How to come up with marketing ideas that go viral? (Down)

Add people to the formula and creativity really starts to work. People are the foundation of all communication. They allow us to see through the evolution of marketing and touch the essence of the brand . Human beings are the most basic and natural elements in the world.

All advertising creativity, whether rational or emotional, product advertising or brand advertising, the basis of advertising is to convey information.

In order to make information better received by consumers, we must first reduce the cost of information dissemination; secondly, maintain an open mind and mechanism in the process of information creation and transmission; finally, always look for fresh ways of expressing and delivering information.

These are the three paths to the beauty of information:

• Smile Pleasant
• Open
• New

4. Smile Pleasant

Advertising godfather Ogilvy said, the customer is not an idiot, she is your wife. If you think you can convince her to buy anything with just a slogan and some bland adjectives, you're insulting her intelligence.

Imagine that you hate the way people in your life talk.

One type is probably full of big talk, empty words, and clichés, and speaking to you is like giving a report. Do you think you are a leader holding a work meeting?

The other type is full of incomprehensible technical terms and jargon, all kinds of fancy concepts, pretending to be profound and mysterious.

You wouldn’t normally talk like this, so why would you talk like this to consumers? It should be noted that the most important quality of an advertisement is to speak human language. Only when creativity is drawn from people’s daily language can it have lasting vitality.

Whenever I see those advertisements in elevators, subways, and streets that say "better life, healthy humans", "leading in technology, leading the future", or "respecting quality, being extraordinary", I always want to say: you are advertising, not giving a report.

What do you call this? This is called the eight-legged essay of the advertising industry. How could you afford such creativity?

One day I was walking on the street and saw a bus from afar with a few big words written on it: Master core planting technology. I thought it was an advertisement for a seed company in the agricultural sector, but when I looked closely I found it was a dental advertisement... I was speechless.

What does a good dental advertisement look like? It should be like this:

Good creativity should show smiles, be friendly to people, respect common sense, use consumer language and integrate into consumer life. Good ideas are pleasant.

China Mobile once had three very classic segmented brands: China Mobile for the general public, and two high-value groups, namely, China Mobile's M-Zone for young people and China Unicom for high-end people.

China Mobile, I think it works - appealing to popularity and public choice

Dynamic Zone, my territory is mine - appealing to individuality and self-expression

Global Communication, I Can - Appealing to Confidence, Progress and Control

No matter which group of people you are communicating with, creativity is always close to people. It doesn't mean that only when targeting the general public should it be plain and easy to understand, but when targeting high-end people it should be high-end and classy, ​​and when targeting young people's creativity it should be wildly cool and awesome.

Also in the field of mobile communications, T-Mobile, one of the world's largest telecom operators , distributed microphones to pedestrians in Dove Square in the UK in 2009 and gathered tens of thousands of people to sing Hey Jude by the Beatles.

The big screen at the scene projected footage of everyone singing in chorus. There were white people, black people, men, women, old people, children, rich people, and beggars. Everyone was singing the same song, regardless of race, skin color, gender, or status.

At that moment you can deeply feel what T-Mobile's philosophy is: life's for sharing.

The video shot on the spot was uploaded to YouTube, reaching tens of millions of views and resonating with people around the world. Even if you don’t understand English, you can be infected by their emotions.

Good creativity can transcend national boundaries and language limitations because behind creativity lies the common essence of humanity.

5. Open

Regarding creative communication management, there have always been two ways of control:

One is called control, the other is called openness.

To come up with great ideas, you must first create an open working environment for creativity. Encourage experimentation, allow mistakes, embrace change, and look at creativity with an ignorant attitude.

The so-called controllers are afraid that the creativity will deviate from the established track of the strategy, that the information will not be expressed properly or fully, or that the creativity will not fit the brand tone. If there is a little bit of unrealistic thinking, they will quickly pull it back.

With such caution, you can only come up with the right ideas, but never great ideas.

George Louis, one of my most admired creative minds, said,

"My whole life I've heard people say, 'George, be careful.' But in our business, 'be careful' is synonymous with making ads that can't be seen. I feel better about saying, 'George, screw it, just do it!' I say that a lot because we're hired to arouse America, not anesthetize it."

