Author: Jiangnan Chun Founder and Chairman of Focus Media
Photo: Visual China
Source: Zhenghe Island
2022 is my 30th year in the brand marketing industry and the 20th year I have pioneered Focus Media.
Friends who know me well know that I communicate with thousands of customers a year, there are startups, there are mature companies, there are also the world's top 500 companies, after the meeting I especially like to pick up the mobile phone to make a record. When I have free time on the weekend, I will read many books, take many notes, and many pieces of thinking will slowly accumulate and put together several books, that is, "Seize the Mind" in 2019, "Dividends of People's Hearts" in 2020 and "Cracking Growth Anxiety" in 2021.
In fact, these ideas in the book I understand as a record of the times and co-creation with customers. In the Spring Festival of 2022, I stopped, reviewed my own books and reading notes, sorted out the summary of my experience in Focus's 100 billion-level investment, and wrote down these 99 reflections to share with you.
001.
Different ways of playing at different stages of the brand:
When starting a business, it is necessary to create a unique function to buy points, and find and seize the origin crowd through accurate distribution and social planting;
When running to hundreds of millions, it is necessary to use brand positioning + detonation to break the circle, and become the first choice for a new category or market segment;
When doing billions, new products should be stacked, scene creation, stimulate potential demand, and create commercial increments;
When rushing to more than 10 billion, we must continue to consolidate the leadership of the industry, increase the brand potential, export values, establish cultural identity, and become a leading brand.
Many people's failure is that the method is correct, but the stages are misplaced!
002.
Small and medium-sized enterprises should not excessively pursue refined operations, tactical diligence can not solve the strategic problems, to 200 million to 500 million years of revenue, brand breaking circle is the core strategy of the stage.
Small and medium-sized brands that do not break the circle, the elimination rate is amazingly high. If it is three years, at least more than half of the new brands will stagnant or even fall, and even if it is a new consumption track, capital will chase those brands that run in the front, and the rule of two and eight has always existed.
The biggest reason for the stagflation of a new brand is that there is no circle breaking, and there is no growth and no future without breaking the circle.
New brands are prone to fall into a kind of "origin trap", each new brand has a group of hardcore fans, these people and brands naturally fit, high loyalty, but its disadvantage is that it is easy to reach a ceiling.
Many people's failure is to flutter in the lake for too long and never look at the capacity of the sea.
003.
When the promotion was started, it was effective, and then it was not promoted, and it was not sold, because competitors were promoting.
Traffic is also effective, but the accurate traffic is limited, want to buy more will inevitably be inaccurate, traffic is bidding, the more you buy, the more expensive. With traffic bidding to achieve higher sales volume, profits are easily swallowed up by traffic.
Those who come fast usually go fast, and short-term pleasure does not bring long-term development.
004.
Five years ago, there was a saying in the advertising industry: All advertisements that do not calculate ROI should not be invested.
Now everyone thinks: can calculate the ROI are too difficult to vote, because your traffic algorithm is no good but the platform, the platform will calculate your ROI thoroughly, there is no strong brand, you while fighting with the opponent promotion, while trying to spell content to spell traffic, in the end is just no profit hits!
Every time Internet advertising is displayed, clicked, and converted, it can be tracked, because of this feature, many companies use ROI as the orientation of Internet advertising, which is a "computable sense of security", but ROI orientation makes enterprises more inclined to promote and traffic forms that work immediately, step by step to the quagmire of volume and price killing.
005.
In fact, what is a company competing for? It is the brand perception of consumers.
There is a choice of cognition, there is a consumer's name to buy, you are not easy to fall into the price war, promotion war, traffic war.
If there is no consumer's named purchase, not the consumer's preferred choice, nor the consumer's default option, then you are at most a factory profit, it is impossible to enjoy the brand's excess profits.
006.
Brands and channels should go in both directions to form a "push-pull synergy"!
Brand pull: the attractiveness of the brand to consumers, so that consumers can actively choose a brand in many goods;
Channel thrust: When consumers want to buy a product, whether a product is easier to reach and acquire.
Thirty years of marketing, the 8 words I believe in the most are: deep distribution and preemptive thinking!
007.
In the old days of traditional media, we seemed to live on Earth; then in the PC Internet era, we lived in the solar system; and now in the era of mobile Internet, we seem to live in the Milky Way.
In the Milky Way, even if you are given 100 horns, you will not be able to sound. If you want your ads to really work, go back to earth and use centralized media to detonate your brand in the real world.
The mobile Internet information explosion is the Milky Way, and no matter how much investment is, it is easy to drown in it, so your brand must return to the earth and penetrate people's limited living space.
008.
Although I have been advertising for 30 years, I think advertising is actually an anti-human industry, and no one wants to see advertising. Advertising is a kind of interruption, a kind of interruption.
What we should really think about is how to put the advertisement in a special scene that consumers will take the initiative to see, so that the advertisement can get effective attention and realize its value return.
009.
Effective attention is the starting point for all business activities. Its defined scope is not the consumer "seeing", but the consumer actively "seeing".
The Internet is very developed, people get more and more information every day, but the information that really sees and remembers in their minds is less and less.
010.
Brand advertising is not Viagra, brand advertising is a process from quantitative change to qualitative change.
Ads with correct targeting may only lead to an increase in awareness and awareness, and beyond the inflection point, there will be a sustained increase in sales.
Brand advertising tends to be slower and longer than traffic ads.
011.
The value of a brand is to build trust, reduce transaction costs, and create a premium.
In times of economic downturn, people will be more cautious about spending and spending money on brands that are more secure, more certain, and more trustworthy.
