How can brands leverage “dopamine” and play with color and hot marketing?

This article systematically analyzes the marketing application of the fashionable concept of "dopamine" in different brands. It is an excellent work that explores brand marketing in a hot topic and has strong application and reference value for brand operations.

Since the colorful "dopamine outfit" became popular on social media, discussions about "dopamine" have been endless. According to Baidu Index, the search index for "dopamine outfit" and "dopamine" has remained high since May. As of press time, there are more than 4.59 million notes about "dopamine" on Xiaohongshu alone. On Weibo, according to incomplete statistics, topics related to dopamine have been viewed more than 3.2 billion times.

The reason why dopamine has attracted so much attention is largely because bright colors stimulate people's emotions, release happiness factors, and bring positive emotional values ​​such as happiness, warmth, and happiness to the public. Dopamine has become a new language of communication among young people, and its popularity has soared and swept the entire Internet.

When hot spots come, it is also a time to test the brand's marketing control ability. Many brands choose to take the "dopamine" express train, allowing the "dopamine" trend to spread from brands to consumers, and then to brands and consumers playing together, showing a cross-circle, cross-field, and cross-industry phenomenon. In the era of fast-paced life, why does the market popularity of "dopamine" continue to rise? What are the core communication logics behind it?

1. Everything can be dopamine. See how brands deliver happiness in various ways

After "dopamine" became popular, brands have seized on the characteristics of dopamine: bright colors and the happiness it contains, hoping to take advantage of the hot spots to win traffic for their brands.

1. Film and TV industry: Expanding influence with top visual assets

The dopamine trend has swept across all industries, and the film and television industry is no exception. The essence of communication and brand building is to shape consumers' mental cognition, and design, as the communication background of creativity, contains brand-specific creativity, which can often achieve twice the result with half the effort.

To this end, the movie "Barbie" made a bold breakthrough. Originally, "Barbie pink" was a highly recognizable color for the movie. "Barbie" built a connection between the movie and the audience through the pink color that is very characteristic of the movie and the movie was popular. The top visual assets of the movie were turned into highly visually impactful communication materials, which not only attracted the user's attention, but also expanded the scope of the movie's dissemination.

2. Catering industry: Dopamine-themed products emerge in endlessly

After dopamine became popular, new tea brands have been putting a lot of thought into it. Brands such as Heytea, Yidiandian, Luckin Coffee, and Bawang Chaji have joined in, whether it is Heytea working with fashion blogger Yi Mengling to promote the new avocado product, or Yidiandian launching the new products "Mint Green Tea Jelly" and "Mint Milk Green" with the "mint green" color, or Luckin Coffee directly launching its own "dopamine" packaging, aiming to attract traffic for summer green grape latte, Orange C Americano and other products that are more suitable for summer, or Bawang Chaji relying on the concept of "dopamine powder" to make "pink milk tea", brooches, and masks successfully explode on the Internet.

The frequent emergence of dopamine concept products in the new tea beverage circle makes people believe that "dopamine" products are thriving in the new tea beverage circle, and also allows more young people to discover the charm of "dopamine marketing".

In today's world where catering is inseparable, tea brands are taking action, and fast food brands are not far behind, all wanting to catch up with this new trend. For example, Lao Xiang Ji, which has always been a fashion hotspot, became a dopamine catering person after seeing the colorful "dopamine" become popular, highlighting the brand's image of keeping up with the times through the display of "colorful Lao Xiang Ji dishes". At the same time, dopamine has also attracted Chinese time-honored brands such as Tao Tao Ju Restaurant. The brand borrowed the concept of dopamine tea and snacks and launched a variety of colorful Cantonese dim sum in order to catch the express train of hot spots.

3. Many brands are targeting dopamine marketing

At the same time, dopamine concept marketing has also swept the clothing, games, design, manufacturing, tourism and other industries, presenting a situation of competition. Obviously, brands are scrambling to grab consumers' attention by taking advantage of the "dopamine" concept, which reflects the popularity of "dopamine" on the Internet and has become an important visual element for brands to attract young consumers this summer.
At the same time, the marketing methods of various circles keeping up with fashion trends also prove from another perspective that the brand's marketing strategy of continuously creating popular products is still effective.

2. What new ideas can dopamine-type content bring to brands?

Marketing has commonalities. Among the dopamine-style contents of many brands, Mr. Bingfa has found some commonalities, hoping to open up new ideas for brand hotspots and dopamine marketing.

1. Amplify the visual experience and create the first sight rule

In today's fragmented information world, how to grab users' scarce attention has become the focus of brand management. Obviously, dopamine marketing content has a very obvious feature: bright and bold colors, very attractive .

When dopamine became popular, brands discovered that expressions using bright colors can instantly activate and release consumers' dopamine. At the same time, they can also convey brand/product information to users more directly and efficiently.

This has prompted the brand to target clearer and more eye-catching colors in the selection of colors for communication materials and in product research and development and design. Bright colors create a happier atmosphere, and allow products to emit highly healing energy through more lively colors, thereby stimulating the public's desire to buy, driving sales growth, and subtly playing the role of the "law of first sight."

2. Provide young people with happier emotional value

In addition to the visual effect, what is more important is that brands can achieve "instant gratification" by stimulating users' emotions , which is also the core of dopamine marketing.

Nothing can replace happiness. Brands can activate the long-term value of the brand among young people by creating dopamine content/products that can drive users' emotions and provide young people with more healing, joyful and positive emotional values.

At the same time, it also creates the best opportunity for brands to highlight their personality and express themselves to consumers, which coincides with the pursuit of young people. It also implants the "happiness" molecule into the brand's DNA, forming a fixed image of "XX brand = happiness" .

3. Can help brands release fashionable and popular brand power

Brand marketing has its own rules to follow, and the brand image has already formed an inherent perception in the minds of users. With the integration of dopamine marketing, it is easy to inject new elements into those traditional brands, increase brand vitality, realize the renewal of brand image, and fully release multiple brand power.

At the same time, effective marketing that hits the mark can also help brands establish a more fashionable and popular brand image, and brands that use language that young people like to communicate can help them capture the minds of users.

3. Finally

It is true that most brands are now frantically chasing hot spots, and they are trying to quickly ferment by imitating others, which can bring a certain amount of traffic to the brand and bring attention to the brand. However, this approach seems to be too superficial and cannot achieve a longer-term communication effect, let alone establish a different brand image and enhance the brand's influence.

For example, the current brand’s dopamine marketing still stays at the level of visual effects and emotional value, attracting users’ attention and bringing consumers a pleasant mood, but it has not truly achieved deep binding and connection with the brand image, brand value and brand core.

In the future, can brands, based on taking advantage of hot topics, integrate with dopamine in multiple dimensions to launch more vital content to release brand power? This may be a new round of marketing challenges that brands riding the dopamine wave will face.

Author: Mr. Bingfa

Source: WeChat public account "Marketing Art of War (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"