Source: Cutting-edge Brand Research Society
Topics of this issue
Break through from a single channel, advance the head queue, other channels are weak, how to break the circle to achieve greater growth?
Brand Profile
Industry: Beauty
Founded: within 5 years
GMV in 2023: 300 million+
Main category: sub-categories under skin care
Channel development: Through the Douyin channel, the monthly sales volume has entered the first place in the subcategory, and in other channels Tmall, Kuaishou, and Pinduoduo have layouts, but most of them are in their infancy
Brand Challenge
1. Advance the top queue in the advantageous channel, but have not yet formed a stable category ranking and brand mentality in the channel.
2. In addition to the advantageous channels, the performance of other channels is relatively weak, and the development of channels is uneven, and the omni-channel mentality has not been formed.
3. Some good items have been created, but there are no big items that can represent the brand's mind and penetrate all channels.
4. One of the founders has become an expert in the field, forming a strong fan stickiness with customers, forming the advantage of "founder's live broadcast + main product + low stream = efficient output", but in the process of further channel breakthrough, subject to the founder's limited personal energy, he is basically 360 days out of 365 days in live broadcast, oversaturated.
Brand appeal
1. The founder wants to do brand upgrading, especially in terms of brand culture and brand image, on the one hand, he wants to be closer to his ideal brand, and on the other hand, he wants to help the brand grow.
2. Enhance the brand power through brand upgrading, and hope to reduce the pressure of the founder's live broadcast and gradually liberate the founder's time.
I have recently met many brands at this stage, and they have put forward a common need, wanting to do some brand image and brand culture improvement, so that the brand can better break the circle of communication.
When many brands have a certain business volume, they will want to upgrade their brands, want to make the brand their ideal appearance, or help growth.
It's like two couples who want to decorate their house better after they get married and make money, and the idea itself is fine.
I can especially understand that people who like to be brands have a disease, called brand cancer, and we all live with diseases.
Why do I try not to make a brand, because I want to be a brand, I definitely have to open the mold, I want to make the packaging I want the most, and I want to make a unique film...... But this one was wrong.
You must be asking me, don't these work for brands? Absolutely.
But at this stage, is it the most important thing to do in the current development process to break the circle with brand upgrading?
When your brand is also in the stage of these brands and has not yet established a solid channel foundation, I advise you to delay gratification.
Let me give you an example, if the couple has just saved 500,000 yuan, should they invest it in home decoration or invest it in business to expand the scale? We spent three months to finish renovating the house, and we began to enter the life stage. Whether life is good or not, it will eventually return to the stage of firewood, rice, oil and salt.
We sorted out the brand and completed a brand-wide refresh, and the matter was over in three months. Then it's time to get by. The difficulties and obstacles that will be encountered in the stage of living will also surface in the same way.
The design company can make a good packaging for you, but he can't solve the positioning strategy of the product, and the planning company can make a positioning plan for you, and he can't solve the brand life.
We need to balance the brand management process, and if we want to grow with the brand at the core, we need to prioritize everything.
Wu Zhigang brand diagnosis
Q: Do you want to upgrade your brand at this time?
A: At the current stage of the brand breakthrough, the first priority is not brand upgrading, but the first to stand up to the product, the product to stand, then the brand.
Q: How can brands break through to higher magnitudes?
A: The first step is to break the circle of channels: at all costs, complete the formation of multi-channel operation capabilities, and each channel should be balanced.
The second step is to shape strategic commodities: complete the growth of multi-strategic commodities at all costs, and find ways to increase the proportion of these commodities in the company's business.
Third, on the basis of the above, brand upgrades can be done, but within the scope of what we can afford.
Q: How to break the situation of over-reliance on the founder's live broadcast?
It seems that we need to upgrade the brand to liberate the founder, but in fact, our real topic in this matter is: how to provide a brand image that meets the needs of the founder's personality, so that the brand becomes better, so that the founder can be more relaxed and more comfortable.
