10 major trends in digital marketing promotion in 2019!

Trend 1: Authenticity becomes a more native brand expression, in-depth dialogue with consumers

"The power of real images" can be said to be one of the annual keywords expressed by the brand in the past year. Today, when commercials have become a marketing standard, SocialBeta has found that more and more brands are willing to abandon the showy or formulaic visual expressions and instead use plain and timeless images to tell stories that are closer to the real world and closer to the individual's heart.

From a certain perspective, this also means that the native nature of advertising has further penetrated from form to content, and brands are trying to build in-depth dialogues with consumers by reproducing the real world and identifying with ideas.

1. I tell my story

When Mr. Lin, who lives in Taipei, held a guitar and talked about what he thought the best home in the world looked like, the singer Yoga Lin under the spotlight disappeared, and was replaced by an ordinary city dweller living alone. In this short film released by Gu Jiajia Furniture last year, Lin Youjia, without the halo of the stage, is fascinated by the sounds, lights and smells of the city. He likes to collect things that are engraved with memories and inspirations, showing his real and natural side.

It's not just Yoga Lin, the same is true for Ma Sichun and Mark Chao who also live in Airbnb. As travelers rather than celebrities, they faced the camera and told the story of their first contact with Airbnb and their respective understanding of Airbnb and travel.

JD.com's "Her in Time" released on June 18th chose to tell three stories: merchants who started e-commerce businesses after retirement, employees who are enthusiastic about public welfare, and owners of home appliance stores. It attempts to restore the changes and development of the times from the perspective of ordinary people, thereby triggering a real sense of dialogue with consumers.

Whether they are spokespersons or ordinary people, they all become true to themselves in brand commercials, telling their own attitudes and stories. From the first-person "I" narrative perspective, their inner activities and delicate emotions are constantly magnified, and a real and unrepeatable power of images is subtly revealed. This daily and personalized narrative method can better mobilize consumers' empathy and effectively convey the brand concept.

2. The rise of documentary image marketing: documentaries and Vlogs

If the documentary "The Art of Awakening Time" launched by Cartier and the Palace Museum at the beginning of the year to a certain extent continued the popularity of the previous topic "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City", then the emergence of a number of brand documentaries such as the documentary about Xiaomi's 8 years of entrepreneurship that subsequently swept social media, and the documentary "Nice to Meet You" jointly planned by VICE and MOMO are enough to show that the documentary as a visual narrative method has gradually broken away from its niche positioning and has been generally recognized by brands.

Unlike traditional commercials, documentaries often contain more and more complete information, and most of them focus on the behind-the-scenes scenes that consumers cannot see, such as the PEACEBIRD WOWEN 2018 Spring/Summer image blockbuster launched by Peacebird, which focuses on the connection between models and photographers behind the scenes, and Tencent Games' documentary "Looking for the Story Behind Monument Valley" that traces the inspiration for the creation of "Monument Valley 2"... These documentaries dismantle and analyze brands and products from all aspects, which not only satisfies consumers' curiosity about unknown areas, but also continuously strengthens the expression of brand attitudes and concepts in the storytelling.

Documentary images have sprung up in the field of advertising films. At the same time, personal documentary images have also become popular, namely VLOG. SocialBeta has previously conducted a special discussion on the rise of VLOG and its subsequent impact on the content platform ecosystem and brand marketing. Compared with brand documentary advertising, the reality of VLOG is more intimate and tangible. However, unlike brand documentary advertising which takes the brand as its perspective, the protagonist of VLOG marketing is the vlogger. In the minds of most vloggers, they all hope to use the brand's products to complete an "I" story. Therefore, the vlogger's subjective recognition of the brand and the brand's leaving enough room for the vlogger to play and trust are both essential for a successful VLOG marketing.

Comments:

Undoubtedly, this year's brands prefer realistic visual expression. If we delve deeper into the logic behind it, we can find that this is closely related to market changes.

Although the tide of "pan-entertainment" has not yet receded, we can clearly feel that consumers' preferences have changed. According to the 2018 annual barrage jointly released by Bilibili and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, "truth" ranked first.

As the threshold for image creation continues to decline and the creative subjects become increasingly diverse, consumers have long been aesthetically fatigued by routine brand commercials. They are more looking forward to seeing something different, and real life experiences and emotional insights have the power to touch their hearts.

On the other hand, amid the myths about consumption upgrading and downgrading, brands need to further clarify their own values, which is related to their subsequent development path and communication strategy. The use of documentary images for expression provides a different perspective from the past to summarize, review, supplement and upgrade the brand concept. At the same time, this is also one of the most intuitive and effective ways to convey brand attitudes to consumers.

Trend 2: Influencer Marketing Upgrade: KOLs Becoming "Celebrities" and "Advertisers"

With content marketing and fan economy both on the rise, influencer/KOL marketing has become an indispensable part of brand marketing. SocialBeta has previously conducted a lot of discussions on the development of KOL marketing. Influencer marketing is no longer as simple as brands outputting brand information through KOLs.