During the economic downturn, the head brand should dare to shoot, which is a good time to open up the gap and expand the share.
IPADATABANK found in a study on the effectiveness of brand marketing that cutting brand marketing budgets may help protect short-term profits in the face of an economic downturn, but after the economic recovery, brands will become weaker and less profitable, while smart companies invest more money in brand marketing, win a greater voice, and thus have the ability to achieve long-term profitability.
012.
There are usually four reasons for advertising and poor performance:
First, the brand positioning and advertising content are not correct. There are no reasons to say why you are chosen over others. The core of the media is reach, and the key to how to touch consumers is advertising content.
Second, the amount of media delivery is not enough, and it has not been penetrated. If the money is not enough, we must focus on the core media, focus on the core area, and penetrate the minds of the core population.
Third, social planting is unfavorable. Consumers look at the advertisement and feel very good, the result is to go to the Internet search, word of mouth evaluation is not good, decisively give up the choice.
Fourth, traffic harvesting is not ok. After the advertisement was played, the offline channel outlets were not enough, and the shelves were not enough. The online omni-channel layout is limited, and the traffic operation capacity is limited and cannot be caught.
013.
Mature brand awareness is already very high, so marketing should be more scene-driven, good advertising is the creation of the scene and the induction of potential demand, good scene advertising will take the initiative to create purchase impulses. What does this mean? Significant reduction in costs and active growth in business.
For example, when people have eaten the delicious duck neck, and then repeatedly use the advertising slogan of spicy and fresh flavor to seduce users has limited effect, so they say on the elevator poster of the office building: There is no tasteless duck neck, what class. On the community elevator poster said: There is no tasteless duck neck, chase what drama. In scenarios where there is no just need, the potential demand is triggered.
014.
Why are the big brands that make money easier on e-commerce platforms?
First, big brands bring their own traffic, and many users are brought by the brand's own traffic, without spending traffic costs.
Second, big brands buy traffic ads, and the conversion rate is higher. Because of the high awareness and recognition of large brands, the probability of clicking on ads and closing transactions will also be higher than that of ordinary brands.
Third, strong brands bring greater premium value, high gross profit margins, and when e-commerce is promoted, the promotion space of strong brands is much larger than that of ordinary brands.
Big-name brands have strong power, high enough premium capabilities, and high ad conversion rates to make a profit on the traffic platform.
015.
Traffic advertising solves the problem of "buy it, buy it, buy it at a lower price"; brand advertising solves the problem of "love it, love it, why love it".
Buying without love is single and unsustainable; without brand advertising to accumulate and solidify brand recognition and trust, sales are unsustainable.
016.
Product effect can not be integrated, brand advertising is long-term, effect advertising is short-term, it is difficult to integrate, but can be coordinated.
017.
Social media planting has become the norm, but the dividends of planting grass are over. Now everyone is planting grass on the grassland, a bunch of grass is planted on a grassland, how can it be discovered by consumers?
While others are still planting grass, you should plant a big tree. The brand volume must be raised to a level that everyone is familiar with, and then everyone will notice the big tree and the grass planted under the tree.
018.
As long as there is the ultimate product, consumers will automatically come to the door? The Internet age allows everyone to make a voice online, and the cost of word-of-mouth transmission is greatly reduced, thus eliminating information asymmetry?
The truth is often the opposite! The richer the information, the more developed the communication channels, and when the Internet allows everyone to make their voices heard online, the communication efficiency between brands and consumers begins to decline. Your brand is planting grass, your competitors are planting grass in reverse, and so many different article views still make users unable to make judgments.
Consumers with limited energy are overwhelmed and rely more on brands to make spending decisions. Branding will play an increasingly important role as an information simplifier.
019.
The dividend of population growth is over, but the dividend of people's hearts is unfolding; the dividend of traffic is ending, but the dividend of branding is unfolding.
The brand is the long-term dividend, and the brand continues to accumulate in order to enjoy the compound interest of time.
020.
The driving force behind China's consumption growth is the consumption upgrade of the 400 million middle class.
The first is that the middle class needs self-compensation and self-reward after working hard;
The second is that the middle class wants to become a better version of themselves and achieve a self-transition of personality, which is a spiritual need.
The 400 million middle class is the consumer vane group, and whoever controls their heart controls the future.
021.
The rise of new consumer brands is first of all to eat the dividends of the new generation of people and new demand after 90 and 00, and then to eat the dividends of new channels and new traffic.
New people and new needs will give birth to a new generation of brands. But the new channel new traffic dividend has passed, what should the new consumer brand do?
Only by implanting the differentiated value of the brand into the minds of consumers and solidifying the value cognition can the new generation of brands produce a moat and enjoy the compound interest effect.
Seizing people's hearts and minds and seizing offline is the biggest opportunity for new consumer brands in the next stage.
022.
Wang Xing, CEO of Kantar China and Global President of BrandZ, said at the "2021 Kantar BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands" press conference: For advertisers and brands, the efficient combination of online and offline, content and scenario-based, and the dissemination of brands through "double micro and one shake and one focus" will become the most effective paradigm for future communication.
The social media brands represented by Weibo, WeChat and Douyin have been deeply planted, and the brands represented by Focus Media have been widely detonated in the daily life scenes, and the interaction and resonance of the two will be the core position to help brands recover and grow strongly in the post-epidemic era.
The combination of online double micro-shake content marketing and offline focus scene marketing is the best combination of this era.
023.
An excellent brand strategy must meet three "points" at the same time: it can not only reflect the advantages of the product, but also reflect the difference points with competitors, and can directly hit the pain points of consumer demand.
A good brand must be three points in one, indispensable!
