First, how to maintain inner peace in this chaotic world?
I recently read a book called The Philosophy of Life, which mentions a slave philosopher, Epicteide, whose students have compiled his speeches into a manual documenting the ill-fated philosopher's rational reflections in the face of his predicament.
Abected, also known as the Stoics, influenced generations.
The manual begins by saying, "Some things are decided by us, and some are not." ”
Born in the town of Hierapolis in 55 AD, Abectete is now part of Turkey and was born a slave. He was beaten and tortured by his first master and suffered a severe leg injury, which left him a cripple for the rest of his life.
In any case, he was indeed lame and poor, and for most of his life he had no family and no freedom. As a slave, you would be beaten, tortured, and even executed at any time.
In such a state of uncertainty and oppression, how can he remain calm and strong when his ability to control his own destiny is so hindered?
Epicteide's answer was to constantly remind himself of what he could and could not control.
We can face the worst of things like this: focus only on what we can control, and don't let ourselves go crazy about what we can't control in the moment.
This came to be known as the "Stoic Control Dichotomy".
Stoic controls the dichotomy
"I'll get it done, and I'm not going to complain that I can't do it."
Epicteide even made a list of uncontrollable things, such as our parents, the weather, the economy, the past, the future, the fact that we are going to die...
In fact, we have very limited control over what happens in the world, and we have to accept that, or we will get angry, afraid, and spend most of our time miserable.
A wiser person will set an inner goal for himself rather than an external goal.
A wiser man whose peace will not be disturbed.
Second, the entrepreneur's controllability and uncontrollable
The current environment is indeed not good, we face a variety of complex information every day, as entrepreneurs, but also encountered a lot of practical difficulties, factory shutdowns, e-commerce returns, traffic costs rise, capital divestment and so on.
But pay attention to the epidemic, war, capital market, social economy, short-term channel dividends, these are things that we can't control.
What can we control?
It is the business direction formulated in accordance with the law of category development, and it is the determination to continue to land after the direction is clear, including visible brand signals, and better and more stable products every day.
Entrepreneurs control dichotomy
The bubble bursts, the hot money is less, the era of lying and earning is over, the tide recedes, and the original face of the business will be revealed.
It seems dangerous, but after exposing yourself, you leave the uncontrollable fantasy area, focus on the controllable area to train yourself, polish the product, and operate the best time for users and brands.
Distinguish between controllable and uncontrollable, and actively face the controllable area, our tranquility will not be disturbed.
Third, how entrepreneurs control the present
However, even if we put down the uncontrollable area, we often have anxiety in the face of the business direction and brand play that really need to be solved. Why?
Before watching "Round Table Pie", Teacher Yijun said a very good point: "The antonym of anxiety is concrete."
Concretely dismantle the problem, use the scientific method to solve the problem step by step, and the anxiety will automatically disappear.
Whether it is a large enterprise or a small and medium-sized enterprise, everyone is equal in the face of understanding the law of categories and discovering category opportunities. The main difference is only in the different stages, different resources, and different playing styles.
Therefore, this part mainly talks about two topics, one is the category law behind the brand; the other is the brand play method of the 0-200 million scale stage.
(1) The category law behind the brand
1. Behind the brand is the category, behind the category is the mental consensus
First of all, we must clearly understand that the main battlefield of business warfare has always been in the minds of customers.
When the customer makes a purchase decision, it actually corresponds to the grid that has been formed in his brain, and this grid corresponds to what we often call "category". Buy milk, in fact, he bought the representative brand of milk, buy new energy vehicles, in fact, he bought the representative brand of new energy vehicles.
People emphasize that the Coca-Cola brand is great, and it can be revived even if the factory burns down. But the premise is that the mind of the category of "Coke" still exists, when one day, people think that "Coke = unhealthy drink" and no longer drink Coke, then Coca-Cola still exists? Look at Nokia and Kodak and we know the answer.
Therefore, entrepreneurs look for business opportunities, in the final analysis, to find the mental consensus opportunities behind the category.
