After studying 200+ brand cases, 50 product and marketing thoughts were summarized

Regarding brands, new consumption, and marketing, I have recorded some of my previous thoughts and summarized them into 50 random thoughts to share with you:

1) Most brands either stand out by marketing their products with cost-effectiveness and alternatives to big brands, or they keep piling up various "elements to enhance brand power" to grab consumers' attention, or they reap the benefits by occupying a certain category and become famous through social media marketing. Most of them are "tool brands".

2) Behind all consumer product opportunities are: brand mission, category branding, and product differentiation.

3) With the upgrading of digital consumption, the competition among brands is not just about upgrading, but about elimination, and the competition among enterprises is not just about competing, but about seizing.

4) Market to your users. Attracting the attention of people who won't buy your product is actually a waste of time and money .

5) The fastest way for startup brands to get admission is to jointly promote emotional stories from the founder’s original intention, the underlying values ​​of the brand to the product, the exploration of the business model, the culture behind the brand and the empathy of consumers .

6) Misaligned competition is the only principle for any enterprise to participate in market competition. A small business can be used to support a family, but if it wants to grow bigger and become a benchmark in the market, it must be sufficiently differentiated.

7) While Zhong Xue Gao sells dumplings and desserts, Heytea launches artificial meat burgers and opens its first pet social store, and Airbus expands from pasta to Western steaks, behind their seemingly unfocused business lies the ambition of these brands to get involved in multiple fields and expand their business. For new brands hungry for growth, cross-border business means much more than just amplifying momentum and maintaining brand vitality. It is more of a trial run for finding a second growth curve.

8) There is a widely circulated new Moore's Law in the marketing circle - the technology adoption life cycle. In the first stage, the core of the product is to solve the "satisfaction points" of 2.5% of innovative consumers . If most products cannot cross this gap, they will die. In order to cross the chasm, brands must focus on a single market, a beachhead, win dominance in a small, specific market, and use it as a springboard to win expansion into adjacent markets, such as Santonban, Jane Eyre yogurt, etc.

9) The essence of beauty brands is to create dreams! When a consumer gets a beauty product, what brings her beautiful fantasy is called the brand, and what is applied on her face is just called the product. Only when the two complement each other can it be considered a true "beauty brand". Brands need to give consumers a sense of self-identity and dreams, and make them feel who they are when they put on this lipstick, rather than just putting it on as a good-looking color that attracts men.

10) Every weak point of a founder, something you don’t understand, don’t know, and don’t have experience with, will undoubtedly become the company’s shortcomings. Even if you don’t understand intellectual property, you will make mistakes at the beginning because you don’t understand it and don’t pay attention to it.

11) The difference between good marketing and bad marketing lies in whether it can magnify the advantages of the product and gain recognition from more people.

12) The meaning of marketing is no longer to help brands with advertising and marketing activities, but a closed loop of " brand communicating with consumers - understanding consumer needs - and driving product innovation through consumer feedback."

13) Every consumer has his or her own set of logic from cognition to consumption decision-making, and can quickly find his or her own "optimal choice" without the need for brands to preach to him or her.

14) The relationship between a brand and its users is not one of looking up to each other, nor is it a simple buyer-seller relationship. Instead, it is about co-creating your own culture with your users . If there is no overlap in (perspectives), it will be difficult to create a product that will make users scream.

15) Content is connected to user needs on one end and to the brand core on the other end, and is becoming a “new shelf” for new consumer brands to showcase themselves. In other words, consumers are actually paying for the content before they get the product.

16) Everything is created by humans, and behind all rapid growth is the support of the team. Solve the people problem first. Otherwise, no matter how high the brand’s starting point is, it may end up being empty talk. So you must think clearly: Can the ability structure of the people you recruit meet the needs of brand building at this stage?

17) For users, rather than whether you can change the world, they care more about whether your product can solve their pain points and change their lives. Always think: What value can we provide to users? This is the intangible value that is difficult for competitors to imitate.

18) The most important thing is that you need to know: who you are, where your energy and abilities lie, what you can do, and finally what resources you can integrate . This resource integration capability can be said to be a talent of a brand and also part of its core competitiveness.

19) Many times we find that the relationship between brands and consumers is indifferent, which makes many users indifferent to the brand. In other words, it is difficult for users to have emotions towards the brand, and it is impossible to arouse users' emotions. This is the most dangerous part of branding .

20) A brand without connotation is not qualified to have a relationship with users. Ultimately, what makes users truly unforgettable about a brand must be something that touches, shocks, and gives them feelings. The entire mission of a brand is to create things that make them feel happy and to build valuable products and services.

21) From winning consumers’ favor (attention), liking (purchase) and loyalty (bias determines preference), brands gradually win their hearts. In this process, brands have more initiative. Everything is centered on the user, and everything else follows.

