Using Internet celebrity tags for brand marketing, is it a poison to quench thirst or the secret to traffic?

The process of creating an influencer product is now very mature, but will influencer marketing last for brands? This article analyzes the market situation and shows that brands may need to further think about the difference between marketing means and purposes. Let's take a look!

It seems like it was just yesterday that a series of activities such as brewing tea around the fire, frisbee, and camping became popular. Many consumers are eager to join this trend. Consumers participate in these Internet celebrity products, stores, and activities on social media, which have become "social methods", and then post them on various social media to obtain social currency. This has almost become a standard process for shaping Internet celebrity activities.

But the reality is that the label of "Internet celebrity" is essentially a magnifying glass, which magnifies all the advantages and disadvantages of brands, products, cities, activities, and events, allowing more people to see the advantages and criticize the disadvantages. Just like the sudden popularity of the term "ice cream assassin", Internet celebrities will magnify the advantages of products while also trying to magnify the disadvantages of products.

What's more, it is not only a magnifying glass for brand power, but also means that consumers will use a magnifying glass to observe brands. In 2021, Cha Yan Yue Se was first questioned for insulting women due to its use of the Changsha slang "picking up a basket", and then questioned for operating difficulties due to three concentrated temporary store closures. Subsequently, the "mutual criticism" between the founder of Cha Yan Yue Se and employees, as well as the subsequent questioned "borderline marketing", "hunger marketing", "standing in line" and other news, repeatedly sent this star tea brand to the hot search list of major social software.

In general, the Internet celebrity label is a double-edged sword, and it is never easy to use it well. Perhaps brands should think more deeply about the use of the Internet celebrity label. Using Internet celebrities as a marketing label is just a means, not the ultimate goal. Brands still need to seriously think about what their marketing purpose is.

1. The myth of Internet celebrities: it is easy to become popular but difficult to continue

If we think about it more carefully, fireside tea-making was already a thing at the end of last year, frisbee can even be traced back to July last year, and the popularity of camping came even earlier. In contrast, social media this year seems to be quite cold. With the seasonal Internet celebrity activity of fireside tea-making gone, the Internet celebrity label does not seem to be as useful as before. This model does not seem to have a new successor, but has fallen into a kind of calm period.

In addition to events, whether it is various stores or events that have become popular as internet celebrities, the road of using internet celebrity labels as marketing capital seems to be becoming increasingly difficult. If we carefully count all the content with internet celebrity labels in the first half of 2023, if we exclude Zibo BBQ, there is almost no good news.

In April, Hutouju, an online celebrity dim sum restaurant founded in 2019, which became the "queue king" by virtue of its two super online celebrity labels of baking and national fashion, also collapsed in the early summer of 2023 after two and a half years of ups and downs. At the same time, the online celebrity fried chicken brand POPEYES also failed in the Chinese market.

In early June, the media reported that the "a1 Snacks Research Institute", which is supported by a popular snack store, had closed nearly 80% of its offline stores. In the same month, Momo Snacks, which started later than Hutou, also began to shrink its business scope. The only store opened in Hangzhou in June 2022 also closed in March 2023.

Similarly, most of the Internet-famous cities have also died this year. With the explosion of Zibo barbecue, many cities want to take advantage of Zibo barbecue's traffic and popularity, but the interesting thing is that whoever takes advantage of the traffic explosion point of barbecue will die. As long as they dare to take advantage of this popularity, citizens will not give their own city face at all, and they are almost ready to dig up the truth. Under each Weibo tag that takes advantage of the popularity, there are all kinds of jokes satirizing the shortcomings of the citizens, which can almost be regarded as a text version of a talk show.

Finally, only two cities have really caught the Internet celebrity express train, one is Zibo and the other is Xi'an. Zibo's main selling point is that the food is delicious and inexpensive. If you look at traveling to Zibo as a product, it is not difficult to find that Zibo's efforts in product strength may be much deeper than most Internet celebrity products. Starting from all aspects, the phrase "consumer-centric" that has been repeatedly mentioned in the marketing industry has been effectively applied to all aspects of Zibo tourism. As the popularity of barbecue has decreased, Zibo has immediately launched corresponding new products - various masters go to the streets to sell words, calligraphy, and even traditional Chinese medicine services to maintain the freshness of tourism.

But it is undeniable that the popularity of Zibo barbecue is gradually decreasing. Since May 1st, 27-year-old Zibo local anchor Azhe has been going to the entrance of Muyang Village BBQ to broadcast live every day, pointing his mobile phone camera at the Muyang Village store sign, answering viewers' questions in a standard broadcasting voice from time to time. But now, the number of viewers in his live broadcast room has gradually dropped from 20,000 to the current double digits.

