How to take advantage of hot topics to create popular advertising materials?

01. Why do selling points need to take advantage of hot topics?

After working in performance advertising for a while, I realized that I was naive. For performance advertising, you must first consider the results, and then think about creativity, innovation and other advertising forms. Creativity without results is a tree without roots. It can be used to make beautiful tree sculptures, but it will not grow, will not bloom, and will not bear fruit.

So later, after doing countless performance ads to ride on the popularity of other topics, I gradually figured out some tricks. They can't be called golden rules or martial arts secrets. They are purely the little thoughts of an old screenwriter. I'd like to share them with you here. If you think I'm right, click like. If you think what I'm saying is rubbish, just take a look at it casually. Without further ado, let me get straight to the point.

Let me say one more thing. Although I am a screenwriter, my creative style is scientific. I like to make all abstract and metaphysical concepts concrete and digitized, especially performance advertising. Later on, you will find that the style of our series is to anchor all the points of performance advertising creation into quantities. Every time we create, we must first determine the quantity one by one, and then optimize the variables to come up with the most quantitative creative idea. This is also my idea for performance advertising creation.

So, before we learn how to take advantage of hot topics, let’s think deeply about what our purpose is. How do you prove that you have thought deeply? That is, whether your answer is an objective statement that is infinitely close to the essence of the problem, and to what extent it can be verified.

We found that the essence of riding on the trend is to win audiences by improving audience appeal and online sense.

Why do we need to improve audience appeal?

Because a hotspot is a link between two strangers. The first role of hot spots is that of "medium". Those of us who have studied chemistry know that in order to make two substances that are extremely difficult to react react, in addition to specific conditions, a reaction enzyme must be added.

For most of the audience, we are just shameless advertisers. In order for us to react with the audience, we also need enzymes. We can usually use hot spots as enzymes. Think about it, why is the first sentence that foreigners who like to chat up usually related to the weather? Because the weather is a hot spot that can be found everywhere, it is the most useful enzyme.

Why should we improve our online sense?

Because when a product is associated with a hot topic, it can improve the audience's subconscious perception of the product.

I have come into contact with many products, and I found that some old IPs or old products often want to take advantage of the hot spots, such as Legend, Empire, Three Kingdoms, etc. Users seem to like these classic nostalgic themes, but in fact, what they want to play are classic nostalgic themes that are always maintained, upgraded, and keep up with the times. Riding on the hot spots is to give these users a signal: our products are always being updated, you see, I still understand what Zhang is.

In fact, these two key points are about how to get closer to the audience. We impress the audience through hot spots, shorten the distance between merchants and audience, and achieve the goal of becoming friends with the audience. Becoming friends with the audience is the first step to a transaction (download).

Now that you understand why people want to jump on the bandwagon, you may be eager to try it out. But let me pour a bucket of cold water on you. Do you still remember that you were very excited in your first chemistry class and wanted to light up a magnesium stick and play with calcium carbonate and hydrochloric acid right away, but the teacher would first tell you the consequences of dangerous operations and some safety issues?

It’s the same with riding on hot topics. Hot topics are a double-edged sword. If used well, they can explode in volume, but if used poorly, the account will be lost. To this end, I have compiled a hot category table for everyone. Everyone must memorize this table and pay attention to which hot spots can be used and which hot spots cannot be used:

First, you must use the highlights of the hot spots

How to determine highlights? The simplest way is to see which element is more brainwashing. The appearance of brainwashing elements in advertisements is a precursor to explosive growth.

For example, if we take advantage of classmate Zhang’s popularity, what is the highlight? Washing hands with three fingers, camera switching, and crunching meat are all highlights; changing clothes with a lightsaber, and the BGM and speed upgrade are highlights.

It is best to develop a mindset when watching Douyin. When you see a video that interests you, close your eyes and think about what is the only thing that impressed you about this video. Then write it down in your material library. As you have more material libraries, they will become a cash cow on your creative path.

Second, revitalize the hot spots

Audiences will not want to watch videos that remake hot elements in their original form. A large amount of pure imitation will cause aesthetic fatigue to the audience, and it also goes against the audience's need to watch hot topics to see the boundaries of their extension.

This element answers a question that many students have deep in their hearts: what exactly are the audience watching when they watch hot topics? It’s definitely an opportunity to watch the fun, to see how we can play around with this hot topic and how we can express our emotions.

So, how do we take advantage of the popularity? There are two ways:

The first is the positive hot spot method

Start from the hot spots and combine them with products. First, develop creative ideas for the hot spots, and then match the ideas one by one according to the product selling points.

The matching principle is: the creative point is either a direct display of the selling point, or it can form a causal relationship with the selling point that is recognized by everyone.

For example, the hottest topic in the first half of last year - high-quality male humans, we used the positive hot spot method to play with it like this:

First, we use the "chromatography method" to generate creative ideas for this hot spot:

The creative ideas we can use from the table obtained by the chromatography method include: the human race in Fantasy Westward Journey, after digging up high-level beasts for treasure, decided to do a group dance, or change the lyrics, or catch a baby, and have the baby dance, etc.

Pros and cons of this approach:

Advantages: Hot spot activities are effective and easy to get attention (better in attracting general users);

Disadvantages: It may not be used on the core selling point;

The second method is the reverse hotspot method

Start from the selling point, expand the expression of the selling point, draw the information with a mind map, find the hot spots, and use the hot spots to match the selling point display one by one;

Matching principle: The selling point display should be completely consistent with the hot spots

For example, one of the selling points of a certain ancient-style business game is that girls love to play ancient-style business mobile games. Then we expand on this selling point and present the cold selling point in the form of specific scenes, actions, expressions, etc.:

Advantages: Can closely follow the requirements of the launch and accurately express the core selling points (better effect of attracting big R);

Disadvantage: It may not be possible to take advantage of the hottest topics at the moment.

Okay, that’s all about how to combine products to ride on a hot spot. In fact, the method is not very difficult. The key is that we must clearly understand why we want to ride on the hot spot and not blindly worship the magic of the hot spot. That’s all for now. Later we will have a systematic explanation of the scientific creation of performance advertising, which will be updated continuously, so stay tuned.