Finishing / Wild Elephants
One-sixth of 2022 is over, the pandemic is still recurring, stocks are constantly volatile, and uncertainty is rife with our lives.
The charm of business lies in its uncertainty and infinite possibilities, and successful business is to defeat uncertainty with certainty and turn "possible" into "can".
In the past year, Jiang Nanchun, chairman of Focus Media, communicated with the founders and leaders of 1,000 companies and found that successful companies have their own successes, but there are similar methodologies behind them, which he summarized as 8 words: "Seize the mind, deep distribution".
How do Chinese entrepreneurs find "certainty" in a volatile market? How can enterprises at different stages of development do a good job of preemptive thinking and deep distribution? Where are the opportunities for new consumer brands in 2022? Teacher Wu Xiaobo and Teacher Jiang Nanchun discussed these issues, hoping to provide a little inspiration for entrepreneurs.
In the era of growth anxiety, the two major misunderstandings of brand communication
Jiang Nanchun: Research company Kantar has done an analysis of total marketing returns, and found that from a long time perspective, 70% of a company's sales are contributed by its brand equity, while only 30% of its sales come from its short-term traffic.
Many brands in China devote 90% of their energy to promotions and traffic with immediate results. Promotion and traffic can help brands reach the goal of sales growth next month, but it cannot help brands get out of the price war and traffic war, can not let the brand into the minds of consumers, it is difficult to achieve the profits it deserves. The result is that prices are falling, traffic costs are rising, and profits are becoming thinner and thinner, which is the source of anxiety.
At the same time, there are many misunderstandings in the second half of the Internet.
The first misunderstanding is that in the Internet era, as long as there are the ultimate products and the ultimate cost performance, there will be consumers. Because of word-of-mouth transmission in the Internet age, everyone can make a voice online. The truth is often the opposite, your brand is planting grass, your competitors are planting grass in reverse, so many different views, users are still unable to make judgments in the end, relying more on the brand to make consumption decisions. For consumers with limited energy, the role of brand as a simplifier of information will become more and more important, and in fact it will ultimately be a brand choice. While others are still planting grass, you should plant a big tree.
The second myth is, will the Internet make communication more effective? In fact, it is not, the virtual world is infinite, and no matter how much investment the brand puts in, it is easy to be overwhelmed. The real world is limited, only by exploding the limited living space of consumers and detonating the brand in the limited space of the real world can we achieve greater exposure and greater visibility.
Wu Xiaobo: You just talked about a concept of "planting grass", now in a fragmented era, the whole spread is no longer pyramidal, everyone does not know where the consumer is, so it will be on some social media through the scene description, so that consumers form a cognitive final diversion to buy, this is the so-called grass planting behavior. So "planting a tree" becomes another matter, what is planting a tree?
Jiang Nanchun: The media trend in 2022 can be summarized in three points:
The first is to use centralized media to detonate brands and combat fragmentation of information dissemination. The so-called planting of trees is to form a centralized detonation through centralized media, and then beat the brand image into the minds of consumers. Many brands are detonated, whether it is detonated by focus or detonated by top satellite TV columns, which is called planting trees.
Brands with 0-100 million can plant grass and cultivate original seed users. Most companies need to detonate the circle after more than two or three hundred million to bring about real sales growth. So planting trees and planting grass is not a contradiction. Mr. Philip Kotler said that in order to form a social consensus, it is necessary to impress five groups of people: buyers, policymakers, influencers, experiencers, and communicators. Today we see the accurate distribution of "goods looking for people", which improves the efficiency of transactions, but "people looking for goods" is the brand building. Building a brand requires centralized media to replace fragmentation and establish the group identity of the mainstream population.
The second trend is to use constant repetition to counter the user's forgetting speed in the explosion of information. Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman, in "Thinking, Fast and Slow," introduced that people will relax their cognition of familiar things and make comfortable and easy judgments. Brand is to establish consumers' sense of security and trust through repetition, become standard and common sense in the category, and become the intuitive response of consumers without thinking.
