How did this brand sell cotton for 4 billion by upgrading a cotton flower?

Want to improve your brand value? I think you need to do the following.

After rapid expansion and brand scale-up, when the brand steadily enters the mature stage, this stage is the stage of brand integration, and several characteristics may appear:

1. Brand value: from value proposition to value perception

This is because the brand is mature, which means that the market share is high and the brand is well-known among the target audience. The target audience is no longer new users. Consumers already understand your functions and trust your quality. At this time, there is no need to repeatedly make functional claims. For example, if Nongfu Spring is still telling you about its product quality, sales leadership, and being nature's porter, would you still be interested in watching it?

Although brands need to maintain consistent brand communication, within the fixed memory framework, advertising creativity and content must be changed to help consumers regain their memories and understand the brand proposition more deeply, otherwise the brand will become outdated. For example, after entering the mature stage, Procter & Gamble still used overwhelming TV commercials to emphasize the value of its products, but rarely used activities and creative content to let consumers perceive the brand value. This was one of the core reasons for its delisting.

We use Nongfu Spring’s poster to see the difference between the brand’s early and current content communication angles.

Nongfu Spring poster

The left picture shows Nongfu Spring's early promotional materials, and the right picture shows Nongfu Spring's "Planet Earth" documentary team, which used the animals in the forest as a perspective to present the forest that has been endowed with thriving vitality by water.

At this time, Nongfu Spring has moved from value proposition to value perception. Through this creative perspective, it conveys to consumers that good water can nourish life, and its aim is to bring this high-quality water to consumers.

If the first step for a mature brand is to become more concrete through "value perception", the next step is to make itself more concrete and detailed and find more value fulcrums.

For example, the brand proposition of All Cotton Era is “All Cotton Changes the World”.

When it comes to marketing communication, we cannot just be half-hearted and shout slogans in vain. Some value fulcrums must be brought out to fully carry through the brand's implementation actions.

So what did Quanmianshiji do around a flower of cotton?

First, promote cotton environmentally friendly shopping bags.

All Cotton Times has distributed about 14 million eco-friendly shopping bags made of cotton to its users. When consumers go to the store to buy things, the clerk will not give them plastic bags, but cotton non-woven shopping bags. Compared with many high-profile brand activities, their action seems very subtle, but it has a silent effect. The seemingly "inconspicuous" shopping bags connect consumers' environmental protection actions and allow them to participate.

Second, spare no effort to promote cotton.

Over the years, Quanmianshidai has been letting the public know the story of cotton, human life and the earth's ecology from a variety of perspectives. For example, it has held the "Cotton. Nature. People" photography competition for eight consecutive years in collaboration with well-known photographers at home and abroad, jointly launched the "Giving and Coexisting" marine environmental protection theme photography exhibition with "National Geographic China", and filmed the documentary "What is Cotton" to trace its origins.

Works from the “Cotton. Nature. People” Photography Competition

Many users said that they started to use less plastic products after getting used to cotton. Therefore, "All cotton changes the world" is not just a slogan of the brand, but also helps the brand become a part of social popular culture.

The third is to shoot documentaries around users.

The documentary series "She Changed" by Quanmianshidai is actually about discussing relevant social issues with you through the life experiences of four women, such as how women can choose their own life dreams and how women can break gender bias in the workplace...

Instead of instilling product selling points into users, Quanmianshidai instills the brand's philosophy into users through these consumer-related topics. When a brand blends its values ​​into social issues, audiences who are concerned about these issues will spontaneously gather and discuss.

2. Brand evolution: What exactly does brand upgrading upgrade?

There is also another kind of "maturity", which means that the brand may face aging, solidified user perception, inability to attract new generation consumers, and the need for business transformation and upgrading. At this time, many brands will choose to carry out a wave of brand upgrades at this stage.

For example, the following cases:

• Keep: From "Self-discipline gives me freedom" to "Self-discipline gives me the freedom to be happy".
• Tmall: From “Just go to Tmall and buy” to “Go to Tmall for an ideal life”.
• Dove Chocolate: From "Enjoying Silky Smoothness" to "Extremely Pleasant"
• Li Ning: From "everything is possible" to "making change happen", it has become China Li Ning.

The positioning and image of these brands have been upgraded in different directions, but the common point is that they all try to reshape themselves with broader concepts to activate users' sense of freshness.

One thing that needs to be made clear is that brand upgrading is not just about changing VI and SI and telling a good brand story. It also includes product research and development upgrades, experience upgrades, process upgrades, aesthetic upgrades, marketing upgrades, brand role changes, etc.

It is not something you just think about and say you want to upgrade. There is no work that is not long-term and difficult, and you also need to give up the expectation of completing the brand upgrade with a big move. It is never a matter of 1+1=2. It is 0.1+0.1+0.1+0.1+infinity=0.1 or infinity.

