Levi's no longer stylish

When we get a product that we have never seen before, and they look dazzling, outstanding features, perfect experience, we always say: "Cool." Yes, "cool" is a can not be more detailed Interpretation of the word, but it represents the young people on a product or a thing in recognition. On the whole it represents: young, stylish, beautiful, personal and unimaginable experience.

Any brand that targets young consumers (usually young people aged 18-35) as target groups will pursue the "cool" experience for the target consumer groups, from the consumer goods Coca-Cola and Nike to the consumer electronics iPhone and PS games Angry Birds Machine to Internet Products, Monument Valley, which have all won consumers. But maintaining a "cool" brand image and product experience is not easy. The brand's history is rather short compared to human history. Over the years, consumers will choose to stay away from some brands, probably because they are not cool It's

Levi's no longer stylish

Levi's may be in a crisis, a survey by BrandIndex, a brand consultancy, found that consumers in the 18- to 34-year-olds are desperate to buy Levi's. Consumers over the age of 50 have become their largest buyers. For a cowboy brand that has been a predominant consumer group of young people, the survey is clearly not an upbeat news.

Originally not a cool brand, Levi's was born in the gold rush of the United States in the 1850s when Western gold-diggers could not buy a pair of strong, durable pants that could withstand the nature of their work. Until the young Vivian Strauss came to San Francisco, he made use of canvas pants, rescue the miner's knees. Levi's at the time represented solid, wear-resistant, high-quality pants.

After the birth of the 501 model jeans with a "Rivet" design (with brass rivets in the corners of Levi's pocket) in 1873, Levi's began to dominate the world until after World War II it became young, stylish, free and personal - That cool pronoun.

The French left-wing philosopher Regis Debray once said: "The power of rock music, video, blue jeans, fast food, news networks and television satellites is greater than that of the entire Soviet Red Army." Levi's brand spirit.

In 1990, Levi's accounted for 48.2% of the jeans category, but by 1998 its market share dropped to 25.0%. By the year 2000, Levi's had only 14% of the jeans market.

The biggest reason for this lack of innovation is that as the jeans brands around the world are leading the fashion trend, the 100-year-old denim brand has moved away from it and is embarking on patent litigation to stop the rise of other brands. And enter the public supermarket, then gradually make Levi's synonymous with cheap jeans. So it started to move farther and farther away, while young people started to move away from Levi's.

Not old before the decline of Facebook

Facebook has a history of just 10 years compared to Levi's and Facebook was cool from the day it was born. It was born in the hands of college students in a college dormitory, which gives students the freedom to express their opinions and initially Open University - Any student with a Facebook account has an inexplicable sense of superiority - in the early days of Facebook's rapid growth, countless schools lined up for Facebook to be open to them. For students, Facebook represents a young, open, free, sharing, how cool this year was.

The turning point in things could happen on September 11, 2006, when Facebook announced that it was open to all Internet users, not just student users, which caused a lot of protests by existing users that year. However, the volume of support from the world at that time greatly overshadowed the volume of objections, people think it is a free and open victory, Facebook represents the future of the Internet. After the open Facebook looks more and more powerful, its users quickly exceeded 500 million, 800 million, 1 billion. Yet another result it brought was the expansion of user levels, where parents of college students and even their seven aunties started landing on Facebook. Young users began to feel that Facebook was no longer a gathering of friends and that it started to become old state.

Of course, in spite of this, products that can pose a threat to Facebook are still lacking until the mobile Internet era, until Instagram and Snapchat began to take away a large number of young Facebook users. When young users use emerging social apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, they find the apps are young, new, fun, and give people an entirely different experience than using Facebook, so that when users of these emerging social apps communicate with Facebook users Experience when there will be a sense of superiority. For them, the old Facebook has long been no longer attractive.

At the end of February 2013, Facebook product director Blake Rose posted a statement of departure through his Facebook profile, saying: "A Forbes reporter asked his son's friend if Facebook was still cool but he got a negative Which made me rethink Facebook's long-term competitiveness and eventually decided to quit. "Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, said in a earnings conference call that Facebook is losing teenagers, but he believes Facebook is still useful.

Useful Perhaps the greatest value of Facebook's current existence, for a product with more than 1 billion users, apparently not to say that can leave to leave. But the number of users does not mean that it can keep the advantage, when it continues to stay away from cool, it will also collapse.

No longer interesting QQ space

Similar to Facebook, QQ Space was born in 2005, early in its birth, it circulated among a large number of classmates and friends. In the age of PC penetration is not high, the use of QQ space is a cool experience, people can in space View other people's logs, status, etc., and interact with the space host. That era, a large part of the Internet behavior occurred in Internet cafes, so of course QQ space belongs to young people's products.

As the economy grows, PC penetration in China is getting higher and higher, and as QQ is transformed from a chat software between strangers into a web-based communication tool between acquaintances and coworkers, the population it accepts is changed from young to Up to fifty or sixty, down to almost all Internet users primary school students. The QQ space has become a common social network of these people, the result is that parents began to monitor students' space, while students have to see the boring state of the older generation published in 2013, Tencent has released a report that 50 to 70-year-old Users are up 30% from 2012, a situation that clearly makes young people feel more and more boring.

The emergence of Weibo and WeChat saved the young people in QQ space in time, and these two products enabled a large number of young people to get rid of the boring QQ space. Weibo and WeChat more in line with the habits of young people, the former allows themselves to speak freely in a relatively private circle, and can choose their own circle of concern and information without having to endure QQ space "does not turn not Chinese," while the latter It is more in line with the movement of modern young people.

For many young people, relative to Weibo and WeChat, QQ space has been no interest. Although the number of users from the point of view, QQ space is still China's largest social network, but it is clear that in the mobile Internet era, people have said less and less QQ space, apparently it does not represent the future, does not mean cool .

It is difficult to maintain "cool" for a long time in a product, and the aging of the product and the lack of innovation may make the product no longer "cool". But for a brand is far more likely, the brand can continue to introduce brilliant products by continuous innovation, just like Apple Macbook to iPod to iPhone, you can also through the use of "cool" elements Continuously shaping the image of "cool", just as Coca-Cola always uses different young leaders to endorse the brand (of course, this is the brand-level image). But in fact, the brand is also very difficult to maintain its youth, younger consumers who know more consumers will always take the lead unprepared, and the leader may also be due to their own reasons behind the market, when young consumers away from them Time may say: because it is not cool.