Promotional Marketing: How to Start a Trend?

Lee Seung-ri, an artist from the South Korean boy band BIG BANG, was pushed to the forefront of public opinion by netizens due to a scandal. Artists related to him were implicated one after another, and the entire network was in a frenzy for a while.

The phrase "瓜田李下" was interpreted by netizens as "this melon field was planted by Lee Seung-ri."

New interpretations of words are very popular on the Internet. Similar ones include “素菜余” which means “sour, vegetable and surplus”; and “人坚不破解” which means “one will not open the Double 11 express package until it arrives, and will have to wait until all the express packages arrive before opening them”.

Why are these words suddenly popular?

Why do some products and concepts suddenly become popular?

How to trigger an epidemic?

There are actually many tricks to starting a fashion trend, and they can be explained by the three laws of fashion .

People are the main body of information dissemination activities. Information can be spread by people, but not everyone can spread information.

In "The Tipping Point", Malcolm Gladwell proposed that there are three types of people who can trigger a trend: connectors, insiders, and salesmen.

Contact person: strong social communication ability and appeal

Who is the “Contact Person”? Is it the operator? Is it customer service? No, it’s KOL.

Connectors are key opinion leaders and experts in interpersonal communication. They can be Weibo celebrities, public account operators, community group owners, and Tieba forum bosses.

They have the gift of being able to connect the whole world, and our perspective on things in life can easily be influenced by them.

What exactly can these people do?

Tell a story: "Paul Revere's Night Ride".

On the afternoon of April 18, 1775, a young man overheard a conversation between British officers:

"We will teach the Americans a lesson tomorrow."

He broke the news to silversmith Paul Revere .

The silversmith immediately traveled 13 miles at night to inform the surrounding residents that "the British are coming."

At 9 o'clock in the morning on April 19, when the British began to attack the village of Lexington, the village quickly launched an organized counterattack, and the British suffered a crushing defeat that day. This engagement gradually evolved into a large-scale war: the American Revolutionary War.

Why was Paul Revere able to knock on the doors of militia leaders in the middle of the night and convince them to prepare for battle?

There were seven "Whig" groups of revolutionaries in Boston, and Paul Revere was in five of them.

Paul Revere was the liaison. He is capable and respected by everyone, able to spread information effectively, and is a key figure in triggering a popular wave.

Psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the " chain letter experiment " to solve the mystery of "how people are connected."

From the experiment he discovered the "six-step separation rule", which states that two strangers can establish a connection in an average of six steps.

The contact person has a huge social network and can contact the target person in just two steps instead of six steps. They can connect us with people in the outside world and bring us into social circles.

They get to know a lot of people, have strong social communication skills and appeal, and can pass on their enthusiasm to everyone.

This is a key point that triggers popularity.

Expert: Possessing professional knowledge and the power to spread information

Unlike connectors who have a large social network, mavens have more professional knowledge. They have a considerable amount of knowledge, understand the inside story, and possess some unknown information.

The right to speak that insiders have is unmatched by others. They are professional enough, closest to hot information, and even a lot of information is released by them.

The viewpoints they put forward are highly persuasive and can generate great sense of identification among users. In daily life, insiders are university tutors, industry bigwigs, and authoritative experts.

Stephen Hawking is an expert in the field of science. The black hole theories and cosmic space hypotheses he proposed have made great contributions to human science.

He has warned many times: "If you receive a message from an alien civilization, never reply."

This statement quickly caused controversy: Should humans contact extraterrestrial civilizations? Although there is no answer to this question yet, Hawking's words are enough to make the whole world think deeply.

Hawking is a leader in the industry, so everyone will believe him and be influenced by his views. Experts like Hawking play an important role in the trend of popularity, and their power to spread information cannot be underestimated.

Salesman: conveying emotions

“In a social epidemic, the insiders are the database, providing information to everyone. The connectors are the social glue, spreading the information around.”

Experts can put forward opinions to influence others, but they themselves are not necessarily good at persuading others. When experts discover a product or piece of information, they can recommend it;

Contact persons can use their personal networks to expand the communication level;

In the final promotion and popularization phase, salesmen are needed.

Salespeople are "emotion senders". They tend to be positive, confident, optimistic, friendly, and good at expressing various emotions and feelings.

If there is someone laughing next to you, you will also become happy unconsciously, and this happiness will infect you.

