Three "counter-common sense" of marketing

Why can’t our schools always produce outstanding talents? ——This is the famous “Qian Xuesen’s question”. When it comes to the marketing industry, there are only a lot of such questions.

• Why do some brands sell well while others do not?
• Why are people most familiar with one brand’s advertisements, but always buy another brand?
• Why can’t we win the hearts of consumers even though we have opened up all traffic channels?
• Why do you say you love me, but when it’s time to pay the bill you pick up someone else?
• Why are consumers still reluctant to place orders even though we have taken all measures?
• Why are my ideas so great, but everyone just laughs and passes them by?
• …

The myriad of questions and current situations can almost be condensed into a book called “Strange Things Seen in Twenty Years of Brand Marketing ”. But behind these strange phenomena, there are actually some "counter-common-sense" marketing logics.

1. Counter-common sense: When seeking fire, it is better to be realistic than to be fanciful

The song of spring will have few people singing along;

It’s hard to live up to the reputation.

This old saying may not be completely accurate when applied to brands, but it is partially applicable.

For example, fame does not necessarily mean sales. For example, White Rabbit, an old brand that has grown up with one or two generations, once fell into a dilemma of poor sales and was on the verge of bankruptcy. For example, those liquor brands that are most promoted on social media, almost no one likes to drink them when you ask about their reputation, and their sales are terrible.

A concept that must be mentioned here is "brand potential". Similar to the definition of potential energy in physics, brand potential energy refers to the difference in value between consumer perception and the initial value of the brand.

Any product has use value, which is the initial value of the brand. During the transaction process, consumers form their own cognitive value from products, services, etc. The gap between the two is the brand potential.

The reason that makes customers spend money to buy products must be that there is a value proposition in the brand potential that meets the needs of consumers, rather than simply doing some tricks to make people laugh.

When it comes to brand voice, many people’s first reaction must be “Durex”. Dominating various hot search lists, large-scale but hilarious memes, posters and copywriting that flood the screen... Durex has basically mastered all the brand marketing tactics on social media.

Durex's marketing strategy is to combine the target population with consumer behavior to form key labels, such as gender, marital status, whether or not they have children, age, etc., to form more than ten categories of people, and carry out targeted communication based on the different characteristics of its own products. With exquisite copywriting and posters, it has become a joke that consumers talk about with relish and are happy to spread.

Using creativity to break the stigma of "sex" and focusing on the more universal concept of "love" is the key to Durex's success.

However, after laughing, when it was time for consumers to place orders, they turned to Okamoto. Because Okamoto directly tells consumers its differentiated value on the packaging box: 001, 002, 003. Okamoto emphasizes the core value of its products at every step, and is always down-to-earth and direct, even "simple and crude" in conveying to consumers the product attributes that are built on technological barriers.

This is in line with their market positioning - mid-to-high-end. In particular, the most popular Okamoto 001 is only 0.01mm, with hardcore technology and a strong user experience.

This has created a very paradoxical situation in the entire family planning market: the copywriting of Durex next door is very impressive, but the middle and high-end customer base is in the hands of Okamoto. Why is this happening? It is common sense that brands always equate reputation with sales, but ignore the core elements such as product strength and user needs. For example, Durex is often used as a benchmark by bosses: "My product needs a copy like this."

But back to the consumers' minds, when paying, do they need a joke that people talk about with relish, or a real product?

For brands, "seeking fire" is futile. There is no need to pursue "Durex's screen-sweeping copywriting". Improving product quality and combining it with brand potential are the keys to development.

As I said: fame does not necessarily drive sales, but sales will definitely lead to fame.

2. Counter-common sense: A multi-dimensional matrix is ​​not as good as a single hole

It is said that marketing has no boundaries.

The bigger your heart is, the wider the boundaries of marketing will be. However, even if a brand has budget, energy and opportunities, its marketing boundaries will always be limited by resources.

To achieve the broadest reach, you must require comprehensiveness; to have the most in-depth conversations, you must require precision. This creates a paradox: Can reach be both broad and precise?

Wanting unity is unrealistic. The two can work together, but the premise of collaboration is to distinguish the primary from the secondary.

What a company fears most is wanting to dominate everything, but there is no company in the world that can dominate all businesses and customers. Generally speaking, the 80/20 rule is still valid in business operations. 80% of a company's profits in a single region are generated by 20% of its high-quality customers.

These customers are the foundation of the company, so the same naturally applies to the products and channels that they care about. Don't waste time and resources on failed and weak products. This is the advice for many companies that have been misled by the common sense of "perfection" and disappeared.

For brands, it is only possible to break through by concentrating most of their resources on consolidating and strengthening the direction that can gain long-term advantages and focusing on one channel.

Cutting-edge brand Meiji Landau. As a new domestic brand in the cheese industry, Meiji Landou’s domestic market share has exceeded 30%, making it the number one cheese brand. But few people know that in the early days, Meiji Landou produced both milk and cheese, but neither of them was particularly outstanding.

In 2019, Meiji Landou determined its brand positioning and product positioning, focusing on domestic cheese suitable for Chinese people, concentrating its efforts on cheese products, and using the magical slogan "Choose Meiji Landou for cheese" in conjunction with Focus Media's elevator TV channels, sweeping across elevator buildings across the country and launching a saturation attack on consumers' minds.

