex sugar-free condoms care for your teeth and care about you more." After that, fans gradually changed the advertisements of brands such as Wuliangye into Durex's.

Durex’s daily replies and interactions make fans realize and feel that Durex is not just a brand, but also a living person with personality.

3. WeChat Official Account

1. Introduction

Durex’s WeChat official account operation team is also very powerful. According to the data from Xinbang, Durex’s estimated active users have reached more than 1 million, the average number of article readings exceeds 40,000, and the number of readings of a few popular articles exceeds 100,000.

However, due to Durex's dazzling performance on Weibo, people's general understanding of Durex mostly remains on Weibo and has not migrated to WeChat.

Secondly, the communication environment of Weibo is very different from that of WeChat. The content and forms that are popular on Weibo may not be widely disseminated on WeChat.

2. Positioning

Durex WeChat Positioning

From Durex’s own introduction, it can be seen that the positioning of Durex’s official account is mainly to spread knowledge, introduce products, and hold events.

3. Content

title

Because of the special nature of its products, Durex has a great advantage in terms of titles and can make full use of the topic of sex. The facts also show that more than 90% of the article titles contain ejaculation connotations.

There are two main formats for his titles.

1) Questions

Question title

2) Declarative sentences

Descriptive title

Whether it is a statement or a question, it can be seen that Durex's title is more or less related to sex. And because of the product, the title of every Durex article is as close to clickbait as possible.

article

Durex’s WeChat articles are mainly divided into two types: one is articles related to sex, and the other is a fixed column, including uncensored answers, G-spot interviews, and informative columns.

Sexual themes

There are two types of articles on sex topics: one is product introduction; the other is sex knowledge.

For example, in the sex knowledge category, do you think you really know how to wear a condom? Mainly introduces some precautions when wearing condoms. In the sex product category, the review after a 30-minute sex session mainly introduces their new product - the King Kong Endurance Ring.

Fixed columns

There are three main types of columns on Durex’s official account.

Uncoded Answers: This column is mainly about Durex using its influence to collect and select questions raised by different users, and summarize them to form small topics. At the same time, it will let a relatively famous person and Durex itself answer the questions.

For example, do bald men have stronger sexual desire? This special topic is about whether sex is really addictive? This topic.

G-spot Interview: It mainly involves interviewing N friends about a certain event to see different people’s views on the same issue, for example: Durex X Rainbow Chamber Choir: What is it like to have your body hollowed out? The main purpose is to interview the Rainbow Choir about their views on being hollowed out of the body based on hot topics.

Informative Column: This column is mainly to collect some things that are helpful for sex, such as music. For example, "Five Minutes Every Night, Do It with Me" is to choose some music that is helpful for the love process.

Sentence Structure

Looking at most of Durex's articles, the sentence structures and meanings are basically related to sex. The form is humorous and funny, and they often tend to be shameless and have no bottom line. But it's very entertaining.

4. Summary

Since Durex's products involve relatively private topics, and WeChat is a closed social platform based on acquaintances, many people prefer to read such articles on their own rather than using their friends circle to spread them. This is probably one of the reasons why Durex has rarely published sensational articles on WeChat.

3. Activities

Durex Live

From these activities, we can see that, first of all, the live broadcast of Durex's AIR condoms being tried on by hundreds of people in April this year, which became popular on the entire Internet, was not the first attempt, but was paved with the previous three live broadcasts.

In other words, Durex's marketing promotion is serialized, planned and continuously delivered to users. The popularity and controversy of this event far exceeded the previous three.

Secondly, judging from Durex’s marketing activities, there are four main aspects of continuous output, namely, integration with art, launch of games, interaction with young entertainment platforms (such as Himalaya and bilibili), and participation in public welfare activities.

Lei Jun once said in an interview in "Sense of Participation": What can transcend time is not business but philosophy, literature or art. The pursuit of art is also advocated by many brands, including Durex.

Durex sponsored "After the Ban - Sex and Love for a New Generation" and built its first art museum in 2015, both of which were tributes to art. The primitive and beautiful thing of "sex" is promoted by cleverly combining it with art. The four consecutive episodes of the long-term live broadcast of Air is also a kind of artistic behavior.

Durex has launched interactive games on Valentine's Day, Chinese Valentine's Day and other festivals in recent years, and has set up FM channels on Himalaya and promoted live videos on bilibili or Douyu, all of which show that this classic brand is younger and innovative.

