Why do we need to do a good job in brand communication planning?

Sometimes the workplace is like a battlefield. If we regard the brand as a battlefield without the smoke of gunpowder, communication is the best infantry on the brand battlefield and directly determines the outcome of the war.

The previous positioning, performance, and experience are relatively implicit, or not so ostentatious or direct, while the communication link is given directly and truly. How wide my communication coverage is, how strong my communication voice is, and how eye-catching the content of my communication is, all these determine the impact of touching the direct cognition in my heart.

So we often say that sometimes because its external attributes are too strong, we regard brand as a synonym for communication. But in fact, it is not. Communication is only a part of brand building, but because its explicit results are too strong, people often equate brand with communication.

In fact, real communication will also serve marketing, not just the brand.

The role of communication in branding and marketing

Let's look at this picture, which very clearly outlines the role of communication in branding and marketing. If communication serves marketing, it is a means of marketing communication. If it serves the brand, it is a means of brand communication .

A brand is a series of efforts made to form cognition, to enhance or improve our cognition, and to increase its occupancy or clarity in the minds of users.

Marketing serves single goals over and over again. For example, we need to increase the number of users, we need to increase market share, and we need to carry out appropriate expansion. Its sense of purpose is a short-term sense of purpose. If we do something to add points for this, it is a means of marketing communication.

Therefore, in brand marketing work, marketing goals and brand goals are sometimes combined into one, and sometimes they are carried out separately. After all, one is short-term and the other is long-term, and they often have cross-cooperation, so many people will be confused and cannot distinguish between marketing and brand.

From this picture, we can see that whether it is branding or marketing, it cannot be achieved without these actions.

First of all, we attract other people's attention through attention, that is, interest.

Our brand communication is actually about turning unconscious attention into conscious attention, because when people pay attention to us unconsciously, our information may be lost. If communication can make consumers more willing to process information related to their brand, this will have the advantage of forming a memory password in the user's mind.

When our products are increasingly connected with user communication, when the user has such needs, the brand will be easily associated with and used by customers.

Therefore, through this intentional attention, we establish a brand cognitive code in the minds of our users, which constitutes a brand decision-making element and will become a fundamental purpose of our communication.

So first of all, we need to segment the population, including the STP rule mentioned before, and divide our target users and populations to see which people are more likely to be interested in us.

At the same time, we want to achieve a state of pleasure in the interaction between our organization and customers, because the brand actually carries a beautiful imagination, just like when we drink a glass of water, if this brand makes everyone feel very pleasant and enjoyable when we drink a glass of water, when the price is the same or slightly more expensive, we still tend to choose brands that make everyone have beautiful associations. This is human nature, an inevitable nature.

At the same time, we also have to meet the concerns of elimination, because people have many concerns when choosing a new brand, and they will use their cognitive patterns to parallel the expectations conveyed by our brand. That is to say, the newly collected information will not form consumer expectations alone, it will allow us consumers to form a parallel expectation in their minds. I actually know new information. Your water tells me that it can eliminate pain, but in my cognition, a bottle of water cannot eliminate pain, only medicine can. If this information is inconsistent with me, then it may not attract me at all, and may even produce some side effects, because you exaggerate this effect.

Therefore, in the process of eliminating concerns through information, it is not only necessary to spread it, but also to interact with our experience to increase this cognition. Maybe you say that this bottle of water has the function of relieving pain and I don’t believe it. But when you conduct an experiment and let me drink it, and I really feel the pain is relieved, or give me some more real touch, I may dispel this doubt or increase this cognition. This is also a mutual force.

At the same time, it is also necessary to form a core differentiated cognition of an exclusive symbol, because the most important purpose of communication in the process of brand communication is to continuously strengthen cognition, change cognition or differentiate cognition.

Therefore, we need to use core creative elements, that is, big ideas, to further strengthen this exclusive symbol in the minds of consumers.