With the continuous advancement of influencer marketing, more and more players have joined the market. From the Matthew effect of head branding, long-tail matrix and vertical development, small Vs have emerged and Vlog bloggers have blossomed everywhere. Wang Jingjing, founder of New Consumer Insider, once said at the 2018 FINS Fashion Blogger and New Media Conference: Now the new media content traffic has entered the second half. For the entire market, the biggest opportunity in the second half lies in the heavily vertical and specially segmented tracks. And those top bloggers who have fans and traffic are also constantly seeking transformation.

1. Become a “star” KOL

During the just-passed Spring Festival, WeChat Pay launched the "New Year, Where We Are" global New Year event and invited fashion blogger Rebecca to become the "Overseas Experience Officer" to bring New Year greetings to overseas Chinese compatriots. Rebecca's team showed off her 2018 report card showing her cooperating with brands in the form of brand ambassadors or spokespersons. These included serving as the image ambassador of the Macau Shopping Festival for two consecutive years, becoming the first domestic brand ambassador for the British brand Crabtree & Tree, and cooperating with Origins as an environmental friend of the brand. Some fans left messages lamenting that the blogger had done so many things, but in fact, through endorsements, brand collaborations, offline community activities and other means, a "business moat" had already been established for Rebecca.

In the past year, there are many bloggers like Rebecca who have reached cooperation with brands based on their personal images. When KOL marketing first emerged, it complemented celebrity endorsements. Celebrities were committed to helping brands expand their recognition among the general public, while KOLs specialized in word-of-mouth marketing and bringing in products in vertical circles. But when the ability to bring goods becomes an indicator for brands to evaluate the commercial value of celebrities, bloggers who rely on social media also begin to step forward and build their own personal brand image. Through long-term investment, bloggers have established a close link with their fans, advancing from image or professional identification to emotional and value identification, and this link is exactly what brands pursuing product and effect integration need.

2. Become an advertising KOL

As mentioned earlier, the VLOG trend has led many bloggers to add the Vlogger blogger tag in their introductions, and has quickly applied it in brand commercial cooperation. The rise of VLOG marketing is certainly due to brands realizing that personalized expression has a growing influence on consumers, but it also brings new challenges to bloggers.

As KOLs continue to move to the forefront of brand marketing, turning our attention behind the scenes, we find that many top bloggers have also begun to get involved in the brand marketing business from the source of creativity. For example, Jiang Sida, who came out of "The Rap of China", has won the love of many fans for his unique personal charm and outstanding personal expression, and has also become a darling in the eyes of brands. Starting from last year's SK-II Spring and Summer Interview, L'Oreal Amateur Experiment and other projects, these works have all been involved by Jiang Sida's team from the source of creativity. In a previous interview with SocialBeta, Jiang Sida mentioned the changes in the way of cooperation with brands. After cooperating with brands on commercial video content, the cooperating brands are more and more inclined to let Jiang Sida's team follow up from the creativity and plan subsequent matters. Another point is that as a team, Jiang Sida's team can undertake the full-link service from creativity to execution to post-production editing, and can even provide brands with full-case marketing solutions.

Another case comes from fashion blogger gogoboi and LV. LV held a "Navigation, Flight and Travel" exhibition in Shanghai at the end of last year. Fashion blogger gogoboi customized an H5 for the exhibition as a warm-up. According to gogoboi's tweet on his official account, he mentioned that the idea of ​​"stealing a suitcase in the middle of the night" was an idea that he came up with internally, and it was also his first time to make a PPT proposal in the brand's office.

In the development and transformation of KOLs, the more top KOLs are unwilling to be just a brand's communication channel, but instead become influential business partners. It is not uncommon for them to participate in the shooting of brand posters and videos, and joint cooperation between brands and KOLs is gradually becoming routine. Digiday once reported that many brands abroad have begun to regard KOLs as marketing partners. One of the most significant changes is that the cooperation signed between brands and KOLs is becoming more and more like traditional cooperation such as TV commercials, which is more detailed and longer, usually half a year to a year.

Comments:

Of course, becoming a KOL who is a "star" or "advertiser" cannot fully reflect the current influencer marketing trend, but in general, SocialBeta believes that the core of the main development trend of influencer marketing is two points: personalization and customization.

The former starts from the perspective of consumers. With the increasing demand for personalized and diversified consumption and fatigue with traditional marketing models, bloggers with more personality and expressive spirit will be favored by users. From a brand perspective, personalization means customization, which requires bloggers to work together to create more creative and higher-quality brand content. Whether it is self-built or seeking support from third-party partners, professional content teams and business teams are an indispensable part of influencer marketing.

Trend 3: Beyond standardization, content co-creation partners are taking over brand advertising business

As early as 2016, SocialBeta discussed: What will the advertising agencies look like in the future? At that time, SocialBeta analyzed that four new forms, consulting firms, brand in-house teams, media companies, and Internet platforms, might participate in brand marketing competition together with advertising companies. Three years later, in 2019, the competitive environment faced by advertising companies has become more intense, but the trend that agencies are not the only source of creativity for brands has also become more obvious.

