Product managers want to maximize the excitement and touch the user's psychological pain points

Nowadays, product managers are racking their brains both in the Internet and in the real world to maximize the emotional pain points of their users - and today's people are obviously more demanding and patient than their past counterparts Less and choose more.

For what kind of product and marketing strategy to succeed, people are usually either addicted to the digital model or mystified ... In a book called "Cultural Strategy: Building a Unique Cultural Brand with Innovative Ideology," two marketing scholars The insight Douglas Holt, Douglas Cameron, offers professionals a magic weapon to finding mass-consumption trends that they call "cultural dreams."

Holt and Cameron's core research findings are:

1 abandon the one-way thinking of the past engineers, technicians, no longer advocate "the best mousetrap" as the only core content of its marketing;

2 Successful brands must satisfy the needs of the ideological realm. The assertions made by these brands must grasp the opportunities in the field of ideology arising from social and historical changes - in short, the only way they can "dream "success.

Managershare + Viewpoint: There are countless social changes taking place quietly in any place or historical moment. As long as the business or product manager can focus on the social changes that shake the existing ideology, it is possible to understand the new collective anxieties and aspirations of the new social class or of the original class. The authors of the book, Cultural Strategy, through Nike and Starbucks, illustrate the collective cultural anxiety and longing for these brands. Again, we can also deduce and think about how these products, known around us, have succeeded.

Nike is how to find a successful cultural code?

In 1971, Phil Knight and Bill Bauerman sold their first pair of Nike running shoes. Ten years later, the brand's annual sales reached 458 million US dollars; another 20 years, their annual sales reached 3 billion US dollars. In 2009, BusinessWeek ranked Nike 26th among the most valuable brands in the world and valued more than $ 13 billion.

Why consumers think the value of Nike so high? Many experts think of Nike as "the best mousetrap" model - that it designed and manufactured the best shoes. However, this statement does not fit the truth: The prestigious technology innovation shoe company is more than the Nike, but not with its brand success in the market. In its book Cultural Strategy, its two authors, Douglas. Holt Douglas Cameron, summed up the success: "Nike's great success is to win over innovative cultural expressions rather than innovative products."

Nike really contributes to innovation in sneaker design, but that's only happening in the early stages of a company. In the 1960s, some competent companies first tried to use new materials and medical science in the design and manufacture of sports shoes, which are the "best mousetrap" stages for such products - these products are aimed primarily at professional athletes And serious amateur athletes.

Nike running shoes developed innovative new fibers and soles, and at any cost please Japanese companies. These companies addicted to advanced technology, there are many companies, in fact, the only thing that is closely watched for the new design is the athlete community, even if a small improvement of their functions are important to them - these people became Nike and several other shoe-making companies fanatical Fans For the average consumer, these subtle technical differences do not matter at all. For more than a decade, these companies are relying on star athletes to boast of product performance, can only add to the general consumer tired.

Nike's situation at this time, the "cultural strategy" a book called the cultural chasm (cultural chasm). By designing shoes with higher performance to meet the athlete's specific needs, Nike has established an influential position in the runner subculture. But the strategy does not work for consumers who are not core athletes, who are the vast majority of the market.

How can Nike bridge this gap? It requires a cultural innovation, not product innovation, Nike's performance for the meaningful consumer groups outside of athletes.

Nike's marketing strategy based on cultural innovation, or cultural strategy to develop a product, to create a dream for consumers, need to understand the historical background of the time - in the 1970s, the U.S. economy entered a period of stagflation - before For 25 years, the social contract that created the American dream began to collapse. Originally, the Americans favorite sport is basketball, rugby, such groups of sports. By the late 1970s, however, one of the most individualistic sports - running suddenly became popular.

Nike's founders believe that this is not a temporary craze, successful runners have the power to resist authoritarianism, to join a group project, it fell into various institutional trap. Runners run alone, bear the full responsibility for their own success or failure. This ideology - what they call their personal will to fight will be the ideological foundation of the Nike brand.

Next, some of Nike's series of ads are no longer the story of sports stars who win track and field events. Instead, they are the personal stories of unknown runners who use the slogan "Runway without end" A new cultural password of the original excavation. Nike developed this cultural code into a charismatic way to convey a perseverative ideology of personal will-eventually, Nike overtook Adidas in 1979 and other runway innovators Dumped far behind.

