Talking about brand three questions and analyzing the Battle of Donglei

With the increasingly fierce market competition, entrepreneurs have been widely aware of the importance of brand, but a variety of specious brand theory, so that entrepreneurs talk about their brand often Scholing, digress. As an outsider, do not listen to also understand, more and more confused. In this way to communicate with customers, enterprises in the brand investment is bound to be basket, resulting in more disease desperately.

The brand exists in the customer cognition, leaves the customer cognition, does not exist the brand, at most is a trademark. From the point of view of the customer (the most important outsider), there are three fundamental problems that occur in turn: What are you? What's the difference? It only takes 15 seconds to focus on the three questions. 15 seconds to answer, it means that your brand needs a medical examination. This is not alarmist, and listen to East elder brother one by one, and by the way the brand three questions to analyze the recent Mingzhu and rebels the doorway of the rhetoric.

First question: What are you?

The most concise answer to this question is the category the brand belongs to, the category name is very few more than 5 words, usually only need two or three words. Category is the specific classification of products and services in the customer's mind, which is the last level of classification before the customer is associated with the brand. Rather than industry experts, industry associations or national standards adopted by the classification, but not the enterprises themselves play the classification, such classification may have academic significance, but for and customer effective communication is pseudo category.

Customer standards are the key to understanding the category, non-customer standards of classification of customers will be unintelligible, or continue to cross-examine "What is it", or directly block your brand. Because of the information explosion, the customer's mind is tired of coping, shielding the vast majority of messages is the inevitable result of limited mental capacity and psychological protection mechanism.

For example, what is Gree? In my tests, the audience answered "air conditioner" unanimously. What is Haier? The answer is always torn asunder. Because of "gree" and "air conditioning" in the customer's mind strong relevance, resulting in the customer "air-conditioning" production needs, the mind of the first to come out of the brand is Gree. As a result, Gree's profit margin, total profit, and company market capitalisation are much higher than Haier's.

Customers need the category, on the other hand, the category represents the real needs of customers. The strong brand, is the category representative even pronoun. For example, micro-letter, strong to become a category pronoun. When people ask what "intercourse" is, they usually do not answer "mobile social software", but rather "the Ali version of the micro-letter." Have to say, "dealings" is a bad brand name, without quotes will affect communication.

Violation of customer standards will appear "* * is a white electricity expert" or "* * is a kitchen electric expert" such pseudo category and pseudo positioning. Because the customer thought is "I need an air-conditioner" or "I Need a hood", instead of "I need a white power" or "I Need a kitchen power", so customers can not effectively related to the specific category of "* * White electricity" or "* * Kitchen Electric" brand, leading to weak brand. Trying to represent the fake category of brands are sick, have to cure.

Day Map brand training camp in the 4th stage of the students have a chain of sheep soup shop, but the students think that "sheep soup" does not sound valuable, to their stores listed as seems more valuable "* * sheep Miscellaneous cut." The student usually every time to explain to others, and finally have to yield to the trouble of the mouth, automatically said he was doing "sheep soup shop". Unfortunately, the change of the signboard is not changed, because the potential communication costs caused by signboards are not audible to the customers.

Question number two: What's the difference?

The answer to this question is the brand positioning, that is, differentiation. The difference here is not what the enterprise thinks it is, but the meaningful difference that the customer recognizes, the reason why the customer chooses your brand instead of another. Entrepreneurs can always talk about their own brand, but most of them are different from what they think they are, the "internal thinking" that the positioning theory opposes. And asking the customer's feelings is totally not the case.

The most effective difference for customer choice is "category one brand". The iphone is loved for being a "global smartphone brand", no matter how cheap the Shanzhai is and how similar it is. When the mobile phone is intelligent, the word "smart" will be discarded by customers, so that the evolution of mobile phone category, the iphone has become the "global mobile phone first brand."

If your brand is not the first category, what should you do? At this time you can hit a certain feature, become an expert brand. Of course, feature propositions are easier to imitate, but when many imitators come together and educate the consumer, it is possible that this trait will become a new category, like a flock of birds. If your brand continues to lead, your most effective differentiation will emerge: the brand new category.

such as the Sky Map Capital investment of the Le line balance car. Balance car pioneer and the first brand is the United States of the Segway, Le Line temporarily cannot claim to be the first brand of balance car, so on the main balance car "portable" characteristics, the product to small and portable direction, hit the Segway large, expensive, difficult to carry, difficult to park the weaknesses. Now the portable small balance car has a number of follow-up, while the Lok Bank to maintain the sales lead, become the first brand of portable balance car. And most likely, the portable balance car will become the mainstream of the balance car, "portable" two words can be removed, le Line became the first brand of balance car, and the Segway was squeezed into a large balance car first brand.

