In order to build a brand, a high-end brand, entrepreneurs must cultivate another ability to use "uselessness" in addition to the "useful" perspective they are good at. This "useless" ability will be the key to building its innovative enterprise and forging core competitiveness.
Author | Duan Chuanmin (Strategic Marketing Observer)
Cheering for the Winter Olympics
On January 15, less than 20 days before the opening of the Winter Olympics (February 4), Dongguan, Guangdong Province, with its subtropical climate, was bustling. A local representative company, Mousse Group, has carefully dressed up the newly completed intelligent manufacturing industrial park (also known as "Super Factory") as a "fantastic ice and snow world" to cheer for the upcoming major landmark events of the Beijing Winter Olympics and Winter Paralympic Games.
It is reported that the project named "Exploring the Dream of the North Olympic Games, Charming Ice and Snow Season" is a national Winter Olympic Awards cultural theme activity filed by the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee and in the early stage of the Winter Olympic Games, aiming to promote mass ice and snow sports, carry forward the Olympic spirit, and comprehensively help the Beijing Winter Olympics. The Mousse Group is the first stop in Dongguan for its national tour.
To this end, Mousse has obviously made great efforts, not only carefully arranging the appearance and atmosphere of the ice and snow world in the newly completed industrial park, but also setting up a simulated ice rink, ski space, Winter Olympic sports project exhibition, and setting up interactive experiences such as champion athlete sharing, Winter Olympic awards cultural theme experience, ice dance performance, ski training, mass experience of ice sports and Winter Olympic knowledge quizzes, so that Dongguan, where ice and snow resources are scarce, can also enjoy the fun of ice and snow sports. During the event, Zhang Hui, the short track speed skating champion of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Xiao Han, the world champion of the Chinese women's short track speed skating team, and the Olympic champions Chen Weiqiang and Wang Liping attended the event.
Is this a whim of Mousse? Or just rubbing the heat before the Winter Olympics? Obviously not, on January 16, the China Next Generation Education Foundation Youth Ice and Snow Sports Training Camp was officially opened in Dongguan Mousi New Industrial Park. Yao Jiqing, President of Mousse, declared in his speech: Mousse and China Next Generation Education Foundation continue to cooperate in depth, and strive to build 'Ice and Snow Sports' into our exclusive youth sports public welfare brand.
Six months ago, with the world champion of freestyle skiing and ski genius Girl Valley Ailing walked into the "super factory" of Mousse, Mousse opened the prelude to participating in ice and snow sports. At that time, it announced that it would donate 1 million yuan to the China Next Generation Education Foundation to promote the "Champion Dream Exploration Program" public welfare activities to help young people exercise, sleep and grow up healthily. The opening of the Youth Ice and Snow Sports Training Camp marks that the public welfare project of the "Champion Dream Exploration Program" has entered the official implementation stage. It is reported that the donation will be used to purchase donated sports materials and follow-up support for primary and secondary school students to carry out ice and snow sports training, so that more teenagers can participate in ice and snow sports.
Although ice and snow sports seem to be unpopular, but since the successful bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics, the national policy on the ice and snow industry has been frequently introduced, according to the relevant planning, in 2023 the country will "drive 300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports", and the total scale of related industries is expected to reach trillion yuan in 2025. Ice and snow projects will become an important part of the national fitness movement, and the fast-growing venue facilities are "expanding from the south to the west and east" - that is to say, the "ice and snow line" into Guangdong and Hainan, which are located in the tropics, is also the meaning of the topic.
It can be seen that the state is strategically arranged to develop ice and snow sports with the Winter Olympics as an opportunity; and Mousse, who loves "sports" and fully promotes the healthy sleep culture of "sports + sleep", is also quite serious in action. No wonder some media commented that this "burning and cool" activity showed the people of southern Guangdong with scarce ice and snow resources a new paradigm of "driving 300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports", and it is also an "icebreaking" for enterprises in the Greater Bay Area to respond to the call of "North Ice Moving South" and participate in promoting the "ice and snow economy".
Continuous efforts to "exercise + sleep"
Speaking of Mousse, this business is by no means simple.