Nike is not without the inertia of returning to the "better mousetrap" logic. In order to promote the category of jogging shoes, in 1985, Nike and Michael Jordan endorsement contract, painstakingly designed a unique Jordan shoes - which led to the rupture of its cultural strategy. By 1984, Nike maintained its annual growth rate of 44% for a period of five years and the profit fell more than 80% from 1983 to 1985. By 1987, Reebok exceeded $ 900 million in annual sales with $ 1.4 billion in sales.

How did the myth of "JUST DO IT" be born?

During the jogging shoes, Nike did not realize that cultural strategies should be used to express the strategy until Widn Kennedy became an advertising agency in 1988 and they developed a new and powerful cultural expression, "Just Do It ".

Since the 1980s, the global economy has collapsed several times and has affected most industries. Large enterprises have merged or closed down one after another. Americans find themselves in a more risky, difficult, and unsafe workday - and they are beginning to need new cultural expressions. In response to this opportunity, Woden Kennedy tapped from the most unexpected places, the African-American slum. Nike touches on the most important social inequities of the time, and most companies try to avoid it when it comes to markets, let alone a company that produces sports shoes.

In the United States of the 1980s, urban slums were the most troubling and shameful part of the United States. These blocks are predominantly African-American. Slum is considered the most harsh living environment in the country, broken families, gangsters, racist police, prison-like schools - here is a ruthless world, the only way to maintain a livelihood is personal tenacity and the streets Clever.

Only with the exception of sports, Nike's myth inspired a strong resonance of Americans. It tells people that sport provides an equal playing field that allows the lowest-level people to get out of their harsh living environment through competition. African Americans, who escaped from the slums and made their way to sports success, represented a new American dream in one of the most profound ways.

Although Nike's star Michael Jordan is a grown-up child from a middle-class family - his image in advertising suggests he is striving to escape the world of poverty. It does not matter whether the real Jordan is from the slums. Such a story was told so many times by the media that in the cultural imagination of the United States all the black athletes came from the slums, and their tireless determination was the reason for their departure from that world.

Nike in the next decade, one after another advertising, are conveyed in the heart of Jordan's state of mind, allowing Americans to find personal motivation from Jordan's will to fight. They also expanded their offerings to the upper middle class, such as golf, through the story of Tiger Woods - although only one-quarter African Tiger breed is not a poor child out of the dirty streets of slums , But mythological fabrication uses ideological bias. Similarly, Nike has also succeeded in using Latin America and other countries for this myth of overcoming social discrimination with minor modifications. It also uses it for football, a sport that American companies have not yet broken through.

See what is creating a popular movie "big move children"

The same is a combination of Feng Xiaogang and Wang Shuo, 1998, "Party B" to 35 million at the box office to become Lunar New Year stallion dark horse, after 15 years, "private custom" effect is not satisfactory. How to find the hit movie "big move children" is a movie circle people pondering things every day. If we look at it from another angle, it is a new idea to consider this matter from the ideology field.

There is a hot word in the movie world - "grounded atmosphere." Since the "romance 33 days," the success of the ground gas is quite a sense of seniority can reflect the technical terms. "The story is not grounded" "The lines have to touch the earth again" "Your show has to touch the earth" ... From the microscopic point of view, grounded earthquakes are some kind of contemporary aesthetic needs. From the macroscopic level, the grounding is actually the consistency between the values ​​of the film and the needs of the public ideology. The film's "cultural strategy" is not a marketing idea but a production concept. If we can take into consideration the ideological needs of audiences from the stage of product development, the movie has some chance of success.

In the 1990s, the success of "Party A and Party B" as the New Year film by Feng Xiaogang and Wang Shuo was due to the dreams of a group of enthusiastic people starting a business for all kinds of people. The elements of the cinema that served revolutionary ideology in the past have been cleverly removed and the passages of the afflicted and the big stars who want to be ordinary people are firmly entrenched in the market economy. "Upstart class dissatisfaction.

