April Fools' Day marketing minefield, it will explode on the spot if you are not careful!

April Fool’s Day is coming soon. In this article, the author will share with you the creativity and minefields of April Fool’s Day marketing. Enjoy!

To entertain people, we need to combine it with brand characteristics

Leverage marketing consists of three components: “leverage”, “trend” and “marketing”.

1. "Borrowing" refers to skills and methods, including screening and review, finding entry points, positioning target audiences, and choosing delivery channels. There are common routines.
2. The “trend” refers to the theme, which includes nodes, hot spots, etc., and requires the “borrowing” technique to screen and analyze;
3. "Marketing" is to refine and reorganize the characteristics of the brand itself, and it must be combined with "momentum" through the technique of "borrowing", that is, the brand characteristics must be combined with the theme.

When doing marketing through leveraging momentum, many people pay too much attention to exploring and applying the "momentum" (theme), emphasizing the characteristics of the theme, and put very little effort into the "marketing" (brand characteristics) itself. As a result, the resulting marketing products have few or even no brand characteristics.

This kind of finished product is what I call "universal" and has strong adaptability. The so-called universality is a concept I often mention, that is, between the theme elements and the brand characteristics, only one of them should be highlighted, and the other can be replaced by other content. For example, the copy for the Spring Equinox is "The sound of rain falling on the Spring Equinox is faint, and the slanting wind on the willow bank brings guests home", which emphasizes the theme elements, but it is suitable for almost all brands. What are the brand characteristics?

For example, the poster of Supor below does emphasize the brand characteristics (product name) by splitting characters, but the overall picture and text only show a spring outing, and the theme element "Spring Equinox" is placed small on one side. If the word "Spring Equinox" is replaced with "Lichun" or "Qingming", there will be no sense of incongruity.

Therefore, marketing products that overemphasize the theme and ignore the brand characteristics are nothing more than a passing cloud for the audience, and do not create any memorable points for the brand at all.

The target audience is busy, how to make the brand catch the eye

So, let’s talk about how to grab the target audience’s attention from the very beginning so that the brand characteristics can be deeply rooted in their minds.

Target audience: What is the target audience? Simply put, this marketing is related to me. It has nothing to do with me, why should I care? Therefore, the content must be relevant to the audience and stimulate their nerves.

In life, the word "life" is nothing more than "life" and "living". Therefore, common content that is relevant to everyone includes:

1. “Live a better life” material gains : When promoting marketing, emphasize that the audience can obtain substantial material benefits from the marketing, and the enthusiasm for participation will become very high. For example, the recent Alipay continuous store consumption to share red envelopes, department stores and supermarkets commonly used 10% off, online games with a knife 99 level, Toutiao Express Edition (the image design adds the three words "get cash"):

2. "Live Longer" Safety and Health : Safety and health are issues that everyone cares about, and the marketing and promotion in this regard will have a strong communication effect. Last year, the safety buckle of a tourist suddenly fell off while playing the extreme flying project in the Ordovician Scenic Area. In fact, it was a marketing strategy. Although it was a negative example of marketing promotion and had a huge negative impact on the brand, it is undeniable that the marketing has made headlines and has a very strong spread. The same is true for articles with various "carcinogenic" and "health-preserving" titles that have the strongest spread in the circle of friends.

Very busy: In the Internet age, information producers are as numerous as the grains of sand in the Ganges, and there are innumerable channels for obtaining information. Of course, information is pouring out. In the big data era, people have a very short time limit for obtaining information, and fragmented reading has become the norm. Therefore, in order to instantly catch the audience's attention, visual appeal is the most powerful one.

The visual attraction here refers to the first-rate, zero-thinking aspect, and also emphasizes the stimulation of color, pattern, and shape on human visual nerves. For example, the color red is a commonly used color because it is very stimulating to humans. In addition, it is also acceptable to choose the opposite color among the commonly used colors of other industries, such as the black and white packaging of Weilong spicy strips.

April Fools' Day theme elements must be consistent with brand characteristics

The entry points for April Fools' Day are theme name and fun (fun):

(1) Theme name leverages the potential (“Yu” is pronounced as “yu”, “yu”, “yu”, etc.):

The word "遇" can be used in matchmaking websites such as Baihe.com, as well as in the ride-sharing and express delivery industries; the word "浴" can be used in the bathroom products industry, as well as in sex toys; "鱼" is related to the catering industry; and "语" is related to the telecommunications industry, such as mobile phones and telecommunications.

At the same time, you can also avoid fooling people and do reverse marketing.

For example, product quality is not foolish , and the slogan "xx is not April Fool's Day" is advocated, such as "quality is not April Fool's Day"

(BMW smart, not stupid)

(2) Fun , which means that on April Fools’ Day, people will share anything they find interesting.

You can start from two aspects: black technology and alternative:

Black technology actually refers to the fantasy of future technological products. Because it is the future, there can be unlimited imagination. When promoting products, remember to use the word "future" to your advantage and let your imagination run wild. But remember to label the product as a fantasy, not a real product, so as not to mislead consumers:

For example, today’s spicy strips, Yunji garlic, Ele.me’s helicopter food delivery, Amazon’s pet voice assistant, and Mayu’s smart sanitary napkins.