It is not only the pioneer of healthy sleep system, the head brand of the domestic upholstered furniture industry, but also one of the few companies in China that adhere to high-end brand operations - and it extends the high-end operating network overseas.
The 14th Five-Year Plan clearly states that it is necessary to carry out Chinese brand creation actions and "cultivate high-end brands belonging to China" in the field of consumption. However, how difficult is it to build a high-end brand? The reason is that it is not just as simple as increasing the price, but to operate the value; it is not just the thinking of the manufacturer who sells the product, but the customer-centric development model; it does not pursue a single cost advantage based on the scale, but moves towards the differentiated advantage based on its own characteristics... In a word, high-end brands not only bring the upgrading of core users and markets, but also the upgrading of core business values, and the reshaping of core advantages on the basis of the first two.
Taking the development of Mousse as an example, it clearly proposed the concept of sleep system in the early stage of entrepreneurship, innovated new categories different from mattresses and beds, and carried out value operations around customer needs and integration of global sleep resources, thus forming its own distinct differentiated positioning. On this basis, Mousse has continuously carried out value upgrading, not only developing a full-scene experience culture based on six roots (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind), but also continuing to upgrade under the theme of health in recent years, exploring the benign interaction between sleep and exercise in an all-round way, and releasing its high-end value operation in the field of spiritual culture and lifestyle to the fullest.
Here we must clarify several misunderstandings: high-end brand is the user's psychological cognition, not just the collocation of high-end parts of the enterprise; it is a strategic operation, not a unilateral advertising bombardment can work; its main battlefield is often not the product function (although it is also very important), but in the user's spiritual world deeply cultivated.
Even in sports marketing planning, Mousse is quite particular: on the one hand, the sport must be aimed at high-net-worth individuals; on the other hand, both the project and the individual are among the best (or champions). For example, in 2018, Mousse became a global partner of the Australian Tennis Association (referred to as the "Australian Open"), became the first high-end bedding brand to cooperate with the Australian Open, one of the four major slam tournaments in the world, and the official designated bedding of the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup - together with the Yao Fund, under the witness of hundreds of sports celebrities and guests such as Yao Ming, Ye Li, Yi Jianlian, etc., opened the 11th Mousse Global Sleep Culture Tour, followed by the "Mousse Basketball King National Challenge" with Kobe. In 2020, it will become the official sponsor of the champion team in the sports field, the Chinese women's volleyball team, and open the emotional interaction mode, jointly with the People's Network and the Chinese women's volleyball team to jointly launch the "National Dream, Bing with the Ball" solicitation activity at the beginning of 2021 to sign a contract to sponsor the world tennis champion Zhang Shuai...
At first glance, sleep and exercise seem to have little to do with each other, and even some opposites, because the former requires quiet and falling asleep, and the latter requires strenuous and awake, but under the theme of health, the two have reached a unity: good sleep is very important for health, and moderate exercise is even more so. Further analysis, the two have become an interactive promotion relationship, exercise helps sleep, and becomes the best booster for promoting healthy mousse; in turn, good sleep seems to be beneficial to athletes to achieve good results... Therefore, "sleep + exercise" has become the best companion for a healthy lifestyle, and has become a new proposition for healthy life of the Mousse brand.
At this time, Mousse has completed the reshaping of its core advantages, and its core capability is not only a physical product of the sleep system under the integration of global resources, but also the satisfaction of the lifestyle of people who hold the same concept such as sleep + exercise; it is not only the functional innovation of intelligent technology products, but the brand culture identity and creative (private customization) model deeply rooted in the spirit of customers. At this time, the high-end is not a product concept, nor is it a channel concept, which really rises to the brand and strategic concept, and can really be called a high-end brand.
The "uselessness" of high-end brand building
Recently, I was invited by the Guangdong Brand Building Promotion Association to interpret the "Three Transformations and the 14th Five-Year Plan" at the "Brand Power Pioneer Forum" hosted by it.
In the process of studying the relevant documents, I found the internal causes of the following problems from a broader perspective: Why have brands shouted for so many years, but there are so few professionally operating brands, high-end brands and global brands? Why has innovation been advertised for so many years, or is there a lack of core capabilities in too many enterprises? Why mention the "three transformations" and "high-quality development"? This is because the development of enterprises in the past three or four decades has relied on material factors, relying on the dividends of population, the dividends of land, the dividends of capital, and the scale of manufacturing, while future innovation depends on creative elements, the dividends of knowledge, the dividends of technology, and the dividends of culture.
