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

In the 5th century BC, there was a most respected wise man in Greece named Protagoras. It is said that Protagoras taught a young man, and he stipulated that the young man would only pay tuition if he won the first lawsuit, otherwise he would not have to pay. Soon, the young man faced his first lawsuit - Protagoras sued him and asked him to pay tuition.

Even more famous than this story is a proposition put forward by Protagoras: Man is the measure of all things.

This sentence means that whether all things exist and what their nature is all depends on human perception. What a thing "is" exists only when it comes into relation with our senses.

As we have always said, what a brand is depends on how it relates to consumers and what perception and feeling it has in their minds.

What is the purpose of people buying goods? Fundamentally it is for life, a better life.

People consume brands based on their needs, desires, dreams, fears, etc. When consumers are shopping, they are not choosing brands, but choosing life. Choosing a brand means choosing a lifestyle; brand is a part of life.

People exist because of consumption. Creativity must be measured by people.

All creativity has to do is work on people's hearts.

1. Purpose

Meaning is the starting point of a great brand. To build a brand, the first thing we should think about is not the brand vision or brand mission, but the meaning of the brand. What does a brand represent in people’s lives? What role do you play? How do people perceive its existence?

When a product is put on the shelf, it changes from a product to an object of desire. When products are consumed, people will give them more meaning during use. As time goes by, products find their place in people's lives and take root in their minds, and then the products acquire public significance.

Products are appropriated as culture and brands are born. These meanings cannot be simply presented by the physical functions of the product; they must be understood and explained by consumers.

To demonstrate meaning in creativity is to show consumers a picture of an ideal life after owning the product and to arouse users' yearning.

SUUMO, Japan's largest real estate portal, provides a massive amount of housing and property information, supporting everyone to find housing that suits their personal lifestyle.

Due to the economic downturn in Japan in recent years and increasingly fierce competition, SUUMO's sales performance has not been very good. In 2016, SUUMO planned to launch a promotion , so their focus was naturally on what a suitable house meant to everyone.

Maybe, not just everyone...

The same is true for every animal. They also need a home that suits them. Out of their survival instinct, they will also look for a home that suits them.

For example, the hermit crab, "nature's home master", loves to move and is particularly picky about where to live. But housing prices on Earth are rising rapidly, and sometimes even they can’t find suitable new shells and can only live in bottle caps.

SUUMO, which claims to find suitable housing for everyone, decided to find houses for these marine animals as well. They invited Hakuhodo Kettle, in collaboration with Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, to design a comfortable and environmentally friendly new home for the hermit crabs.

They studied the body shape, weight, curling range and living habits of hermit crabs, and selected starch, a strong, lightweight and biodegradable organic material, to make them in three sizes.

(Project name: Shall We Move? Shall We Move?)

When these SUUMO brand logos appear on beaches around the world, every tourist can understand what housing means in SUUMO.

80% of people buy SUVs not for off-road use. Chinese people are crazy about SUVs simply because they like the tall and mighty appearance of SUVs, and the superior vision they get over the vehicles in front and behind when they are stuck in traffic. For most SUV owners, the farthest place they drive to is probably to take their children to travel around the area on weekends, and occasionally cross a puddle or a dirt slope.

However, advertisements for many SUVs are still filled with scenes of deserts, Gobi Desert, grasslands, and winding mountain roads, which are scenes that consumers will rarely see in their lifetime. Sometimes I think that this kind of thinking inertia is really scary.

As long as it is a family car, it is a scene of a family of three living happily together; as long as it is an SUV, it is a wilderness road race; as long as it is a high-end model, it is the red carpet, gentleman's suit, and the president's office. Not only are the products not much different, even the advertisements are the same, so what kind of brand is there? It's just the name and the logo that are different.

On Children's Day in 2017, JEEP Cherokee launched an advertisement: Children who have seen the world are stronger.

He is not afraid of the dark because you once took him to see the brightest star in the dark night.

She is more assertive

Because the world you helped her discover is much bigger than the classroom.

He likes to ask why more than his peers

Because you have already opened the door to his curiosity.

He is brave and fearless in the future

Withstand the wind and rain and explore the boundaries of the world

In the future, he has a distant place in his heart

Break through the fences of mountains, lakes and seas and experience the wonders of all living things

In the future, he will always be curious

Keep your enthusiasm for the unknown until you find the answer

because

Now he is on the journey with you

See the most beautiful world

Children who have seen the world are stronger

Jeep

He is not afraid of the dark because you once took him to see the brightest star in the dark night.

She is more independent because the world you have helped her discover is much bigger than the classroom.

He likes to ask why more than his peers because you have already opened the door to his curiosity.

This is the true meaning of SUV, taking children to see a bigger world. Rather than just talking about freedom, distance, controlling the world, and traveling without boundaries...

As early as 2012, we had worked on a similar plan. At that time, we believed that the greatest significance of SUVs was to connect children with nature and to take children to experience the outside world. As for Western Cross Country? Does not exist.

It’s just that this creative idea never had the chance to be released, because every client is different.

2. Emotion

When it comes to creativity, there are often rational appeals and emotional appeals. A person's decision is either made rationally or emotionally. These are two complementary decision-making styles that are unique to humans: emotion and logic.

Many people think they are rational and logical. But the fact is: every decision a person makes is primarily controlled by the emotional center in the brain. Reason is mainly used to prove the correctness and rationality of emotional decisions.

For example, if you like someone, you think you like him because of his strengths, advantages, and talents (rationality). But in fact, usually you like a person first, and then you look for strengths and advantages in that person to prove that your liking is correct and reasonable.

Just like if you hate someone, you will only see that person's shortcomings and ignore everything else.

