How did one line of copywriting for Melatonin sell products worth 10 billion yuan?

In terms of marketing ability, Shi Yuzhu can definitely be ranked among the top 3 in China.

After all, not many people can sell a health product worth tens of billions; and no one’s marketing ability can gain the admiration of Jack Ma , be invited to give lectures at " Lakeside University " and serve as a school director.

So how was the most well-known advertising copy of "Nongbaijin" that saved Shi Yuzhu - "I won't accept any gifts this year, but if I do, I'll accept Nongbaijin" created?

Let me add one more thing here: Some people say that studying and researching advertising and marketing is actually a kind of archaeology.

For example, if we want to study a student who was admitted to Peking University, we cannot just study his college entrance examination papers, but we have to trace back to his learning methods, tutoring materials, and study notes to see what reasons enabled his grades to rise to this level.

The same is true when studying advertising copy cases.

We cannot study the copywriting itself, but we need to look at the process of its formation.

1. A little common sense: advertising is a competition for attention

People's time is limited.

Therefore, we prefer to focus on things that are more meaningful to us in our limited time:

For example, reading and learning that bring you growth; or entertainment and leisure that bring you happiness; or even some trivial matters in life.

However, advertisements are basically meaningless to the vast majority of people. Few people will actively seek out advertisements to enjoy. Instead, after seeing an advertisement, they habitually avoid it.

For example, when you encounter a commercial during a TV series, you will go to the bathroom; or when you see a flyer while shopping, you will just throw it into the trash can.

For this reason, all advertising creativity, production, and placement theories are centered on "competing for consumer attention," first of all, to make consumers notice their ads and receive as much advertising information as possible.

After all, no matter how great the advertisement, how good the copywriting, or how dazzling the creativity, if consumers can't see you or remember you, everything is in vain.

So one of the essences of advertising is:

Compete for consumers' attention and let them see the advertisement; then let consumers know that there is a good product in the world.

2. Don’t trust the ability of the advertising company

To be modest, almost half of the adult Chinese can recite the famous advertising copy of Melatonin: I won’t accept any gifts this holiday, and if I do, I’ll accept Melatonin.

This advertisement not only made Melatonin the most successful health product in more than a decade, but also to a certain extent saved Shi Yuzhu, who was in huge failure and in debt of 250 million RMB at the time.

However, although this advertisement, which has gone down in marketing history, was produced by an advertising company, everything from strategy to copywriting to positioning was basically handled by Shi Yuzhu himself.

In fact, Shi Yuzhu does not really believe in the ability of advertising companies. The reason is very simple. He has always believed that: "To do advertising, you must have people who are most familiar with the products and consumers."

Because the purpose of advertising is nothing more than introducing products to consumers, only people who are familiar with both things can accomplish the task better.

Advertising companies obviously don’t have enough understanding of products and consumers. How can they possibly understand every industry when they have to take on so many cases a year?

To take a step back, even if an advertising company really conducts serious market research, how can it compare with my own experience and observation after years of immersion in this industry and countless nights of overtime in just one or two months?

Not to mention, some people in advertising companies just sit in their offices and do nothing but think.

So Shi Yuzhu didn't believe them.

So who does he trust?

3. No investigation, no right to speak

Shi Yuzhu is a die-hard fan of Mao Zedong. It is said that he only reads "Selected Works of Mao Zedong", so his management style is also obvious in the style of Mao.

For example, Mao Zedong particularly emphasized that "without investigation, there is no right to speak", and Shi Yuzhu's company has an internal regulation that every advertising employee must interview 50 consumers every week to obtain first-hand information about consumers.

What is even more commendable is that when Shi Yuzhu conducted market research, he personally interacted with consumers on the front line . It is estimated that few bosses with a net worth of over 10 billion yuan could do this.

However, the copywriting of Melatonin is based on such a large amount of first-line investigations.

