How to create IP for new consumer brands?

preface

If you don't know the new consumer brands Xicha and Yuanqi Forest so far, nor do you know the Internet celebrities Li Ziqi, Wei Ya, and Li Jiaqi who have come out of the circle from video and live broadcast, and have never heard the golden sentence terrier that was played by the public, "Come, brother", "Good hi yo, I feel that life has reached its peak", then congratulations, you have a peaceful and peaceful life.

Whether it is a new consumer brand, or an Internet celebrity, or a brush screen golden sentence, they all have more and more huge fans, brands, content is forming a new consumer trend, whether on the Internet, or offline have a largely developable, potential market and audience.

And these brands and content have gradually evolved into IP.

While not all brands have to become IP, IP must be the highest stage of brand evolution. Evolving to IP means getting one step closer to traffic.

What is branding IP?

What is the difference between brand and IP? Brands are a product of the industrial era, and IP represents the product of the Internet era. Brand is more positioning, planning, advertising, visual; IP is more reflected in the values, outlook on life, world view, or philosophical meaning, and ultimately resonates with people culturally and emotionally.

For brands, IP has gradually become a new tool or new methodology for brand building, through creating a distinct personality and creating high-quality content, and users continue to have valuable interactions, to win more users' love and pursuit.

From another point of view, brand IP is another new model of word-of-mouth marketing.

In this era, IP is also becoming more and more diversified, and any content, any thing, and any item can become IP, such as people, products, services, golden sentences, and content.

Successful IP can indeed successfully capture people's hearts, because it has an emotional resonance point that can touch people's hearts.

For example: Why do people like Marvel characters? Spider-Man, who is a teenager but has superhero responsibilities; Captain America, who was originally a thin youth, and finally injected super serum and became a super soldier; Iron Man, who is an inventor, adventurer, billionaire, playboy, or crazy man and other multiple roles.

Marvel has so many characters and so many heroes, but there is always a hero that people worship, that people like, and that every character can capture the hearts of people who have a preference for them.

In the Internet era, becoming an IP is equivalent to occupying a permanent consumer entrance and continuously providing traffic for the brand. Becoming an IP in the context of extremely scarce traffic dividends can also help reduce people's choice costs and sell their products or services better. The value of this can bring higher monetization benefits is self-evident for the brand, and it also has considerable appeal.

IP has the potential value of its own topic. There's a comparison: licking a dog and a goddess. Licking the dog is the brand, you have to chase the user to run, the IP is the goddess, the user chases the IP to run. This is also the survival state of the brand and IP. At the same time, it also brings a new way of linking: the brand is passively linked by the user, while the IP is actively linked by the user. The underlying logic of this link not only determines the cost of the link, but also determines the change in the relationship between the two. When you're a brand, you're a friend with your users; but if you're an IP, you're more like a religion to your users, and users are followers of you. Brands address more rigid needs, while religion satisfies people's spiritual beliefs. Therefore, the link basis between the brand and the user is equal, and the link basis between the IP and the user is to become his spiritual home.

When you can become the user's spiritual home, it comes with value. What IP does, says, and uses will become the object of user reference and imitation. Users want to be one of the social spokespeople for IP.

The relationship between IP and brand

All IP is formed, and it is not a company that fabricates an IP out of thin air. Instead, based on its own genes and soil, it gradually changes in the marketing process, and through the users served by the brand's products, it has been comprehensively interpreted, and finally evolved into a result.

That's why there is that sentence: not all brands have to become IP, but IP must be the highest stage of brand evolution. The traditional brand positioning theory is biased towards materialization, and the brand is high above and has a long distance with consumers. However, IP reduces the physical nature, emphasizes human nature, and emphasizes that the brand is a living body with the general charm of human nature.

The relationship between IP and the product

From the perspective of the product, the brand has excavated what can be called "social flower" products, the characteristics of this type of product are not strong, the general acceptance of the public is high, the consumer is widely contacted, and there is a certain degree of recognition, the appearance is outstanding, since birth it has its own social attributes, itself also has a certain fission ability, not only can broaden the marginal effect of the product, but also can enhance the exposure and sound volume of the product brand in other new fields.