024.
The slogan is actually a condensation of a competitive strategy, a reason to choose you over someone else.
A good slogan has nine words: customer recognition; sales use; opponent hate. Don't advertise too much of a sentimental and value output, that's the prerogative of the successful.
025.
A good brand image advertisement is the aura of the leading brand, and it is easy for followers to blindly follow suit. Nike is not successful because of just do it, it is because it is successful that it can be said to be just do it!
Nike started out as a technology-leading sneaker (functional value), then became the equipment of top athletes (label value), and then when the world recognized Nike, Nike began to export values (perseverance, never-say-die spirit).
Just like people who have a lot of money are often qualified to say: I am not interested in money.
026.
There are usually three ways to find a good slogan:
1. Force the boss to die. Ask your boss at the bottom of the matter: If you only have 5 seconds to face customers, how can you simply say in one sentence how to differentiate between you and your main competitors.
2. Visit Pin Crown. The reason why they became sales champions, they must have said something right, hit the user's mind, and finally became the sales champion.
3. Interview loyal customers. Loyal customers not only buy you but also recommend you to others. Interview what they said when they recommended you to others.
027.
Synergy = upward pry + downward pry
Upward pry is online pry traffic. For example, consumer goods brands can drop to the Tmall search box or the JD search box in the advertising screen to drain the online platform.
Downward can drain the terminal, pry the merchant, such as maternal and infant products for offline interactive experience demand is higher, the advertising screen in the drop can be the advertising point near the three kilometers of the mother and baby store, drained to the store.
028.
The brand advertisement is "Air Force", and the traffic and push are "Army". A combination of "Air Force" and "Army", the "war" wins the lowest cost.
Don't try to rely on the air force to parachute to occupy the position, the air force can not replace the army. It is unrealistic to rely solely on brand advertising to achieve a surge in sales.
The job of the "Air Force" is to explode the psychological defense line of consumers, so that the "Army" can seize the position and occupy the results at a faster speed and lower cost.
029.
In an era when everyone is talking about digitalization, socialization, and private domain, when they are looking for KOLs, KOCs, and anchors, Kantar's latest research shows that the cognition and choice of marketers are not the ideas of consumers.
Some of the social and online advertising media that marketers prefer to use, such as influencer content marketing, consumers are often indifferent, and the net preference rate is only about 10% or less.
030.
Remember a formula: brand potential = brand differentiation× mental sharpness × reach intensity.
Building a strongly differentiated brand perception and telling a brand story that can cut into the pain points of consumers will never become outdated.
People's needs can not be fully met by any brand, you can always cut into a segment of the crowd, a segment of the scene, you can also create a new function, become the first.
Not only to have differentiation value, but also to be the first choice in a certain segment, like having a sharp nail and then using a powerful media hammer to concentrate high-frequency strikes and nail into the user's mind.
031.
The best tactic against strong competitors is to go in the opposite direction, effectively hitting the innate weakness of the opponent's strength and leading the enemy to where you are best at fighting. You hit yours, I hit mine!
Representative case: Feihe uses "more suitable for the physique of Chinese babies" to deal with powerful international brands. Pepsi used the "choice of the younger generation" against Coca-Cola's "century-old heritage authentic Coke".
032.
Some companies have limited budgets but prefer a decentralized style of play, with a few punches in each place.
Is it effective for a TV show with a rating of 0.4% to vote for 10 head columns equal to 4% ratings? No, it is basically equal to 0, even if the people reached are exactly the same. 4% of the head column can detonate the brand.
The limited budget needs to be detonated in a concentrated manner, otherwise the amount is not enough, and it will not form penetrating power - if you want to win the business war for the minds of consumers, you must concentrate firepower to penetrate the blood-brain barrier of consumers, and the concentration is strong enough to achieve.
Victory does not necessarily belong to the side with the largest number of troops. Victory belongs to the party capable of concentrating the greatest forces at a decisive location. That's the key.
033.
Many Internet celebrity brands are prone to a misunderstanding that the brand has a high reputation, and sales do not grow because they have touched the ceiling.
In fact, the Internet will amplify the body feeling of discussion heat, and the brand of hundreds of thousands of users, coupled with the promotion of "marketing means", can produce a lot of people planting grass and hot discussion.
However, when you really visit randomly offline, not many people know about it, let alone go to second- and third-tier cities to investigate. The people that these brands fail to influence are the huge opportunities for consumption increments.
034.
The complete marketing chain should achieve "three in one":
The first is the high-speed direct access to users of brand advertising, with the aim of brand building (who are you?). What's the difference? Why? ）；
The second is social planting for content marketing (what's your value?). What are the advantages over your opponents? What do users say? ）；
The third is the shopping guide harvesting, which guides users to make purchases quickly in physical terminals and e-commerce terminals.
035.
The first to break into the minds of consumers is called first, and the first thing to do is never called first.
Baguif was the first to make a cheese stick, and Miaoke Lando was the first to break into the minds of consumers, and finally became the first.
Don't think that a good product alone will definitely win, consumers think that you can win.
Innovation is not as good as the sense of innovation, and the innovation perceived by consumers is the real innovation, which is called subjective thinking and objective thinking.
036.
New brands to break the circle, in fact, mature brands also have to break the circle, but they break the larger circle, from the solidified life scene to the focus of the new life scene.
Mature brands come with potential energy and trust, and if they better connect and stimulate potential demand, they have the opportunity to generate more incremental space.
037.
Investment is very similar to investing in advertising, the most important thing to invest is to have a compound interest thinking, and the brand is the same, do a thing that can be accumulated and can be copied for a long time, in order to enjoy the compound interest of time.