Taking my former employer MINISO as an example, let me talk about what actions it has taken to upgrade its brand based on the goal of “lighting up a better life in 99 countries around the world”.

Founded in 2013, MINISO, which is now in its 10th year, has made three major changes in brand upgrading: first, from a channel brand to a product brand with self-built channels; second, from a pure retail company to a content company driven by interest-based consumption; and finally, from a customer-oriented approach to a user-oriented approach.

• Channel strategy: Creating a super store model with an area of ​​more than 1,000 square meters and promoting it globally is one of the important deployments of MINISO's global brand strategy upgrade. For example, the Xi'an flagship store is the first city image store with Chinese cultural elements.
• Category upgrade: In terms of category strategy, we develop products with content thinking and create signature dishes, such as aromatherapy, blind box, and doll categories. We provide products that are "good-looking, fun, and easy to use" with both practical and emotional value, leading the trend of interest consumption and strengthening a beautiful life that is good-looking, fun, and easy to use.
• Super symbol: Create wink's "happy philosophy", embody beauty and convey beauty.
• IP strategy: 80+ IP licensors, approximately 2,300 IP co-branded core SKUs, and joining hands with multiple series including the world's top IPs, two-dimensional IPs, national trend IPs, creative trendy play IPs, sports/game IPs, and art and fashion IPs to create a lifestyle fashion brand featuring IP design.
• Brand going global: From domestic to international, the brand is going global and has entered 111 countries and regions, creating an image of Chinese original brands that are catching the global waves.
• Social responsibility: The "MINISO Small Animal Protection Public Welfare Fund" project was established. All the funds of the foundation will be used to carry out a number of small animal protection public welfare projects, such as popularizing the law, scientific rescue of stray animals, and targeted training of search and rescue dogs.

Therefore, the strategic upgrade of a brand is not a repackaging of its brand positioning, but an extension of its market development blueprint.

3. Brand management: how to combine internal and external factors to guide public opinion

Brand expansion has enabled the brand to move from a niche circle to the general public, leading to an increase in user scale and brand awareness, but it has also brought a lot of external (media, competitors, and the general public) scrutiny.

Many brands have failed after entering the public eye, such as the “fake condemnation” after Pinduoduo’s listing, the “ice cream assassin” of Zhong Xuegao, and the “79 yuan eyebrow pencil incident” of Hua Xizi. These public opinion pressures that are like a thorn in the throat are also a major challenge for brands to enter the mature stage.

At this point, the brand has already come into the public eye. What is important at this stage is the company’s “internal harmony and external defense against public opinion.”

1. Internal: Shaping content dissemination standards

When our team diagnosed some brands with a scale of hundreds of millions or even billions over the years, we found that they all had a common problem:

With the continuous segmentation of marketing functions inside and outside the company, the most difficult thing for some teams due to lack of experience or poor management of brand operators is to make all expressions "speak with one voice". For example, the visuals are very confusing, the slogans are changed every day, the product selling points are also vague, and the brand has different opinions on the value layer, visual layer, and experience layer. The problem that this easily leads to is that the brand is very confusing when it comes to communication to the audience.

Everything a brand does externally is communication. Products, pricing, channels, and communications are all communicating with users. The key is not any one element, but what effective information is conveyed to users through these four elements.

This information can be managed by the brand in a unified manner. For example, in terms of product, what functional value do you provide? At the brand level, what spiritual value do you provide and how do you express it to the outside world? What do you say on the product packaging, or even on the product details page and brand profile of the e-commerce platform? In terms of pricing, does the price match the value you say?

Brand positioning → value system → visual system → product selling point → channel selection → marketing method , all of these points of contact with users should form a whole of points, lines, surfaces and bodies, with the points forming lines, the lines forming surfaces and the surfaces forming bodies, conveying a unified message and making the same voice.

Strictly speaking, brand consistency requires: consistent product selling point output, consistent brand visual output, and consistent brand value output.

Although influenced by different media (carriers, channels) and with different focuses, effective implementation that maintains brand consistency makes it easier to gain consumer trust and reduce communication costs.

Especially after the brand has developed to a certain stage, as a brand operator, you must manage the planning and sorting of the brand value system as a core project and implement it efficiently.

There are three key elements involved. Let me share my approach based on my experience as CMO of MINISO:

1. Establish brand equity standards

That is, to safeguard brand building from the perspective of corporate organization and behavior, and to regulate the management of brand assets. This includes four aspects:

(1) Basic definition of the brand - product concept, determination of the core target group, identification of core competitive products, basic introduction of the brand, brand story, etc.;

(2) Core elements of the brand - regulations on brand name, trademark, VI, SI and font, core values ​​and claims, packaging design, representative logos, brand image, and guidance on future modifications; protection of intellectual property rights such as brand patent technology, patent packaging, copyright, anti-counterfeiting marks, especially trademark registration protection, domain name registration protection, and registration protection of account names on major social platforms;

(3) Brand philosophy and culture - establishing the brand mission, vision, values, and brand philosophy, and accurately defining the brand culture; building a brand image perception system including the overall brand tone, visual tone, and auditory tone; and building a brand house, etc.

