How to plan a marketing campaign that combines “brand value and business value”?

Create IP-based marketing activities to solve the problem of difficulty in measuring brand and business value. This article provides a practical guide for strategic planners and is recommended for marketing professionals.

For some client’s brand marketing departments, if they measure the value of marketing activities based on business empowerment, they will find that many marketing activities face the following embarrassing situations: “First of all, in terms of conversion effect, although a marketing activity will produce some results, the bloody fact is that the profits produced by most marketing activities are far from enough to cover their cost investment.

Let’s talk about brand value. Although everyone says that brands should be measured from a long-term perspective, consumers’ attention is extremely scarce nowadays. A marketing campaign will be forgotten by consumers soon after it ends, so how can we talk about long-term value?

As business becomes increasingly difficult and the value of marketing activities is difficult to prove, we can see with our naked eyes that the marketing budgets of enterprises are decreasing year by year; because using these marketing budgets to subsidize users, fight price wars, or improve product quality and service quality can immediately see the growth of sales performance. However, does this mean that marketing activities are not worth doing nowadays? Does it mean that spending a lot of effort on marketing activities is a waste of corporate resources and budget?

The answer is obviously no! Because only a very small number of companies with significant product advantages, high technical barriers, and strong brand foundation can still sell their products well without relying on marketing activities. For example, companies like Tesla, Apple, BYD, Huawei, etc., with their far-leading technology, can quickly gain the attention of the media and consumers when they release any new product. And brands like Coca-Cola, Nike, SK-II, etc., although their technical barriers and thresholds are relatively low, they can also open the door to the market with the brand power built up over many years.

However, most companies do not have such technological advantages or brand power, and some companies, despite their technological advantages, are still not well known and recognized by the public. The new products or services launched by these companies can only open up the market through marketing activities, otherwise they will be submerged in a dazzling array of similar products and will not even have the opportunity to be displayed in front of consumers.

1. Practical solution: “IP-based marketing activities”

Regarding the problem mentioned earlier that the value of marketing activities is difficult to measure, Lao Pao believes that the most practical solution is to "IP-ize marketing activities" and try to avoid using a single-event mindset to conduct activities; only in this way can the value of marketing activities be objectively and reasonably verified, giving the activities a more lasting and stronger vitality!

Regarding the "IPization of marketing activities", the common ones can be divided into four categories: brand activity IPization, holiday promotion activity IPization, public relations activity IPization, and customer experience activity IPization. The following will use some classic success cases to help everyone better understand how to implement the IPization of these four types of marketing activities.

1. Brand activities are IP-based, occupying consumers’ minds

The goals of brand activities are generally long-term, such as establishing a specific brand image, conveying certain brand values ​​or brand concepts, and enhancing brand awareness, reputation, and loyalty. By continuously incorporating these concepts and values ​​into brand activities, it is possible to capture the minds of consumers and become the brand of choice in the minds of consumers.

The advantage of turning brand activities into IPs is that you can concentrate your efforts on a certain point to make a breakthrough, and constantly communicate the same thing with consumers in similar scenarios, thereby occupying the minds of consumers.

Tencent's 99 Charity Day has been launched since 2015. Over the years, it has adhered to the concept of "doing good together", allowing more ordinary people to participate in charity with a lower threshold. Its original "little red flower" image is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Now, Tencent's 99 Charity Day has become one of the most important forces in the domestic charity field.

There are actually many companies that insist on doing charity, but most of them are doing it in a scattered and unsystematic manner. Tencent, by turning charity activities into IPs, has made the public remember Tencent's great love of "insisting on promoting charity to the public", and its influence and appeal are growing like a snowball.

2. Make holiday promotions IP-based and avoid one-off sales

Holiday promotion is a very old sales method. As the name suggests, its purpose is to sell more goods faster. With the great success of domestic and foreign promotional IPs such as Black Friday, Tmall Double 11, and JD 618, all companies and merchants have realized that seemingly simple and crude promotional activities are no longer a one-time deal, but require careful consideration to operate continuously.