1. Marketing solutions are hidden behind the Internet platform IP

Internet platforms now occupy a very important position in brand marketing. More and more Internet platforms are beginning to provide marketing channels that are not limited to advertising or e-commerce operations, but complete marketing solutions covering everything from consumer insights and strategy execution to action and effect evaluation.

Among these diversified marketing solutions, we found that the most obvious commonality is that the different marketing solutions provided by the platform for different brands are beginning to be packaged and implemented in commercial marketing IPs . Take Tmall as an example. Tmall Super Brand Day, which appeared in 2015, created its own Double 11 for brands. The subsequent Tmall Super Category Day discussed the transformation of ideal life and the trend of consumption upgrading with the leading brands in different categories. Tmall Little Black Box, which appeared last year, focused on unlocking new models for new product marketing for brands. With the three super marketing IPs as the center of the circle, different brands have their own positioning and appeals, thus working with Tmall to draw a circle that suits the brand itself in the brand's digital transformation and upgrading.

The commercialization of Douyin accelerated last year, and its short video marketing also moved towards high-quality and column-based development. Since July last year, Douyin has successively launched the content column "Beautiful Images" with luxury brands Chanel and Montblanc, and cooperated with Jeep on the "Beautiful Institute". During the National Day holiday, it jointly created the travel IP "Fun Siqulv" with Ctrip Travel, and later joined hands with Country Garden to launch the first food vertical IP "China Douyin". With the launch of these IPs, Douyin has gradually formed short video marketing solutions covering different groups of people, different categories, different scenarios, and different expressions.

1. Media platforms use IP and column-style content to meet brand content marketing demands

The high-quality and column IP characteristics of content marketing are also very prominent on media platforms. As brands continue to explore content marketing, media platforms that are good at producing content and controlling tone are becoming increasingly popular. In the past year, whether it is the old magazines Elle, Vogue, Lens, or new content companies such as GQ Lab, New World, VICE, etc. under GQ Intelligence, they have become partners for brands seeking content co-creation.

Regarding the value of media platforms, Lens' previous introduction to SocialBeta about its content marketing value is representative enough: in-depth exploration of content, excellent production, and precise dissemination . With the increase in the number of cooperating brands and the deepening of cooperation demands, SocialBeta found that content IPs with memorable and topical elements are more favored by brands, such as the Good Night Girl and Four O'clock City series created by New World. Of course, creating customized and differentiated content for brands in the form of content columns and content IPs has also become a trend. For example, the "High Energy Class Research Institute", an open-minded life observation project created by GQ Lab and BMW, and the "Cross-Obstacle Youth Care Program" created for PEACEBIRD Men's Wear that focuses on young people in the workplace.

Comments:

This year, we will see more and more Internet platforms using IP-based marketing solutions to meet the diverse marketing demands of brands while also exploring the possibility of connecting online and offline.

In a sense, the marketing solutions of Internet platforms or media platforms are first and foremost the aggregation of the platform's own content, data, capabilities and other resources, which can be described as a standardized solution. The addition of IP elements provides brands with a marketing solution beyond standardization. These IP projects are both extensible and flexible and can be customized according to the different needs of different brands. At the same time, satisfying 2B brand needs in a 2C manner can in turn increase the stickiness between users and the platform.

Observation 4: Embrace the growing national trend and embrace more possibilities

If we say that the national trend was first a circle culture that emerged in a niche fashion circle, then in February last year, when the sports brand Li Ning made a high-profile appearance at the New York Fashion Week, the national trend began to officially evolve into a social phenomenon and was widely praised by the public.

From the earliest clothing brands to the current product extensions based on "clothing, food, cosmetics and daily necessities", the concept of national trends has gradually penetrated into all aspects of consumers' lives. Appearing at international fashion weeks, cross-border products, platform empowerment... With the participation of more and more roles and the birth of more brand marketing forms, for brands, embracing national trends often means embracing more possibilities.

1. "Clothing, food, cosmetics and daily necessities" cross-border, 1+1>2 "national trend effect"

If you think carefully about the cross-border trend of domestic products in 2018, you may quickly think of the following products: the Liushen RIO cocktail that " repels mosquitoes with one mouthful, and enters the soul with two mouthfuls", the spicy kiss lip balm jointly launched by Zhou Hei Ya and Yunifang, the Luzhou Laojiao Peach Blossom Drunk Perfume... However, with the increasing number of creative cross-border products, consumers' threshold for freshness is also constantly increasing. Products that are simply produced for fun or curiosity will no longer be able to easily capture consumers' attention.

The fit between brands is beginning to become another important test criterion. The toffee-flavored lip balm jointly launched by White Rabbit and Maxam is an example. Although the design of the toffee lipstick is rather bizarre, the close internal connection between the brands makes the product itself more vital.

With the rise of more cutting-edge designer brands in China, SocialBeta predicts that in 2019, cross-industry collaborations between domestic brands and the fashion industry will become more common. At the same time, the forms and entities of cross-border collaborations will become more diverse. The cross-border "national trend" is not only a product collaboration between brands, but also the collaboration between brands and designers, brands and media platforms... perhaps more sparks will be created. In this regard, the joint clothing launched by Want Want and Takasha, and the pop art peripherals cooperated by Lao Gan Ma and "Men's Health" magazine are good examples.