Today you may bet on a drama, or bet on a variety show, but next year, you must be able to bet right? Today you made a screen brushing article, next year will not be able to make the same screen brushing article?
Find the core population, find the core media, and accumulate the brand mentality for a long time, and the effect of compound interest will become larger and larger.
038.
Now everyone talks about attribution analysis, attributing the user's purchase behavior to the last click before the purchase.
But this model apparently ignores a propagation law, which is the impact on the user before the last click.
It's like a person eating five buns and eating enough, but not attributing the fullness to the last bun.
In general, brand advertising to social planting to traffic harvesting, this is a complete causal chain, and the final result is the joint action of a series of causes, which cannot be discarded through attribution analysis.
039.
JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) is a concept proposed by Harvard Business School professor Christensen in his theory of disruptive innovation, which is "when [the scene]... I want (motivation)... in order to (satisfy the emotional and the meaning of life)...". The premise of this task model is to have a "scene", and the scene and the consumer are strongly related.
In today's era, the "thing" itself has been extremely rich, the importance of functionality has gradually given way to the solution, the "person" in each scene of the problem, emotion and meaning of life need to have a systematic solution to meet, the scene demand trigger is the largest commercial increment.
040.
People get exposed to 2,000 brands a day, but none of the brands that appear in the scene have anything to do with you.
Therefore, teacher Wu Xiaobo said on the year-end show that only brands that appear in the scene that can make you look twice are called brands related to you.
041.
There are never shortcuts in this world. From selling goods to selling brands, it requires long-term accumulation and detonation at key points in time.
Remember to do a good job of 5 linkages:
Positioning linkage, a sentence to say the reason for choosing you, not choosing others;
Time linkage, do things that can be accumulated for a long time, and enjoy the compound interest of time;
Firepower linkage, key nodes should concentrate firepower to open up, saturation attack detonation;
Identify with the linkage, break the circle to become a public brand, change from an Internet celebrity brand to a public brand, and become the social consensus of consumers;
The linkage of the store or the linkage of traffic operation should transform the channel outlets of the brand power online and offline into the actual purchasing power.
042.
Everyone likes to talk about cost performance, in fact, what is the real formula for cost performance?
Tangible value plus intangible value, divided by the formed cost plus intangible cost.
Enterprise competition has developed to today, tangible value and formation are almost the same, and to really improve the cost performance, it is necessary to enhance intangible value and reduce intangible costs.
What is the maximum intangible cost? The cost of trust is the biggest intangible cost, and branding is the most effective way to reduce the cost of trust.
Brands can also highlight intangible values such as consumer taste, identity, emotional resonance, and cultural identity. Therefore, the importance of the brand is to reduce the intangible cost and enhance the intangible value.
043.
One of the most famous quotes in advertising is that I know half of my advertising dollars are wasted, but I don't know where that half is wasted.
In fact, half of the advertising cost is invested in your target consumers, and the other half may be potential customers, not buyers, decision makers, but may be influencers and communicators, and ultimately these brand communications will constitute the construction of the entire social field.
044.
From a corporate perspective, they all want advertising to be accurate and want to hit the target audience that will generate purchases.
From a marketing point of view, the market chain effect is generated by five groups of people: decision makers, influencers, buyers, experiencers, and communicators.
Not only to affect the buyer, but also to influence the decision-makers behind the buyer, and finally the communicator, the needs of consumers, purchasing power, cognition will change over time, not a brand of customers now, the future may be. Therefore, big brands should dare to expand their circles and form a social consensus when advertising.
045.
Traffic play requires high conversion rate and high ROI support, the more accurate the population label, the higher the conversion rate, but the more accurate, it means that the number of people is smaller.
When the online brand develops to its precise crowd boundary, the precision traffic play method becomes a short board that hinders its growth. When brands try to get incrementals into a larger pool of people, roI becomes very ugly.
Usually this is the time point when the brand is scaled up.
046.
Consumers go through about 5 psychological stages from exposure to advertising to completing purchase behavior: attracting attention, generating interest, cultivating desire, forming memories, and purchasing actions.
Brand advertising mainly plays a role in the first 4 stages and is the basis for consumers to form cognition. Performance advertising, on the other hand, focuses on the last link, facilitating "buy action."
Brand advertising and performance advertising work together to shorten the consumer's decision-making chain.
047.
Consumer goods need to master two shelf theories:
First, the realistic shelves, the more terminals the product enters, the better the shelf position, and the greater the probability of selling.
The second is the shelf of the consumer's mind, in the consumer's mind, whether you are on the shelf, how big the brand surface is occupied.
The penetration rate of the real shelf X the penetration rate of the consumer's mental shelf is your comprehensive sales ability.
048.
1% penetration in 10 markets is not as good as 10% penetration in one market. Because 10% of consumers in 1 market will detonate the remaining 90%. So focus on a key market segment, high-density coverage of consumers.
When the market penetration rate exceeds the critical point, the entire market is automatically detonated, achieving exponential growth.
049.
Some brand ads do not immediately lead to a surge in sales after dissemination, and marketers think that investment is wasted.
Essentially, the role of brand advertising is not only to bring short-term sales, but also to discourage the possibility of homogeneous competitors entering.
When you have the core differentiation value, the saturation attack of brand advertising will make you the first to seize the user's mind, forming an entry threshold and a moat to prevent being swept in.
Once you seize the mind, the imitation and delivery of the follow-up will actually remind the user of you, and they invest fifty yuan for every hundred yuan they put in, which is the siphon effect and black hole effect of the preconceived brand.
050.