When Shi Yuzhu was chatting with consumers, he discovered a phenomenon:

Chinese elderly people are actually quite stingy with themselves. Few are willing to spend money to buy such expensive health products for themselves. Most of them want to save the money for their retirement or for their children.

But when Shi Yuzhu asked these old people, why do I see you are also taking Melatonin?

The old people said that these were bought by their children for themselves, and if their children bought them for me, I would eat them.

At the same time, in Chinese tradition, one of the ways children show filial piety is to give gifts to the elderly.

According to this logic, Shi Yuzhu has insight into the essence of health care products beyond their functional attributes: their gift attributes.

Before Melatonin, most health products focused on their functional attributes, and placed the emphasis of promotion on functions such as "lowering blood pressure", "calcium supplementation", "blood supplementation", and "brain supplementation".

However, based on his own market research, Shi Yuzhu discovered that health products have obvious gift attributes, and he could make Melatonin the first choice gift for children to give to the elderly.

Therefore, he positioned the advertisement on his children; the appeal of the advertising copy was to encourage the children to give Melatonin to the elderly as a gift.

This is the internal logic and strategy of the advertising copy "I won't accept any gifts this year, and if I do, I'll accept Naobaijin."

It was this advertisement that opened up a blue ocean of health products with "gift attributes" as its main selling point.

The copywriting of Melatonin also shows that effective advertising must be supported by an excellent strategy.

4. You must frequently invade consumers’ time

We have already known that the essence of advertising is actually the competition for consumers' attention.

To compete for consumer attention, there are two ways to summarize:

1. Extremely explosive creativity.

2. Constantly invading consumers’ time.

First of all, it’s an extremely explosive creativity.

If the creative idea of ​​the advertisement is amazing, it will definitely have an advantage in competing for consumers' attention.

However, no matter how good or amazing the advertising creativity is, it is still essentially an advertisement, and consumer acceptance is still not high.

Is there any advertisement that you will never forget after watching it once? Almost none.

Even for great movies like "Forrest Gump" and "The Shawshank Redemption", it is difficult to remember the plot for a long time after watching it only once, let alone an advertisement.

However, it is undeniable that a good idea can at least stay in the minds of consumers longer.

But more importantly:

No matter how good the idea is, if consumers cannot see or remember it, then everything is in vain, because there is a time lag between consumers seeing the advertisement and actual consumption behavior.

Few people will take immediate action to buy a product after seeing an advertisement. Instead, they will consider which brand is suitable for them after they have a purchasing need.

Therefore, if you want advertising to have the desired effect, you must constantly and frequently invade consumers' time, so that consumers see you, remember you, and even cannot forget you.

When an advertisement frequently invades your entertainment and leisure time, no matter how good the creativity is, consumers will dislike it.

If your ad isn't annoying, there are only two reasons: consumers ignore you and consumers forget about you .

5. Popularity > Reputation

In most cases, the products that occupy the largest market share are not the most "favorable" products, but the products with the highest popularity.

Because in advertising terms, the so-called "reputation" and "loyalty" are relative, subjective, and cannot be measured, while only popularity is absolute and objective.

People who want to buy your product must first know about the existence of this product before they can complete the purchase.

So when there is no "fame", all other "reputation" and "loyalty" are nonsense.

In the past, the advertising industry would select the “Top Ten Advertisements” and “Top Ten Worst Advertisements” every year.

The difference is that the "Top Ten Advertisements" are selected by judges in the advertising industry, while the "Top Ten Worst Advertisements" are selected by TV viewers.

Melatonin’s advertisements have been rated among the “Ten Worst Advertisements” almost every year.

But over the years, most of the products rated as the "Ten Worst Advertisements" have survived, while the products rated as the "Ten Best Advertisements" by the advertising industry at that time have almost all failed.

The main reason is as mentioned above. Consumers will hardly have a favorable impression of advertisements because you have taken away their entertainment and leisure time.

Almost all of the advertisements for products that can be remembered are annoying to consumers.