2. Platform empowerment, the catalyst for the rise of national trends

Bringing brands to the New York Fashion Week, creating popular cross-border products... E-commerce platforms led by Tmall and Taobao are continuing to empower the rise of Chinese fashion and its popularization.

Compared with vertical fashion platforms, the biggest advantages of e-commerce platforms such as Tmall lie in the massive consumer data and the platform's extensive influence. With the help of the platform's efficiency, it can provide domestic brands with full-link services from early data insights, supply chain production, marketing planning to later data feedback. This also enables the "National Trend Action" to break away from the single-point effect of a specific brand and begin to move towards scale, clustering and platformization.

The 2018 domestic entrepreneurial boom has also made SocialBeta realize the important role of the platform in supporting original designer brands. According to Taobao's previous data, Taobao added more than 100 national trend stores in the first half of 2018 alone, and there are more than 300 high-quality original national trend stores; at the same time, vertical platforms such as YOOHOOD and LabelHood are also using their own resources to continuously empower original brands.

At present, although original designer brands are also constantly joining the mainstream national tide movement, the influence they can produce is still relatively small. Therefore, SocialBeta predicts that with the continued support of the platform and the continuous investment of resources, we will also see more original brands in the marketing actions of the "national tide" in 2019.

Comments:

Behind the popularization of national trends is actually the fundamental change in brand awareness, brand preference and consumer behavior among the new generation of young consumers. There have been many research data showing that compared with trendy brands introduced from abroad, the younger generation represented by those born after 1995 and 2000 are becoming more and more accepting of local brands. To them, the brand value behind the logo has no practical meaning; instead, the values ​​and personal attitudes represented by the brand itself are the criteria for their selection.

To some extent, when a brand becomes a trendy brand itself, it often means being closer to young people and the discourse system in which they live. And when the mainstream discourse power and consumption power of society gradually shift from the previous generation to this group of young people who pursue individuality and originality, the "national trend" built on innovation may become more and more intense.

Trend 5: Cultural IP is becoming younger, creating influential Chinese cultural symbols

With the evolution of traditional culture into daily life, cultural IP, a term that was once quite "high-end", is gradually entering the homes of ordinary people and penetrating into the daily lives of the public with a younger attitude.

The Palace Museum, Dunhuang Academy, British Museum... The rise of these typical cultural IPs, to some extent, symbolizes that the cultural and creative industry represented by traditional culture is breaking the circle and reorganizing, and the value and vitality of culture are constantly extending. At the same time, the addition of Internet platforms has enabled a better integration of cultural and technological forces, and a more strategic, systematic and long-term IP "activation" mechanism is beginning to emerge.

1. Digitalization: Innovative expression of cultural IP

The construction of Internet infrastructure and the emergence of new marketing methods such as H5 and mini programs have provided a natural soil for the rebirth of cultural IP. However, IP digitization is not simply the transfer and secondary presentation of content. More diverse digital expressions and deeper digital integration are the focus of cultural IPs including the Forbidden City.

The traditional Chinese style mobile game "Painting Reality: A Thousand Mountains of Wonderful Brushstrokes" jointly launched by the Palace Museum and NetEase Games is a typical example. Prior to this, the collaboration between cultural IP and games existed more in the form of a single theme, skin design or special version of the game. Users "pay" for the value of the IP itself, and games are the medium for conveying the connotation of the IP. The cooperation between the two parties indicates that in cross-border cooperation, cultural IP begins to deeply intervene in the upstream of content production, and even becomes the content itself, bringing users an immersive experience.

Pan-entertainment forms of expression, including games, music, and comics, have broadened the boundaries of cultural IP expression from a broader dimension: the "Ancient Paintings Can Sing" project uses musical synaesthesia to extend the emotional value of IP, and the "Echoes of the Forbidden City" theme comics target more young groups through online serialization... With the continuous emergence of diversified digital creative methods, SocialBeta believes that linking offline entities to create digital creative presentations may be the next innovation point for cultural IP.

2. In-depth cooperation: Commercial advancement of cultural IP

Just in January, Tmall announced that it would launch the "Hello, Forbidden City" campaign with the Forbidden City IP, which is also the first stop of the 2019 "Tmall New Cultural and Creative" plan. From entering Tmall to launching in-depth cooperation, the combination of cultural IP and e-commerce platforms such as Tmall has begun to move from the 1.0 "testing the waters" stage of selling products to the 2.0 full commercialization stage.

This also means that after reaching more consumers through IP-derived cultural and creative products such as the Forbidden City lipstick, the platform's commercial integration and operational capabilities will bring more possibilities for the renewal of cultural IP. Earlier, Tmall's "National Trend Action" cooperated with the Summer Palace to appear at the New York Fashion Week, and Tmall also teamed up with the British Museum to hold the "Museum Cat Night" offline event to help promote and renew the IP.