Although Durex is talked about a lot for its Weibo marketing, the bonus period of leveraging marketing has faded, and content marketing has become a regular means for brands.

Different from content marketing, event promotion requires a variety of methods to flourish and be tried in various channels. Durex did not try this only when live streaming videos became a hot topic in 2016, nor did it start promoting it only when content marketing on Weibo became routine. Based on this, it can be seen that Durex dares to try different channels and embrace subculture.

Since its establishment, Durex has been involved in public welfare activities such as AIDS, which also responds to its brand culture and spreads a positive and healthy attitude.

The following is an analysis of Durex’s live marketing campaign of 100 people trying on Air.

Event theme: Durex AiR air condoms 4.26 (Tuesday) Hundreds of people try them on and live broadcast on the whole network

Purpose of the activity: Brand promotion, promotion of the main product Air sleeve to promote sales

Broadcast channels: six major live broadcast platforms including bilibili, LeTV, Youku, Tmall Mobile App, Zaizhibo, and Douyu.

Event time: 21:00-24:00, April 26, 2016. 6 live broadcast entrances, 50 pairs of men and women, 180

Minutes live.

Live broadcast time

Event Preview: 1) At 20:06 on April 18, Durex’s official Weibo account released the first live broadcast information preview, starting with recruiting 100 couples and using the number of remaining couples as progress.

There was a countdown promotion for several days in a row, and a cryptic message was released at 20:15 on the day of the live broadcast, which whetted the appetite and fully mobilized the curiosity of the majority of users, and also accumulated strength for the outbreak of this event.

2) Durex’s WeChat official account pushed messages for two consecutive days on April 25 and 26. One message was a pre-launch PR message, and the other was a push notification for the live broadcast.

Durex Official WeChat-Live Preview

Activity Impact:

1) On the day of the live broadcast, as of 22:33, the number of people watching online simultaneously on the six major platforms exceeded 1.034 million. On Bilibili alone, the number of people watching online simultaneously reached 288,000, pushing the live broadcast event to a climax.

According to online statistics, Douyu reached 2 million users and Youku 1 million users on the day of the live broadcast. It is estimated that the number of people online at the same time on the entire network exceeded 5 million. The impact index is 50.2, and the overall negative public opinion outweighs the positive impact.

2) Comments: The high-frequency negative words in the incident are mainly “boring”, “fart”, etc. According to the popular comments on Weibo, most of them are negative comments such as “cheating” and “disgusting”.

Durex 4.26 live broadcast impact-By Zhiwei Time Museum

Positive and negative high frequency words of events-By Zhiwei Time Museum

Netizens commented as follows:

Live Commentary

Activity process and analysis: The entire live broadcast lasted 3 hours, including one hour of moving beds and making beds, one hour of having 10 fat friends in bathrobes do radio gymnastics, half an hour of chatting, and half an hour of eating fruits. It ended with a fart that was described by many netizens as "air is air".

The whole process was full of embarrassment. Netizens cried out that they were cheated and said that "from fans to haters, they will be haters for life", while industry media and others had different opinions on this marketing. Judging from the total online playback volume and influence, Durex has successfully attracted attention and gained attention. However, judging from the comments and complaints from netizens, it does not seem to be successful.

As far as I am concerned, since this is a controversial marketing case, it is neither a success nor a failure. Durex has accumulated a long-term reputation due to its Weibo marketing. As for those users who said they would never use Durex again and would switch to Okamoto after watching the live broadcast, will they really stop paying attention to Durex and stop using Durex?

I don't think so. At least Durex did not create a very bad social impact and did not reveal any pornographic images. It was just sensational.

Before long, after the new marketing event has overshadowed it, there will still be a group of users who are chasing after it, just like the wonderful copywriting "DUDU Old Driver" of the merger of Didi and Uber, which has received unanimous praise.

Of course, Durex needs to think carefully about the marketing of this incident. It can have routines, but they should not be too routine.

4. Competitive Product Analysis

Because Durex mainly sells condoms, its main competitors are Okamoto and Jissbon.

Communication Analysis

Jissbon registered on Weibo in 2010, one year earlier than Durex. After several years of development, it only had 250,000 followers. Okamoto, who registered on Weibo in the same year as Durex, has only 100,000 followers to date, which is incomparable to Durex's nearly 1.6 million followers.