In the past, many bosses and entrepreneurs habitually asked: What is the use for me? Even more direct – how much money can it help me make? They even scoff at brand investments that cannot be "monetized", and their perception is rather superficial – either they think it is just a recognition symbol, or they regard it as an inevitable result of short-term operation, and once the operation is fluctuated, the first thing to reduce is often the brand promotion cost (or even the originally small share of brand investment).
In the home furnishing industry, most companies (even a few tens of billions of enterprises) still point to the target of advertising spokespersons to channel construction, the focus of operation is still products, channels and terminals, such brands can only be regarded as the level of channel brands, in the minds of real consumers there is no too clear brand impression, let alone brand loyalty.
Of course, this seems to be interpreted as a problem at different stages of enterprise development, or a difference in the choice of business routes. But in the practice of Mousse, we see that at the beginning of its business, it put forward the concept of "selling not mattresses, but healthy sleep", opening up customer relationship operations (giving gifts to consumers every Christmas, and insisting on giving them away for more than ten years); when it was 5 years old (2009), it launched the "Global Healthy Sleep Culture Tour", and jointly held a series of activities such as "World Sleep Day Global Healthy Sleep Summit Forum" and "Dialogue Sleep Master" to carry out cultural experience marketing. Explore healthy sleep solutions, and carry out direct communication with users in Guangdong; when it was 8 years old (2012), it opened its own value marketing process, using the creative micro-film "Bed Relationship" and "Sexual Encounter" to implant the brand cultural value into it, completing the value turn from "bed" to "bed relationship", separating itself from its opponents and creating a high-end consumer experience.
In this process, Mousse's brand communication method is also quite professional. For example, the advertising image of its wise old man has been used for more than ten years, and the expression is clear and persistent. And it does not rely on the gorgeous advertising slogan to win favors, but continues to convey a mature, stable, professional and intelligent temperament. This way is actually quite risky: the elderly do not have visibility, that is, there is no IP traffic; the language is not sharp means that it cannot point directly to people's hearts and drive sales, however, Mousse uses more than ten years of "silly" persistence, with "long-termism" to cast a powerful brand visual hammer, not only deeply engraved into the depths of the customer's soul, but also conveys the professional, tenacious, long-term and stable brand temperament of the enterprise, triggering the strong trust and brand yearning of high-end people.
Look at the six cultural (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) system that was later innovated, trying to make people sleep better through the satisfaction of various senses; and the cross-border combination of exercise + sleep advocated in recent years, no one can see The unremitting efforts and ultimate pursuit of Mousse in practicing "healthy sleep culture". These colorful and creative content and activities, coupled with the strong interaction with customers in various circles, seem "useless", but more and more people strongly experience the high-end charm of the brand. The real high-end brand is not a slogan on the slogan, but a cognitive imprint that permeates the deep heart of each customer.
Therefore, in order to build a brand, a high-end brand, entrepreneurs must cultivate another ability to use "useless" in addition to the "useful" perspective that they are good at. This "useless" ability will be the key to building its innovative enterprise and forging core competitiveness.
Because this "useless use" opens up a completely different battlefield from the past. The battle is not happening in the products, channels and markets that companies are familiar with, but in people's brains. The construction of (high-end) brands is not only a battle of knowledge and technology, but also a battle of understanding and spirit. Many businesses and entrepreneurs need to relearn and lay out.
Coaching Consultant – The Way to Multiply Performance
Duan Chuanmin, a strategic marketing expert and researcher spanning the three circles of enterprises, professions and media, is known as "the research school in practice, the practical school in research", and has long served as a strategic marketing and development consultant for many enterprises.
Advocate the "coaching consultant - the way to multiply performance", through the five steps of "setting the direction, building the team, finding the way, allocating resources, and grasping the landing", focusing on the three modules of "orientation, implementation and integration", taking the results as the guide, assisting enterprises to achieve the goal of rapid growth of performance.