How to make products that young people love

How to make a product that young people love? This is a complex issue: it involves many aspects of marketing, product, and service innovation. I think we must go to the first scene of young people's life, feel the different environment and temperature there, can accumulate the feeling of making products.

Subculture is the first scene for young people, so it is a compulsory course for product managers.

A sense of participation in the first scene

Why the scene? We can look at an example. We know that Baidu has a product called Baidu search list, it can show the different age groups of users search keywords rankings and trends.

We choose the video content of the search results will see that people of different ages of the search structure is not the same: although some of the same content, such as "westward", such as "Lust and lust," but their rankings are significantly different.

More importantly, these sorts reflect the difference in consumer scenarios between people. Young people's hormones are exuberant, so "all the way to the West" and "lust and precepts" such as "God film" has been ranked front, but also on the computer online to watch, not affected by theaters, "small time" has long been the forefront of the shelf. And the more than 30-year-old user to search the list of movies is basically now movie theater on the list, they have developed a movie theater of the habit and culture of the film.

If we want to learn about the preferences of young users watching movies, it is obviously problematic to go to the cinema to investigate their habits. So we have to find the right spot. So, the next question is, what kind of site is the most observational value, the trend of interest of the crowd most at a glance?

The answer is to fully demonstrate their interest and expression preferences of the subculture community. In the early days, this kind of community has mop, post bar and watercress interest group and so on, and in recent years the New Jin leap Red is to express more rich, more intuitive play screen video site and violent comics and so on.

A station (acfun.tv), B Station (bilibili.tv) is the most popular video sharing website, the first time I saw the commentary on the screen is really shocked. In the face of every moment is overwhelming text, my first reaction is, this video how to see it? But my colleague said it was very high, so I forced myself to look at it for 15 minutes, and the result was still spent.

But to adhere to half an hour, I began a little sudden epiphany feeling, the screen can see, will find the eyes of three-dimensional space in the picture and the comments are separate, you want to see the picture on the screen, want to read the comments on the review. Please be sure to try. It's like when we were kids looking at three-dimensional painting: in two-dimensional plane to see 3D eye is not to focus, suddenly become three-dimensional, is this feeling.

Intuitively, the common denominator between the mob and the barrage seems to be parody. Sometimes, the so-called mature people will say, "after", "00" after the hopeless, all day will be a spoof. But a little careful observation, I found that this is not just a spoof. In addition to spoof video, anime, perhaps you can hardly imagine, the young people will also through the barrage to see the history of the Yi Zhongtian, there is no lack of serious.

If you think of the originator of the video station, Japan's UGC video site NicoNico, you will find that the barrage is more of a tool value and the changes in the way of observation- The video station even penetrated the live broadcast of Japan's major political debate: political stance of different party candidates on the NicoNico network was used on the Internet, and people were evaluating the performance of different politicians.

The curtain itself is a kind of content, but not limited to this, it is a new generation of young people to watch the video way. I tend to think about more than 10 years ago, when I was watching TV with my parents, I was playing with my mobile phone and playing with my computer, and my parents would be unhappy and criticized for not paying enough attention. In the same vein, our initial surprise at the curtain was just a little understanding of the behavior of young people.

In fact, the scale of the subculture community is not only the source of the content, behind also have a system of product mechanism support.

The video site provides a perfect tool for playing screen, and there are some advanced small features to help you achieve the same effect as the God-the key guarantee that it can rise is that it is not just a way of expression, it provides a very complete product chain platform. The same is true of the mob, and they also have the appropriate formatting platform and tools. In fact, the classic expression in the mob is prefabricated, which can be done two times in existing video and/or images.

Formal these powerful, complete product platform, launch, encourage, support a large number of subculture group of participants to create two times. In fact, this is perfect in line with the characteristics of post-modern culture: the mass creation and consumption, as well as the classical elements of deconstruction, parody and collage.

