Marketing Enemies

Virus？ Micro movies? Augmented reality? If you don't know what your brand is saying, don't say anything.

We are the stories we tell (we are the story).

These words almost fill up the entire tether company's official homepage. You probably don't know what tether is, or who its founder Stanley Hainzworth is, but you must know Nike, Lego and Starbucks three companies. Stanley Hainzworth, the creative director of the three companies, became a fashion and energy representative from a sneaker brand, and the concept of Lego became synonymous with possibility and imagination, and Starbucks, Stanley Hainzworth, let it shine. , dotted with music, oil paintings, and warmly greeted you, and then wrote your name on the paper cup of the clerk.

The most distinguished brand Master in recent years has attributed his marketing to "storytelling". If you ask the creative directors of the 4 a company, the word is likely to be mentioned, after all, those who relish the effects of shampoo or the strong power of the car ads too straightforward, put them in the "show the Charisma" or "the style of the winners" will be more content.

Stanley Hainzworth to the story, he let marketing back to the original intention of the company. "Any entrepreneur at the beginning of the establishment of a brand, there will always be his reasons, maybe they want to solve a problem, they deeply believe that their approach will be successful, so they wholeheartedly into the cause, this is the story we need to find." ”

He feels that brands such as Nike and Starbucks, where they grow up with rich stories for marketers to dig and tell stories successfully, are known to more consumers. As for those companies that are not so well known, they are not without stories, but because they have never considered how to tell and apply them, or they always characterize themselves as a product manufacturing company rather than a brand that has an emotional connection with consumers.

"The brand story should be the brand's readme, be able to explain why it exists, why people should care about it." Of course, the more vivid the story, the more interesting it is, and the more attractive the consumer will be, and hope that he will be part of the story. Stanley Hainzworth said to Caijing Weekly, "consumer preferences are always changing and the competitive environment is changing, and companies must constantly adjust their strategies to accommodate these changes." But the core of the brand is pure and will not change. It's like a spider's Web, and the spider has to make sure that it can find its way back to the center even at the far end. ”

Indeed, we see Nike selling Nike plus chips at Apple Stores, and Lego has turned the tables, chairs, chandeliers and other things into building blocks. The greatest insight behind these practices is to focus on the nature of the company.

In a word, the essence of a company is nothing more than "who, what, what, and who to sell." The essence of marketing is to help the company "sell" better.

At the end of this article, we enclose the 10 marketing cases that the first financial weekly considers most worth talking about. They are provided by 4 companies and brands themselves, covering a variety of marketing cases from last October to the October this year in the Chinese market. The best marketing can be intangible, straightforward, and not too much to explain. And the things we've chosen are groundbreaking, well done in new markets and new users. This is really a paradox, because the marketing skills excellent and get the "dazzle marketing" affirmation.

If you look closely at the companies on the list, you will find that they are almost all targeting young consumers and are more willing to try new media outlets outside of television. They want to find new users for marketing-it's no surprise, who doesn't want to sell their products to more people?

now the question is: where is the new user?

Stanley Hainzworth joined Starbucks as Global Creative vice President in 2004. He puts forward five standards for the brand: handmade, artistic, professional, humane, and persistent. It doesn't take one by one to control what it means, but Starbucks has become a kind of ... Culture。

Prior to this, Starbucks also advertised the environment and comfort, but stores look like old private study, it seems to light a cigar to shoot "American past." Stanley Hainzworth remembered the idea of founder Schultz (Howard Schultz) initially set up Starbucks: When Schultz went to Milan to experience the local coffee culture, visit local cafes and bars, and watch the customers carefully. So Starbucks has designed a unique social atmosphere at the outset, and Howard is well aware that more than just the Starbucks family can provide quality coffee, only a "community" to make Starbucks stand out and make it the third place outside the home and the company. And Stanley Hainzworth just reinforces this: the choice of furniture, what paintings to hang, what music to play, is all around this idea, and the idea that the clerk and you will have a close greeting.

"To the brand, the product is the experience, the experience is the product." For Starbucks, when you taste a drink, the music you listen to, the conversation you have with someone, and the sofa you sit on make a complete experience, who would say I just came to Starbucks for a cup of coffee? Stanley Hainzworth said. He felt that the brand, like people, appearance, taste, smell, sound, touch as a whole, no exception.

