Children’s Day is coming, how should brands carry out marketing promotion?

"Moeology" is probably one of the compulsory subjects for contemporary marketers. "Cuteness" has long become an indispensable "seasoning" in the business world. With the upcoming Children's Day, a major event, many brands have embarked on a massive journey of selling (pretending to be) cute (tender), and have put all their efforts into being "cute" and "cute".

Cuteness, a money-making tool in contemporary business society

A while ago, "Detective Pikachu" was released, and this cute creature with two heads and rosy cheeks won fans all over the world. According to statistics, the Pikachu IP has earned 620 billion yuan to date, proving the universal law that "cuteness is productivity."

In the Japanese drama "Escape is shameful but useful", "cute" is considered the superlative adjective:

So, what exactly is considered "cute"? Regarding the issue of "cuteness", Japanese scholar Inuhiko Shihoda wrote a book specifically titled "On Cuteness". In his opinion, cuteness has the following characteristics:

Small things that make people feel nostalgic for some reason. Without protection it seems that it will be easily hurt, a fragile and illusory thing. Romantic things have the ability to lead people into an aimless dream world. Something that fills one's heart with innocent emotions just by looking at it. Incredible stuff.

In today's stressful society, cuteness seems to have a magical power that can make people let down their guard and break the "rigid" interpersonal relationships in modern society . It is for this reason that cuteness is widely admired by people and they are willing to open their wallets for it.

Children’s Day is a great opportunity for brands to use “cuteness” to communicate with users. So, how can we play the “cute marketing” card well and act cute without making users feel that they are being pretentious?

Behind “cuteness” are three major psychological mechanisms of users

Some scholars believe that the prevalence of the "cute style" is in line with the social and cultural trend of modern commodity society that pursues popularity and entertainment rather than sublimity and criticism . From children to adults, from the East to the West, why are people of different ages and cultural backgrounds so irresistible to "cuteness"? From what deep psychology of people does this natural sense of joy and healing power come from? The following three psychological factors are necessary to make users feel cute.

1. Infant schema: cute shared “external”

A careful observation will reveal that those real or virtual things that make people feel "cute" basically conform to what scientists call the "Baby Schema". Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz discovered in 1943 that "infant schema" is a "mechanism generated within human beings" and that "lovable characters" that conform to this schema tend to inspire human love and nurturing.

The typical manifestations of the "infant schema" are chubby cheeks, big round eyes, a forehead that occupies a large proportion of the face, a short nose and chin, short and fat limbs, and clumsy swinging postures. Not only the infant state of humans, but many young animals in the animal kingdom also conform to this schematic representation.

Some researchers have also found that people can create cute patterns that conform to human visual habits by adjusting quantitative measures such as size and proportion. For example, in a 2012 study, visual information expert Sookyung Cho found that "cute" artworks can be designed by adjusting the size, proportion, curvature, rotation angle, and color depth of objects. Among them, features such as small, round, light-colored, and tilted are considered important factors in cute design in artwork design.

Look at the three pictures below. Do you find any common features?

The answer is that they all conform to the representation of the "infant schema": big, round heads and eyes, short limbs, pink cheeks/nose, and with this appearance, they can basically use cuteness to sweep people's minds.

I also wrote in my book "The Basics of Copywriting" that the world's aesthetic tendencies, especially those in the online world, have changed from the masculine aesthetics of advocating masculinity, conquest, and possession to the feminine aesthetics of loving softness, cuteness, and healing.

2. Chemical stimulation: the brain's "pleasure center" nucleus accumbens

What happens in our brains when we see cute things?

When scientists used an MRI to scan the brains of people who "feel happy because of cuteness," they found that these cute things stimulate the "nucleus accumbens" in the brain that is responsible for pleasure, and lead to the secretion of dopamine . This can be regarded as a chemical change produced by "cute" things and the human brain.

The "nucleus accumbens" area in the human brain is regarded as the brain's processing center for pleasure and reward information. When humans feel happy or rewarded, the nerves in this area will be fully stimulated. The Dutch journal Neuroscience also published a research result that showed that when we appreciate beautiful faces, the nucleus accumbens area, which dominates love and beauty, will also be significantly activated.

It seems that cute things, like the pleasure brought by beautiful women, chocolate, and love, can bring spiritual pleasure to humans in a biological sense.

Combining the pleasure that cute things bring with them into the context of modern life, we can fully understand why people are ecstatic about cute things from time to time. The monotonous urban architecture and high-pressure living conditions often put the area of ​​the human brain that processes pleasure in a passive or even resistant state . Therefore, cute things, such as beautiful women, chocolate, love, etc., are particularly precious in their ability to activate the nucleus accumbens area and cause pleasure.

3. Cognitive psychology: The “nurturing brain” system is at work

When many people experience "cute" things, they often use words such as "healed", "so cute", and "my heart melts" to describe their inner feelings. Whether it is real-life cute animals such as babies, cats and dogs, or virtual characters such as Pikachu and Peppa Pig, there is a natural urge to love and protect them.

So, where does this "unreasonable" love come from?