Sometimes when I give training or share my thoughts, I will talk about the meaning of the name "Kong Shou":

Clench your hands and there is nothing inside; open your hands and you will get the whole world.

To come up with great ideas, you must keep an open mind, caution and control, which are synonymous with making ads that cannot be seen.

However, advertising companies often connect with corporate marketing departments and brand departments and face the company's middle-level managers. The mentality of most middle-level managers in companies is not to make mistakes, but to avoid making mistakes in front of their boss.

If the idea is done well, the first beneficiary is the company; if the idea is messed up, you will be the one directly affected. Especially for mature brands, conventional ideas can still sell products, but the effect will not be as good. However, once the ideas go wrong, the middle-level management cannot bear the responsibility.

Taking the blame is the boss's privilege. For middle managers whose benefits and responsibilities do not match, it is not worth risking their career prospects for an innovative idea. Therefore, the mentality of middle-level managers tends to be more stable, and many creative ideas are thrown into the trash before they even reach the boss's approval.

There has always been a saying in the advertising industry: the best ideas are in the trash can.

It’s not enough to come up with great ideas, it’s really great to convince clients to execute them. I remember Gao Jun from Mega Advertising said that he would never take a client unless he could see the boss. That's the reason.

A few days ago, Wufangzhai’s Dragon Boat Festival pre- movie caused a lot of controversy as soon as it was released. It was so immature, incomprehensible, exaggerated, and confusing. Wufangzhai went crazy...

(Criticism is easy, but construction is difficult)

As for me, as someone who has served Wufangzhai's direct competitors, I have great respect for Wufangzhai.

That’s Wufangzhai. How could such a time-honored brand shoot such an advertisement? Is the brand tone appropriate?

If you change the client, such creative ideas will be rejected in the first round, and there will be no chance for you to see them.

To come up with big ideas, it is not only necessary to keep an open mind during the idea generation stage, but also to open up participation nodes and allow consumers to participate during the idea execution stage.

Let consumers comment on, forward, spoof, and re-create the ideas... In short, big ideas are not about being pretentious or talking to yourself, but about having fun with consumers.

Han Han’s Fanke advertising is a good idea, but “Love XX, love XX…” is just an ordinary sentence.

Only after the idea was launched online, spoofed by netizens, and triggered a larger-scale spoof, did Fanke become a phenomenal idea.

Its entire diffusion process cannot be controlled or predicted in advance.

But it provides great inspiration for creative communication. Before the creative ideas go online, a backdoor should be reserved in advance - open participation nodes and design ways to interact with consumers. Then, you just hope that consumers are willing to play with you, triggering social fermentation and forming a word-of-mouth effect.

Also, don’t worry about your creativity being spoofed or ruined by netizens, and have an open and inclusive mindset.

Haier Group is soliciting new images of Haier Brothers from the whole society:

As a result, the activity went awry as soon as it went online, and the works collected turned out to be like this...

But Haier did not panic and did not delete all these works from the background. Instead, it released a new image promotional video #Haier Brothers Can't Be Broken# in the official name, which fully demonstrated how Haier Brothers could be broken, allowing users to play with them to their heart's content.

Haier did not try to control the direction of the topic, but only took advantage of the situation to achieve the maximum communication effect. During the peak period, 5 million people participated in the discussion and forwarded the content, covering more than 30 million users.

Let me end this topic with an early advertisement for Audi A6L, one of my favorites.

How to control? open.

Why sublimate? precipitation.

How to reward life? Start the journey again.

If you want to be in control, first learn to let go.

6. New

In an age of information explosion, consumers have already developed a way to cope with it: filtering mechanisms

Consumers will selectively pay attention, selectively recognize, and selectively participate in the pervasive advertising information. Otherwise, you will be bombarded with thousands of advertisements every day when you open your eyes. Even if you have Fish Leong, you probably won’t have the courage to live.

However, precisely because of the existence of the filtering mechanism, only 1% of advertisements will be noticed by consumers, while 99% of advertisements die quietly without being noticed.

This is not because the billboard area is not large enough, the billboard location is not eye-catching enough, or the advertisement is not played enough times, but because when consumers see the advertisement for the first time, they subconsciously make a judgment: "It's the same old thing" and "There is nothing new"...

Even if you are familiar with it, you will ignore it. This is the natural enemy of creativity.

