With Xiaohongshu, brand marketing has entered the "individual era"

The operation of Xiaohongshu requires the manager to have a very clear positioning of the brand and to carry out brand marketing and promotion according to a variety of personalized needs. This marketing method caters to the young consumer groups to the greatest extent and has become a popular promotion model on Xiaohongshu.

In this fast-paced and personalized era, brand marketing is no longer just a cold product display, but the transmission of emotions and stories.

Compared with conventional business formats, the "manager economy" is also a business of "people, goods, and places", but the former is backed by technology, chain stores, and large-scale manufacturing, while the latter reconstructs the logic of "people, goods, and places" with the help of emotional value and social attributes: through online fan traffic (people) and offline unique experiences (goods), a closed loop of commercial consumption is formed (place).

Brand marketing has entered the "individual era". In the era of social media, brand marketing needs to focus on the creation of personal IP. The manager is the projection of the brand's personality. The brand can convey the brand concept and brand warmth through the manager's personal IP, especially Xiaohongshu.

1. Under the new trend, how can brand marketing tell "new stories"?

With the booming development of social media, brand marketing has shifted from traditional advertising models to more personalized and interactive marketing strategies.

As a platform that gathers a large number of young users and KOLs, Xiaohongshu has consumers that are different from other platforms. They have witnessed brand marketing, have aesthetic tastes, and attach more importance to brand value.

Traditional marketing strategies are becoming less effective, and telling old stories is no longer able to attract users to pay. Under this trend, a new "brand individual era" has arrived.

If a brand wants to gain higher brand exposure on Xiaohongshu and achieve better advertising and marketing, it needs a "manager" IP to face users, so that the brand no longer relies solely on celebrity endorsements, but relies more on "manager IP" with personal charm and professional ability to establish connections with consumers.

Storytelling doesn’t have to be new in content, a new form is also fine! Some business friends may ask, what is the IP of the host?

In brand marketing, to put it simply, the brand is an external marketing window in the form of an individual.

2. How to build a personal brand IP on Xiaohongshu?

Some business friends may say that what they are doing is not a trendy category, so can they still build their own brand IP in this way?

Of course you can. To put it bluntly, the manager IP is just a new method of brand marketing. Any category can try this method to shape its own personal brand IP. The purpose of creating a manager IP is to bring more reputation to the brand.

So how do we create a personal brand IP that suits our category? In line with the tonality trend of Xiaohongshu, tell the brand story in a personalized and differentiated way. Brands can start from the following aspects:

• Identity: Who are you?
• Value positioning: What price can you offer to your fans?
• Image positioning: Based on the brand tone, what kind of personality and style should you convey to users?
• Memorable point: that is, your uniqueness. When combined with products or brands, what characteristics of yours can be magnified?

Personal brand IP = high degree of personal fit + ability to tell product stories + diverse ways of disseminating content = a vivid image rich in commercial value.

So first of all, before our brand creates a personal IP, we need to clarify our own personality and style positioning and not deviate too much from the brand. We need to refine it from the characteristics of the manager himself to ensure that the style positioning is in line with the value concept that the brand needs to convey.

For example, "Yu Shea", the manager of an architectural design firm, through her identity as a "post-95 female entrepreneur + architectural designer", can convey her brand's design value, design concept and even some design cases to her fans through sharing about architecture and home furnishings, as well as some storage vlogs, and then perfectly achieve the exposure of her design firm's brand by acquiring customers through private messages.

This is to sublimate the brand value of architectural design through personalization through "female + independence + value". It not only fits the main trend of Xiaohongshu - emotion and story, but also attracts a large number of financially independent female fans.

To create a differentiated brand IP, you can also learn from the women's clothing brand "Jieweika Women's Wear Studio", which creates the founder's IP on Xiaohongshu and tells the product from the perspective of a "male designer" from four aspects: fabric, version, color and design concept to achieve short video sales;

The double buff of male designer + women's clothing designer has greatly differentiated the label of the opposite sex from other women's clothing brand managers, attracting 135,000 fans on Xiaohongshu.

3. What value can this bring to the brand?

In some aspects, the influence of the manager's IP is very large. The brand attitude and story conveyed by the IP are essentially a reflection of the brand's personality, which may make consumers feel more involved or resonate. Therefore, some fans' trust in the manager may even exceed their trust in the brand.

For example, the manager of the mattress brand "Half-Day Leisure Mattress" - "Mattress King Mohan" shares household tips and reviews through his personal IP account, attracting fans with household consumption needs. He uses the pain point topic "If you don't choose the right mattress, you will sleep in vain every night" and combines it with his own brand Half-Day Leisure household products to endorse his own brand, successfully planting grass and converting fan users to the corporate account to place orders and purchase.

As long as the brand's IP is well managed, the influence is not limited to the platform, but can even radiate to all aspects of life. The top domestic personal brand IP influencer is Xiaomi's Lei Jun.

A Xiaomi car launch conference became a phenomenal marketing event in the automotive industry and even on various platforms. He perfectly enhanced the brand appeal with his personal charm, successfully marketed the launch of a product, and converted users' trust in him into orders for Xiaomi cars.

The positive image and attitude of the manager can help the brand rebuild trust in a crisis to a great extent. Even when the brand faces negative public opinion, the public relations team can respond quickly through the manager and use personal influence to calm the crisis.

In summary, through this new marketing method on Xiaohongshu, brands can attract more precise user groups, enhance brand trust, gain new exposure and customer acquisition channels, and promote sales conversion.

Author: Vic

Source: WeChat official account: "Vic's Marketing Thinking (ID: Viccps0227)"