The "nurturing brain" theory in cognitive psychology may explain this phenomenon. The so-called "nurturing brain" refers to the fact that when adults respond to infant stimuli (faces, voices, etc.), a series of neural circuits in the brain related to parenting behavior become active, including neural network areas such as empathy, emotion regulation, motivation-reward, etc.

Scientists believe that the positive emotions humans experience towards cute things - due to the involvement of the nurturing brain system - are very similar to a mother's desire to care for and cherish her baby.

Cute or adorable things fully unleash the "nurturing instinct" of modern humans and create a sense of being "needed". The generation of these positive emotions also helps people eliminate negative emotions in daily life, which may be one of the reasons why cute things have "healing power".

Here are 3 tips to play the "cute marketing" card well

It is not easy to introduce the "cute aesthetics" of ease, joy and friendliness into commercial marketing. "Cute" is a very general concept. It can be used to praise a shy girl, or to describe the brave and cute "blue fat man"; it can be used to describe "Emperor Showa of Japan", or to describe the adorable Kumamon. If you want to play the "cute marketing" card well, accurate emotional insight and appropriate copywriting are the most important.

1. Cute Sprouting: Emotional Insights That Make It Easy

Perhaps except for cats, no one in this world can be cute casually. "Cuteness" without connotation is destined to be superficial and frivolous, and it is difficult to leave an impression on people and release positive emotional energy. If you observe carefully, you will find that the impressive "cuteness" always captures the subtle and unspeakable emotions in people's hearts. After the emotions are precipitated and filtered, they are finally expressed in a calm and relaxed manner .

In other words, people don’t just buy cuteness, but rather feel resonance from cuteness. By doing this, cuteness is no longer exclusive to children and small animals. For example, this group of short poems written by Japanese elderly people are very cute:

Need to be confirmed repeatedly

It turns out to be love

Now is the breathing in sleep

My great-grandson asked me

Have you seen

Dinosaur

My ideal type is a woman older than me

Now

No more

The tone of each sentence is calm yet a little self-deprecating. At first glance, it seems that the old man is just very childlike and cute, but after reading carefully, one will feel the sadness and sorrow of old age behind the words. It can be said that in order to transform sadness into beauty, one must have painful experiences and deep emotional insight.

Insights into the emotions of vertical groups of people may also trigger an "unexpected" marketing event, such as Starbucks' "cat claw cup". Many people just cannot understand how a transparent double-layer glass cup that just looks like a cat's paw can attract users to line up in front of Starbucks and be sold at high prices ranging from several hundred to one thousand yuan on second-hand platforms.

The reason behind this is precisely that Starbucks is well aware of the younger generation's emotional needs for cuteness.

This seemingly unintentional but "crazy-snatched" cute marketing behavior was obviously well prepared. Before the product was officially released, Starbucks had already built its reputation on social platforms that young people focus on, such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and had also preheated the product on WeChat Moments. After the product was officially launched, it aroused the curiosity of a wider circle of people through the diffusion effect of various media. At the same time, Starbucks further utilized the scarcity of the "cat claw cup" and successfully aroused people's strong desire to possess cute things.

2. Cute expression: use the word "de-sharpness"

Cute often means "non-aggressive", which is reflected in the copywriting by avoiding weirdness and humor and choosing less sharp and ordinary words.

The poster copy for "Tokyo Niigata Story" is a representative work of diluting words. The copy uses the tone of a woman's confession to calmly express the author's many inner emotions. The words used are extremely common spoken vocabulary, but they successfully create a strong emotion.

Perhaps it is precisely because the text is easy to understand that the psychological path for users to understand the text, transform emotions and form resonance is shortened.

He confessed to me.

This time, I want to take my time in falling in love.

First time drinking with my dad.

It's the same kind of wine my father has been drinking since I was a child.

I broke up in Tokyo.

Fortunately, the wine was strong.

3. Lovely “condiments”: the clever use of modal particles

As the name suggests, modal particles are used to strengthen the tone and express emotions through tone. Interjections usually appear in spoken language rather than written language, but if used properly in business copywriting, they can achieve a rare kind of affinity, as if someone is talking in your ear.

Modal particles also have a hidden advantage, which is that they can not only help texts accurately present emotions, but also help users restore the scene.

In Japan's classic Seishun 18 Railway advertisement, many one-sentence copies make extensive use of interjections such as "ma", "ah", "ba", and "ma". This not only conforms to the peaceful and diluted "Japanese aesthetics", but the interjections also act like "softening filters", bringing a summer healing emotion to the overall expression.

"Let's continue chatting like we are doing now wherever we go." Winter 1994

"How can you think about life in your own room?" Summer 2002

"I can't bring back such scenery as this." Winter 2012

Conclusion

As mentioned in the book "On Cuteness", "Once the magic of 'cuteness' is cast, no matter how ordinary things are, they will quickly be filled with a sense of intimacy, showing us expressions full of kindness, and guarding this imaginary world of innocence and comfort."

In marketing promotions , making good use of cute emotions and elements can help shorten the path into the user’s mind and make it easier to gain their favor. Are you ready for this cute marketing event on Children's Day?

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Author: Uma Xiaoman

Source: Wuma Xiaoman (wumaxiaoman)