After that, we conducted an opportunity cost-effectiveness assessment, because most consumers actually think rationally. Although they are driven by emotions, we may still conduct some assessments through some so-called cost-effectiveness methods. Therefore, giving them some price incentives or some promotional methods at this time can also increase the chances of successful communication.

Finally, it is to stimulate sharing, that is, we need to spread continuous secondary feedback and diffuse it, which may attract him to post his comments on user sharing platforms, such as posting his comments on Dianping, or posting comments on other platforms, which will have a secondary diffusion effect for us.

Such a picture shows how our communication process flows. Whether you are doing marketing or branding, you cannot do without this picture.

The real meaning of communication is that through communication, our consumers can build a network diagram consisting of various brand-related ideas and memories in their minds. The information we have includes the name, characteristics, evaluations and some selling points. Each of these nodes is connected together. The stronger the cognitive structure of the brand in our minds, the better the recognition of the brand's differences.

In a broad sense, brand communication includes the following means:

It includes three categories: advertising, announcements, and new media. Although people sometimes classify new media as part of public relations, some people separate it out and run it in parallel with public relations. In any case, new media is a form of online carrier. In fact, it is a combination of advertising and public relations on the Internet. In a narrow sense, it is a carrier of network communication media.

Advertising and public relations are two concepts that everyone is relatively familiar with. To put it simply, advertising can be divided into two modes: video and print.

Video is the current TVC advertisement (television commercial), online video, or outdoor elevator advertisement. It uses the dynamic way of video to present our communication information and tell the advantages or differences of the brand.

Graphics are posters and stickers. If you put them in a magazine, it is a magazine ad. If you put them on a web page, it is a web ad. In fact, compared to advertisements, it is a more naked and direct form of telling the advantages or points of a brand. Of course, there are also some that are very artistic and beautiful. It may be more inclined to the output of brand image.

Just like when we watch advertisements, you will find that the bigger the brand, the less it talks about functional selling points, but rather about artistic conception. For example, when it comes to cars and sneakers, foreign brands will talk about their heroism and luxury. They don't actually talk about the nature of the engine or the material of the sneakers, but domestic brands mostly focus on product functions.

It doesn't mean that domestic brands are necessarily inferior to international brands, but that it conforms to a time trend. When our brand first enters the user's mind, it will still impress everyone with its usual unique functional selling points. Of course, as time goes by and it generates more links and possibilities, it will deepen its emotional value connection.

The second is public relations. The core of public relations is two things: one is the media, and the other is activities. They both let a third party testify for themselves or tell about their own advantages. This is the fundamental difference between public relations and advertising.

So what is the media? The media is some soft articles, reports, and cooperation, allowing our third-party media, whether it is our print media or television media, or the big V media in the new media, to say good things and do good things for our brand.

The second activity is that we carry out a wide range of offline activities, for example, because this type of public relations generally refers to offline public relations, which may include some user meetings, media meetings, and some promotional activities. Of course, promotional activities are more inclined towards marketing, and we use this method to do some of our communication work.

New media includes content and community. The first is to spread and disseminate good content online continuously, which includes advertising and public relations.

At the same time, another way of new media is to build communities. In this way, through WeChat communities or other forms of communities, our users can have a more direct connection with our brand. This is also a very good initiative.

A long time ago, Harley-Davidson motorcycles were brought back to life by an unintentional group of Harley-Davidson users. Friends who are interested can go and have a look. So community is not a concept that has become popular now, it is a concept that has existed since the 1970s.

No matter what kind of communication, we must do a good job in internal work

What we are going to talk about is how to write a brand communication plan. So before writing, we must know that communication does not exist alone. Communication itself is a major element in the brand system. It is also a self-circulating system. So we must first do a good job in this system. We must know that it is a very direct communication around consumers to achieve the purpose of our communication.

Therefore, the cognitive closed loop of consumers’ cognition, search, purchase, use, impression, repurchase and dissemination is what we need to understand clearly in advance.

Before writing any successful plan, please ask yourself these questions:

Do target customers know my brand?