6. “Pulse” advertising skills

In Mao Zedong's military thinking, there is another very important point: concentrate superior forces to annihilate the enemy one by one.

Shi Yuzhu used a technique called "pulse" in advertising, which is also another way of "concentrating superior forces."

Many consumers feel that the high frequency of advertisements for "Naobaijin" is actually a "false impression" created by this technique.

For example, like most commodities, Melatonin is divided into off-season and peak season.

What Melatonin does is to reduce the frequency of advertising to the minimum or even stop broadcasting it during the off-season.

It is difficult for ordinary consumers to notice the suspension of the program at this time, because no consumer would be bored enough to watch the advertisement of Melatonin.

This is when you can save on advertising costs.

When the peak season arrives, it will be broadcast with the greatest power, highest frequency, and overwhelming force. Consumers will then feel that the amount of Melatonin advertising is huge and will be deeply impressed.

In addition, it can be broadcast every other day, saving the first day's advertising and concentrating it on the second day, which will also leave consumers with the impression that the broadcast is "hot".

So the frequency of Melatonin advertisements seems to be very high, but in fact, on average, the advertising costs are not particularly high. It is said that it is not even among the top 50 .

7. The sample market cannot be too fast, and the national market cannot be too slow

After Shi Yuzhu went bankrupt, he borrowed 50 million yuan from a friend as start-up capital for Nongfu Spring.

This boss, who once had hundreds of millions of cash at a wave of his hand, actually thought that 500,000 was enough.

Because his theory is "the sample market cannot be fast; the national market cannot be slow."

What is a sample market? That is, first find a small city as an experimental sample, conduct consumer surveys, test advertisements, adjust product positioning, try to launch the product in the market, etc.

At that time, Shi Yuzhu chose a small city like Jiangyin. During this period, Shi Yuzhu was not in a hurry at all.

Every day he went to the front line to meet consumers, chatted with old men and women, and then personally revised the advertising copy word by word. He changed the title of a newspaper soft article dozens of times, and based on the results of the trial advertisements, he debugged the presentation of the advertisements, adjusted the product packaging, and so on.

I did this kind of work silently in Jiangyin for more than 8 months.

However, after all the marketing plans were implemented in the sample market, he copied the same method and launched markets such as Wuhan and Nanjing.

The slogan "I won't accept any gifts this year, but if I do, I'll accept Naobaijin" was finalized during this period and achieved great results in the market.

After proving the effectiveness of these marketing methods in the market, Shi Yuzhu began to "not be slow in developing the national market."

After that, Melatonin started to expand its territory and launched a massive nationwide promotion , starting with spending big money on advertising on CCTV, followed by down-to-earth sales pitches by promoters, which were replicated a hundredfold and exploded across the country.

Sales soared and it became a legendary product in marketing history.

8. Summary

In fact, judging from the marketing operations of Nongfu Spring, Shi Yuzhu's style is extremely pragmatic. He basically does not talk about any marketing concepts. He only keeps his eyes on consumers and only believes in market feedback.

No matter how good a marketing theory sounds, it’s nonsense if it has no effect in the market.

Perhaps Shi Yuzhu, who likes Mao Zedong, remembers a sentence that is "Practice is the only criterion for testing truth."

The following is a summary of the characteristics of Melatonin’s advertising copy.

1. Advertising is actually a competition for consumers' attention.

2. When doing advertising, you must hire someone who is most familiar with the product and consumers.

3. The copywriting of Melatonin is based on such a large amount of first-line investigations.

4. Advertisements must be frequent and invade consumers’ time.

5. To a certain extent, popularity is more important than reputation.

6. Pulse: Concentrated use of advertising resources may produce better results.

7. The sample market cannot be developed too quickly, and the national market cannot be developed too slowly.

Author: Copywriter Yu Ji , authorized to publish by Qinggua Media .

Source: Copywriter Yu Ji (ID: jimtchina)