We must comprehensively organize the persona, pallets, and price plates, liberate the founder's time, and at the same time, amplify the leverage of Douyin channels.
The channel is broken
Build multi-channel operation capabilities
Although we achieved good results in a single channel, this result is still far from a stable brand mentality. If the target category is not occupied, the brand mentality will be weak or even non-existent.
Doing Dabo can only eat fan traffic, but self-broadcasting eats global traffic.
The founder/partner's live broadcast seems to be a brand self-broadcast, but it is actually a similar broadcast, a model of people.
Now I'm just comfortable eating, but I'm not full. Don't set limits on yourself, and further amplify the TikTok leverage.
The first step is to do a thorough job of advantageous channels, here is Douyin as an example.
The reason why these brands I have encountered have been able to break through in a single channel is that people, goods, and places have been combined to a certain extent to form efficient growth.
First of all, they have a certain advantage over their peers in terms of products, secondly, their categories are in the window period of platforms such as Douyin; finally, they live broadcast through their founders or partners, and have formed a talent effect, and because they are their own people, they know this inventory very well, and they have high efficiency in bringing goods.
But our immediate success is only because we are one step ahead of others, the window will be closed, and others can see what we see.
Once the mouth of Douyin is opened, if you are not good at management, as soon as the bonus period passes, it will come back, and the probability of being robbed is very high.
And there is only 1 founder/partner, when you want to do channel expansion, the contradiction between personal energy and channel expansion needs will be highlighted, and at the same time, this person himself is also involved in it, unable to focus more on other matters of the brand.
So you have to zoom in on the model and push the boundaries.
Comprehensive adjustment of human design, price tray and pallet.
Once the standardized play method is broken, it will be able to eat the Douyin traffic, and it will reach a higher level on the Douyin platform alone.
Let's assume that the founder broadcasts from 360 days to 60 days, then 300 days need to be completed through external anchors or internal training anchors.
This is a comprehensive change, the pallet does not move, and the price order does not move. Because the current efficiency is that the pallets, price orders, flow and people are closed, one must move is all moved, otherwise it is useless.
On the pallet, the pallet of the founder/partner is the pallet that they have more body feel and can carry the goods, and the key to the pallet of other anchors is efficiency, which is closer to the way the standard product is played, so that it is easier to enlarge.
In terms of personality, it is necessary to further promote the personality of the founder's live broadcast, and in the founder-based live broadcast field, based on the founder's advantages, increase the connection and increase the customer order, and finally achieve the sales equivalent to the past 3 or 4 broadcasts;
In terms of price, the goods with other anchors as the core must be a certain dimension higher than the price of the existing anchors in order to tolerate ROI, and now the efficiency is high because people have a role, but if this person is not our own person, the fee ratio will be higher, and the ROI will not be able to hold up.
On the basis of the increase in price, the stream can be taken out of a higher proportion, the stream is full, and once the standardized play method is broken, the Douyin traffic can be eaten, and a higher order of magnitude can be reached on the Douyin platform alone.
Building the mind is the key to breaking the channel circle.
Formed multi-channel operation capabilities and entered the TOP5 core categories. The core category represents the brand mentality and can be searched.
Only when you enter the public domain can you see it, and you can leverage more public domain traffic.
In the minds of consumers, what is our brand equal to, and will consumers take the initiative to search for brands on various platforms?
For example, Douyin, the efficiency of Douyin is particularly high, and all that can be converted is converted into Douyin, but we must avoid becoming a channel brand. Only when the brand effect is strong, consumers will take the initiative to search on other platforms.
When a brand ranks high in a single channel but has a weak presence on other platforms, GMV is not the core indicator at this stage, and it is also important that the business of each channel is relatively balanced.
To improve the ranking in the existing advantageous channels and other mainstream platforms such as Tmall, it is best to enter the TOP5 of the core category.