In this way, we can list a long list. Like a Budweiser that produces beer, it certainly sells frothy beer (and the glass must be hung with crystal drops), but it also sells vigor and the joy of friends gathering, such as Coca-Cola, no matter how the various brands to change the creative, open the soda bottle that "" "The" "" "a must have, such as Zara, Its windows from Paris to Shanghai stores are the same style of the same theme, this is to make you feel that you are buying a world fashion brand, you are hot enough.

But if you care enough about marketing, you will also notice that in the 2011, brands have never racked their brains in marketing. So many 3D shows, endless smartphone apps--they usually come with augmented reality or virtual reality technology, or at least a social network, last year was just a "going to power" fire, and this year there were various versions of the "Tom Cat" commentary, and marketing and current events were surprisingly fast ( The first financial weekly has previously reported on the Beijing Flood and Durex's Patten marketing.

"Marketing is now hard to do, especially for young people who are selling words to you." "Enovate, brand manager of Brand Consulting, Eufer told the first financial weekly." Chen Yijun, the executive creative director of the advertising company BBH, says: "Consumers are now PhD researchers in brand research." ”

Everyone is competing for the attention of consumers-so many brands don't remember what they want to do. The most intuitive argument may be that you think your marketing is very successful, but consumers actually remember is advertising, rather than you want to promote products or services. "Many creative (creative) solutions are not very effective (effective)," said Oli Goulden, director of the Shanghai Austrian advertising group. ”

If you are an advertiser who makes a marketing plan, consider three questions:

1, your excellent production, emotional and moving advertising is to say what.

Advertising is becoming more complex. After a mix of rock-and-roll jeans advertising made the brand popular, many advertisers began to think about adding rock and roll to their plans. More and more ads are starting to focus on visuals, increasing the impact of images (while speculating on the consumer's aversion to large text) and trying to entertain-it's OK, but consumers are increasingly inclined to enjoy, appreciate, talk about ads, and even laugh, but still not buy their products.

For example, in order to promote the 350 and the creation of a "Che Shen rocking" app, the last 36 hours in the App Store free software ranked first, and finally reached 600,000 downloads. In the final advertiser's report, there is a summary: "There are now 8 million iphone users in China, that is to say, one out of every 14 users has downloaded a car shake and shake." ”

Let's put this estimation formula aside, the app─ use method is to upload a man and a woman's head image after downloading, shaking the phone so hard that you can get a baby photo-is said to be in the Glory 350 "into the young people aggressive unique gene." The problem is that even if the 600,000 download is really effective, and really entertaining a lot of people, how many people will be "aggressive" and spend about 100,000 yuan to buy a car linked to the behavior?

2. Do you believe in your channel purchase report?

Although the tools to record personal data are now ubiquitous, there is still no effective way to measure the advertising conversion rate for consumers to ultimately buy because of advertising, the media monitoring company's report on the aggregate of the media itself is the index, it can not be associated with the legendary "conversion rate".

The new media may be more prominent at this point. At Pizza Hut to put 26 new products to micro-blog, encourage users through the "powder" to draw a new product award, the final monitoring report on these numbers: Cover 30 million people (the total number of monthly login), Participating in the event number of 35,300 people, published 21,780 blog, the Activity page button was clicked 2.12 million times, Pizza Hut micro-blog to make 650 v users, and finally Baidu search "Pizza Hut 26 new" value of 142,000, Google is 114,000, "These are earned Word-of-mouth."

More importantly, in view of the fact that this is just a new category of food and beverage products, the actual conversion rate in these figures may be very high--but as the phrase, "You know half the ads are wasted, you just don't know which half."

3, "Virus" and "advertisement", you putting the cart before the horse?

Viral advertising itself is not new, fresh is more and more advertisers began to say to the advertising agency: "Give me a virus ads." ”

"Before receiving a customer proposal, most of them would consider flat and TV commercials. But now viral has become a requirement, or a measure of metrics. "If it's a good advertisement, the likelihood of the virus will certainly be high, but you can't force it into a viral ad," Chen Yijun said. ”

And this concept is similar to the popular "micro-film." From the publicity of high-quality canon to the promotion of sterilization of the cure, all in a short few minutes of the story to strengthen the brand marketing. "For example, on Sina Weibo, industry monitoring data is that 3-5 minutes long micro-movies are more likely to be read by users." "The founder of the industry website advertising Door Miao Hao told the first financial weekly," This is the following video patch advertising brand favorite way.