From the perspective of Weibo’s positioning:

From Durex’s official Weibo, it is not difficult to find that the image it portrays is that of a gentleman who is profound, funny, artistic, and a little dirty. Users like to communicate with brands and get along with them like friends. The positioning of Durex and Okamoto is relatively less interesting.

From the Weibo post:

Jissbon did not release any Weibo content during Qingming Festival and May Day. In contrast, Durex would post on Weibo almost every time there was a holiday or major event. Combine the characteristics of the product itself to spark topics. There is no doubt that tracking hot spots is the most basic skill in marketing, but Durex can do it to the extreme.

It is said that Durex’s marketing team holds meetings every day to select topics and maintain 6 or 7 original articles. You can even post on Weibo in the middle of the night and track the hot topics within minutes of them appearing. It can be seen that success does not come easily.

From the Weibo content:

The styles of Okamoto and Jissbon's Weibo posts are similar, mainly containing conventional knowledge about gender, topic discussions and lucky draws, with some emotional quotes from time to time. It seems that he lacks sexual interest but is more artistic. Is sex interesting? It's definitely interesting, but is it interesting to have some serious sex?

This is where Durex differentiates itself from its competitors. In addition to regular popular science knowledge, topic discussions and lucky draws, Durex also shares a lot of interesting information.

These messages are all on the usual social platforms. People will smile knowingly after reading them, forward them casually, or @ their friends' little fun. The comprehensive sharing has gradually given Durex its own unique personality - a shy and introverted little otaku who occasionally tells dirty jokes and occasionally has some small emotions.

As Durex’s Weibo grew, topic discussions developed, with one question #除绝胡说# every day, and the “most fans” were regularly selected for rewards. Further deepened the communication and interaction with the audience.

In order to provide emotional counseling and solve problems for friends, Durex also invites some popular influencers to answer emotional questions. They are really thoughtful friends.

This online and offline linkage not only deepens the communication between the Durex brand and its fans, but also builds a platform for fans to communicate with each other, making Durex's official account no longer a virtual platform, but a visible and tangible entity organization, giving fans a greater sense of belonging and identity.

Durex has achieved three major points in brand communication:

First, how to make the content fit the audience's interests;

Second, how to take advantage of the higher social media engagement and influence of this audience group compared to other young people

Third, Durex’s influence has expanded to areas beyond Weibo. For example, the Durex AiR air condoms were tried on by hundreds of people and live-streamed on Bilibili.

The audience of Bilibili is not its main consumer group, but it makes more use of their spontaneous communication power to convey and amplify the news of the new product launch.

Topic marketing will have an impact on sales, the most direct of which is exposure. Whether it is Weibo or WeChat, if it can become popular, the chance of being seen will be much greater.

Just like Melatonin, a brand that appears in the public eye many times will subtly influence consumers' purchases. A successful topic marketing may not directly lead to purchases, but for the brand it increases consumer recognition, consolidates old fans and adds new fans.

V. Conclusion

The choice of Durex was quite coincidental, because during the period when the topic was selected, Didi happened to merge with Uber China, but the most outstanding thing was that Durex used this event to carry out time marketing.

This is also the topic of this article, analyzing Durex's marketing. The overall gains are as follows:

1. To do good marketing, you must fully understand the characteristics of your product. In this way, no matter what hot spots appear, we can quickly find the right entry point for event marketing.

2. The platform should be selected based on the characteristics and purpose of the product. Durex’s main goal at this stage is to promote the product and let more users know about it. In this case, Weibo is more likely to generate large-scale exposure.

It is more conducive to the spread of Durex. Of course, if the product involves trust, the WeChat environment is bound to be much better than Weibo.

Secondly, Weibo is conducive to the dissemination of pictures, while WeChat is conducive to the dissemination of pictures and texts.

3. Cleverly use hot spots. Looking at the Durex copywriting that can cause widespread dissemination, they are basically related to hot events, such as Li Na's retirement and the merger of Didi and Uber. In fact, the team is still the same team, but the impacts caused by different time points and different events are very different.

4. Continuous updates. Whether it is WeChat or Weibo, Durex updates daily. The frequency and time nodes are almost the same. This rhythm can establish a strong interaction with fans. Increase the stickiness of the analysis.

The above is just a simple analysis of why Durex can be widely spread, the most important of which is the production of content.

In this age of ever-shrinking time and space, the problem is not that we are afraid that others don’t know, but that we are afraid that we will not be able to produce high-quality and interesting content or products.

Author: Network

Source: Internet