22) Among the three "golden rules" of user operations (circle, emotion, and sense of participation), circle should be put first. Because it is the cognitive basis of user operations, only with circle awareness can we effectively mobilize emotions and sense of participation and achieve word-of-mouth explosion.

23) It’s not enough to just create content, it’s about creating excellent content . The gap between content and extreme content is the gap between the mountain at your doorstep and Mount Everest.

24) Soft power such as appearance is actually very easy to imitate and surpass . What's more, today when the Internet has broken down the barriers to information dissemination, if a product becomes popular due to its good looks, thousands of homogeneously packaged products will emerge and copy your strategy at almost no cost.

25) “What will defeat translators, drivers, chess players, and accountants is not better translators, drivers, chess players, and accountants, but robots. There are more and more cases of cross-border robbery.

26) Today’s consumers not only want to eat eggs, but also want to eat organic, nutritious free-range eggs, and eggs laid by hens with values. What are the eggs laid by a hen with values? Only when companies operate their chicken farms in accordance with the concept of sustainable development and with a responsible attitude towards consumers can they produce hens with value.

27) The failure of many companies is due to the failure of their top leader. They have dreams, feelings, passion, and actions, but they also have many fatal flaws that are common to many founders: they are easily trapped in founder YY.

28) Many founders are sentimental people. They easily feel involved in something. If they particularly like a product or something, they will dive into it. Unfortunately, most of the time they don’t think about market research, product design, model demonstration, etc., but just live in their own little world of emotions.

29) To truly achieve brand upgrading from the ground up, we must focus on three questions: Why change, for whom, and how?

30) If you want to create a hit product that will impress users, achieving 100 points in core attributes is just your duty, and only if you achieve 120 points will you just have a chance.

31) Don’t ask whether a brand is old or not. A brand will never get old . What will get old is only the brand’s product strength.

32) When creating a product, don’t try to please everyone or have everything.

33) The so-called Internet celebrity hit phenomenon does not reflect the material needs at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, but the spiritual needs at the top of the pyramid.

34) Whether it is toB, toC or the current hard technology startups, you can actually use the syllogism of brand building. First, you must be clear about the advantages of your products. Second, you must clarify the main differences between you and your competitors. Third, you must figure out the pain points of consumers. All three points must be combined. After finding this point, how to verify it? Three evaluation criteria, do customers agree? For sales? Do you hate your opponent?

——Jiang Nan Chun

35) Segmentation is an excellent entry point for new brands to start up, but the ultimate path for an enterprise is to use the brand to break through the limitations of the category.

36) Business must explore the essence of business and return to human nature, only then can there be sustainable business.

37) First create value for your product , then talk about marketing.

38) Abandon survivor bias and do not infinitely magnify the successful experience of a certain brand based on a specific environment. Instead, you should unravel the truth and truly see from the essence what others did right from 0 to 1, and from 1 to 10?

39) When building a brand, sometimes it is not difficult to add, but the difficult part is to subtract.

40) There are seven weapons to achieve sales conversion: reciprocity, liking, contrast, aversion (pain points), consistency, social proof, and scarcity. And liking someone must start with appearance.

41) Brand marketing : Compared to the high-end "highbrow" products, this generation of young people prefer the straightforward and down-to-earth products.

42) The consumption concept of those born in the 1990s and 2000s is completely different from that of those born in the 1980s and 1970s. I asked someone born in the 1990s, would you mind telling others that the brand-name clothes you are wearing today are rented? She said of course not! How environmentally friendly is this?

43) Brand management is just like hotel management . It requires a certain amount of maintenance and upkeep every year. This is not an expenditure but a strategic investment.

44) To build a brand, you need to be a little “stupid” or even a little “slow” and achieve four excellences: excellent products, excellent user communication, excellent brand language, and excellent user value.

45) Business is a protracted battle. At the beginning, it tests inspiration, bravery and luck. What follows is perseverance, vision and rationality. ——Wu Xiaobo

46) The process of defining a brand is actually the process of forming brand culture , which is an early part of brand building. However, many founders often skip this important step and start focusing only on sales issues, and then determine their competitive advantages and describe ideal customers.

47) The current wave is an alternative brand opportunity brought by the new consumer group, which completely replaces the relatively rigid and stable consumption pattern of the previous generation. This is why we say that "all industries are worth redoing." What we can expect is that in the next decade when those born in the 2000s and 2010s become the main consumers, there may be another wave of business opportunities for the re-manufacturing of consumer products.

48) People who don’t understand popular culture cannot spread it well. When designing and disseminating information, you need to know the social and cultural background, what people pay attention to, what people want to see, and whether what you disseminate can touch the sensitive nerves of the public.

49) What kind of product is a hit product? Before purchase, let consumers have expectations for the product; when purchasing, let consumers be surprised by the product; after purchase, let consumers talk about the product and recommend it to their friends.

50) If you have patiently read to the last 50th article, do you have anything to add? Article 50 is left to you all.

Author: Sister Mulan

Official account: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)