When a brand becomes a representative of a certain type of product, most people will directly use the name of the brand, and some brand names are even used as verbs by consumers, such as "Baidu" and "SF to you".
Brand has become synonymous with the category, in the consumer mind has a clear enough exclusive word, consumers will naturally think of you first when making a choice.
A good brand is to become a standard, to become common sense, to become synonymous with categories, and to become a choice in the hearts of users without thinking.
051.
People are easily influenced by the word "magic", and many brands guide the customer's intuition and strengthen a psychological cue through the saturation of an advertising word.
When a brand's advertising word or concept is formed, its gravitational force will continue to act on the customer's senses, affect customer perception, and form a psychological stereotype.
Advertising is all about building conditioned reflexes and cognitive stereotypes.
052.
Why are some products always in stock and can't be brands? The reason is that there is no accumulation of core brand equity.
The brand represents a hint of trust, especially a well-known brand, which will subconsciously hint to you its sense of strength, reliability of quality, influence on herd choice behavior, etc.
053.
How to do brand premium? The core lies in whether users are willing to pay a premium for the lifestyle and attitude expression attached to the product.
You need to help customers become who they want to be, and every choice they make, every product they buy, shapes their identity.
When a customer buys you because of the cost performance, he will also forget you because of the more extreme cost performance of other brands, so do not fight for the cost performance, but to accumulate and solidify your identity label, emotional resonance, or cultural identity to stimulate the customer's spiritual desire.
054.
The development of entrepreneurial brands to mature brands, from fragile to solidified thrilling leaps, often has three aspects:
Scale solidification - occupying the most market space in a limited time;
Capital solidification - to strive for the most capital in a limited time;
Mental solidification – occupying the consumer's mind for a limited time.
Scale solidification and brand curing is an iron law, only scale curing has a hot money influx, in order to further detonate the brand and penetrate the mind, and the bilateral effect of brand detonation and scale solidification will lead to the next round of hot money influx and brand upgrading.
055.
Today's access to information has a common feature, that is, to vote for your preferences, targeted feeding.
However, the truth is often that the article that swipes the screen in one person's circle of friends has never appeared in another person's circle of friends.
The existence of algorithms improves the accuracy of transactions, but the "precision" delivery of online traffic advertising is easy to cause the "information cocoon" effect, missing many potential consumers and relevant actors, experiencers, and communicators who may affect consumption decisions, and advertising has become a narrow notice.
When the brand lacks effective large-scale reach and cannot form a high-density and high-concentration penetration, it cannot reach the tipping point and thus constitute a social consensus.
And once there are more FMCG brands, they are increasing the traffic of the target group, the traffic price will immediately rise, and the sales cost will become difficult to bear!
056.
Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman argues that repetition triggers a sense of comfort and familiarity with cognitive relaxation.
It is difficult to tell the difference between familiarity and truth, and familiar things are easier to believe because there is no need to mobilize the brain's "slow thinking system" to enter a state of cognitive relaxation and make comfortable and simple judgments.
Brand is to establish fast thinking and become the intuitive choice of consumer subconscious.
057.
Daniel Kahneman published a new book, Noise, in 2021, "Where there is judgment, there is noise." In a world where noise cannot be avoided, how do brands cross noise?
The core is to focus on differentiated value, detonate the brand in a high-frequency manner through a centralized medium with very high visibility, and cross the noise with enough energy fields and shock waves.
058.
"Field" is time and space, "scenery" is the scene and emotion, in the time and space of waiting for the elevator to take the elevator, the unique scene has created the value of the user's active viewing of advertising, and the user naturally needs information to fill the blank space in the brain in a moment of idleness.
Focus was founded because it found a scarcity scenario that hundreds of millions of people must go through every day and will take the initiative to look at advertisements.
059.
Effective scene advertising is "time, location, people", fully combining time, space and user needs.
Tianshi: Find the gap in the user's attention, let the user stay and accept;
Location: The easiest and most frequent place for users to pass through, so that the advertisement is fully exposed;
People and: Create ads from the user's standpoint and emotional point of view.
060.
In this era of rapid imitation, the rate at which a new product is imitated is often three or six months, and at most it will not exceed a year.
To recognize this matter, we must choose the right time to attack, find the correct differentiated positioning, and seize the consumer's mind as quickly as possible.
Detonation brands should be "fast, accurate and fierce" in the time window period, quickly grasp the opportunity, accurate positioning, and attack in saturation to seize cognition. Otherwise competitors will soon follow suit, forming an inner volume.
061.
In war, the weak rarely win the strong, and the few win the more! The core strategy of Zeng Guofan to fight wars is to "harden the village and fight a stupid war", which is essentially to find a favorable position and focus on organizational resources for a long time to firmly occupy this favorable position and accumulate advantages.
The same is true in commercial competition, where a position of comparative superiority is first occupied and the focus on forces is focused to form an overwhelming advantage.
062.
Price reduction promotion is the simplest means of all marketing strategies, and the same is true of throwing money into traffic, if the core driving strategy of a company's growth is to only use the simplest means, the enterprise does not have any core competitiveness in the long run.
Mr. Drucker said that enterprises have two core competitiveness: one is to create differentiated products and services, and the other is to become the first choice in the minds of customers through brand marketing.
063.
In the same way as a price reduction promotion, when a media outlet uses "cheap" as a reason, entrepreneurs and brand leaders need to calm down. Cheap advertising is often the biggest price.
Limited exposure cannot form the detonation effect of broad social consensus; low-frequency reach cannot break through the blood-brain barrier to form a memory; poor media quality and chaotic advertising environment will reduce the brand image; cannot obtain a strong endorsement effect, can not let C-end users have trust, let dealers have confidence, let the team have morale.
