IP Marketing Trends in 2025: From “Opening the Backend Link” to “Removing Business Obstacles”

In the challenging business environment of 2024, companies are facing problems such as slowing growth, lack of dealer confidence, difficulty in promoting new products, and declining consumption frequency. This article explores in depth how to use big content IP as a "business lever" to help companies remove these obstacles and achieve healthy growth, for your reference.

Business growth in 2024 is like a self-harming long-distance race.

If you look at the financial reports of listed companies, you will find that many companies' profits come more from layoffs and cutting advertising expenses, and many sales increases come more from price cuts and continuous promotions. The growth of many companies is more about growth in financial reports than real growth.

If a company wants to achieve healthy growth, it should not focus on sales itself, but on solving hidden dangers while operating at a steady pace.

At this time, we need some "business levers" to help us achieve our goals, and big content IP is one of the options.

In the past few years, the trend of IP marketing has evolved from focusing on the pre-sales link to opening up the post-sales link. The pre-link refers to interactive behaviors related to the content itself, such as forwarding, liking, commenting, and participating. The post-link refers to the links that are closer to sales conversion, such as visiting the store, adding to cart, live broadcasting, and joining the club.

In the past two years, due to changes in the overall environment, even if IP has opened up the post-sales link, it is difficult to boost sales. This is because the reason for weak sales is not only whether the link is smooth, but also the business obstacles created for enterprises by the bad economic weather.

I have roughly summarized five key business obstacles:

1. Dealer confidence is low
2. High performance pressure but low budget
3. Overdraw old customers and promote new products
4. Rely on price cuts to boost sales
5. Consumption frequency decreased

In 2024, many companies used big content IP as a starting point to help themselves clear business obstacles and achieve relatively healthy results.

01 Empower dealers with IP and help them find confidence and leverage

In 2024, Mengniu Chunzhen cooperated with "Joy of Life 2" and, by teaming up with Tencent Video, held 11 offline advance screening ceremonies in 4 cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing and Shanghai; and held 14 celebrity fan meetings in 7 core cities including Zhengzhou and Changsha.

It is worth mentioning that Mengniu Chunzhen sent 1,000 tickets to regional distributors instead of consumers. If we interpret the 1,000 tickets given to distributors as customer hospitality and value-added services, we will underestimate the value and significance of this event.

It can be said that what Mengniu Chunzhen gave away was not 1,000 tickets, but 1,000 pieces of confidence. For many companies, the confidence of distributors is as valuable as gold. And for many distributors, the confidence of manufacturers may be more precious than the rebate policy.

In recent years, dealers may have a harder time than manufacturers, because it is dealers who are on the front line of sales and face market pressure more directly than manufacturers.

In the first half of 2024, nearly half of the dealers failed to meet the performance targets set by the manufacturers, and 63.2% of dealers saw a decline in profits. Under the pressure of performance and sluggish sales, dealers' channeling behavior became more serious. Many dealers began to operate multiple brands and categories to share risks.

When the consumer market is tight, the relationship between manufacturers and dealers is more about waiting and testing. Unscrupulous manufacturers are constantly testing how much inventory dealers can digest, while dealers are waiting to see whether manufacturers are willing to continue investing, fearing that they are the only ones paddling in this boat.

In 2024, the purpose of many brands cooperating with IPs is quietly changing, from pure 2C behavior to a combination of 2B and 2C. IP is not only to enhance the brand's influence in the minds of consumers, but also to boost the confidence of dealers and franchisees and find a handy tool for their distribution work.

The reason why Mengniu Chunzhen attaches importance to the joint promotional resources in offline cities in its cooperation with "Joy of Life 2" is to use these offline occasions to let dealers feel the popularity of this IP more intuitively, build confidence for the subsequent IP marketing, and enable more active cooperation from terminals.

In the past, the way companies boosted dealer confidence was through sales meetings, where they talked about policies, performance, and modeled dealers. However, in such a cold consumer environment, these actions are more like "forcing blood" and have little persuasiveness. It is better to refer to the practice of Mengniu Chunzhen and use the popularity of IP to directly infect dealers.

Moreover, distributors also have their own “customers”, which are their own retailers. Among the many materials and materials derived from content IP, one of the important functions is to allow distributors to post them on WeChat Moments and give them to retailers to stimulate end consumers.

All companies that rely on dealers, please leave more bullets for the dealers.

02 Use IP to improve the success rate of new products

In the past few years, 90% of global brands have launched at least one new product every year. However, on mainstream e-commerce platforms, the success rate of a new product is only about 2%.

What is more noteworthy is that only 28% of new products bring market growth to the brand, and only 6% of new products can bring new users to the brand.

These figures reveal the "disguise" of corporate business: for the vast majority of companies, the success rate of new products is not only pitifully low, but even if the new products can survive, they are still relying on the company's "old capital", and the sales of new products are mainly based on "overdrawing" the trust of old customers.