And compared to the professional producers of production content, and then through professional media distribution channels to the public broadcasting traditional mode, there is a perfect product system support of the subculture community can provide the face of the lower threshold of the majority of users to participate in enthusiasm, more prosperous two times creative ecology. The most typical may be the "Oriental Project" from Japan, which is just a developer Zun a person to complete the world view, character settings and basic game, music, programming elements, but he opened to the vast community of people to change the copyright, so the annual ritual activities, a large number of colleagues to create novels, records, Video and so on constitute an unprecedented huge two times the creation of ecology, flowers and clusters of brocade, magnificent.

In the case of programmers who are more familiar with understanding, the nature of the open source community is two creations. However, in the field of mass consumption, many subculture communities have a wider impact and lower participation threshold.

This is an evolution, these fully-produced "first scene" provides a "telepresence", but also provides a complete tool system for two of times. With these tools, two of young people's creations are powerful tools to support and disseminate incentives, and derive a strong sense of engagement.

Young people always crave for different personalities. Only in the past because of the lack of media coverage capabilities and tools, the people who have different youth can reach and influence the population in space has great limitations, and now, benefiting from the increasingly developed mobile communications services, social media networks and the mob, AB stations to provide a product tool system, Young people are finding it easier to find their own differences, define their differences, find partners with similar traits, and spread them more easily to promote the differences they prefer.

It is these young people who have formed a diverse group of Asian-cultural enthusiasts. So we want to really understand their preferences, it must be the end of the subculture group's first scene.

The essence of change is consumption demand

So how did evolution happen? From the consumption view and the change of consumption habits can find some reasons and root causes.

In my understanding, this is the new branch bud on the evolutionary tree of consumption concept. Throughout this history of change, the earliest people are functional consumption, and then to the brand-type consumption, and then experience the type of consumption. For the past two years we've been talking about experiential style. For example, when we buy a phone, always said I need a can call, standby time long, this is a very typical functional consumption, then there will be Ericsson, motorcycles, then to the brand era, the outstanding is to emphasize "technology people-oriented" Nokia.

That used to be a very crazy era, like the health care industry once the "popular fried chicken" three strains, Red Peach K have been very proud to say that they have to brush the ads to the rural pigsty. There will be a lot of companies jump out to say that they have a VI system, a set of VI can sell millions, it is crazy.

Later, the consumer experience has become a new era of key words. For example, mobile phone manufacturers before this has opened a lot of high-grade, exquisite experience, they try to convey to consumers: you buy is not a simple brand, I have a good sense of the scene.

New changes will continue to emerge, and my judgment is that it is now in the era of participatory consumption, a whole revolution in the concept of consumption.

In the previous notes, I have elaborated, the sense of participation is the soul of the brand of millet concept. Here, we believe that the new participatory consumption concept of the era, based on the sense of participation, for the product manufacturers and users, there is a new requirement. Therefore, we will continue to think about doing products, brand marketing process, how to provide very convenient, very good qualification and platform, from the beginning of the design time to consider can facilitate the user to do two times to create, to participate in. Then according to user participation in the opinion of constantly improve our products, users in the process, will continue to obtain a sense of achievement, this chain will form a very positive rolling.

We can say for sure that the younger generation is consuming a sense of participation, not just saying that I see you and touch you, but also that I need to be able to participate and grow with you.

In my understanding this is crucial-it means that consumer demand has taken a critical leap-consumer demand for the first time exceeds the product itself, not only by the physical and chemical properties of the product, but also by the social attributes: What I can do today is not easy to buy, but what I can do with it, What kind of new experience can I get involved in the process.

Millet practiced this set of methodologies. We first did the MIUI system, only then did the handset hardware. MIUI is my first project in the Millet belt, we set the basic line in the beginning: How to through the Internet, we want to make a user really through participation in the continuous improvement of products, rather than behind closed doors.

Before we do, all the manufacturers release cycle is six months, three months, two months, and then we do MIUI, said we can challenge themselves, can do weekly release, weekly iteration. Just started to start a business, MIUI only six people, the entire millet staff at that time only dozens of people, but can not mobilize the strength of the people, really is to do 100,000 of the development team, this is the beginning of our original point.