We will have category rankings in various channels, but this category should be implemented into category attributes or functional attributes, what category we are equal to, what function is equal, to be searchable, I will give an example of "emotional skin care", it cannot be searched, consumers will search for "whitening" (function), search for "essence" (category), but will not actively search for "emotional skin care".
Therefore, we should think clearly about what our core mental category is, which is the first dimension of business, and strive to make the platform form a consensus and enter the competition ranking of its own most advantageous category in the platform.
Strategic commodity shaping
If there are no two or three core products, and the sales account for more than 50% of the company's overall sales, you will not have the ability to cross the channel. Only one or two items are sure to run through, these two items will grow and help the brand go further.
There is a core strategy in the category strategy called the T-shaped strategy: the category is deep, and the crowd is thorough.
Only when strategic commodities are interdependent with the crowd can the crowd be pushed to do thoroughly.
It is necessary to end the stage of explosive products as soon as possible and enter the stage of strategic commodities.
When we say get rid of explosive products, what is the reason? Explosive products do not mean that they are wrong, they are in fact explosive, but there is no end in sight to explosive products, and no brother can make a living by beating explosive products from generation to life.
Hitting explosive products is the same as flirting with girls when they were young, and eventually we have to get married, and there is no result in flirting with girls every day, what does it have to do with the brand's mind after flirting?
Most people are constantly looking for opportunities, and they will eventually die because of opportunities, and no one can always seize opportunities.
I've watched it for so many years, and I can survive for a long time on the way to hit explosives, but no. People who make explosive products are very gambling, and if they continue to gamble after losing, they always feel that they are unlucky. Actually, it's the way it plays itself that is a problem.
There is a core strategy in the category strategy of e-commerce called the T-shaped strategy, which we call the category deep and the crowd thorough.
The two are definitely interdependent. Deepening the category means that the most advantageous standardized category should achieve omni-channel distribution. Crowd thoroughness is to take the origin crowd as the core to complete the in-depth operation of the full-link commodity of the product.
Here you can see the core difference between strategic commodities and explosive products: from the perspective of the two lines of commodity growth, "category growth" and "crowd relevance", explosive products have high category growth, but both lines are high, which is a strategic commodity.
OIB looks at the dimensions of strategic commodities: time, space, interior, and outside.
Whether there is a play in strategic products depends on whether there is a chance to win in the minds of consumers under the target category.
In the process of creating strategic commodities, what are the dimensions of evaluation? The method of OIB is "inside and outside time and space".
From a time perspective, whether it is a long-term need;
The spatial perspective is whether the industrial structure and profit structure of this category can be profitable in the long run. For example, some categories are inherently only suitable for discount products, and the industrial structure determines whether you can make money here;
Internal: It is our supply chain advantage, operational advantage, etc.;
External: It is consumer cognition, looking at the vacancy in the consumer's mind.
In the minds of consumers, do we have a chance of winning in the target category?
If consumers in this category have a particularly strong brand awareness of the first place, our strongest place cannot shake the position of the best brand in the category in the minds of consumers, and we have to go around, because in the end we can't get the end.
MAIA ACTIVE, a cutting-edge brand that makes yoga pants, took a lot of financing and finally sold it to Anta last year, because no matter how MAIA ACTIVE makes yoga pants, the ideal brand in the minds of consumers is Lululemon.
It's like when I was a student, I didn't have the money to buy vivo and OPPO, but the ideal brand in my mind must be apple, as long as I have money, I will buy it (excluding the essential difference in price band).
Therefore, this matter is thinking about whether we can win in the core category, relying on our supply chain capabilities, operational capabilities and other advantages.
For example, we have a customer, HeyBetter, which is a lifestyle brand focusing on children aged 2-12, but it actually starts from a very small category, children's sun hats.
From the perspective of time and space factors, mothers will pay attention to children's sunscreen when they begin to pay attention to sunscreen, so the sunscreen hat itself is in line with long-term needs, and mothers are willing to pay high attention and high premium for any product of their children.