I would like to say that the success of a new product cannot be judged only by sales volume, but also by incremental volume. Here, incremental volume refers to new customer groups and new types of markets.

For example, Xiaomi Ultra focuses on the high-end market and is aimed at people other than Mi fans. Xiaomi Mi 9 balance bike is aimed at the short-distance travel market.

This year, Realme launched a new cost-effective mobile phone, which was supposed to target digital-loving men and gamers. However, when promoting this product, they cooperated with Tencent Video's "Perfect World".

This is an IP that was adapted from a fantasy novel into a game, and then into a Chinese comic. This IP has helped Realme achieve "killing two birds with one stone" in attracting new customers, winning over users in the gaming circle and expanding users in the anime circle.

They also chose a female protagonist named "Yun Xi" in the film and launched a customized "Ling Mou Zi" mobile phone, successfully expanding the audience to the female gaming crowd, and it was snapped up as soon as it went online.

In addition, Realme has customized an exclusive TVC for Yunxi, co-invested in advertisements on animation channels, collected returned Jingteng data, and carried out the next advertising launch, thereby expanding the customer base and improving conversion efficiency.

The idea of ​​using IP to find incremental growth is worth replicating for small and medium-sized brands when promoting new products.

03 Use IP to get rid of price reduction dependence

In 2024, "volume increase and price decrease" will be the main theme.

The price of a cup of milk tea that used to cost more than 20 yuan has dropped to a few yuan;

There is a wave of closures of mid- to high-end restaurants, and economical brands can’t stand the price cuts. For example, the price of a certain noodle restaurant has dropped by nearly 30%, and the price of a certain brand of roujiamo has dropped by more than 50%;

The average drop in car prices is said to be more than 30%;

Even the hot tourism market was not spared. During this year's National Day holiday, air ticket prices dropped by 15%; the price of high-end hotels in Sanya dropped by nearly 30%, and you can even stay in a five-star hotel for less than a thousand yuan.

Reducing prices to increase sales is a panacea but also a slow suicide. Because price cuts affect more than just profits. The biggest problem is that they make consumers dependent on price cuts, and they won’t consume without price cuts.

I have always emphasized to many companies that in the current environment, consumers do not want low prices, but low prices with reasons. In the first half of 2024, Chinese residents' savings increased by 11.46 trillion yuan. It can be seen that consumers are not short of money, but they dare not spend it.

The key to marketing is not to simply lower prices, but to create new reasons for consumption so that consumers ignore the price. We can use IP to achieve this goal.

This year, Meituan cooperated with Wong Kar-wai's "Fang Hua". In addition to the advertising cooperation in the drama, they also released a check-in map for food with the same style as "Fang Hua", selected Shanghai snacks that appeared in the drama, launched a special event "Fang Hua Food", and launched a "Fang Hua Theme Hotel Package"...

People buy flower-themed products not for the sake of cheapness, but to taste the flavor of Mr. Bao and feel the demeanor of the uncle.

Of course, Meituan will also give out coupons during events, but the discounts at this time give users the feeling that they are not clearing out inventory, but participating in a consumption trend. This is what I call "reasonable low prices."

04 Use IP to leverage industry resources and achieve multiplier effect

The "2024 China Fast Moving Consumer Goods Distributor Business Status Survey Report" shows that 75.1% of manufacturers did not increase their marketing expenditure.

Not only do “landlords have no surplus food”, but because of the tightening consumer market, the pressure on most market people is “budgets cut in half, but performance has to double”.

At this time, all the money must be spent on the cutting edge. But what exactly is the project that can be called the "cutting edge"? In my opinion, it is a project or mechanism with a leverage effect.

Take the car companies as an example. This year, thousands of sales staff of NIO have joined the social platform and become KOS. They have sold more than 1,000 cars through the social platform.

Some foreign-funded tire companies will design some content incubation mechanisms to allow dealers and stores to produce UGC content to help manufacturers promote their products.

This year’s advertising budget should not only pursue brand mindshare, direct sales conversion, or even brand-effect synergy. This year’s advertising budget should use external advertising resources to leverage internal industry resources.

For example, the marketing of the automobile industry attaches great importance to car clubs. In the past, brands used to attract customers by offering car purchase discounts, solving car maintenance problems, or holding offline car club gatherings, but the scope of influence was very limited.

At the end of last year, Audi and Tencent Video customized a content IP on the video account - the 52Hz wagon channel. They encouraged car owners to share their life stories and get a chance to test drive the wagon.

The difference is that Audi has leveraged the power of car owners' clubs from the very beginning.

During the story collection period, they connected with car owner communities and clubs across the country through Tencent, and selected 100 car owners from 45 communities and 50,000 car owners to participate in offline test drives.