The third trend, with deterministic media logic, counters an uncertain development environment. Find the core media and accumulate the brand mind for a long time, so that the compound interest effect will become more and more large. Everyone wants to create the hottest marketing event of the year, but its success rate is very low, it is difficult to copy, and it is impossible to find.
Kantar CEO Doreen emphasized the concept of "double micro one shake one focus" at the launch of the Top 100 brand rankings, and she believes that "double micro one shake one focus" is an effective paradigm of current communication, that is, online content marketing represented by "double micro shake" and offline media represented by focus in apartment buildings, office buildings, and cinema scene marketing.
Has the development of new consumption come to an end?
Wu Xiaobo: Some time ago, Xicha began to lay off employees, and last year Haidilao seemed to have also begun to lay off employees, and everyone would say that new consumption and new domestic products have not been done, what do you think of these views?
Jiang Nanchun: I think there are many innovations in the process of new consumption development, and there are many places that need to be returned, but I firmly believe that the future of new consumption is bright. Because the new generation has the needs of a new generation, it will definitely give birth to a new generation of brands. Today, new consumption is slightly faster, relying too much on traffic dividends, so the foundation is slightly unstable.
Today, for new consumption, the slowdown in the traffic dividend will bring a comeback. Today's new consumer brands have two problems to solve:
The first problem is that some new consumer brands are excessively pursuing refined operations, and tactical diligence cannot solve strategic problems. After doing 200 million-500 million, you did not break the circle, and the hardcore powder is more than this amount. So they want the crowd to break the circle, seize the broader consumer mind, and change from an influencer brand to a public brand.
Another problem is that channels are too dependent on online, and I predict that the next wave of new consumption in China will be offline. When a strong offline channel penetration rate is truly established, the company can achieve larger-scale growth and truly have strong profitability. Because offline is a limited shelf, a limited mind.
Wu Xiaobo: I think many new consumer brands are going through the make-up stage, and these so-called new consumer forces may not have been in this industry. Because they have mastered the traffic ability, they have achieved explosive growth in a very short period of time through the outlet period of traffic delivery and e-commerce.
But they face two problems, the first is the problem of supply chain. Whether you make makeup, make toothpaste, or ice cream, after achieving a certain scale, you will buy land to build a factory and return to the supply chain itself. Because if the manufacturing capacity is not enough, there is no production capacity and pricing power of a product.
The second is the problem of offline channels. There's not much difference between [new consumer brands] and consumer goods companies in the traditional sense. When I first entered an industry in the 1980s and 1990s, the first thing I did was not to find consumers but to find a production line, and then design the brand and sell it to everyone through distributor channels. Now it may be through the traffic method to obtain a batch of users first. But looking back, the lessons that should be made up, the pits that should be stepped on, and the things that should be done have to be done again. So we have to look at a business with a longer cyclical mindset. So what do you think of today's new consumer brands?
Jiang Nanchun: I have been doing consumer goods marketing for 30 years, and my biggest experience is that the whole new consumption must return to its essence. It can be summed up in 8 words: deep distribution and preemptive thinking.
High channel penetration rate, high mental penetration rate is king. First of all, the product must be good, without a good product can not enter the final, but after entering the final you will not necessarily win, because the same level of excellent companies compete with you. At this time, it is very important to have channel penetration.
Second, are you waiting in the consumer mind is not equal to a category, etc. is not equal to a feature? Are you preempting the minds of consumers? Is there a reason in the consumer's mind to choose you over someone else?
Strong brands have stronger, longer-term competitiveness and immunity. Strong brands have a premium ability, even if it is still profitable when it is promoted, weak brands have no profits. In a downturn, consumers will actually spend their money on stronger brands that are more secure, more certain, and more trustworthy. During the crisis, strong brands dare to take a shot, but it is a good time to open up the gap and expand the share.
In 2022, how to do branding
Wu Xiaobo: Do you think a brand should first impress the rational side of consumers, or the emotional side? What is the rhythm of branding?
