Brand Marketing: Let’s talk about Durex’s 419 marketing failure!

On April 19, Durex Weibo posted several interactive Weibo posts with other brands. Among them, the copy interacting with Heytea on Weibo, "Not a drop left tonight", and Heytea's comment under the Weibo post, "There's always my cheese on your lips", sparked dissatisfaction among netizens, who criticized such advertisements for "taking vulgarity as fun." In the end, a series of posters were replaced and the merchants apologized, which caused serious negative impact on the brands involved.

This article analyzes why this marketing campaign failed from two perspectives: creative cognitive errors and copywriting problems.

Creativity: Not only challenging the imagination, but also stimulating communication

The creative cognition error in marketing is the direct cause of Durex's failure

How to recognize creativity, divided into three aspects

The first is content , which is the content and decoration of business information.

Not to mention the content, the embellishment mainly relies on the combination of pictures and texts and the rhetoric of copywriting, among which pun in the rhetoric of copywriting is the most common creative method. The creativity of the content focuses on screening the entry points between pictures and texts and thematic elements, as well as copywriting skills, especially the use of rhetoric.

The second is form , which refers to the diversification of the forms of marketing and promotion products.

For example, offline posters, DM leaflets, banners, LED scrolling characters, and wall advertisements; while online finished products are more diversified in form, have stronger communication effectiveness and vitality, and lower costs, including electronic posters, tweets, micro-flyers produced with H5 technology, short videos, etc. Different finished product forms have more direct effects. For example, electronic posters are suitable for brand promotion and product selling point promotion, while short videos are more suitable for corporate image display. Generally speaking, online forms are more suitable for attracting traffic, while offline forms can better promote conversions.

The third is channel , which refers to the promotion channels and platforms.

With the development of the times, channels and platforms have been continuously expanded, starting from small street advertising stickers, and now even audio playback can be used for marketing promotion (different from online advertising on the radio). For example, audio advertisements are injected before and after the programs of the Himalaya APP. The creativity of channels and platforms focuses on analyzing user portraits and daring to break through traditional constraints.

How to stimulate dissemination after being creative enough

A sufficiently creative marketing product can indeed attract traffic, but what needs to be considered more deeply is whether the marketing product can stimulate dissemination. What kind of marketing products will stimulate readers to spread the message for the second time?

I think it is content that can help communicators obtain more tangible benefits or social currency .

First of all, there are substantive benefits , which need no explanation. When promoting marketing, emphasize that substantial material benefits can be obtained from the marketing, and the enthusiasm for participation will become very high, such as raffles, crowdfunding, and support. For example, the previous Alipay continuous store consumption to share red envelopes, the online game's one-knife 99 level, and the Toutiao Express version (the image design added the three words "get cash"):

The picture is from the Internet, deleted if it infringes

The so-called social currency , to put it simply, is the recognition, likes, comments, attention, etc. that a communicator can obtain after publishing certain content, which affects the shaping of the communicator's image in the social area. Therefore, this kind of content should be able to bring positive emotional projection to the communicator, reader, and the brand itself. Selfies used to be the easiest way to earn social currency, but now outputting useful information and creative thinking are more effective.

For example, NetEase Cloud Music’s annual playlist sharing allows communicators to obtain social currency (likes, comments), and the finished form of this marketing promotion is also passed on (forwarding, sharing, discussing) because communicators can easily obtain social currency. This is the case with things like testing, expressing emotions or opinions on hot topics.

Creative marketing is not just for momentary pleasure, nor is it just for attracting traffic, but also about whether it can stimulate dissemination. At the same time, we should also pay more attention to the impact of creative marketing on brand image, which involves the attention of the work (marketing product) to the readers (customers).

Copywriting: not only attracts readers, but also gains trust

Copywriting is the specific reason for Durex's failure this time. I analyzed it from the essence of commercial copywriting: in literary research, the author, the work, and the reader are the three elements of literature. Depending on the different tendencies, the requirements for text are also different.

For example, there is "The Life of Tristram Shandy" which tends to serve the author and is completely incomprehensible to readers; there is "Work No. 1" which serves the work itself; and there is popular science text which serves the readers and requires clear content. Commercial copywriting is essentially a type of work. Any work is inseparable from the relationship with the author and the reader. What information to convey, how to convey the information, and whether the information is received are the propositions of literary research and also the basic propositions of copywriting.