A product with the ability of "social flower" is actually a standard Internet product. The salient features of Internet products are traffic fans and social attributes. Not only traffic, but also their own fans, and fans can also give Amway to other consumers, expanding the traffic pool of the entire product.

In the case of Heytea, its succulent grapes can be called a "courtesan" product. Not only has it long had its own social status, but it has also attracted much attention after becoming a product, and the popularity of search is also very high. When people talk about succulent grapes, they can already wake up the brand discussion about the brand itself, and even Heytea has specially born a grape girl for this purpose. At the same time, when people discuss succulent grapes, they also wake up people's tea brands such as Naixue's tea, tea beauty, Coco, and tribute tea.

From timesink

Not limited to tea products, succulent grapes and peripheral concepts and product extension capabilities, in the Little Red Book search succulent grapes, you can search for 30,000 + notes, in addition to how to make succulent grapes, there are succulent grapes around the beauty, such as succulent grape hair color, nail art and so on. The vitality of succulent grapes is no longer just a cup of milk tea, but far beyond the effect of a cup of milk tea.

The product of succulent grapes has become a product-type IP of its own, with the attribute of becoming a "goddess".

The relationship between IP and channels

Different channels make different IP.

Douyin and Little Red Book have made Hua Xizi and the perfect diary. As the vanguard of planting grass, the thriving brand has more than one point or two to get out of the circle and the traffic dividend on various short video websites, and even has determined the life and death of this brand. Large and small brands compete on the short video platform, through the video to raise fans, live conversion, so the rise of the short video platform is almost every brand IP formation of the history of the family history.

There is no ERA of IP, only the IP of the era.

The relationship between the IP and the user

Generation Z enters the business world with innate sensitivity and decision-making power, attracting the attention of the business world, when more and more business entities play the slogan of rejuvenation, in fact, whether they want to admit it or not, the consumer world dominated by the Z era has quietly arrived.

Their focus on experience and data redefines the important factors of consumer loyalty to brands, they prefer interest communities, and they are active in communities that they are interested in, such as music, e-sports, games, short videos, love beans, anime and other diversified entertainment scenes. They are the indigenous people of the mobile internet, with heavy social, local mobile and personalized consumer groups. They are good at and enjoy using their phones to get information. Their consumption concept and consumption mode promote and create the IP of a number of brands.

Reading them, but also reading the future of the development of the entire brand.

The relationship between IP and the scene

All business elements and brand IP reconstruction form a new and scenario-based solution.

Many companies do IP is to draw a mascot, and then do a little peripheral things, but it does not have any effect on the company's products and marketing.

For example, Jiang Xiaobai, although there are still many controversies about its product quality and taste, jiang Xiaobai is very successful, that is, the application of IP falls on the product. Each of Jiang Xiaobai's wine bottles has a quote on the packaging, not only the company's own creation, but also the UGC content from the user.

Jiang Xiaobai has made the product content and IP, and changed the scene of the product through IP, so that there is a clear difference between the brand and other liquors. You walk your tall, I walk my little scene. This also allows Jiang Xiaobai to stand out from many liquor brands and gain his exclusive traffic market.

In the end, under the joint action of five factors: brand, product, channel, user and scene, brand IP has become a major trend.

How should brands be IP-oriented?

If you want to promote the IP of the brand, what should the brand know?

1. Continuous high-quality content production ability

The differentiation of brand and IP is like licking the dog and the goddess, the brand needs to constantly pull users and please users, and IP is the goddess, what she has to do is to constantly create content, divergent charm, so as to attract more fans.

Therefore, the brand is often called the gold owner, and the IP is called the gold mine. The gold lord pays for it, and the gold mine is the deposit that attracts the gold lord.