Whether it's "micro-movie" or "Entertainment consumer," They're nothing wrong, it's just what you do.

Few brands have exaggerated the direct link between advertising and sales. Instead of persuading consumers to buy more products, advertising is increasingly focusing on consumers ' choice of brands. Whether it's laundry detergent, television or automobiles, the purpose of advertising may be to defend (retain existing customers and market share), but to attack (from the same products to seize market share, to win new users) appear cautious.

Or more sensational: a fear of "getting new users"-the brand is too concerned about what the user is thinking. James McGregor, former head of the Wall Street Journal in China, published in 2005 his book, "1 Billion consumers", which insights into China's business phenomenon from the 1990 to the beginning of 2000, says: [Those brands may find] Chinese consumers with empty pockets but insatiable appetite.

The situation is changing at a breakneck speed, and the Chinese consumer's pockets are not just bulging, but, crucially, a much younger group than brand-marketing policymakers.

This is the reason that Eufer's company, Enovate, was rated by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies in China for more than 2011 years. "First Financial weekly" reported it six months ago, the company specializing in the young Chinese consumer market, including Unilever's consumer goods companies, including Ogilvy, such as advertising agencies. In their "marketing of young people", the first is: as marketers, you have to behave to understand what they are saying, even if you anytime not understand.

So it's not surprising that brands flock to social networking sites, even though most of the time they are at a loss. "Brands are learning, such as looking at spikes in the amount of information on Weibo, and then seizing the opportunity to tweet." "Eufer said.

This August, the McKinsey Quarterly quoted John Hayes, chief marketing officer of American Express, for a conversation with employees. "When we try to bring your ideas to market," says John Hayes, "the industry will decide whether the idea is truly valuable, people will comment on it, and then position it exactly the way they want it." The employee replied, "so that we really can't control it?" The answer is: "indeed." I can't control all the comments about our products. But know that you still have to take full responsibility for the marketing results. ”

The value of advertising is its "wide", is its efficiency, which is from the salesman this career developed from the value of modern marketing. Facebook has made social connections important again, but that doesn't mean you're back in the salesman era.

Next we will sum up 10 rules, which are not learned from the winners, but more likely learned from the marketing enemies. The enemy is blindly superstitious new channels and lose the grasp of the essence of the product, the fear of acquiring new users, ultimately lost in the marketing nature.

10 rules to make your marketing meaningful

Stop chasing dazzling technology or creative trends and think about what you and your customers really need.

01 Don't make a mistake, selling is the only thing.

Looking back at the history of the old brand, we usually find a product development because of its dissemination of knowledge or technology manufacturing capabilities, marketing is mostly around the entity's products. Nokia, for example, initially ran three things: paper, synthetic rubber and telegraph and telephone network cable manufacturing, but people outside of Finland were rarely heard of the company more than 10 years after its inception. Compared with the time, the current marketing seems to be better at image management and control, such as you are familiar with "This is a way of life." This is no problem, just can't take fancy things as their essence, let alone the fancy ideas of others.

02 Turn your brand into a story.

Stanley Hainzworth said a story, not by advertising companies for your products say a piece of irrelevant things. "Everyone knows, the establishment of a company is not easy, experienced these hardships people must be wise enough to know how to create a touching story of the brand and enterprise is how important." "The most important thing about marketing is that you tell consumers why you need me." The need to say, if you provide services, sales of products themselves are not interested, then do not spend too much on the marketing of the mind. And if you have enough confidence and enthusiasm, also be the new media and consumers in the endless need to go further and farther.

03 If you try to talk directly to your consumers, remember to use their language.

And then how to "tell"--tell a story first to find out who your audience is. Let's assume that the brand is a living person, and when he walks into a room, he first observes who's in the room. There may be one person who is the CEO of a company, the other is a taxi driver, and one is a delivery seller. No matter what their identities are, they are valuable people, so we have to adopt different dialogues and ways of getting along with each other. There is only one brand story, but for different people, you have to use different means, the tone of adolescent anger, of course, you will not be used to talk to his mother.