Cheap is often expensive, and expensive is often cheap. When companies miss the time window, the price paid is the most expensive.
064.
The media environment, the media itself and the content message together affect the user's perception of the brand.
"Media as message" means that what the brand wants to convey is just as important as the medium through which it is delivered and where it is delivered.
The information received by customers is not only the advertising content of the enterprise, but also the media environment in which the advertisement is located, and the advertisement is placed in the mainstream media, implying high quality and trustworthiness.
The user's perception of the brand is essentially a comprehensive perception, focusing not only on what the brand "says", but also on "where to say" and "how to say".
065.
Consumers have five mental laws: one is complex, two are limited, three are preconceived, four are insecure, and five are full of curiosity.
Therefore, the brand positioning should be concise and clear, the brand occupiers should be one of the best, if not, the new category will attract attention, the brand communication should be preemptive, and the brand content should contain a letter of trust to establish trust.
066.
Some companies do not make money for the time being, why is the valuation still very high?
The reason is very simple, it has a more valuable resource in the customer's mind, more valuable than the traditional factors of production such as capital, land, and labor, and we call it the mental resource, that is, it has a unique advantageous position in the customer's mind.
067.
First-line brands are often full of consensus in media choices, and from the eyes of consumers, it is another picture - that is, people will subconsciously believe that the head brand will appear on the media of the same head.
For new consumer brands, the media that has ascended to the head is like buying the ticket marked as a non-sale product to the head brand club, and the value of this ticket lies in the strong endorsement effect.
Correspondingly, the industry's second- and third-tier brands often appear in the second- and third-tier streaming media, and consumers will also internally classify them into the camp of second- and third-tier brands. As advertising dollars go by, these brands are drifting away from the perception of their strengths.
068.
One of the biggest puzzles of the century: What exactly are KPIs to measure brand communication?
Most pragmatic bosses will focus on the KPI on clear customer acquisition, which has also become a common problem: KPI replaces the effective growth of the brand and becomes the performance goal that the company chases, that is, the so-called "KPI short-sightedness", ignoring the brand value that really needs to be created, there is no moat without the accumulation of brand value, when the imitators start to fight the price war, your profits and KPIs are quickly beaten down!
Kantar BrandZ confirmed through 360 TMROI Total Marketing Revenue of Investment studies that in a real market environment, 70% of sales occur in the medium to long term and are contributed by brand equity, while short-term direct conversions account for only 30% of sales.
Long-term effective brand building can not only increase sales, but also bring higher premiums.
Is the effect of brand advertising really "slow"? Perhaps, at the moment of information overload, penetrating the user's "blood-brain barrier" through high-frequency and repeated contact requires a certain degree of continuity, but this can leave an indelible imprint in the user's mind in order to achieve more long-term results.
Moreover, in this way, every penny of your investment is not wasted, because it is precipitated in the user's mind, and continuous repetition will form a high potential energy and mental monopoly of the brand, in order to form a "brand equity", it will give you the 70% return on sales.
069.
In the past few years, new consumer brands have eaten the first wave of traffic dividends through online promotion and social planting.
This kind of "goods to find people" business model - to rely on KOLs, traffic advertising to pull consumers to buy, which leads to only traffic to have a deal, no investment there is no deal. As competitors on the track increased, the price of traffic rose and eventually got stuck in traffic, seeing no future, but unable to stop.
New consumption should change from "looking for goods" to "people looking for goods" - more customers can think of you when they have demand.
While the brand detonation has brought sales growth, it has also brought active search and a steady stream of free traffic, while the rise in brand recognition has greatly increased the conversion rate, which will greatly reduce the cost of customer acquisition!
070.
Many companies do not understand the "enterprise perspective" and "customer perspective", from the perspective of the enterprise, each product is the life of the enterprise, all want to tell the customer all the advantages of the product, but may be for the customer, your advantages are dispensable, from the customer's point of view to choose you is often just a simple reason.
Mercedes-Benz is luxurious and noble, BMW is driving pleasure, Volvo is safe, Ferrari is speed.
It is enough for you to leave a word and a sentence in the user, the brand should be greedy, and the more you want to say, the easier it is to fail!
071.
Brand detonation over the past two decades has typically had three paths.
1. Integrate and create major social events and major topics (e.g. Li Ning New York Fashion Week detonated China Li Ning)
2. Integrate into major entertainment and events (head variety shows and event titles, such as An Muxi title runner, JDB China Voice)
3. Integrate into consumers' most daily living spaces like communities and office buildings (e.g. Myoklando, Genki Forest, etc.)
072.
Brand marketing is like sending a signal, and if the signal is not strong, the signal is invalid.
The signal should be strong: choose a high potential energy medium, the energy is strong enough to be seen and heard by everyone in the fragmented and dusty world, cross the consumer's blood-brain barrier, and enter the consumer's mind.
Coverage should be wide: we must not only talk about precision strikes, but also cover all consumers such as decision makers, purchasers, users, disseminators, etc. It is necessary to form a broad social consensus and social field capacity.
073.
Products are easy to imitate, and differentiated brand cognition is not easy to be imitated once it enters the mind.
You can imitate Coca-Cola's products, but you can't imitate Coca-Cola's place in the minds of consumers. Companies that often win in blind testing are easily defeated by strong brands when the brand is fully displayed. Brands will fully influence people's perception and experience of the product.
074.
Marketing "inner volume" is everywhere, essentially carrying out low-level duplication and competition in the local battlefield, ignoring the underlying thinking of the overall situation.