They collected stories from brand managers, cycling enthusiasts, and designers, and successfully expanded their user base from simple chopper enthusiasts to different circles such as cycling, outdoor, and camping.

After the video was released, it quickly circulated to the WeChat communities of car clubs and car owners' associations for long-tail dissemination and diffusion. These videos were eventually spread to more than 550 vertical communities.

In the past two years, some platforms have also seen the difficulties faced by enterprises and have proactively opened up more upstream and downstream industry resources, trying to integrate them with the enterprises' own industrial resources so that cooperative projects can produce a "multiplier" effect.

For example, Tencent has connected its own ecological resources. You can easily jump between Tencent Video, WeChat, Video Account, Mini Programs, WeChat Reading, etc. If you search for "Joy of Life" or "A Journey with Phoenixes" in WeChat, you can jump directly to Tencent Video and WeChat Reading to watch and read.

They also give up more space for IP creation. In the past, the relationship between brands and platforms was "Party A and Party B". The platform packaged a resource package and sold you several solutions, including ABCD. Now, everyone comes together to create, and the platform is the brand's "marketing partner".

Taking Tencent Video as an example, the ecological resources and industrial resources that can be applied to IP marketing are basically divided into three layers, and customers can flexibly "customize" according to their needs.

The first layer is the resources within Tencent Video, such as focus pictures, creative ads, pause ads, etc.

The second layer is the media resources of Tencent's entire ecosystem, such as video accounts, mini programs, corporate WeChat, QQ Music, WeChat Reading, etc.

The third layer is the upstream and downstream industry resources related to IP, such as celebrity short-term agents, customized advertisements, documentaries, offline activities, product authorization, etc.

These three levels of resources will be collected, adapted and integrated around the client's marketing themes, and will try their best to integrate with the client's industrial resources.

For example, IP secondary creation is integrated with video accounts and WeChat for social diffusion; documentaries are integrated with offline exhibitions, store visits, and source tracing; offline publicity and promotion activities are integrated with city terminal promotion; mini programs are integrated with corporate WeChat and private domain user operations...

In a word, a good IP project can effectively connect the respective industrial resources of the platform and the enterprise, allowing advertising to have a multiplier effect.

05 Use IP to increase consumption frequency

We all say "consumption downgrade", but consumption downgrade is not just about buying cheap goods, it also includes a decrease in consumption frequency.

The "China Consumption Trends Research Report" released by McKinsey some time ago said that the consumption frequency of Chinese people on tobacco, alcohol, consumer electronics, furniture and home appliances is decreasing. Before, you might have three packs of Zhonghua a day, but now you might have two packs of Zhongnanhai a day.

Therefore, the way we increase sales is not only to get consumers to buy more things, but also to get consumers to buy more often. We have to do both, and both hands must be strong.

At present, the way companies increase the frequency of user consumption is still mostly through promotional activities. But the problem is that even though consumption has increased, profits have not.

A more clever approach is to expand more frequent consumption scenarios, thereby increasing the frequency of consumption. At this time, IP becomes a useful tool.

Yunnan Baiyao aerosol was originally a "medicine for treating traumatic injuries", but how many times can a person get injured in a year? This kind of consumption reminder is very low frequency.

Therefore, they cooperated with Tencent in the 23-24 NBA season, hoping to tell people through a sports event that Yunnan Baiyao Aerosol can be used as a regular medicine during exercise, and transform it from a medicine that people only remember to buy after being injured to a "sports partner."

"Injury treatment" is a low-frequency scenario, while "sports equipment" is a high-frequency scenario. Yunnan Baiyao emphasized the combination of sports scenarios and its new positioning through advertisements in 180 NBA games, which successfully increased the consumption frequency of its products.

In recent years, Jinjiu has also been expanding its consumption scenarios.

It was originally a health-care medicinal wine with a tonic effect, and its main sales scene was gift-giving. But in the wine market, the gift-giving scene has obviously been saturated.

Later, Jinjiu found a nourishing scene to neutralize cold foods. They joined hands with the original crew of Tencent Video's "Flavorful Origins" to make a food documentary called "Flavorful Mountains and Rivers in the World".

In the documentary, you will see such tips as "mutton with Jinjiu, warms the body, heart and stomach", "seafood with Jinjiu, warm and cool complement each other, a good match". When people realize that Jinjiu is not only suitable for gifts, but also can be eaten with cold food, they will naturally place an order when encountering similar scenes.

Using promotions to exchange for sales is short-sighted. A more long-term approach is to leverage the power of content IP, link it to higher-frequency consumption scenarios, and reverse users' underlying perception of the product, thereby allowing the product to sell naturally.

To sum up

Don’t focus on the growth in financial reports, but on real and healthy growth. Using big content IP as a “business lever” to remove business obstacles and stabilize the basic market is one of the antidotes to the period of consumption contraction.