With the development of more in-depth cooperation, SocialBeta believes that the platform advantages represented by new product launches, IP overseas expansion, and new retail will empower the promotion of cultural IP. At the same time, using the platform to achieve cross-border cooperation with more global brands will also provide more commercial value for IP development and inject new cultural connotations.

Comments:

The popularization of cultural IP is not simply about expanding the population and outputting value. As the cooperation between platforms such as Tencent and Tmall and cultural IP continues to deepen, a more systematic and long-term IP cultivation mechanism has begun to play a vital role.

Judging from the long-term strategic cooperation between Tencent, the Dunhuang Academy and the Palace Museum, for traditional cultural IPs with profound historical and cultural connotations, simple cultural and creative product derivatives can no longer meet the IP's demands for deep expression. With the help of rich and diverse innovative forms such as games, music, social networking, cross-border cooperation products, mini-programs, H5, etc., cultural IP can break the barriers of time and space and produce a broader and more profound IP effect in the form of content experience.

As Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, mentioned: "From cultural relics to culture, the Palace Museum will be handed over intact to the next 600 years." When the connotation of objects gradually generalizes into more diverse forms, the cultural industry with IP construction as the core will help to create more influential Chinese cultural symbols.

Trend 6: Brands’ intensive cultivation of offline scenarios: art goes down, brands go up

In the top ten observations on digital marketing in the first half of 2018, SocialBeta has discussed that flash marketing is becoming "slower" and "transformation" is reshaping the brand's offline crossover. Brands are keen on "building museums and holding exhibitions" and constructing "new concepts" of native expression based on their own tone, constantly expanding the offline scenarios for communication between brands and users, and at the same time making this communication a kind of self-IP for the brand. This year, the brand's intensive cultivation of offline scenarios has shown some new changes and trends.

1. Art down, brand up

Amid the craze of “building museums and holding exhibitions”, art exhibitions have become the unanimous choice of many brands. From LV's "Louis Vuitton Travels", Hermès' "Adventures in a Box", Didi's "Didi Art Museum", Xiaomi's "Times Technology Art Exhibition", OPPO's "Tender is the Night · Night Never Ends Image Exhibition", etc., all of them have integrated elements of art without exception.

SocialBeta previously launched a topic survey to readers, "Why are luxury brands so fond of holding art exhibitions?" Among them, nearly 40% of readers believed that luxury brands holding offline exhibitions is a high-level means of sharing brand culture and embodying brand concepts. This reason can also be extended to other brands. The atmosphere created by art exhibitions can help brands quickly enhance their value and spread positive word-of-mouth .

In addition to the use of artistic elements, the brand art exhibition will also use new media technology to present the multifaceted collision of art and technology, striving to connect sensory experiences such as vision, hearing, touch, and smell, focusing on providing consumers with a full range of freshness and immersion. In the "Renaissance of the Dionysian Spirit" new media art exhibition created by Tmall Qimiao Research Institute and Hennessy, interactive installations are used to find modern expressions for classical art, allowing exhibitors to experience the contemporary poetic life firsthand.

2. Closer online and offline linkage

In late December, the Alibaba family welcomed a new member - the first future hotel "Feizhubukue", which focuses on full-scenario intelligent identity recognition response and AI technology services. In this unmanned hotel, guests only need to scan their faces to enter and exit elevators, rooms, restaurants, and gyms, and enjoy services provided by robots, Tmall Genies, and other artificial intelligence. As Alibaba's exploration of new retail in the hotel industry, Feizhubukue has completed the integration of Alibaba's ecosystem offline, including providing guests with Youku VIP membership benefits, Tmall International's selected products that can be bought as seen, etc., fully linking online and offline.

Alibaba is not the only one exploring new retail. The digitalization and immersive experience of physical stores have become the direction of brand transformation. Uniqlo's largest store in Shenzhen and Nike's first concept flagship store Nike 001 have both launched new retail experiments earlier, transforming stores through AR technology, experience devices, etc., conducting two-way guidance online and offline, and expanding consumer experience.

3. Reshape offline commercial centers

Shopping malls are appearing more and more frequently in brands’ offline events. According to SocialBeta’s report, there were 16 events held in Sanlitun this year. Shopping malls, aware of the plasticity and traffic value of physical space, have gradually changed the role they play in their engagement with brands: from venue providers to event organizers.

The newly opened K-lab in Hangzhou Huanglong Vanke Center has locked in a new business model of "knowledge consumption". In its early days of operation, it attracted Zhihu's "Unknown Clinic" and MUJI's "The Reason for MUJI" to set up exhibitions. According to the information that has been made public, knowledge-based consumption formats such as art crossover stores, sound and image museums, new media digital art museums, and life aesthetics experience halls will be gradually introduced. The newly upgraded Shanghai Xintiandi also launched the slogan of "new social destination for women", attracting the first travel art museum of Qyer to move in.

Internet brands have also become more fond of shopping malls, and brands that are at the bottleneck of online traffic urgently need to find new growth points. After experiencing the pop-up store craze, brands have initially established a foundation for controlling offline operations. As digital technology continues to develop, online and offline linkages are becoming increasingly close. SocialBeta has also observed that some Internet brands are more willing to choose shopping malls as the locations for physical stores, providing consumers with another way to understand the brand and to increase their presence in consumers' daily lives.