The same is true for Xi'an. From the "Doll Girl" to "The Longest Day in Chang'an" and now the "Secret Box of the Great Tang Dynasty", Xi'an has become popular one after another. In 2019, the "Doll Girl" in the Tang Dynasty City that Never Sleeps became popular on the Internet. Later, the online drama "The Longest Day in Chang'an" starring Yi Yangqianxi and Lei Jiayin became a hit, and the unique Tang Dynasty style in the drama also brought the main scene - Chang'an (now Xi'an) to the limelight.

Recently, in the Tang Dynasty Never Sleeping City scenic area in Xi'an, a knowledge quiz trend has been set off, which is brought about by the "Secret Box of the Great Tang Dynasty". The so-called "Secret Box of the Great Tang Dynasty" is an entertainment interactive program officially launched by the Tang Dynasty Never Sleeping City. It is composed of "Fang Xuanling" in purple and "Du Ruhui" in red, two officials during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang Li Shimin. The two adults were commissioned by the emperor to travel to the modern era and find talented people by asking questions.

Even so, a careful look at the case of Xi'an reveals that its popularity is also the result of a series of different events and the rise of different internet celebrities. What's more, Xi'an is a well-known tourist city, not an internet celebrity city that rose to fame by relying on internet celebrity logos.

Similarly, the stores in various Internet celebrity communities in China are also very similar. On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, the restaurants in these Internet celebrity communities always have a lot of traffic, and some restaurant owners who appear on camera always look like they are living a peaceful life. As a result, many workers are shouting that they want to quit their jobs and open their own community stores.

If you think carefully, you will find that the catering ecology in the Internet celebrity community is also chaotic and cruel. It is almost normal for a restaurant to close down within 3 months of opening. In the most extreme cases, there are many cases where a restaurant closes down within a month of opening after renovation.

In addition, as consumers gradually return to rationality, the frequency of Internet celebrities has dropped significantly in the first half of the year. Many brands seem to be unable to find a way to transform from Internet celebrity brands to long-term popular brands. Instead, they are sharpening their sickles more and more, and seem to have reached a new consensus: to recover the most costs in the shortest time, and then do everything possible to harvest the leeks as soon as possible before harvesting the next one, rather than continuing the business for a long time.

Therefore, the "social currency" that could be bought for 20 or 30 yuan in the past has also increased in price this time, and the cost of buying Internet celebrity products is getting higher and higher. For example, the high-end toast shop Ginza Jinshikawa, which originated in Ginza, Tokyo, recently opened its first store in Shanghai. On the first day of opening, there was a long queue. Before 3 pm, 400 raw toasts were sold out. In the end, some people waited in line for 4 hours for 98 yuan toast, and some people bought it from scalpers at three times the price.

This formula of "Internet celebrity = high price" almost highlighted some trends when we were brewing tea around the stove. A set meal that originally cost only about 80 yuan, as long as it has the Internet celebrity label, it is almost inevitable that the average price will be 200 yuan.

The 98-yuan toast and high-end baked goods seem to be sending a new signal - the target customer group of Internet celebrities is shifting towards the middle class. The cash-strapped queue-up group seems to be abandoned, as there are no "Internet celebrity" products that they can easily afford.

2. The upgrade of "Internet celebrities" is just a price threshold

Therefore, the story of the twins, "scalpers" and "Internet celebrities", seems to be still being replicated. There are even rumors that some brands are looking for scalpers to queue up and create a lively scene of queuing. The classic routine is played out again and again.

But the key to turning internet celebrity label marketing into a marketing model that only serves to quench thirst is the high marketing costs.

In fact, the sudden popularity of an event, especially the phenomenal traffic, is often uncontrollable, such as the Zibo event, and it is never easy to take advantage of the popularity of such an event. In addition, it is even more difficult to artificially give meaning to various Internet celebrity events, spread them crazily and divert traffic on social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Weibo, so as to achieve the purpose of attracting customers.

We can take a representative industry as an example to look at the dilemma of this marketing model.

As an industry that has been firmly labeled as an Internet celebrity since its inception, small household appliances can almost be regarded as the epitome of various Internet celebrity products. When traffic is sufficient and the market is not yet saturated, riding on the east wind of the Internet celebrity economy and the lazy economy, small household appliances have indeed successfully captured the minds of users. By constantly creating hot products, shaping a refined lifestyle through various social media platforms, and further promoting it to impress more consumers, this is the biblical marketing model of the small household appliance track.