Most new consumer brands only stay in the thinking of picking up money (lower traffic costs) and making money (improving delivery output), so it is difficult to extricate themselves from the inner volume.
Only by upgrading into brand management thinking, establishing brand differentiation value, establishing consumers' mental preferences, and establishing brand potential and premium capabilities can brands achieve sustainable high-quality growth and positive cycle compound interest from the source.
075.
Business warfare is three words: stable, accurate, and fierce. To win first is to be stable, to strike at the void is to be accurate, and to be strong is to be fierce. Either do not shoot, the shot will be fierce, it is necessary to form an overwhelming advantage, go all out, defeat the enemy with one move, and do not give the opponent any chance to fight back.
The principle of saturation attack in business wars actually copes with the "threshold effect" in econometrics, and only when the marketing force reaches a certain level in the market can it break through the threshold of consumer cognition, cross the inflection point of quantitative change to qualitative change, and achieve significant benefits.
076.
If the water does not burn to 100 degrees, only 95 degrees is wasted, and the heat is soon gone; if the water is boiled to 100 degrees, then as long as it is maintained by a small fire, it can always remain boiling.
The same is true of the user's perception of the brand, and it is stopped without reaching the inflection point from quantitative change to qualitative change, and it is the biggest waste to give up halfway.
077.
There is an important concept in retail called "three-kilometer life circle", that is, 60% of consumer transactions occur within the scope of three-kilometer life services, and eating, entertainment, pet raising, beauty, etc. are common scenarios.
The three-kilometer living circle is crucial to the brand's offline sales. Brands can choose communities and office buildings within three kilometers for advertising according to their own stores and terminals.
Covering three kilometers of living circles, it shortens the conversion path of consumers from "watching advertisements" to "going to the store to consume".
078.
Disassembling the common genes of the rise path of new consumer brands, some similarities can be found:
Grasp the growth of the customer base, that is, the new middle class and generation Z with considerable quantity, strong purchasing power and advanced consumption concept;
Found the "exclusive anchor", that is, the core differentiated positioning of the brand;
Use the "concentrated detonation" to quickly occupy the mind through the high-density saturation attack of advertising with a wide audience and mandatory.
079.
It is crucial for brands to establish social consensus and social field energy, and it will have great benefits and long-term benefits if they take the general trend.
"Potential" is the amplifier of strength, "snobbery" potential and profit are inseparable, there is a potential is advantageous, so do not ask for profit, to take the momentum.
If the brand only stares at the immediate interests, it can only get small profits and short profits at most.
080.
Although communication is becoming more and more fragmented, branding cannot be fragmented.
Precision marketing is an effective means to reach consumers and directly hit buyers, but many times one-on-one precision marketing and social planting are difficult to achieve brand social identity and brand consumption atmosphere.
Goods to find people is accurate distribution to improve transaction efficiency, people looking for goods is brand building, people think of a category to think of you, this is called branding. Building a brand requires centralized media, establishing a group identity of the mainstream population of buyer decision-makers and influencers.
One-on-one Internet precision advertising like bedroom marriage proposal, only you know what I know but everyone does not know, only large-scale detonation is called square marriage proposal, everyone witnesses together, become a social consensus. Brands must become social consensus in order to trigger the herd effect.
081.
Consumer trends are shifting from price-sensitive to value-sensitive.
The traffic era is suitable for just needs, suitable for explicit regular needs, and e-commerce platforms have built user price sensitivity while meeting demand;
The scene subverts the traditional traffic entrance, creates and stimulates the needs of users, meets the pain points, itch points and excitement points of users in specific scenarios, stimulates the purchase impulse, and creates commercial increments and premiums.
082.
Branding is the biggest Matthew effect in the business world. In the long run, the head brand will often suck away most of the industry profits, and the brand concentration will become higher and higher.
Consumers will subconsciously form a judgment priority in their minds in the face of the strength and weakness of different brands, and under the impetus of priority, they will pay more attention and praise to those more famous and powerful brands, so that they can become more powerful.
083.
One thing that is particularly true is true: only by truly understanding the humanity that humanity has formed over the past 6 million years can we predict what will happen in the next 6 months.
Brands are most likely to succeed when marketing conforms to the innate laws of human behavior.
Don't always chase the trend of marketing, the dividend of traffic, and the change of playing style, you should grasp the unchanged essence, the unchanged nature, and the unchanged decision-making model of the brain. Grasping the unchanging will make you more determined.
084.
If you only buy a product once this year, then there is a high probability that you will choose the first brand in this industry, which is a kind of "natural monopoly law".
Most consumers are "lazy" and generally do not make decisions after careful calculation and repeated comparison when making decisions, and are more inclined to choose from the crowd.
085.
Brand advertising is not immediately effective, at this moment the internal team's combat effectiveness is very important, whether the overall campaign operation can be implemented in place, will be an important factor to determine the external customer cognition, sales conversion effect.
Advertising as a battle charge horn, will greatly affect the confidence of the enterprise and related parties, the more people have the power of "believing", the more can be seen by believing, the more firm and resolute the power of the charge.
Therefore, it is of great significance for brands to form strategic cooperation with head media, and the impact of confidence stimulation formed by this strategic cooperation on the team, dealers and terminals is huge.
086.
Leading brands is safer to defend against overindulges than underdefing them.
In the face of competitors' attacks, industry leaders are either dismissive or wait and see what happens, which is a dangerous approach that should be fully blocked and suppressed in time.
087.
A sign that startups judge whether they have a future is: Can they establish an advantageous position for competition? Can we establish a dominant position in this advantageous position?
Only by hitting the commanding heights can enterprises grasp the pricing power.
088.