04 Create an experience and expectation, not just sell some products.

A new state of commercialization is that people no longer reject it, consumers recognize the brand spirit and brand story in the business community, they do buy something that makes them feel motivated, and brands can even tell them what to do and how to do it, and they are less likely to be "directed". A brand, if it can create new experiences and more possibilities-whether it is a lifestyle, or a change in the status quo or the future of the opportunity will allow consumers to produce more expectations.

A more advanced version is what Stanley Hainzworth called "the final state." "For example, when we conceive a new product, we are not thinking about its formulation, but imagining what it ultimately is in front of the customer." We discuss what it should be showing. Like Apple's famous 1984 ads, it does not show a specific product, but it shows the consumer's ' final state '. "You can interpret these four words as" who you can be ", and it applies to any good marketing.

05 Don't try to control social media and discuss your users above.

Brand education is an ongoing process. In the past, a television or print advertisement constituted the main means of communication between brands and consumers. But today social media has broadened the contacts between brands and consumers to make them more approachable, because without aggressive commercials, consumers are free to focus on their favorite brands on Facebook or Twitter, They have no need to passively wait for the next issue of new advertising or to rely on department store updates to interact directly with the brand. This may be what the brand is dreaming of: becoming a part of everyday life for consumers. Don't try to remove or stop consumer discussions, it's only going to get worse. Speak normally and communicate in good faith.

06 Good brands have a face.

And the sound, and a pair of hands that you can high-five with or just hold tightly. Well, the meaning of this sentence is to make your brand personified. A good brand image should be made accessible to consumers, it can constantly arouse consumers ' interest and curiosity, at least to exchange views and opinions, just as friends feel. It is to be noted that all of these should be consistent.

07 Trust your consumers, but don't trust market research.

George Louise, author of Blue Design, has a summary of the campaign ads for political figures, and can be put here: trust your consumers. If you think the consumer is a fool, but you want to earn his money, then you are basically a fool.

But the market research and focus group is another matter, taking BBH to Johnnie Walker's case, "if we go to the investigation company, they may and other foreign wine brand survey of consumer conclusions no difference, if we do this, other brands can also do so." "Chen Yijun said.

08 Discard your preconceptions and grow with your new users.

This is in line with the sixth. A scary idea for brands is that two or three-tier cities don't have the same level of consumption as the first tier of cities, so there's no need to put too good a product into the channel. A similar idea is that luxury goods are thought to be better sold in China with big logos. The consequence of this is that once you miss the consumer's maturity (see more, try more) you will be ruthlessly discarded and completely unaware.

09 Cheap products do not mean poor design.

In fact, cheap products + good design often means that the operators behind the brand need to pay more, but also often can get higher brand loyalty and higher market share. The role of design should not be the icing on the cake for high-end products, it is in fact the same as marketing: to solve the problem.

10 never forget the details.

At the world's Gucci flagship stores, the home of New York's V Avenue has a unique fascination, even though the new products they have on the shelves are no sooner than in Tokyo or Los Angeles. Before the store opened, Tom Ford, the Gucci creative director, considered all the details of a store: temperature, humidity, how consumers came into the store, what angle the lights were on the merchandise, and even the ratio of the female customers ' heels to the height of the stairs. These are not sold as merchandise, but will make consumers feel "here is very attractive."

2011, these ideas are different

"First financial weekly" from last October to this October, a variety of marketing cases to select a breakthrough 10. 2011, they were remembered.

Nineth class Explosion orange experiment-Fanta Marketing planning party: Shanghai Ogilvy

How many oranges can squeeze out a drop of orange juice without resorting to external forces? Fanta's official website became an experimental classroom to introduce a new formula for Fanta's orange juice. Fanta knows what its consumers are, and these 13-18-year-olds love novelty, not to mention a 9999-dollar scholarship for the last-guessed pair. But the marketing target audience is actually the children's parents, let them think their children drink is no longer an unhealthy carbonated drink. During the marketing campaign, 4.3 million teenagers watched the experiment online, and Fanta's brand effect increased by 155%.

Language Road Program-Johnny Johnnie (Walker) Marketing Planner: Hundred BBH Advertising (BBH)

BBH does not intend to treat the marketing as an ad, and they want to evoke the resonance of the target consumer with the elements of "dream", "success" and "persistence". Jia Zhang Ke director in documentary Way, photographed Pan Shiyi (blog), Luo, Yunpeng, beans and other people, tell their real life. In fact, there should be no one in the drinking time to think of these, the marketing in the time to evoke resonance is completed. As a high-end foreign wine brand, Johnnie will not push consumers to buy more, it hopes to build a brand identity.