Comments:

Many articles have explained why brands frequently take offline actions, focusing on attracting new traffic, strengthening interactions with consumers, and promoting conversions. But apart from this, is there any other value that offline has for brands? SocialBeta would like to chat more about the future possibilities of the brand.

As the Internet is flocking to offline businesses this year, a phenomenon worthy of deep thought has emerged: a large number of offline stores are promoting lifestyles. The logic behind this is not difficult to understand. As a preliminary attempt to reach offline, the lifestyle can radiate to more new users, but it is inevitable that homogenization will occur to a certain extent.

For most Internet brands, offline is an extremely imaginative new scenario, so correspondingly, offline should not just be reduced to retail stores that showcase brand concepts and sell peripheral products. The diverse needs of the population and the various plasticities of the business are potential opportunities for brand further development .

The editor believes that if you want to achieve deep integration of brand and offline while building your own barriers, providing consumers with high-value-added customized services or experience services based on physical stores may be a good way . For example, Qunar started travel customization in its first offline store and tried to enter the mid- to high-end travel industry. Online big data is the advantage of providing such services. It can help brands achieve online and offline linkage. On the other hand, it can also encourage brands to improve and upgrade in line with offline needs.

Trend 7: Hot marketing products help young people release themselves, and collective carnival is being driven

There seem to be a lot more hot-selling products this year. Is it because the brands are more creative this year? Or are this generation of consumers more fond of sharing? As social marketing has come to this day, we see that the relationship between brands and consumers is gradually being rewritten. At the end of the year, topics related to the annual review such as NetEase Cloud Music's annual listening report and Alipay's annual rankings remained high on Weibo's hot search list, proving that the identity roles played by consumers in brand marketing have become more complex and diverse: they are no longer simply target audiences, but more of participants, truly creating one marketing hit after another.

1. Give up the right to express your opinions

A wave of test H5s exploded on social media this year, which was unexpected by everyone. Among them, after NetEase set up its own H5 planning team, Dada, the several H5s it produced were quite eye-catching. The "Jungian Psychological Test" co-developed by NetEase Cloud Music and the game "Identity V" ingeniously combines the game's original soundtrack with professional psychological tests. Through a conversation-based test interface, it analyzes the user's internal and external personality, attracting a large number of participants in a short period of time. In addition, NetEase Cloud Music's "User Manual" and NetEase News' "Philosophical Temperament" have also made it onto the screen-sweeping list.

We have also discussed this light-gamified social currency in our top ten observations on digital marketing in the first half of 2018. Its emergence points to a new identity for the dialogue between brands and users, returning the focus to the "people" themselves and creating different ways to express personality and attitude.

As another form of psychological testing, the test H5, which is dressed in brand creativity and elements, creates an outlet for individual emotional expression and is also one of the ways for brands to increase the volume of marketing communications. By testing H5s and rankings, brands transfer the right of expression to consumers, thereby lowering their own discourse identity and attracting more potential people to participate and share.

2. Online group carnival

Alipay used the "Chinese Koi" Weibo lucky draw event to prove its well-deserved title of "National APP", and also injected new vitality into the traditional marketing form of lucky draw. Since then, similar activities have emerged one after another, such as JD.com spending one million to look for "Wang Yuan", NetEase Cloud Music looking for "Ding Xuan's son", and McDonald's issuing a notice to look for "Gold", all of which have achieved good dissemination effects on social media and triggered fission-like viral transmission.

Judging from the results, the koi-style marketing that relies on luck will inevitably have only a very small number of lucky people who can attract attention at the beginning of the event, and this attention will increase exponentially over time. Based on this, brands often launch it as a pre-event warm-up activity. Young people of the new era who pursue self-expression are also keen to participate in activities that bring their own topics, and are willing to share discussions and express their opinions. They hope to catch up with hot topics in real time and be in the same dialogue field as their friends. The combination of these two trends ultimately led to a collective carnival of online sweepstakes events.

Comments:

Digitalization has changed people's lives, and public squares that serve as places for gatherings and communication have also been eliminated by digitalization, moving from offline to online social media. Different from traditional festivals and temple fairs, sharing rankings at special time points and participating in the same online activities have become a fixed ritual for young people of the new era. They use it to express themselves and exchange feelings.

Behind the self-expression through brand activities or the pinning of one's fortunes on koi-style marketing, lies the common and persistent anxiety among contemporary youth. Faced with social pressure and the difficulties of self-growth, this generation of young people tend to use a roundabout way of expression to achieve self-relief.

Marketing blockbusters are actually the key to understanding this group of young people. Brands need to constantly create space for them to express and release themselves, and reduce the authority of implanted discourse.

Trend 8: Generation Z Marketing: Further Advancement of Dialogue with Young People

As a group of high school students born in 2000 received college admission letters one after another, the post-00s have officially entered their adulthood. For brand owners, this is also a strong consumption signal that they are about to face a group of younger and fresher new consumer forces.