So for good creativity, no matter what message you want to convey, always look for the freshest way to express it. Give consumers a refreshing feeling and arouse people's natural curiosity.

For lotteries, the message they want to instill in consumers is always the same: come buy a lottery ticket and you will have a chance to win a lot of money.

But the New York Lottery found a completely new way of expression: they designed a set of fonts with US dollars, and all advertising copy was produced using this set of fonts.

Although it is a cliché that lottery can make you rich, the novel methods can still make people's eyes light up.

Many people have taken a plane, and flying has even become a lifestyle, with people flying in the sky all year round. Well, I would like to ask, has anyone ever watched the safety demonstration video on the airplane?

The safety demonstration was so boring that it made people want to go to bed immediately. The textbook demonstration is this:

But some airlines’ promotional videos are so creative and unique that you want to watch them again after watching them once and they are unforgettable. I even went to video sites to look for them and watch them again, like Air New Zealand's Hobbit version of the promotional video.

(The Elf Queen demonstrates how to buckle the seat belt)

(Orc demonstrates how to use emergency breathing equipment)

(Gandalf demonstrates survival posture)

(The Hobbit’s concluding remarks)

As for Virgin Airlines' musical, Hainan Airlines' Calabash Brothers, Air France's fashion blockbuster...

We can also see that even something as boring as safety propaganda, with so much information to convey and so many restrictions, can be made into very creative content. So what else can’t be made creative?

(Life jackets and hot dancing go better together)

(The Calabash Brothers show their magical powers)

(Air France teaches you how to fly elegantly)

However, if you fall into a routine and just talk to the audience when you talk about making a promotional video without looking for fresh ways of expression, you will never come up with big ideas.

In addition to the safety publicity of airplanes, the safety of trains is even more impressive. The safety promotion of Melbourne Railway in Australia was actually made into a cartoon.

This film, "Stupid Ways to Die", showcases various stupid acts of seeking death, including those that violate common sense of railway safety, and promotes the theme of safety through an interesting interactive format. Later, this video became popular on the entire Internet and was made into a mobile game .

For the general public, the greatest new thing is news.

The best idea is to turn it into news, something new that everyone wants to know.

We have talked about the New York Lottery advertisement above, now let’s talk about the Taipei Lotto.

At the beginning, a huge poster was hung on the exterior wall of a landmark high-rise building in Taipei City. The poster shows a man kneeling on one knee, holding flowers, with the text "XX, marry me."

It was obvious that this was a proposal advertisement from a wealthy person, so the whole of Taipei was in an uproar. Citizens were enthusiastically discussing who was so rich and which woman was so lucky. Television stations and newspapers also took turns to follow up on the report. Just when the proposal news was hyped to a new height, Taipei Lotto put out an advertisement: "If you have money, you can also be so romantic."

Because of the hot topic of rich man’s marriage proposal, the advertisement received unprecedented attention. This is the power of news.

The so-called branding is actually about finding your own unique language, style, and visual system to communicate with users. The brand must find its own way of speaking and expression.

Let consumers recognize you at a glance from the vast crowd and the flood of information.

In the previous article "Six Philosophies for Creating Screen-Sweeping Creatives (Part 1)", we talked about the three basic ways to break through consumer cognition from senses to emotions to spirit: meaning, emotion, and truth. In addition to the three in this article:

• Purpose
• Emotion
• Real
• Smile Pleasant
• Open
• New

Put these words together and you get person.

Dow Chemical has a very classic TV commercial, share it with you——

Everyone is exploring, and suddenly we have an epiphany that life is a combination of basic elements. There are wonderful combinations everywhere, sodium plus chlorine forms salt, hydrogen plus oxygen forms water, but we have overlooked an element that is not on the periodic table, and that is human.

Add humans to the equation and the chemistry really starts to work. Potassium emits potential, metals contain determination, and hydrogen and oxygen emit desire. Human beings are the basis of all changes. They allow us to see through the evolution of all things and touch the essence of all things. Solving doubts, creating ideals, and extending life, humans are the most basic and natural elements in the world.

Add people to the formula and creativity really starts to work. People are the foundation of all communication. They allow us to see through the evolution of marketing and touch the essence of the brand.

Human beings are the most basic and natural elements in the world.

The author of this article @空手 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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