Sometimes the feature of the brand does not differentiate into the new category, but it will become the most important feature of the existing category. If your brand dominates the most important features of the category, you can use it to become the first brand of the existing category.

For example, Colgate toothpaste into China, the main "moth" characteristics, through intensive advertising to achieve a high-speed growth. Although "moth-proofing toothpaste" has not become a new category of customer recognition, but consumers are also educated to think that "moth-proofing" is the primary feature of toothpaste, occupy the "moth" mental resources Colgate to become the Chinese market toothpaste brand first.

It is a delicate question of when category characteristics will be differentiated into new categories, depending on the changes in customer perceptions. Still take toothpaste as an example, imagine his wife let her husband "buy a toothpaste back", husband asked "What toothpaste to buy", if the wife to answer "Colgate", then "toothpaste" is the wife thought of the last level of the brand before the classification, "moth-proofing" is only characteristic and did not complete the category differentiation; if the wife answers "Moth toothpaste", the husband asks again " What to buy moth toothpaste ", the wife replied" Colgate ", then" moth-proofing toothpaste "became a category.

Another example of the main feature is that the Boss brand Hood main "big suction" characteristics, the education consumer "big suction" is the most important characteristic of the lampblack machine, although did not appear "The Big suction lampblack Machine" new category (because in the customer mind generally only classifies to "the Lampblack machine", the specific characteristic will only when buys the specific consideration and the comparison), But the boss by leading large suction characteristics, sales overtook side too, become the first brand of Lampblack machine. If the boss has a better name, the effect will be better, because "Boss" without quotes or additional "card" word, will affect the spread.

Because the latter may be able to transcend the leader with some feature, the leader needs to occupy two words in the customer's mind: the category name and the first attribute of the category. Gree is the air conditioner category leader, occupy the "air conditioning" this word, still need to occupy the "advanced technology" this may be the most important characteristics of air-conditioning, otherwise it may be the go-ahead, like the original Hisense by the use of inverter technology to the impact of Gree. If Hisense did not engage in brand extension, "Hisense" brand at the same time for television and air-conditioning, but for its creation of the "variable frequency air-conditioning" new category to start a new brand name, perhaps now the pattern of China's air-conditioning industry will be very different.

Jack Trout in the book "Difference," pointing out nine kinds of effective differentiation, it is worth reader to read carefully, do not enumerate here, but the East elder brother adds the tenth kind of differentiation: don't just stare at category first, category second sometimes also effective differentiation, because "second" is also unique. When the category of a single, "We Are the second" can effectively obtain customer choice. "The old godmother first, the meal sweeps the light second" is not increased your choice meal to sweep the light the opportunity?

Question number three: why?

The customer is naturally sceptical about the information the company sends to him. The answer to "What are You" is a little bit better, because customers want to understand, but not without doubt. For example, Haier said that it is a refrigerator, some customers will believe that other customers will be questioned: I think it is the washing machine? And for the "How different" answer, the customer holds the strongest suspicion, because this is the reason for customers to pay, of course, customers will accordant prudent. At this point the enterprise needs to provide a trust to relieve customers of their doubts. However, the customer is equally sceptical about the trust provided by the enterprise, so the trust must be an obvious fact or evidence provided by a third party authority, and should conform to the customer's thinking logic.

0 Risk commitment is to provide a trust-like common way, such as free trial, unconditional return, satisfaction before payment, a long time free warranty. In the day Map brand training camp, there is a student in Chengdu, said she had bought the air conditioner, is because the dealer promised 6 years warranty, indicating that the seller has confidence in the product, this is the customer's thinking logic. However, the student added that he was too pure, credulous of the unprofessional brand, because it was not 6 years after the air conditioner evacuated Chengdu market.

As for the "category of the first brand" need to trust, no more than authoritative sales rankings, so Gado will promote "China's sales of 10 cans of herbal tea 7 cans is Gado" (later the ad because of the king of the old Kyrgyzstan to sue its data is untrue and banned), Liv Essential Oil publicity "online sales of 3 bottles of essential oil 2 bottles is a", fragrant fluttering milk tea is propaganda " Sales of 700 million cups a year, the cup can be linked to the Earth two times.