For example, your friend just bought a bread maker and posts pictures of the bread she makes on WeChat Moments every day. Today it's white bread, tomorrow it's whole wheat bread, and the day after tomorrow it's honey oatmeal bread.

Even though you know it will probably sit in a corner of your kitchen unused, you still buy a bread maker.

Why do you want to buy it? Because you are infected by your friends' positive emotions.

The law of individuals regards connectors, insiders and salesmen as key people in information dissemination. If you want to create a trend, you have to find these people.

During an epidemic, information disseminators are very important, as only they can spread the information. But at the same time, the content of the information itself is also important.

The specific factor for the success of a message is that it has "stickiness".

In order to help students remember important points in the textbook, teachers often raise their voices and repeat the same content.

The same is true for salespeople. There is a saying in the advertising industry: Anyone must see an advertisement at least six times before they can remember its content.

Repetition is to make the information stick strongly in the user's mind .

Social psychologist Howard Levanthal conducted a " fear experiment " in which he wanted to see if he could convince a group of high school seniors to get a tetanus shot.

Levanthal divided the students into groups and gave each student a pamphlet explaining the dangers of tetanus and emphasizing the importance of vaccination. He told everyone that the school hospital center could provide free tetanus shots to interested students.

However, the versions of the booklets distributed to students were different. Some booklets were "high-fear" versions with photos of sick children and exaggerated text, while others were "low-fear" versions with no photos or text and low-key descriptions.

A month later, Levanthal found out through investigation that only 3% of students went to the health center to receive vaccinations. These students actually forgot the dangers of tetanus!

The information in the brochure failed to really convince the students and the experiment did not stick with the users.

So Levanthal made some minor changes to the pamphlet. When he repeated the experiment, the vaccination rate of students increased to 28%.

He added a map and a schedule for injections, turning the booklet from an abstract health lesson into practical advice for staying healthy. Once advice becomes practical and personal, it becomes memorable.

Launching a tetanus epidemic does not require a flood of new and additional information, but rather letting students know how to properly arrange tetanus into their lives.

This case tells us that if we want to spread products or information, we can make subtle changes to the content to increase its stickiness and appeal, so that users can have a greater connection with the product .

NetEase DaDa's "2019 New Year Flag" attempts to make the H5 content sticky.

H5 wants users to set flags and prepare keywords in advance such as "don't stay at home on weekends", "read 50 books", "write N articles with 10w+ views", etc., so that users can choose keywords and remember the flags.

It is impossible to predict whether users will achieve their goals in the new year, but the information that matches the users will remain firmly in their minds.

《2019 New Year Flag》

Environment is also an important factor affecting popularity. It is most closely related to people and is related to the conditions, time and place of events.

For example, if you change your pillow when traveling, you can’t sleep at all;

Or maybe people from Beijing go to Chongqing and can’t stand the humid weather and heavy food, and start to vomit and have diarrhea;

In fact, we are not sensitive to changes in the environment, but extremely sensitive.

The surrounding environment always gives you hints, and these hints can become the tipping points for popularity.

Criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kling proposed the " broken windows theory ", which explains that if a window is broken and no one comes to repair it for a long time, passers-by on the street will judge that no one cares about or manages the place. Soon, more glass will be broken.

This is the influence of the environment.

When making H5, the node atmosphere and environmental factors must also be considered.

NetEase DaDa’s New Year’s flag H5 was released on the eve of New Year’s Day, creating a good outlet for users’ sense of New Year ritual.

"What Can Be Wrapped Up with a Thread" takes the two sessions as its theme and talks about common social issues at the beginning of the two sessions.

What can be produced from a piece of string?

Malcolm Gladwell states in The Tipping Point:

"To launch a large-scale epidemic, you need to launch many small-scale epidemics first, and the number of people initiating a small-scale epidemic team should not exceed 150 (research shows that people can maintain a maximum of 150 social relationships) ."

Whether it is a WeChat community, Weibo super topic, QQ interest group, or Zhihu Q&A, once it reaches the limit of 150 people, it is likely to cause a trend.

There are huge marketers behind the Weibo hot search list, and these groups are the behind-the-scenes teams that cause the trend.

One sick person can cause a city-wide flu;

A satisfied customer can keep a new opening full;

Small-scale popular groups can trigger large-scale popular trends.

The seemingly sudden fashion trend is actually full of tricks.