But as time goes by, the platform's control over traffic becomes stronger and stronger, high-quality traffic becomes increasingly scarce, and competitors enter the market one after another, making it almost inevitable that marketing costs will rise.

Take Bear Home Appliances as an example. Its financial report shows that Bear Home Appliances' total sales expenses in 2022 reached 730 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.94%, which is five times the research and development expenses in the same period. Among the sub-items, brand promotion expenses and market promotion expenses increased the most, reaching 54.15% and 41.75% respectively.

This means that every peak in product sales, and the efforts to make products “hot” and even become social media currency, are all the result of Bear Electric spending a lot of money. And this is not just Bear Electric’s dilemma. On the contrary, Joyoung and Supor, which are in the same field, have almost encountered similar problems.

The key to this problem is that the technical threshold of small kitchen appliances is low and the degree of differentiation is poor. If we turn our attention to the Internet celebrity coffee, Internet celebrity baking, and various Internet celebrity events mentioned above, the crux of their rapid rise and fall lies here.

3. Internet celebrity labels, drinking poison to quench thirst?

Going further, if the reason most brands fail is that they have no control over their products other than traffic , then if they use the influencer label to gain traffic while further promoting reforms on the product side and providing more technological innovations, will influencer brands have the ability to survive the cycle?

Unfortunately, this idea may only exist in people's good wishes, but it may not be an easy thing to realize it.

First, a large amount of marketing expenses will force companies to cut back on R&D spending. In fact, if we carefully observe the case of Bear Electric Appliances mentioned above, as well as various similar Internet celebrity brands and Internet celebrity stores, we can easily find that if we want to create the image of such an Internet celebrity, it is almost inevitable to bet heavily on marketing. After all, how can we get huge traffic and create the image of an Internet celebrity without marketing?

Secondly, if we look back carefully at the fields where Internet celebrity products have emerged frequently in recent years, such as cosmetics, food, baking, beverages, etc., these products that need to rely on Internet celebrity label marketing to gain popularity are almost all primary products that do not require technology, and it is much more difficult than it seems to want to reform the technology on the technical side. Take the sparkling water that exploded in the past few years as an example. At that time, the demand for low sugar was very popular, which also made many brands focus their firepower on the concept of "sugar". Under the overwhelming publicity, ordinary consumers often overlooked another common ingredient on the ingredient list - the preservative potassium sorbate.

As a large number of competing products enter the market, the competition becomes increasingly fierce. If brands want to make technological reforms, one of the few options is to remove the potassium sorbate added during canning, thereby obtaining a new label - 0 preservatives, to attract consumers' attention and purchases.

Although it sounds like you only need to remove potassium sorbate, if you really want to achieve this, it is actually a long-term process, the core of which is Log6-level aseptic filling technology. So, what is Log6 aseptic filling technology? In layman's terms, if you produce one million bottles of beverages, not one bottle will be contaminated by microorganisms, and the strictness level is ten times that of Log5.

Therefore, brands that cannot make breakthroughs in technology can only go down the advertising path. Brands that finally entered this track while the popularity was high will naturally fail in this track as the popularity fades. Just like the ice cream track, which is very similar to sparkling water, according to CBNData's "2019 Online Ice Cream Consumption Insights", there were more than 60 online ice cream brands in 2018, and this number increased to more than 140 in 2019.

However, most of these brands did not even survive a quarter.

Finally, there is the change in consumer psychology. In fact, most products that are labeled as Internet celebrities have almost experienced full seats when they first opened/launched. Many young people come to eat. They put on exquisite makeup in advance, and taking photos seems to be the most important part. Not long after, the business of the store slowed down. There was no need to queue, and the store was rarely full. Before the store closed, the whole store was usually deserted and few customers came.

After all, once a business is labeled as an "Internet celebrity", consumers will not focus on the product, but will regard the brand as social currency, which means that the brand can only make money in the short term. If it is just used as a photo tool, then as the aesthetic trend changes, it will inevitably become a fate that consumers will only buy once a year, monthly or even daily.

This is why most Internet celebrity brands, after going through the most difficult journey from 0 to 1, almost all emphasize the same thing - de-Internet celebrity . Almost all Internet celebrity brands in recent years have emphasized this point this year. After all, Internet celebrity is a label that can easily disappear with the wind. Consumers' freshness is constantly iterating, and consumer demand is constantly changing. There will always be new Internet celebrity brands, but no brand can be an Internet celebrity forever.