Mental consensus is not a creation of nothing, but a natural cognition built up by groups based on familiar things. For example, "on fire" is a concept that people are naturally familiar with, and Wang Laoji only found it through the herbal tea category, and expressed it through brand tools.
Brand signal strength comparison chart
On the contrary, sometimes the mental consensus that entrepreneurs are looking for is most likely a false consensus, or a weak consensus. For example, emotional drinks, satellite mobile phones, etc., think that it is innovation, but it is actually anti-consensus.
2. Categories continue to evolve and differentiate with the development of business, and never stop
In the development of categories, we need to pay attention to two important forces.
The first force is the evolutionary improvement in the development process of the same category, a category from the beginning of the formation of mental consensus to the maturity of the public mind, in this process due to the upgrading of group demand and concept upgrading, will inevitably promote the supply side to carry out evolutionary improvement again and again.
For example, the category of underwear, when it first appeared in the 70s of the last century, was dominated by sexy consciousness, and the entire category was continuously optimized in terms of shaping, gathering and other functions, Andel, Dianfen and other brands introduced underwear into China, and then Aimos, Victoria's Secret and other brands optimized in design and fabric to continuously meet the needs of sexy appearance.
At the same time, there is another kind of change that happens silently, and this important change is also called differentiation.
After 2000, the consumer demand for Yueji's health sprouted, and the underwear category differentiated into underwear without steel rim;
After 2010, the underwire-free underwear category accompanied the rapid growth of the mobile Internet, inside and outside, Ubras, banana and other brands hitchhiking, and in the "underwire-free underwear" this new category for a new round of evolution and differentiation, in 2018, some brands launched a subdivision category "size-free underwear".
Category process model
What kind of force are you influencing the categories that you have entered or are focusing on? Whether it has just started to enter the growth period, or has evolved to maturity to roll up, or is being pulled by some force to change, judge the category process clearly, in order to stabilize the mentality to control the rhythm.
Recently, many Internet manufacturers lay off employees and reduce salaries, the Internet from hot to return to normal, in fact, it is only the law of category development, the market into the mature period means that there is no increment, no increment began to roll, the inner volume has to adjust the structure, adjust the structure there is a large number of category members of the sacrifice.
3. Different stages of categories present different category opportunities, and entrepreneurs should change with the times
Categories from the start-up period to the growth period, to the maturity period, the change period, there are different category opportunities at different stages. For brands, at each category stage, leading brands and new entrants also need to have different coping strategies.
Category opportunity model
In the launch period is the stage of new categories to expand the territory, there is no leading brand, in this period, through the brand tool to complete the pilot convergence, the first to obtain the most accurate category attributes and the most complete category characteristics, there is an opportunity to become the final category leader.
In the growth period, the category members increase, all brands enjoy the growth rate of the category, at this time we must seize the opportunity to establish enough brand potential to seize the minds of consumers, the leader should pay close attention to the category, and the new entrants can optimize the category at the same time, closely follow the boss, and carry out competitive interaction.
For example, the Chinese fast food brand 72nd Street, as a latecomer, closely follows the real kung fu, and the early days of the real kung fu are also close to the fast food head brand KFC McDonald's, competing by analogy.
In the mature period, the category oligopoly brand pattern is formed and stable, the entry threshold is high, and the head brand needs to be vigilant against the threat of kinship categories, and focus or extend the category according to the different states of the enterprise. At the same time, all brands need to maintain the sensitivity of category change and seize category opportunities in a timely manner.
The first is to perceive the opportunity of category segmentation, such as milk subdividing an independent category "peanut milk", chewing gum subdivided into "xylitol" category.
The second is to pay attention to category curve opportunities, and leaders have to prevent one from accidentally being destroyed by the group. For example, Nokia's decline was not switched to the smartphone category in time, and Kodak's decline was due to the end of the film camera category after the emergence of digital technology.
(2) The way to play the brand in the scale stage of 0-200 million
Many of the business war cases we see today are mostly about large enterprises, how to fight when the US group is hungry, how to fight Jingdong Tmall, how to fight nongfu Mountain Spring Baishi Mountain, these cases have actually completed the original accumulation stage of 0-200 million scale when they enter our field of vision, and have begun to burn money to fight the mental offensive war, and many small and medium-sized enterprises cannot imitate.