Other obvious facts that can be used as a form of trust are selling or Word-of-mouth. Go to an unfamiliar place to eat, the Chinese know which restaurant people go to where more. And now with the public comments such as Word-of-mouth evaluation tools and "delicious not to wait" (another bad name) such a remote queuing tool, customers can not be on-site to get the restaurant evaluation information and queuing information, which is the Third-party authority to provide trust.

Usually, a company will have multiple trusts, but there is a basic principle of using a trust, which is to use the most effective one instead of listing all the trust-like. Because the mental capacity is limited, the customer cannot remember too much, the customer can not say too much when reporting. In addition, more is less, I believe reader have feelings: business cards printed on a variety of titles, most of them are not really important characters, because the big things need to focus. Reader should not be the same, if there is a coincidence, then you happen to be the few exceptions.

Trial Sword: Donglei rhetoric

Mingzhu in the "2014 Annual meeting of Chinese business leaders," said the United States to steal the patent of Gree was the court, and Millet is just out of the country on the patent issue was blocked, millet and beauty of the marriage is "two swindlers come together into a thief group." As a business leader, such fierce rhetoric has lost its grace and has lost much of its powder. However, it is estimated that in addition to valuing the personal charisma of entrepreneurs, the party has heard or read Mingzhu speeches of onlookers, buy air-conditioning will probably be more likely to choose Gree.

Because Mingzhu seems to have lost the style of the shooting (may be deliberately challenging the gentle annual meeting Orthodox to get more spread), in fact, tightly buckle to the three questions of the effective answer. Dong called himself "I'm an air-conditioner", simply and accurately answered "What are You" and then points out that Gree is the first brand of air conditioner, effectively answering "What's the difference"? and pointed out that gree a year sales of 140 billion yuan air-conditioning, leading air-conditioning second 50 billion, effectively answered the "why". Mingzhu also spoke with rich stories about Gree air conditioning worldwide sales, energy-saving, mute, good quality, can be attributed to "advanced technology", and proudly pointed out that Gree has more than 8,000 technical staff, developed more than 14,000 patents, in order to occupy the "technologically advanced" this air-conditioning primary characteristics provide a trust-like, Blocked the other air conditioner brand to play the attack of technical card beforehand.

Mingzhu's attack on millet, though graceful, was very useful. For example, the investigation site how many with the millet mobile phone, the result only two people raise their hands, so that the millet mobile phone is not accepted by the high-end crowd of the fact that the dramatic show out. and further attack millet patent streaking, by price war, "because Apple, Huawei expensive, millet cheap." I bought a bargain, I didn't buy a high quality product ", very tough attack." Perhaps the audience will be more emotionally supportive of Lei, but more likely to stay away from millet when buying a choice.

Lei to Mingzhu quite gentlemanly response to win a lot of netizens applause, a lot of powder. However, from the point of view of the brand three questions, the Millet brand has lost a lot of points. Lei How to answer the brand first ask "What Are you?" Because our business is more complex, sometimes people are not very good at understanding. The core of our business is to build an internet platform, which is our core business, by making platform hardware such as smartphones and smart TVs. Based on this core business, our other business is with the start-up companies, with other growth companies, and even large companies. Therefore, the whole millet is an open and cooperative attitude. As a customer, do not listen to also understand, the more listen to the more confused, because the customer thinks "Millet is the mobile phone", and Lei is desperately denying this cognition, desperately let millet represent more things-millet is "mobile phone, TV and other platform hardware."

Let Millet brand representative so many categories, there is no chance to be asked "what is different" and "how to be seen", the customer will only be aware of the unknown, at a respectful distance. When Millet loses its cognitive advantage on the phone, millet "platform" will also become roots, because there is no "platform" category in the customer's mind. Perhaps investors have a "platform" in mind, so we can see the market value of millet, and gree to create profits. The rise of millet in the mobile phone industry is very similar to Dell's rise in the PC industry, and the diversified expansion of millet is very similar to Dell's original diversification (Dell has created three months to acquire 20 companies). So will millet be the same as Dell? Let's wish "internet thinking" to bring good luck to Mr. Lei.

Mingzhu by the high degree of attention of 1 billion gambling, will be effective answer to the brand three questions skillfully implanted in the customer's mind (this proficiency and perfection, let me doubt whether this article has long been summed up and let Mingzhu practice, even if the future really lost 1 billion, but also earned several times advertising fees, Gree brand is always the biggest winner. Gree's state-owned Assets management Department, should be for Dong elder sister out of this money.