Abroad, the post-00s correspond to a group known as "Generation Z". FastCompany once predicted that by 2020, Generation Z will account for 40% of all consumers. To a certain extent, learning to talk to this group of Internet natives also means finding the key to a new world of consumption in the future.

Post-1.95 brand spokesperson

Nowadays, post-95 brand spokespersons are emerging. The rapid rise of the post-00s has made the brand begin to regard this new generation of idol groups as a breakthrough in "communication": Tmall chose TFboys group member Yi Yang Qianxi to become the first brand spokesperson; NinePercent and Rocket Girls 101 were signed by multiple brands as soon as they debuted; Liu Haoran, born in 1997, also became Zhihu's first spokesperson.

Brand spokespersons are becoming younger, but in addition to the age representation level, more marketing forms targeting post-00s are also undergoing a secret change. From the "21 Tian Yuanqi Plan" created by Tmall for Yi Yang Qianxi to the "7 Days Boiling Plan" jointly developed by Zhihu and Liu Haoran, the cooperation between the brand and spokesperson no longer stops with the official announcement and TVC.

Satisfies the demands of post-00s who are eager to participate in their idol life in depth, tailor an interaction with their fans, and become a way of communication for more brands. With the addition of more spokespersons born after 1995, including Cai Xukun, Ouyang Nana, Wu Lei , etc., marketing methods that focus on the internal connection of "spokesperson-fans" will also be favored by more brands .

2. More rational consumers

Although the post-00s in the fan circle seem to be more devoted to their idols, the "Tencent Post-00s Report" shows that the influence of KOLs on the post-00s is decreasing. The utilitarian relationship between KOL and fans made the post-00s no longer trust KOLs, and they remain rational about various marketing methods early on. For brands, they face a group of young consumers who are independent, autonomous, rational, willing to pay for their interests, but need to be within a certain range of capabilities.

This also means that "impulsive consumption" caused by traditional promotional discounts, pain point marketing, brand premiums, etc. will become increasingly rare among the post-00s. Leaving the outer cloak of "marketing means", only by more equal dialogue, more precise insight and deeper emotional connection can we truly impress consumers born in the 2000s.

3. More than after 00

Just as the post-90s generation once had a deep love for "Mars", one of the characteristics of the post-00s generation is that they have a unique "black talk" language system. During the first batch of post-00s colleges, the "black marketing" initiated by Tencent Video has caused widespread heated discussion for a while.

But what we need to define is that the target audience behind the post-00s marketing targeted by the brand is not necessarily the real post-00s consumers. Taking the post-00s as the "hook" to attract more other consumer groups who are eager to pay attention to the living conditions of the post-00s, it can sometimes help brands leverage the larger young consumer market. This is also why the context of "blame talk" is private in circles and is not suitable for widespread social marketing communication, but it can cause heated discussions among the public. From this perspective, focusing on the post-00s, but not just the post-00s, can give brand marketing activities greater room for imagination.

Comments:

In the early years, when we were talking about "brand rejuvenation", we usually refer to the post-90s group divided by demographics. They have obvious group consumption characteristics and user portraits, and the generational differences between the post-70s and post-80s were also more prominent.

But today, when people born with rich material life are gradually entering the social stage, "youngering" is no longer a group label that can summarize them. This group of indigenous people on the Internet know themselves earlier than people of any era. They devote themselves to the fields they like and are good at, and have their own ideas and insights.

This also means that the barriers in the circle are constantly thickening, and marketing techniques that try to use one point to arouse widespread resonance will no longer work easily. Faced with the post-00s, "thousands of people and thousands of faces" and "circle marketing" may be better communication methods for brands.

Trend Nine: Opening a new selling point marketing realm of "Sweet Drama Mode"

Huawei launched three preheating advertisements when it released nova4 last year, telling three simple scenes: the bird on the rooftop was frightened by a cat, and the cat shrank into a circle; the floating ball in the swimming pool was sucked into a place and caught in the sewer; the dice on the chess table was turned into a pile. This simple and clear animation form shows the concept of Huawei nova4 being easy and extremely clean, highlighting the product’s selfie and comprehensive screen, and also reflecting the change of the hole-punch screen on the product instead of the notch screen.

I have seen many brand advertisements that promote emotions, and such creative advertisements around product selling points are eye-catching. But in fact, similar selling point marketing or product marketing is not uncommon in the past year. One obvious change is that selling point marketing is not the brand product TVC we recognized in the past, but the marketing methods that focus more directly on brand products or functional demands, but are presented in diverse creative expressions .

1. Under the short video trend, how to talk about selling points in 15 seconds

Even at a time when creativity, media and technical means are so rich, cognition is still the most important demand for many brands when doing marketing. Especially with the Internet brand upgrade boom that has emerged in the past two years. Traditional brands usually need to go through a long process to establish brand awareness. When it comes to Internet brands, as the user volume grows rapidly, brands want to quickly pass a high-profile brand battle to create a brand mark in the mind of a more popular audience.

Brand proposition + action temptation is a selling point marketing routine commonly used when many Internet brands are renovated in their products or functions. Last year, Alipay used three 15-second advertisements to briefly and clearly show the use value of different functions from Yu'ebao, Huabei to life payment in different scenarios, and also strongly supports the end point of "use Alipay when paying".