Jiang Nanchun: I think the most important thing is to have a differentiated value in the minds of consumers, and different stages have different ways of playing.
For example, when starting a business 0-1, there must be a unique functional selling point, either representing a category or representing a characteristic. At this time, through accurate distribution and social planting, we can grasp the origin crowd.
After you run to hundreds of millions, accurate distribution, social planting has entered the bottleneck, and then you have to detonate the circle through brand positioning, and you must become the first choice for a segmented group.
Starting from a few hundred million to several billion, it will enter the second bottleneck, which requires new product iteration and scene creation. In the past, the advertisement of the absolute duck neck mainly tasted spicy and fresh, but to achieve further growth, it needed to be detonated by the scene. For example, Focus in the office building to the taste of the elevator advertisement "no taste of duck neck plus what class", in the apartment building elevator is "no taste of duck neck chasing what drama", which creates a scene, may stimulate potential demand, create commercial increments.
When the enterprise develops to the level of 10 billion and is already a leading brand in the industry, it is necessary to improve the brand power, export values, establish cultural identity, and become a leading brand. The failure of many companies is that they understand the methods, but the stages are misplaced. Many companies talk about feelings when they get up, but today's feelings are often the privilege of successful people.
Wu Xiaobo: In the past two years, what do you think are the most successful cases?
Gangnam Spring: Myoko Rando and Yuanqi Forest. They all first focused the company's strategic goals on a very good subdivision track, and then chose to focus on all the company's resources and firepower, quickly broke the circle of popularity, and established an absolute leadership position in the subdivision category.
When you establish a perception in the minds of consumers, mention 0 sugar, 0 fat and 0 calories, everyone thinks of yuanqi forest; when you mention the cheese stick, everyone thinks of Miaoke Lando. Such a brand has formed a siphon effect, and truly established a moat for the brand, the company can develop very stably and sustainably, and the brand is the most sustainable traffic.
Wu Xiaobo: How to identify a real potential category track?
Jiang Nanchun: In fact, it is quite difficult to judge, I think there are two ways to judge: the first way to judge is to see if there is one in this category that is bigger. For example, when doing Mengniu Youyi C, there was a benchmark company that was Yakult, and Yakult had already achieved five or six billion, so we felt that this track must be OK. The second is to judge pseudo-needs and true needs. Yuanqi Forest made more than 100 kinds of products at that time, and these products were accurately distributed online, first doing small-scale tests. In the end, only 4 products sold, and those that could not be sold were quickly eliminated.
Wu Xiaobo: Just now Nanchun actually gave entrepreneurs two inspiration points, for example, if you do the men's wear market, you can study which popular style or category is now growing in the global men's wear market, and do benchmarking research on the international market. The second thing is to dare to try and make mistakes. For example, I am also making down jackets, but there is already a Bosideng in this industry, what to do?
Jiang Nanchun: The Chinese market is big enough that there are many places to innovate. Either segment a crowd, or subdivide a scene, or subdivide a function. The strategic positioning of the business is mainly 4 kinds: the boss is usually a banned category, the brand is equal to the category, such as shopping "Tmall is enough"; the second is to attack the boss, highlighting its own characteristics, "more, faster, better, province Jingdong", the core is fast delivery; the third vertical focus, Vipshop will "specialize in selling the website", focusing on a segment; and then the latecomers opened a new category, landed in no man's land, Pinduoduo "fight more, save more", and created a social group model.
Wu Xiaobo: A piece of advice to all entrepreneurs is that it may be a very fortunate thing for you to have a competitor like a mountain in your industry. You have two choices: the first is to withdraw and leave the industry; the second is to die, in the shadow of your giant, to find the possibility of survival. Through differentiated competition and professional strategy, we will find the possibility of our own development. I think business is the ultimate struggle of intelligence, it is the game of intelligence, which is where business is sexy and exciting.
Source: Wu Xiaobo Channel