"Love of Driving"-Budweiser marketing Planning party: Know Shiansopa

Sales of beer, more sales sense of responsibility. Budweiser tried to "Drink not drive" this boring preaching into creativity, so in Qingming, May, Dragon Boat Festival three small long holiday concentrated, is also a party frequently in the media and micro-blog featured on the launch of the "love of driving." Participants can look for "driver" to send their own home in their Sina Weibo friends, but compared with this, perhaps Eason's staring eyes twist to make more people remember this season of Budweiser-including those who do not drink.

29 Yuan v-tee-every customer sincere product marketing planning party: where Customer Prudential products

It is good to have a group of up to 30 years of age to operate Vt. They are like a magazine project for the T-shirt sales planning theme, not only on current affairs, and not only with more than 100 designers to cooperate with the design, more is self-ridicule-style slogans and literary youth-style words, such as the sentence " Whether life is always so hard, or only childhood is like this. The team is more sensitive and more guts, after Xiaoming was ridiculed "not acting faction", they conveniently followed the object, let this originally bleak topic once again lit.

"My Health and Health"-Good store Marketing planning party: Agenda

Wacky Marketing. In the cab of the small screen, three of strange people wearing colorful tights winking in the "Give Me Health exercise", teach you how to use simple exercise to keep healthy, and high-frequency playback also let people deepen the impression. As a well-known nutritional supplements brand, this "strange marketing" a reverse of the median route before, pour in the overwhelming ads appear maverick. In contrast to this online part of the line seems to be the same: let users participate in Sub-health State testing, integrated marketing, the number of participants is still 1 million.

Ling Shi Effect-Ling Shi Marketing Planning Party: Hundred BBH Advertising (BBH)

Although Ling Shi in Europe and America for a long time, advertising has always gone sexy out of the way, but Unilever in the introduction of the brand in China when the heart disturbed, including for it to do the early market positioning of the enovate also found that Chinese male consumers for the fragrance is actually very tangled. Finally BBH selected Edison Chen, to teach everyone "sister Tips" way for Ling Shi do a back video manual, synchronous delivery microblogging and Renren. In fact, the video content itself is not very interesting, but BBH's mind in the Edison Chen's topic effect, the core of marketing is "You can also attract girls ' attention."

Jobs biography-Citic Publishing house marketing Planning Party: CITIC Press

This is a marketing that needs to be considered "don't do anything". Since signing the Chinese version of the copyright of the biography of Steve Jobs, Citic even planned the marketing of the concert, in addition to the company's publicity, they decided to open the licensing, and a number of Web sites to cooperate to carry out multi-angle marketing. Tencent opened the Chinese version of the official website, Youku and whale production of jobs zone, where guests in 10 cities, more than 500 billboards full of books on sale information. This Chinese version of the first week of sales volume of 678,000, as the industry review said, such a result I am afraid that in the last 10 years no one can go beyond.

"Love My Love"-Chevrolet Marketing Planner: Chevrolet

Following 11 degrees of youth, Chevrolet continued to follow the route of brand image marketing. In fact, even the car's people may not be able to say what their brand culture is-they will feel that the purchase of Chevrolet is not Shang, and this is the ultimate goal Chevrolet to achieve. They are no longer the cheap and easy to use the car image. In marketing means constantly out of the new today, selling cultural connotations more than selling products. After the launch, Chevrolet's popularity rose from 50% to 78%, with sales exceeding 150,000 in the first quarter of 2011, up 3.5% per month.

Cai Women's shoes-Cechy women's Shoes (JC collezione) Marketing Planning Party: Czech-Greek women's shoes

From Shanghai Long Canton department store sales data, Cechy only seven of summer women's sales results in the same time nearly 40 well-known women's shoes brand all the total sales results. These prices of 1500 yuan or so the charm of high-heeled shoes is not Tsai design, but "limited edition" of the Sales Psychology: Tsai released after the design, there are female stars have been wearing debut. This is the women's shoe sales in the rare Cross-border, if from 1500 yuan to buy a celebrity topic of view, the sales performance is not so difficult to understand.

This article source: First Financial weekly author: Yang Ying Yiaofang qin