After 15 years, Feng Xiaogang "private custom" again Lunar New Year debut. Or Wang Shuo screenwriter, or Ge You, but the evaluation is uneven. The core reason is that the director has not changed, but the community has changed - 15 years later, the big money is no longer the object of ridicule, but has become an inspirational role model. Leadership can be complained but can not be ironic. Ten thousand people apply for civil servants trying to get into that stratum. The rich life is no longer a booming consumption but an in-depth and simple explanation. The mainstream of social ideology turned against the whole year, worshiping the power, admiring the wealthy, forgetting the revolution - in this context, the two tactics Feng Wang was just blundered on the ground.

In Chinese regional directors, Zhang Yimou subscribes to a large number of literary magazines, on the one hand looking for adaptations of the script, on the other hand is actually a subconscious understanding of the current ideological behavior. Chen Guofu read a large number of newspapers and magazines daily, not only to strengthen their understanding of the mainland culture, but also subtle perception of the aesthetic needs of the ideology - a group of excellent creators are struggling to find the subtle awareness of the movie Shape opportunities.

New Oriental can create the next myth?

If we follow the theory of "cultural strategy", the New Oriental established in the early 90s of the last century created a clear and correct cultural expression exactly through the myth of shaping and strengthening the three founders with Yu Minhong as the core.

In 1993, when Yu Minhong founded New Oriental, he was catching up with the study abroad boom that started in the 1980s and continued throughout the 1990s. By 1991, the total number of overseas students studying abroad has soared to 170,000 - leaving the country to study in the army from now on to becoming magnificent.

In 1985, Yu Minhong, a graduate student who graduated from the Foreign Languages ​​Department of Peking University, felt the tremendous opportunity brought by the boom of study abroad to English language training. However, why did the New Oriental come to the fore as the leader of Chinese English training? According to Yu Minhong's memory, he still taught Peking University before and after 1990, and the consultation on English training went abroad. That is to say, the number of English training classes is not scarce.

On many occasions, Yu Minhong recalled the tremendous role of "free lectures" in recruiting new students during his start-up. The so-called free lectures, is to find a big classroom, Yu Minhong to give students want to apply for a speech. Yu Minhong talked about what? Motivational stories: talk about his failure and struggle history. Yu Minhong's personal motivational story is a myth created by him. He is the representative of "the fate of knowledge change" in that era. He precisely grasps the cultural password of that era and continuously strengthens it. It has also become an important part of the brand culture of New Oriental .

If we say that the early Yu Minhong in free lectures and lectures to join their legendary practice is a subconscious means to promote New Oriental. Later, he and Xu Xiaoping and Wang Qiang began to consciously make God by means of media propaganda. Yu Minhong became an evangelist and spiritual teacher of young students and immigrant new immigrants and prospective students. At the same time, this dream - Knowledge changes destiny - is correct, positive.

However, how to carry out this mythology to each teacher in the New Oriental classroom, Yu Minhong's approach is to make each teacher a star, class to talk about the good, just like the presidential election, the ballot in the hands of students. Yu Minhong inspirational not only for students, but also for the new Oriental teacher, he has also been encouraging teachers for the future, the future and struggle.

In the early days of the reform and opening up of the New Oriental and the 90s of the 20th century, the spirit of the times that people broke away from the restraint of the system and pioneered a new life with their own struggles was extremely consistent. But the ensuing boom in Internet entrepreneurship has subverted the New Oriental myth system - the Internet has changed the content of "the fate of knowledge change" and has become hollow by the diversity of successful approaches.

Perhaps due to the history of New Oriental itself and the pressure on Wall Street capital, New Oriental business is getting more and more complete. It has become the leader in China's training market from the initial grassroots training institutions. 2003 has been seen as a turning point in the study abroad fever. Since that year, many returnees have become "sea treats" and can not find jobs. The aura of studying abroad gradually receded. The initial niche market of the New Oriental - English training and counseling for studying abroad has become a regular item.

In 2013, Baidu, China's largest Internet, Baidu, Ali, Tencent all on the online education platform, which has a huge impact on Yu Minhong. New Oriental Dreammaker seems to be degenerating into the general education and training institutions, with the general training business in the swirling Red Sea, our judgment is that we can seize the mobile Internet and online education this technical level explosion point , Depending on when Yu Minhong seize a new round of psychological needs of the public, the New Oriental is likely to usher in the next brand explosion point.