All IP must be able to continuously produce high-quality content that can impress users, here are three key points, useful, effective, and changeable.

Useful – IP can be used in key aspects of marketing. For example, the image of three squirrels is implanted and all users are called the master culture of the master.

Effective – can directly enhance the product experience or sales experience. For example, the emperors who were spoofed in the big IP of the Forbidden City made users bring refreshing feelings and quickly increased the user's attention to the Forbidden City IP.

There is a change - the scene of the brand can be combined with the Internet and the new situation of consumers. For example, Jiang Xiaobai has constructed a series of drinking cultures and scenes, and has turned himself into the standard of wine culture in various scenes without a trace.

2. Differentiated personality interpretation

The brand only grows in the form of the product itself, even if it will make a lot of content and gameplay, such as doing cross-border with other brands, having its own micro-movie, but no matter how to do the brand, it is the product itself, it is a materialized language, there is no soul, and there is no temperature.

But IP is different, such as the relationship between Apple's mobile phone and Jobs. Jobs lived his life in a philosophy of minimalism, and he attached his philosophy to Apple's products. With only one key and only one style, it seems that the user is not buying an Apple phone, but Jobs has chosen the similar taste of you to become his user. Buying other brands of mobile phones, most of them are just to meet the needs of the functional level.

3. Highly recognizable product value

In the map of brand IP creation, first of all, we must complete the positioning of IP, and then carry out professional design through positioning, improve the value of the entire IP, so that users can see you for the first time and leave a deep impression.

In recent years, all the popular Internet celebrity brands have more or less possessed this trait. The level of product appearance is highly related to the current young people's emphasis on the economy of appearance. If the product has a high appearance and is watchable, it is easier to attract young people to take the initiative to share socially. For example, the entire scene layout of the new retail brand "Colorist" store, every corner is designed into a high-value environment, and users are very willing to take photos inside and share them on the Grass Platform of Little Red Book. This also achieves the brand's marketing purpose: if your product can let users actively share, then you can also save a lot of budget in marketing.

4. The integration and good use of new communication technologies

Our media ecology today has undergone earth-shaking changes. From the traditional mass media and the four major media monopolize all forms of centralization, we have come to a new stage of distribution and fragmentation in the Internet era. The communication and advertising to be done today have also changed from the past mass communication to the new communication form of today's social sharing. In the era of mass communication, the leader has a strong advantageous resource, seize the strong media prime time can be condescending to strike, the most classic is the CCTV + brand advertising play.

But in the era of the Internet, social sharing has largely become the main way for users to obtain product information. Vertical advertising communication has given way, and the communication method with consultation, communication, use, sharing and diffusion has become the mainstream, and this mainstream actually means that the user has changed from a simple product user to an important participant in the product link.

Passive brainwashing can no longer meet the needs of users, users hope that they can participate in the process of product dissemination, so when the brand uses soulless language to communicate with users, it is naturally not very good. The personification, sharing, and interactivity of IP are popular in the new communication stage.

END

It is an indisputable fact that brand IP can bring the energy of independent dissemination. The competition of business is, after all, the competition of traffic. Under the huge temptation of IP-based traffic potential, the way of survival of enterprises, brands, communities, and individuals will change dramatically in the future - IP will usher in the best era.

But is IP really a better option?

We can imagine: when all the products on a street can be called brands, in fact, the meaning of the existence of the brand is diluted. Similarly, when all the brands on a street can be called IP, the meaning of IP may also be diluted.

Or to say: the brand does not have to become an IP, in a certain user circle to make an impact, with a small and beautiful model, in the more and more segmented user needs, it seems to be able to find their own niche market.

In the future, what new concepts will lead the direction of brand development? This is an open-ended question, and it is also the thinking left by the times.

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Liu fang

Author of "Traffic Monetization"

Columnist of China's cutting-edge retail information platform "Lianshang Network", "Lianshang Planner", "China Food Newspaper New Retail", "New Retail Finance"

New retail private domain marketing consultant, personal brand IP consultant