Which side does the commercial copywriter lean towards?

For commercial copywriters, this selection tendency changes, from serving the author to serving the reader, that is, from serving the merchant to serving the customer.

The reason is: As we all know, merchant information (including product information, industry information, etc.) is an important factor affecting customers' purchasing decisions . Before the Internet era, the channels and content for customers to obtain merchant information were very limited. Product information can only be released by merchants, and merchant information (including evaluation, strength, etc.) can often only be heard from the merchant's one side, and there are few integration platforms for industry information. Therefore, merchant information is extremely asymmetric for customers.

In the Internet age, the transmission and exchange of information has become extremely frequent, and merchant information is no longer so limited. On the one hand, more information channels, more convenient information, and more diverse ways of obtaining information have reduced the asymmetry of information between customers and merchants, helping customers make more reasonable purchasing decisions; on the other hand, customers are no longer limited to purchasing through a certain channel, and it is easier to switch between different channels, which means that the same product can be selected from different merchants, and merchants are more passive.

It can be said that in the Internet age, the identity of the customer is not only a product purchase decision maker, but also a disseminator of merchant information . Moreover, the identity of a disseminator of merchant information is particularly important for marketing promotion.

Business copywriting in the Internet age

Therefore, before the Internet era, business information was released by the merchants. At this time, commercial copywriting served the author (that is, the merchant). What content to publish and what information to convey, customers were forced to read and even trust it as long as the merchant published it. In the Internet age, customers can obtain information extremely conveniently and quickly, and can find out simple information with just a simple search, and their judgment ability has also improved dramatically.

At this point, the customer does not need the merchant to tell him what it is, but should focus on the merchant's information delivery in terms of why and how .

For example, if the selling point of a mobile phone is "soft light dual camera", previous advertisements may have focused on promoting the feature of the phone with "soft light dual camera"; but now customers need to know more about the advantage of this feature, so the focus should be on promoting the "soft light dual camera" and the difference between it and other mobile phone photography. Let’s look at a counter-example:

Example 1: Consumers don’t understand Jingtian Baisuishan’s advertisement

Reason: Advertisements serve the authors (merchants). In order to meet the so-called high-end demands of merchants, the works (advertisements) display the brand image in the minds of merchants, but fail to accurately convey merchant information and ignore the reception effect of readers (customers). Readers (customers) don’t even understand what it is, resulting in ineffective delivery. If customers can’t even understand the information, why should we expect them to play the role of disseminators of business information?

The picture is from the Internet, deleted if it infringes

Example 2: Bosszhipin and Mafengwo’s ads were criticized

Reason: Advertisements serve the authors (merchants) and unilaterally consider the information that the merchants want to convey, without considering the information that readers (customers) want to obtain. Although the merchant information (merchant brand name and service content) is conveyed, the imposed information indoctrination and straightforward works (advertisements) without aesthetic appeal cause readers (customers) to be disgusted, and do not generate positive emotional projections in customers (trust, fun, etc.). How can this affect customers’ purchasing decisions? Even let customers play the role of disseminators of business information?

The picture is from the Internet, deleted if it infringes

Therefore, for businesses, how to guide customers to read, trust and even pass on the information released by businesses is the primary task of commercial copywriting in the Internet era. Diversified forms and creative personalization can guide customers to read business information in the era of information explosion, but the content and modification of business information can promote customers' positive emotional projection and make businesses trust and even pass on the information.

Summarize

Whether it is creativity or copywriting, I have repeatedly mentioned some concepts: the identity of customer communicators, whether the content stimulates readers' positive emotions, the creation of marketing products, etc., because the analysis in the two directions is interconnected, and this is the fundamental reason for Durex's failure this time: in the final analysis, whether it is a mistake in creative cognition or a problem in the creation of commercial copywriting, it is a manifestation of the merchant's overconfidence, ignoring the readers' (customers) feelings about the work (commercial copywriting).

In fact, in the Internet age, marketing and promotion is no longer a one-man show for businesses, but requires more attention and analysis of customers: paying attention to customers' emotional projection can not only avoid negative marketing of the brand image caused by marketing and promotion to the business, but also promote the communication effect by leveraging the customer's identity as a disseminator of business information; analyzing the customer's user portrait can accurately select the channels and platforms for marketing products to maximize the communication effect.

Author: fat c

Source: Weird Brain Hole