Can my target customers find my services?

Will the target customers fall in love with the product at first sight?

Is the product experience satisfactory?

Can the brand be remembered by target customers?

Can it encourage target customers to buy again?

Has word of mouth spread? What is the motivation?

These issues may go beyond the work of brand communication and even involve products and operations. However, whether we are brand people, public relations people, or advertising people, we should all think about how our communication can achieve the correct purpose from a higher level perspective.

Good communication can make a company achieve twice the result with half the effort, while bad communication can make a company die miserably.

Let me give you an example of how good or bad communication can fundamentally help or harm a brand. These are two brands in the same category, one is Nongfu Spring and the other is Evergrande Spring. It can be said that both of them have spent a lot of money on marketing and branding in this growth path, but the results are very different.

After so many years of development, Nongfu Spring has become the No. 1 domestic water brand with annual sales of 13 billion. Another company, Evergrande Ice Spring, invested 5.54 billion yuan a few years ago, but only sold 1.28 billion yuan. It can be said that it suffered a huge loss of more than 4 billion yuan. Why is there such a big difference? We don’t talk about their marketing channel distribution, their pricing strategies, we only look at the brand.

Communication is not formed by a single point, nor is it enough to have only one big idea. You will find that since its establishment, Nongfu Spring has always emphasized one recognition, that is, it is a representative of high-quality water sources. However, the representation of high-quality water source is not just empty talk. It is conveyed very cleverly at the beginning through its sweetness, so that everyone remembers that its brand and water quality are different from others.

Because at that time it was still Robust that was talking about the 27-layer purification, so it used the brand positioning of the 27-layer purification to create a somewhat sweet emotional perception, and then quickly through continuous upgrades and iterations, it became a brand appeal point of "nature's porter".

Along the way, its brand has actually been hitting a point very accurately, and it is an upgrade that is completely in line with its own brand strategy.

On the other hand, Evergrande Ice Spring uses real Chinese mineral spring water. There is no so-called supplementary point underneath this real thing, and a large number of celebrities are used to promote it. However, whether it is Fan Bingbing, Jackie Chan or Kim Hee Sun, there is no real performance of the brand communication behind all the celebrities. People just repeat what others say after watching it, and its visual sense and the integration of its entire communication are very thin and disconnected.

So you will see that good communication and bad communication can bring significant differences to a brand. If we only regard communication as a single point breakthrough, and think that by spending money and inviting celebrities, we can bring communication to a very high level and achieve twice the result with half the effort, this is actually a very wrong perception. Good communication is subtle and silent, it is planned, it can be presented in a very good way, and every link will not be misplaced, only then it will become a successful brand communication.

Consider these three points comprehensively, and your communication will be correct.

The first is to understand the market. You need to know what everyone is talking about in the market. Just like the example I just gave, Nongfu Spring was competing with Robust, which was doing 27-layer purification, and Wahaha was competing with celebrity endorsement by Leehom Wang. Nongfu Spring avoided celebrity endorsements and also avoided directly talking about the purity of the water. Instead, it changed the way and used a very humorous advertisement to tear open the market, telling about its slightly sweet characteristics.

The second is to understand the audience, how to know what the audience wants, what are their needs for water, and what other added value does water have besides safety and cleanliness? And how does Nongfu Spring capture their psychological insights? In fact, this is a process that is very worth learning.

The third thing is to understand the brand and how the brand grasps the key points. The three words "a little sweet" may seem simple, but they actually play an important role. They give people very good emotional associations and make people feel that Nongfu Spring is different from other water sources, because only good water will be a little sweet, because spring water is a little sweet.

Therefore, by giving the spring water a slightly sweet feeling, its natural quality characteristics are also enhanced, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

Planning of communication is very necessary, so communication is not a single point, but a triple understanding of the market, audience and brand. In communication planning, the big idea is just the finishing touch, not a panacea. If we only know the big idea but don’t know how to plan the communication, our brand may still not be effectively promoted.