For brands in the scale stage of 0-200 million, financial resources are limited and manpower is limited, how should we fight?
1. Cut into the small category battlefield of the present and the big category in the future
Choose the current look small, large enterprises can not look at, but the future will be a large category to do the base, that is, focus on the start-up period and growth period opportunities in the process of category development, especially the opportunity in the early stage of growth, all brands in this period enjoy category growth, and there is no strong brand to grow out, cut into it is often twice as effective.
Category opportunity judgment - early growth
2. Focus on super items while considering the system layout
Super single product is not only a strong representative product of the brand, but also a product that can quickly cut into the mental battlefield in a guerrilla warfare style and help the brand stand out in the category competition, but the key is that it is necessary to take one step to see three steps, and the focus of the super single product is to occupy a commanding heights and smoothly lay out the next stage of the product line.
Looking back at the first battle of Nongfu Spring that year, it was a guerrilla war, cutting into the family market with 4L bottled water, avoiding the main battlefield of pure water 500ML and 18L.
Look at some of today's new consumer brands, entering the self-heating food track with self-heating hot pot, entering the Kuaishou vegetable track with gin soup sauerkraut fish, and cutting into the underwear track with unlabeled base models.
3. Use brand tools to gather the most accurate category advantage resources, and start as a category representative
The word "brand" many entrepreneurs have a very big misunderstanding of it, thinking that doing a brand is to burn money to invest in the focus, do a tall image advertisement, or form a deep impression in people's minds. So Nike is a brand, and startups don't have a brand.
Brand in English is brand, brand original meaning is "branding", ranch in order to distinguish the ownership of animals, on the animal to print a brand is the earliest brand behavior. Why brand? It's because it's because you want others to recognize your products more quickly, and finally the brand becomes famous and great, and that's just the result of a continuous operation.
In the initial stage, doing branding is a kind of cause, which is to use the name, slogan, and vision as a tool to amplify the brand signal, gather the superior resources of the category, and strive to be the most like a milk brand, the most like the brand of self-heating food, the most like the brand of maternal and infant products, and so on.
Principles of brand signal system
Recently, I have been talking about category thinking with some of my peer partners, and I have also used category thinking in our projects, which I think is the essence of the development of positioning theory to the present, a real starting point for thinking in business.
Its greatest significance lies in redefining the goal of brand operation, that is, "building categories to represent brands". It also tells us an internal action standard: all actions that can strengthen the representativeness of the category are right, and all actions that weaken and dilute the representativeness of the category are wrong.
More methods and views This article can not be exhausted, recommend the system to see the book related to the category, such as "category thirteen rate", "business war", "category strategy", "upgrade positioning" these books.
Follow the rules to find the direction, sooner or later, we can walk on the right path.
With direction, our tranquility will not be disturbed.
Fourth, write at the end
At present, about the epidemic, about the world situation, all kinds of news and anxiety are filled with news media, WeChat groups, circles of friends, as well as communities and families, sometimes disrupting our normal rhythm and making it difficult to concentrate on doing things.
I would like to say that human attention is a very limited resource, and one should take care of one's attention as one takes care of one's own body.
Concentrate, you may be able to do two or three things a day, if you can't concentrate, you may not be able to do anything in a week.
Concentration is the process of doing subtraction after distinguishing between controllable and uncontrollable, if necessary, there is no need to focus on the entanglement of meaningless things, listen to the command in terms of the epidemic, do not add chaos, and try to return to a simple and simple living environment.
The epidemic has delayed many things, but it cannot delay us from thinking, communicating, stockpiling grain and grass, setting directions, and accumulating our own and the company's ability to fight against fragility.
Don't ask questions, focus on the present moment, and our peace will not be disrupted.
This article is sent to entrepreneurs and peers under the epidemic, I hope that no matter in the era of prosperity and bubbles, or the days of chaos, we can use reason and science to overcome anxiety and have the courage and wisdom to move forward.