This means that not only do brands need to complete product, technology or process upgrades within a relatively short window period, but to some extent, if there are any deficiencies in the product from the beginning, being labeled an internet celebrity is almost a death sentence. The more people buy products with problems in the early stages, the more permanent damage will be done to the brand. After all, consumers may forget those ordinary products, but they will never forget those pitfalls that they spent a lot of money on.

Even if the brand can really make reforms at the product level, it will probably be difficult to restore the bad impression of the product in consumers' minds.

4. Internet celebrity environment, meaningless carnival

From this series of cases, the label of Internet celebrity seems to have a commonality - it is born and dies quickly, it is fast to start and disappear quickly. And even if they want to make technological reforms, it is probably difficult to sustain, and they will eventually fall one after another in the dark night and be forgotten by consumers in the depths of the memory palace.

As a result, many people have a resistance to all kinds of things labeled as internet celebrities. The situation has almost gone to two extremes. Some people are disgusted with all things labeled as internet celebrities and regard them as a typical example of IQ tax, while another group of people regard them as a kind of social currency, which is essentially just material for posting on WeChat Moments.

Therefore, many people will ask a similar question when faced with Internet celebrity products: What is the meaning of this Internet celebrity thing?

The answer is: it makes no sense.

In fact, if we carefully explore the use of Internet celebrity tags as a marketing tool, or various types of products that suddenly become popular, we can easily find that they almost all go to two similar extremes.

One is meaningless, the other is endowed with illusory meaning.

Let’s talk about the meaningless part first. The coconut shell charcoal that became popular not long ago is almost the representative of meaninglessness. Taking a bite of coconut shell charcoal and then spewing out black smoke, the essence of this seemingly nonsensical content is simple, pure and even meaningless happiness, and it is this meaninglessness that eliminates the meaning of life for many people.

In the adult world, there are various rules and boundaries, and people have to maintain a "personality", but now this meaningless and even illogical "happiness" has largely deconstructed such constraints, so people get short-term happiness.

They don't require you to think, firmly occupy your visual and auditory senses, and forcibly cut off the distractions in your brain. They do not provide meaning or reference - after all, quite a lot of people will only watch the videos and click "like", that's all, and they will not actually buy them to eat.

This meaninglessness also means that the happiness of internet celebrities is short-lived and cannot last. When a meme appears for the first time, it is like a god. But when this meme is repeated hundreds or even tens of thousands of times, it becomes a rotten meme and eventually disappears in the corners of the Internet.

But for merchants who want to sell goods, this kind of meaningless internet celebrity label that cannot provide a reference is useless, just like the black garlic, black plums, and the recent coconut shell charcoal that have been spread countless times.

But if we can give meaning to this meaninglessness, whether it is the label of a good life, the connotation of traditional culture, the hundred lifestyles that fashion gurus must open, or the consumption illusion of the middle class, as the American sociologist Mills said, the middle class is often panicked about their own class slippage, so they hope to highlight their taste, style, lifestyle and class through consumption.

So we see all kinds of internet celebrity products and stores that are given various meanings. It is undeniable that these given meanings are often difficult to sustain for long. As a result, we have seen various dim sum shops under the banner of discounted national trends go bankrupt, various internet celebrity activities become popular in a short period of time and disappear in a short period of time, and we have seen various imported products and emerging things become popular and then gradually disappear.

V. Conclusion

Of course, the simplest conclusion seems to be that the shelf life of Internet celebrities is limited after all, and only by cultivating internal strength can one win the future - technology and production are the foundation of all businesses. In fact, marketing is indeed important, but if you can't find a path from Internet celebrity to long-term success, you need to work hard on the basics such as products to take off the fancy clothes and finally find a long-term path.

As we said at the beginning, it is probably not a good choice for brands to make creating an internet celebrity brand the ultimate goal. Perhaps brands may need to further think about the difference between marketing means and purposes.

Just as Morketing talked to a CMO about the relationship between brand and effect not long ago, the other party said: You need to clearly know which work is done for today, which is done for tomorrow, and which is done for the longer term future. " If it is something done for today, it must be a work that is "well-received" and "popular". Therefore, the issue that needs to be paid attention to is which group of consumers and which scene to target in the current stage of sales, and how to do some effective marketing activities that are helpful to the brand and sales. However, if it is something done for tomorrow, I will remind the team: It does not necessarily have to pursue a "popular" level, but it must be extremely "well-received". The significance of this work cannot be just for sales. "

Author: Innocnet Roland

Source: WeChat public account "IBrandi Pinchuang (ID: ibrandi)"