Since then, the entire Meiji Landou has experienced a very rapid growth, topping the sales list of e-commerce platforms many times, and its market share has gradually climbed to more than 30%, breaking the situation in which the Chinese cheese market was dominated by foreign brands such as Bel.

This also reflects a counterintuitive point: it is better to be specialized than to be comprehensive.

When corporate resources are not sufficient, seeking perfection is often a false proposition. Carrying out omni-channel and all-category marketing activities actually distracts one's own energy.

A multi-dimensional matrix is ​​not as good as focusing on one hole. Companies like Meiji Landou choose high-coverage, high-reach media such as Focus Elevator, and use high-frequency rolling saturation attack methods to achieve the goal of detonating the brand, allowing consumers to firmly remember the brand information in a short period of time.

Marketing should require continuous investment and accumulation. Just like fighting in the ring, punching randomly will only waste your energy, while you need to gather your five fingers, punch with force and hit the vital point directly.

Only by concentrating limited resources on the most critical goals can we obtain greater benefits. Once you have captured the most important position, you may find that achieving secondary objectives becomes easy.

3. Counter-common sense: To seek volume, it is better to occupy the mind than to please the channel

Channels are king; this is the best description of the first decade of the 21st century.

However, with the rise of offline channels, e-commerce platforms, new retail, live streaming rooms and other channels, channels are obviously no longer the only option for brands. Because there are so many options.

It should be clear that in market competition, temporary losses of secondary directions or channels are inevitable and even necessary. The accumulation of brand potential requires a process. Compared with other brands, gaining relative advantages requires accurate selection of channels and directions to obtain differentiated marketing momentum.

It is better to occupy the mind than to please the channel. Let’s take an example of a market where emerging brands are highly concentrated: hair removal device.

As a personal care sub-category, there are many battlefields for hair removal devices. There are Taobao and JD.com for e-commerce, Xiaohongshu for product promotion, Douyin and Kuaishou for content, and live streaming rooms are indispensable as a tool for selling products. Every place is a battlefield, every place needs marketing, and every brand has its own base.

Thanks to social media and celebrity word-of-mouth marketing, the entire category is extremely hot, but it is always difficult to distinguish the winners. Before 2018, no brand had truly dominant leadership.

Ulike rose in such an environment. Its brand marketing strategy can be summarized as "two Weibo, one Douyin, and one Focus Media". The online channel uses various social media as the main content to promote products, while the offline channel uses Focus Media's centralized media to place brand advertisements, continuously accumulating consumers' brand awareness and trust, and effectively accumulating brand potential.

Ulike CEO Pan Yuping

When the players in the same field were still simply relying on marketing models such as traffic advertising and consolidating their positions on online promotion platforms, Ulike saw that although pleasing channels and focusing on channels could bring sales, it could not help brand building.

When the cost of attracting traffic pools such as social media becomes increasingly expensive, the growth of brand products will encounter bottlenecks. In addition to the utilitarianism brought by the strong bundling of traffic and sales, there are drawbacks to precise push through online channels: it is impossible for the brand to form widespread recognition and brand impression among the mainstream population unless indiscriminate delivery is carried out, but the cost is too high.

Ulike's initial strategy was similar to that of its peers, pursuing more and more comprehensive online services. It has always remained in the "goods find people" model. Later, they changed their thinking and focused on offline elevator media targeting the public with a model of accumulating brand potential. They continuously delivered the brand advantages of Ulike hair removal devices to the mainstream consumer groups through the elevators of apartment buildings and office buildings that they must pass through every day. The repeated and high-frequency broadcast of "Sapphire is high-end" formed a high memory point among many brands and built their own brand potential. Ulike’s backend search data shows that they have already crossed over to the “people looking for goods” mode.

Temporary local losses are incurred in order to achieve ultimate victory and thus eliminate the disadvantages of other losses. Since 2016, Ulike hair removal device has dominated Tmall Double 11 sales for six consecutive years, and has occupied nearly 50% of the market share in China's household hair removal device industry, achieving brand leadership.

4. Party A’s financial thinking: What goes against common sense is routine, but what remains unchanged is the human heart.

The term "common sense" is defined as the common everyday consensus in society about the same thing. But this consensus is not constant; it is vectorial and will always change with social forms, changes in the times, and cultural background.

This is reflected in the contradiction of common sense. It is the key to help us understand the world, but it will be blocked in front of the emerging fingerprint lock. We will doubt our lives because we cannot find the keyhole - is the lock installed upside down? Why is there no keyhole?

The marketing environment is complex and ever-changing, and is always covered with coats of different materials, making it difficult for people to see its true face.

This is a bit like when inland residents come to the water's edge and their jewelry accidentally falls into the water, they try to fish it out based on their experience and inertia, but they never get it out because their common sense judgment is distorted by "reflection" and what they see is far from the actual situation.

The essence of "counter-common sense" is to eliminate the evil and promote the good, to wipe away the smeared surface of various marketing phenomena and see the real inside behind the window. Only in this way can we see the "common sense" behind "counter-common sense" and adapt to this complex world, and become the ultimate coping tool for migrating with the world.

What is contrary to common sense is the routine, but common sense is the essence, and what remains unchanged is the human heart.

Author: Party A Editorial Committee

Source: Party A Finance