Now it looks very simple, and we started through the most primitive way, through the Forum, weekly update our products to the forum, and then in the process, our product managers can communicate with users, we do this thing, not simply product manager, we are asking for a national forum, the National customer, Everybody wants to bubble forum, want to interact with the user. We upgraded every Friday, users can submit his experience report next Tuesday, next Wednesday, we know from experience report last week's update which group did better. We have a vote internally based on the user, we will say who made a good improvement last week, the user is very satisfied, we have a small reward. We have formed a real user vote to drive research and development improvements, not in the opinion of the boss, nor in the opinion of a very bull engineer.

Outside of MIUI's professional users, we also have the offline user interaction activities such as popcorn inviting all users to participate. We play games with our users and our development team goes to the scene. We made 19 popcorn in 2013, with more than 500 folk. Last December 27, we made an annual festival of popcorn at the Beijing National Convention Center, the core of which was to award our users the same day that our users were stars.

The mainstream culture also comes from subculture

The sense of participation is a new consumption demand based on emotional interaction and value identification, and it can grow into a towering giant even if it is based on subculture.

For example, AKB48 is now Japan's most popular girl idol group, and the entire AKB group even has more than 200 large branch sisters and derived combinations. In fact, the emergence of this group is almost regarded as one of the best examples of the emerging and successful participation in consumer demand in recent years: In recent years, she has taken almost all of Japan's record and entertainment awards, for several consecutive years to take the top of Japan's annual single sales list, became a household name of the National Girl Idol group.

Her success was a miracle that was born in 8 years. At the time of their inception, they were just an underground idol group active in Akihabara, Tokyo. But akb unprecedented "can face the Idol" this subversive concept, compared to the traditional high idol role, AKB designed a number of intimate contact with fans, interaction, and even fans can participate in the impact of the operation strategy. For example, they hold regular handshakes throughout the country, and fans can shake hands by buying a record and getting a handshake ticket. Many of their members shake hands with each fan and stand for a day or even their hands will swell. Their "total election" system was a major innovation, with fans buying single CDs to vote for their favorite members, thus determining the Singles ' list and the position.

Not only this, their whole system is not simple packaging, there are also perfect draft, upgrade, graduation system and numerous offline theaters, online TV, and so on, I understand deeply, akb mode behind the total producer Qiu Yuan Kangjin is a very very great product manager, he put the whole draft into a systematic platform, Become a real dream factory. And one of the really most touched by the AKB is the face of the idol, fans can and they grow together, and retreat.

On the one hand, the Asian culture is really aware of the preferences of young users, on the other hand is the future of the mainstream culture of the prospective discovery.

The evolution and growth of subculture has a certain difference in time and space. For example, after akb48,8 years of efforts in Japan has become the absolute mainstream, but her sister group in Shanghai, China SNH48 is still mainly in the minority subculture to get attention.

For example, Rock, after the 70 's, in Europe and the United States has become mainstream, and in China 10 years, 20 years ago to listen to rock, we all feel very different, but today's rock and roll became a spirit, is widely accepted. If you compare, you may even find that many of the rock elements of pop music today are more intense than the classic hard rock of 80 years.

What happened in the meantime? In fact, "not the old man is bad, the bad guy gets old". The people who listened to rock and roll mastered the right to speak today and became the mainstream of society. Rock and roll was also subculture, but the spirit of rock has been recognized by more people.

KK once said that subversive innovation comes from the fringe. We will also find that many of the mainstream culture is actually from subculture. Now that the group of children who are so fond of the mob and akb grow up, we can imagine how colourful the mainstream culture circle will be in more than 10 20 years.

Now we can sum up: to make the products that young people love, the key is to go to the first scene of young people. Today, the subculture group young people are very important scene, the young people now consume is not simple function, not simple brand, he consumes is a sense of participation.

We should look forward to the mainstream culture of the future and keep the passion of foresight and discovery. Therefore, subculture is a required course for our product managers.