Alternative , break through the product concepts under the inertial thinking, and launch product concepts that are unique and in line with brand characteristics. When promoting, the core lies in the brand characteristics. Do not create product concepts that are irrelevant to it, otherwise they will be gone in a flash:

For example, Wangzai Milk Facial Cleanser, Hammer Ugly Camera which is the opposite of Beauty Camera, Toutiao’s “What You Hate” module which is the opposite of “What You Like”, and Sina Weibo’s “You are on the hot search” which allows you to be on the hot search even if you are not a celebrity.

Not entertaining, commemorating the unruly wind

In addition to the usual elements, April Fools' Day is also the anniversary of Mr. Leslie Cheung's death.

First of all, I would like to state that I am a fan of Mr. Leslie Cheung and I have great respect for him. It is extremely immoral to exploit the deceased. When I was writing this paragraph, I deleted and revised it repeatedly, always worrying that readers would misunderstand that I was encouraging the exploitation of the deceased.

In fact, my purpose is just to open up creative ideas. Therefore, the following suggestions are just to stimulate discussion for emotional articles (commemorating and remembering Mr. Leslie Cheung). I hope that emotional articles can introduce Mr. Leslie Cheung to more readers from multiple perspectives, so that more people can know and understand him. At the same time, I hope that when everyone is commemorating the past, no commercial marketing will be involved.

If it really involves business marketing, the brand characteristics should be kept simple, and just put a logo. It is shameful to exploit the dead.

Song Sharing

You can choose entry points by module. Sharing Cantonese songs and Mandarin songs is the norm, but remember to mark your personal preferences. After all, Mr. Leslie Cheung has so many good songs. Compared to the slow songs that most people are addicted to, sharing fast songs is also a good entry point.

In addition to singing, an inventory of the songs created by Mr. Leslie Cheung can help us know and understand his identity as a singer from many aspects, mainly the composition aspect, including: "Silence is Golden", "Starting from Zero", "When the Wind Rises Again", "Red Beauty and White Hair", "Red", "Caring People", "Loneliness is Harmful", "Hot", "So Far and So Close", "Glass Love", "Red Butterfly", "I", etc.

Video Sharing

In the film and television field, of course there are classics: "A Chinese Ghost Story", "Farewell My Concubine", "A Better Tomorrow", etc. You can also share some lesser-known movies and TV shows, such as:

Lesser-known films: Leslie Cheung and Jia Baoyu in "Red Mansions", Leslie Cheung and the Third Prince of Central in "Applause"/"The Unemployed", Leslie Cheung and Hui Man-keung in "New Shanghai Bund", Leslie Cheung and Fong Sai-yuk in "Forbidden City";

Leslie Cheung and martial arts: Jin Yong's "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" (Yang Guo), "Ashes of Time"/"A Chinese Odyssey" (Huang Yaoshi), Liang Yusheng's "The Legend of the White-Haired Witch" (Zhuo Yihang), Gu Long's "Sword Washing" (Fang Baoyu), Leslie Cheung and Fang Shiyu's "The Heroes in the Palace";

Leslie Cheung behind the scenes of film and television: scriptwriter of "Story of Princess", director of "Midnight Song", "Sex and Zen: Love and Zen 2", producer of "Back Then", "Side Views", "From Zero" and "Left and Right Hands".

Other aspects

Award summary: Awards are the most intuitive and objective way to understand a person. We can review Mr. Leslie Cheung’s award-winning works from the two aspects of music and film and television.

Life: You can find some suitable topics, such as Life Like the Wind (The Wind Trilogy), which I will not go into details here.

Minefield 1

There is a limit to how foolish people are. Don't treat your customers as fools.

April Fools' Day does not mean false marketing.

In the fun element of April Fools' Day, you can tease customers and entertain the public, but you cannot tease customers: on the one hand, the promises made on April Fools' Day must be fulfilled, so the jokes cannot be too big, and you must be careful to grasp the scale. You can't make a big mess or give but not take, otherwise it will only erode the brand's credibility. On the other hand, don't make jokes that hurt the feelings of customers. For example, a real estate project may run a buy-one-get-one-free promotion on April Fools' Day, but the result is that you buy a house and get a balloon for free. The customer's strong sense of loss before and after will affect their purchasing decision. In addition, jokes that use sensitive words and involve moral issues are not allowed.

Minefield 2

There is a limit to entertaining people. Don’t exploit the dead.

First of all, traditional Chinese morality holds that the dead are the greatest, and exploiting the dead is a very immoral behavior at any time. Marketing promotions involving ethics must be done in moderation. For example, the sexual marketing I mentioned before can cause negative effects if you are not careful. Secondly, fan economy has always occupied a very important position, especially in the Internet age, the speed and channels of information transmission are very different from before. Saying the wrong thing or using the wrong word may lead to a public relations crisis.

On April 1st, we can commemorate the dead, but we cannot exploit them.

Source: Weird Brain Hole