But from the perspective of external consumer mentality, children's sunscreen hats do not have a strong brand mentality.
Mothers think that sunscreen hats are quite important, but they find that sunscreen hats are very difficult to store, and they are easy to fall off when they are worn on their heads. How can you find a hat that is easy to store, doesn't take up space, and doesn't take up space while kids run around?
HeyBetter's team found Virginia, the world's largest underwear processing factory, HeyBetter got inspiration from it, used the mechanism of making underwear to make hats, combined the ergonomic technology of underwear with hats, improved the fit of hats to the extreme, and used 100% scientific and technological rebound fabrics, children wear them to carry out daily exercises, no matter how they move. And the hat that comes out of this way is moldable and folds for easy storage.
This sunscreen Little Red Riding Hood has become HeyBetter's first popular item, officially launched in February 2022, and by June 2023, it has sold a total of 2,000,000+ tops on the whole network, and has continuously dominated the TOP1 of Tmall's children's empty top hat hot list.
After the sunscreen hat, HeyBetter has released many other children's functional clothing categories, all of which start from the functional mind to make breakthroughs.
In fact, this has something to do with the team's genes, that is, internal advantages.
The opportunities in the category are diverse. Focusing on our core advantage categories, looking for insights and differences, and innovating around the key points of consumption, there are many innovative points that can be done.
Fight before you win, don't fight first
If you win, you will fight, and if you can't win, you won't fight first
Why I strongly recommend that you do a good job of strategic products first, lay a solid foundation for the channel, and then consider doing brand upgrades, because we believe that:
The product is higher than the brand, and there is a product and then a brand. If the product doesn't stand, everything is empty.
A particularly important point of Sun Tzu's Art of War is called knowing victory and then fighting. Don't go to war first, fight only if you win, and don't fight first if you can't win.
To be a brand, the core is to predict victory and then fight.
Let me tell you a story:
Two days ago, there was a good brother who made a brand, saying that he had prepared 30 million this year, and asked me if I could play?
I said that you think you have made up your mind to invest 30 million, but even if you put 30 million all in, it doesn't mean anything in the beauty industry.
But on the contrary, if you divide 30 million into two money, one is called 5 million and the other is called 25 million.
First use 5 million to determine the good job of this product, what is good?
Are you confident enough to do this product? Have you done it thoroughly? Tell me how good it is, is it better than Estee Lauder, or is it better than La Mer?
We don't just make products up to standard. After passing the national production standards and doing some efficacy tests, this is not good.
This product is determined to be good enough to be compared with the best standard, and I am also good;
Secondly, there are also awesome people who make endorsement platforms for us. That's when consumers think the product is good.
With these 5 million and 25 million, we will discuss whether we should spend it in the long run.
It even said that 25 million will not be spent for the time being this year, and you can sleep. I spent 5 million to get the best product, this product may be two years ahead of the market, why should I be in a hurry to spend the 25 million today?
Is it okay to spend 10 million this year? Or save enough next year to spend 50 million at once.
Why do I have to spend money on tasks for you? I want to win, I want to win.
So back to whether we want to do brand upgrades, in fact, we all have an inertial thinking in it:
Everyone will think that there is a contradiction between branding and growth, and everyone thinks that to be a brand is to invest money, but in fact, this is a misunderstanding.
For example, when opening a restaurant, what is the only difference between a branded restaurant and a non-branded restaurant?
If I have money, of course, I can invest in Focus, but if I don't have money, I clean up the store and display it cleanly, this is the brand, make good use of the store's own media to do communication, this is also the brand.
Therefore, OIB has always emphasized that branding is a process of branding, not branding. It's ING, it's a continuous tense.
It's going forward, it's going there, it's going there, it's going forward this year, it's going to be one step ahead next year, it's going to be one step after another, and it's going to be your ideal way.
I hope that everyone can make the ideal brand in their minds in this era of being the best brand.