(4) Brand communication and extension - including brand communication principles, content creation principles, communication execution principles, brand concept communication events, etc., by establishing review standards for brand advertising information, establishing principles for handling public relations activities, especially crisis public relations, terminal management and promotion regulations, as well as implementation requirements for product line extension and brand extension.

2. Brand information archiving

Since I took charge of the brand center, all the information in our department, regardless of the size of the project, needs to be archived and saved, classified by group, and uploaded to the department's information sharing disk. First, it is for information sharing, second, it is to accumulate and settle the materials so that they can be quickly found when they are needed for subsequent dissemination, and third, new employees can get familiar with the brand and their own work more quickly. (For details, please see the sixth chapter of "Breaking Word of Mouth")

3. Regularly evaluate and monitor brand consistency

To ensure brand consistency, my suggestion is to regularly evaluate and monitor the brand's display in different channels, occasions and media. Brand consistency can be maintained through regular brand image surveys, review and update of brand logo and copy content, and continuous improvement of brand story and culture.

For example, all materials, audio, video, articles and brand profiles of MINISO Group need to be reviewed and confirmed by the brand center before they can be uniformly released to the outside world. We will also conduct random checks at stores from time to time to see whether the materials in the stores are the latest and whether the promotional materials are posted in accordance with the instructions issued by the group.

2. External: Public brand building

Public relations is also referred to as PR or public relations.

But in fact, public relations is not limited to sudden crisis events. Excellent brand public relations should not only nip the signs of a public opinion crisis in the bud when it "starts at the tip of a green ripple", but also be reflected in every aspect of the brand's daily external relations, correctly handle the relationship between the company and the public, media, and society, and shape or enhance the brand image and competitiveness of the company.

Specifically:

1. Media management: First, the content team actively produces and publishes valuable PR manuscripts, such as daily manuscripts, brand event manuscripts, CEO/senior speeches, etc. Second, it guides authoritative media to report on the brand positively and attracts vertical opinion leaders in the industry to pay attention to and voice out the brand.

A brand must be able to generate favorable publicity in the media, otherwise it has no chance in the market. Once a brand is born, it needs PR to maintain it.

First, each brand has its own media resource library, including traditional media: magazines, television, newspapers, etc.; official media: Tencent, Sohu, NetEase, etc.; new media: industry financial media, self-media big V accounts, etc.; and various media in second- and third-tier cities; as well as foreign media.

Especially those journalists and self-media authors who have actively reported on the brand or commented on brand topics need to establish daily contact.

Secondly, you can cooperate with the media's regular topic selection and provide them with topic content; when a brand releases a new product, you can send them the press release and let the media publish it; at the event site, you can invite TV stations or live broadcast media to report on the scene and conduct media group interviews, and the event press release should also be contacted with the media as soon as possible.

Readers who have read "Breaking Word of Mouth" should still remember that during the rapid development stage of MINISO, we paid great attention to mainstream commercial media and financial self-media resources, and carried out large-scale publicity and exposure through a series of high-quality authoritative media cooperation.

At the same time, establishing good media relations can avoid slander. When negative public opinion about a brand appears, many media outlets will save face and not follow suit in reporting.

2. Product promotion: For example, poster communication leveraging solar terms, interactive H5 communication, financial report disclosure, press conference topic communication, product technology public relations, flash communication, brand conference theme communication, etc., as long as they are creative enough, they can be regarded as excellent single advertising and public relations events.

Just like every press conference of Apple, Jobs would repeatedly polish and simplify the PPT, and sometimes he would stop the press conference because of a small technical problem that did not meet Jobs' requirements. It can be seen that every brand public relations has value and influence, so if the founder of the company cannot understand this, no matter how good the product is, if it does not have the power to gather people and appeal, it will be difficult for the brand to move forward.

Today, many companies that have emerged in the Internet era are using public relations to promote their products and brands. We often see the founders of companies standing in the foreground, constantly creating public relations: Lei Jun of Xiaomi, Ren Zhengfei of Huawei, etc.

3. GR management: GR stands for government relations, which emphasizes social values, policy orientation, and regulatory requirements.

The materials of public relations communication can become the materials for government relations departments to report: such as public welfare activities, media awards, etc. Some public relations channels can accurately convey information to the government or competent departments, such as industry media, internal references, industry forums, closed-door meetings, etc.

4. Crisis public relations: Establish network-wide public opinion monitoring, public opinion crisis early warning and disposal plans, crisis public relations response models, etc., to conduct public relations in a timely manner when a crisis occurs in the company to reduce losses.

Author: Sister Mulan talks about brands

Source public account: Sister Mulan (ID: 958702)