From 15 seconds to 6 seconds to 5 seconds, short videos have successfully cultivated users' viewing habits, but at the same time put forward higher requirements for brand creativity. JD Electric has launched 30 advertising films at the Campaign "220V Live New Human", which provides one-stop electrical solutions for emerging consumers who love "black technology", but it has been well received. SocialBeta has also analyzed that through intensive information point output and high-energy copywriting, it brings "immediate" satisfaction to the audience, which is in line with the current consumers' fragmented and fast-food content reading habits. After all, at a time when consumers are already "desensitized", they always say that the pain points are too heavy. Sometimes using tickling to win their laughter is an excellent strategy for brands to communicate with consumers.

2. More delicate and innovative expression of products and functions

Simple and straightforward but creative selling point marketing is directly effective, but in addition to cognition, we also found that in the current fierce competitive environment, the purpose of marketing or advertising has shifted from insight into consumers' pain points to creating new demand points for consumers, so selling point marketing must also be upgraded.

A commercial released by HaiLan Home last year, "Set of the Universe" and the previous Xiaofei Yang's "Taste Journey" are both from the hands of Chen Shuozhi, director of "China II on the Tip of the Tongue". The similarity between the two is to show grand scenes through micro-photographing methods through the scenes or ingredients between square meters. Among them, "Scenery Qiankun" shows the fabric advantages of clothing brands, it uses fabric to create landscapes, which greatly enlarges the details of the fabric. At the same time, these grand "natural landscapes" give the brand new meaning, completing and sublimating product marketing.

Products are constantly innovating, and the form of conveying products also requires more innovative expressions.

3. Transform product value into brand value

Selling point marketing can also achieve brand communication. When the function of photography and photography has long become a red ocean in mobile phone brand marketing, the brand is also constantly extending the value of product functions. For example, Apple's "Shot on iPhone" marketing campaign that has been going on for many years has continuously expanded the creative boundaries of mobile phones' "casting blockbusters" and opened up an era when everyone is a photographer. OPPO, which was previously keen on entertainment fan marketing, invited four well-known vloggers to create the "Discover the Beauty of the Night" series of films, showing the night colors of Tokyo, New York and Hong Kong in the personalized shots of vloggers, and also interpreting the night shooting function of OPPO R17 Pro.

Huawei also regards product photography and video functions as one of its main marketing lines. In addition to advertising films, it has also created new imaging plans, and activities are created for users with different levels of photography hobbies and levels through holding "master classes" and "new imaging competitions". Regarding the "New Image Plan", Li Changzhu, vice president of Huawei's mobile phone product line, told the brand studio in an interview: "Huawei wants to form its own photography education system so that consumers can gradually advance in the direction of image, vision and aesthetics, so that ordinary daily mobile phone shooting can also have more artistic performance."

Judging from the above-mentioned mobile phone brands' diverse marketing measures around the "photography" function, more and more brands are beginning to understand how to convert the value of their products into user experience, thereby bringing greater brand value.

Comments:

In a sense, the upgrade of selling point marketing is that the old way of doing things is becoming increasingly difficult to fool consumers. The rise of a group of professional consumers who pay more attention to product performance and advocate rational consumption. Compared with the brand's hard work in product functions, they believe more in actively searching and seeking consumer decision support obtained by KOLs in vertical fields.

Therefore, for brands that are still struggling to find their own foothold in competition with similar products with similar prices and similar product functions, finding the value points that brands can bring to consumers is far more important than the functional points. Value points include functional use value, and can also be expanded into the value of consumers' identification with the brand. Finding the value points of products may be the new realm of selling point marketing.

Trend 10: Reconstructing Communication - The Way to Upgrade Brand Digitally

The tenth point of the top ten digital marketing trends, we want to talk about brand digitalization.

The "brand digital transformation" that emerged with the rise of social media is one of the retained topics in the marketing industry in recent years. Every brand or practitioner has its own understanding and answers to how brands should digitally upgrade, but one thing is that brands' understanding of digital upgrading and transformation is constantly deepening every year.

In 2016, a survey conducted by Strategy & (formerly Boss) in collaboration with the American Advertisers Association (ANA) and Korn/Ferry) found that 72% of CMOs believe that fostering digital marketing capabilities is crucial. But the problem is that there is no ability to "play around the world and play around". Companies need to understand what kind of marketing department they need to build, and choose a suitable digital marketing model based on their strategic goals, and then cultivate corresponding capabilities combinations on this basis. To this end, Strategy & summarizes four major digital marketing models:

Digital Branders (Digital Brand Building)

Customer Experience Designers

Demand Generators

Product Innovators

Each point is more or less confirmed in the 9 marketing trends mentioned above and even the current complex marketing world. Embrace digital platforms, connect online and offline, and innovate communication methods... More and more brands realize that the so-called digital brand building is not just "two micro and one shaking", it is a bottom-up digital capability. In the process of building this capability, it has become an indispensable part as a platform for communication between brands and consumers.

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Source: SocialBeta