To summarize the four paths to brand growth:
1. Product circle breaking: break through the circle layer of the origin crowd, use saturation attack, and realize the circle-breaking detonation of the general population;
2. Develop scenes: use the scene as a trigger to stimulate consumer demand and open up new increment space;
3. Global improvement: online data return supports e-commerce sales, and offline advertising covers 3 km of life circle of terminal outlets to achieve product-efficiency synergy;
4. Regional attack: Look for high-potential markets, focus on resources to achieve regional breakthroughs, such as cities sinking to third- and fourth-tier cities, such as East China-based brands attacking South China, and brands with low-tier cities as the core attacking first- and second-tier cities.
089.
As James Quinn says, no single business has the resources to overwhelm its rivals on all fronts. Therefore, competitors must not only consciously determine which territories to cede to their competitors, but also minimize the resources required for secondary targets.
Only in this way can competitors concentrate the most critical resources on the most critical locations and make the most effective and efficient use of their own resources.
Before the overall superiority of the troops is reached, and before sufficient strength is accumulated to win the general war, it is necessary to select key core markets to concentrate firepower to penetrate and establish a base area that can be defended.
090.
Live streaming is also essentially a channel, and strong brands bring value in any channel.
Not a strong brand, it is difficult to be selected by the big anchor; not a strong brand, it is difficult to make a reasonable profit in the negotiation of the waist anchor; not a strong brand, the platform is difficult to give you good resources in the big event; not a strong brand, it is difficult to have large traffic for self-broadcasting.
Only by strengthening the brand can traffic make live broadcasting more effective and reduce traffic costs.
You have to build a brand, don't build a brand, the cost of traffic channels will become higher and higher, eating up your profits.
091.
The so-called attack on the false is to proceed from the overall situation and select and use the key and fragile links of the opponent as the target of the attack.
From the perspective of market strategy, it is necessary to break through the gap in the market and break through at the most sensitive point of consumers;
From the perspective of competitive strategy, it is necessary to break through when the opponent is the weakest and break through the weakest link of the opponent.
And the weakest place of the opponent is often the opposite of his strongest advantage point, and to hit this void is to attack it undefendable.
092.
There is a "barrel theory" in traditional management, in which how much water a bucket can hold depends on the shortest plank.
But according to Charlie Munger, "None of the companies and systems that can achieve great things is based on the barrel theory." The winning systems tend to go to the near-absurd extreme of maximizing a single element."
From the perspective of marketing communication: the extreme absurdity generated by maximizing a single element is the easiest to trigger strong memories and good feelings of users, and it is easiest to establish popularity and open up mental connections.
093.
Why are most influencer brands short-lived? The core reason is heavy trend and light trend.
New brands with development potential must be in line with the general trend, and what can cross the consumer preference cycle is not to cater to the current trend and fashion.
Entrepreneurs should not stare at short-term trends, but grasp long-term trends.
094.
The whole path of the brand is from recognition to recognition to subscription. Like brand advertising on Focus is to let more people know you, familiar with you, generate a sense of security, and recognize the differentiated value of the brand to become interested, and then consumers will go online to see the relevant reviews, which is identification, and finally meet in offline channels or buy in e-commerce channels.
Widely recognized to rely on brand advertising to detonate, in-depth recognition to rely on social media content to plant grass, in-depth explanation of the advantages of these products, faster subscription to rely on online precision advertising, offline shopping guide, live streaming with goods and other means, at the last minute to sell.
Enterprises to be big, there is no thing that can be missing, this is a complete marketing value chain, there is no brand sowing, no content planting, it is unrealistic to want to directly bring goods.
095.
Many people frown when they mention long-termism, thinking that the primary goal is to survive, how to do without making money.
The real long-termism is not to let you not make money now, but not to earn the last copper plate of the moment, to seek big things, not to make small profits. Long-term thinking is not the antithesis of short-term inaction, but a business model based on compound interest thinking.
096.
When a founder devotes 90% of his time to traffic and promotions with immediate results, he will only become more and more anxious, and he will only become busier.
Because you are not busy with the essence, not busy with things that can accumulate value, short-term promotions and traffic may help you complete the next month's sales tasks, but it can never help you break the price war, never help you into the consumer mind, get the profit you deserve.
Don't use the diligence of traffic delivery to cover up the lack of brand building.
A founder's current true certainty comes from the choice you made a few years ago, and you enjoy the compound interest that comes with that choice today. So management is not management result, it is management cause and effect.
What is the dividend of long-termism, in romantic terms, is that when your growth comes from the innings laid out two or three years ago, you can fully enjoy the growth that blossoms and bears fruit and stretches naturally.
The brand is the continuous traffic, the longer the time, the lower the cost, the more generous the compound interest of enjoying the time.
097.
How founders build their own personas – become trusted industry experts, clearly distill the essence of things, and output industry-based insights.
098.
In extraordinary times, we must dare to take action and turn the crisis into a business opportunity. I often communicate with many excellent entrepreneurs, and the biggest experience is that their views are very consistent, that there is a crisis and a cold winter is not terrible, because the crisis and winter will also clean up the market at the same time. Every crisis is a time when brand concentration rises.
In all competitive markets, there are always ambitious companies that preempt their peers, grab the market, hit the brand and occupy the share one step ahead of time.
099.
The essence of business should be determined by right and wrong, not by short-term gains and losses.
Right and wrong is success or failure, doing what is right is done, doing wrong things is failing, but this will be anxious because of short-term gains and losses, doing things that are not necessarily gained in the short term, and doing things that are not necessarily lost in the short term.
But only by judging decisions based on right and wrong, rather than gains and losses, can we win the ultimate success.