Therefore, Antonio R. Damasio, a member of the American Institute of Medicine and a world-recognized leader in the field of neuroscience research, wrote a book, "Descartes' Error", to demonstrate the relationship between human emotions and logic.

Descartes is the founder of modern rationalism. His belief that humans are rational animals dominated the mainstream for centuries. However, Montaigne said that if you burp or fart at a banquet, you will lose all your rationality.

According to emotional psychology, humans have six innate basic emotions and seven acquired higher-level cognitive emotions. But we who are creative don’t need to be so academic. There are basically three types of emotions that can ignite human action:

1. pursue pleasure and avoid pain;
2. Pursue hope and avoid fear;
3. Seek recognition and avoid isolation.

Generally speaking, consumer goods that can bring people immediate and direct physiological enjoyment mainly appeal to pleasure and happiness, such as soft drinks and snacks. Coca- Cola ’s “Creating happiness is up to you”, Lay’s “Every moment is a joy”, Harbin Beer’s “Let’s enjoy beer together”, Nestle Coffee’s “Tastes great”, M&M’s’ “Irresistible fun”, Skittles’ “Unlimited play”, and Oreo’s latest “Play together”.

Products that do not bring immediate benefits, take some time to take effect, or require consumers to invest time and energy mainly sell hope. For example, skin care products and cosmetics, weight loss products, and learning products. After using my products, you will become more beautiful, stronger, more powerful, more tasteful, richer, smarter, and more charming...

For example, Nike's just do it, Li Ning's everything is possible, and today's paid knowledge products only know how to sell hope by creating anxiety and fear among users. The two subway advertisements of Suntech Group are a perfect example of giving you a slap in the face before giving you a sweet treat.

Pantene's classic motivational advertisement Canon, you may have all seen the Thai one, but the Russian one is also good.

Pantene’s starting point of thinking is that if you have beautiful hair, you can be confident in your life, you can shine, you can shine.

This is hope.

For products that are not for personal use and require social participation (products used in front of a group or shared with others), they usually appeal to recognition. For example, products for household appliances used by the whole family appeal more to family affection, such as McDonald ’s’ “Let’s be together”; products shared with friends appeal to friendship, such as Johnnie Walker’s “Friends encourage me and I move towards my dreams” and Maxwell Coffee’s “Good things should be shared with good friends”.

Creative ideas related to love, family, and friendship are all aimed at creating a sense of belonging among users and making them have a strong emotional identification.

Or some niche products tend to label users and highlight their identities, making users feel proud of their unique identities and generating identity recognition. For example, Douban 's "Our Spiritual Corner"

For example, in the luxury car market dominated by ABB, luxury, technology and driving pleasure are all represented by Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW. The new luxury brand Infiniti uses the emotional experience marketing of "Dare to Love" to create differentiation, positioning itself as the most emotional luxury car brand and establishing emotional resonance with high-end consumers with a young mentality.

3. Real

The Rolling Stones have a classic slogan that feels true. You say your product is great, so can you present it to consumers in an intuitive way to make your product real and tangible?

As the saying goes, seeing is believing, hearing is not.

No matter how good you say you are, consumers won't believe you. They prefer to trust their senses. Everyone who enters a supermarket, clothing store, or bookstore will look, touch, smell, and listen before buying... and then make up their mind.

Reality is a fact experienced by the senses. You have to use vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch to make people feel and resonate with the feeling that "it is indeed so".

When the carpet brand STEP launched its new carpet products, it sent 400 gift boxes to consumers. Each gift box contained a pair of slippers made of carpet, allowing users to personally experience the texture of the pure silk carpet.

In the end, out of the 400 people who received the gift boxes, 342 placed orders for the carpets.

In order to promote the public good of not spitting gum everywhere, Dublin chose to use an intuitive way to let you see the consequences of spitting gum - the shoes are stuck to the road and cannot be removed.

When it comes to public service advertising creativity, a simple reminder is often just scratching the surface. Smoking is harmful to health, drinking is harmful to health, and drunk driving endangers public safety, but consumers often turn a blind eye and will not cry until they see the coffin. The only way is to show the consequences intuitively.

The Red Ribbon Campaign makes it clear that breast cancer is more common than you think.

See, this is the consequence of not getting checked in time.

Similarly, if you want to talk about how thrilling a zoo is, just show it directly to the consumers.

In his book "Brand Brainwash", Martin Lindstrom said that the most addictive sounds are the laughter of a baby, the sizzling of a steak, and the crackling sound of pouring a drink into an ice glass. For this reason, many brands spend a lot of effort to transform their product packaging to produce sounds that arouse people. Jam jars are intentionally designed to make a "pop" sound when opened, making consumers feel fresher, cleaner and safer; Chrysler set up a special department to analyze and create the perfect closing sound.

Because today, before buying a car, any consumer will sit in it, hold the steering wheel, smell the car, get out of the car, and listen to the unique muffled sound when the door closes.

So it is no wonder that before every Rolls-Royce leaves the factory, its design team extracts a scent that is a mixture of wood, leather, linen and wool from more than 800 elements and adds it under the seat.

Starting from the five senses, the most intuitive and most trust-winning creative idea is to convey the information to consumers through the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.

What you see is what you get, which is the new consumption spirit today.

Traditional advertising creativity is based on gaining consumer recognition. But hawking-style advertising, which competes to see who can shout the loudest, is always difficult to impress consumers.

If you want to better convey information to consumers, you might as well transform the information into sensory experience, emotional resonance, and spiritual meaning. From senses to emotions to spirit, these are the three basic ways to break through consumer cognition.

This is from the perspective of communication content. What kind of communication content should big creativity construct? In the next article, I will discuss the other three philosophies of big creativity from the perspective of communication methods and concepts.

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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