KFC Crazy Thursday, which has been popular in the past two years, was originally just a special discount event launched every Thursday. Later, due to the continuous production of a large number of jokes by netizens to flood the screen, it eventually evolved into a phenomenal IP such as "Crazy Thursday Literature"; the great success of "Crazy Thursday Literature" is undoubtedly the result of the brand's careful operation and guidance of the rhythm on the social platform.

3. IP-based PR activities to create a brand feast

Ever since Steve Jobs successfully turned the annual Apple product launch into a national tech extravaganza, many companies and founders have followed suit.

Among them, Lei Jun and his Xiaomi are one of the most typical representatives who have reaped the benefits of press conferences. Xiaomi's new product launches every year, as well as the launch of its first electric car, Xiaomi SU7, this year, and even the previous change of Xiaomi's brand logo, have all sparked frenzied discussions among netizens and the media.

Nowadays, it is not only electronic technology companies and Internet companies that like to turn large-scale public relations activities into IPs. This approach has penetrated into various fields such as catering, home appliances, finance, sportswear, and self-media.

For example, it has been very popular in recent years for leading self-media such as Luo Zhenyu, Liu Run, and Wu Xiaobo to hold annual keynote speeches and broadcast them live on major traffic platforms; the popularity and influence of Luo Zhenyu's annual speech "Friends of Time" has even surpassed some TV stations' New Year's Galas in some years.

Of course, putting on a stage to perform naturally requires the support of onlookers and the media, otherwise it will become a one-sided self-entertainment; the companies that can do a good job of IPizing public relations activities are either the brands themselves have a high degree of popularity, or the products they release have far-leading new technologies, or the founders of the company have strong personal charm.

A blacksmith must have strong tools himself. If one only imitates others in form, it will become a waste of corporate resources.

4. IP-based customer experience activities to cultivate high-quality word-of-mouth

Customer recommendations and positive reviews are always the most persuasive way for a company to promote itself and the most efficient means of acquiring customers. Building immersive offline scenarios that allow customers to have in-depth interactions and experiences with the company's brand/products has become a good choice for many companies to establish a good customer reputation.

Especially for industries whose sales channels rely on e-commerce, have high product prices, top fashion luxury goods, high-end lifestyles, and financial products without physical carriers, it is particularly important to plan high-quality offline experience activities to capture, maintain, and convert customers in these scenarios.

Taking a project planned and managed by Lao Pao this year as an example, entrepreneurs have always been a very important potential customer group for HSBC. However, faced with these elite groups with high cognition, high income and precious time, it is difficult to reach out to them in depth, understand their needs and provide satisfactory wealth planning services.

Through research, we learned that in addition to wealth planning needs, expert consulting services in various fields, how businesses operate and grow, and connecting with high-end circles and resources are all things that the entrepreneurial community is highly interested in.

So we launched an event IP called "HSBC Entrepreneur Salon", and regularly invite well-known experts from the business, economics, management consulting and other industries as event guests to provide entrepreneurs with some inspiration in business operations; at the same time, they can also use the HSBC Entrepreneur Salon platform to connect with more high-end resources and connections.

By building a high-quality platform to regularly host offline salon events, as well as through word-of-mouth recommendations from entrepreneur customers who have attended the salons in the past, the HSBC Entrepreneur Salon has become a very popular customer experience event IP for HSBC. Every event is always packed with guests and tickets are hard to come by.

2. Four key elements of marketing activity IP

Creating a marketing campaign IP is a systematic project with a long cycle and complex mechanisms. There are many factors that determine whether it can be successful and ultimately achieve business goals. Here we will mainly give you a detailed explanation of the four key elements: "symbol design, sustainable operation, updates and iterations, and multi-party collaboration."

1. Symbol design: specific themes and visual symbols to create memory connection points

Designing specific themes and visual symbols is the most basic work in creating a marketing campaign IP, mainly to solve the problem of rapid user identification.

The theme symbol is the name or slogan of the IP, such as Tmall Double 11, JD 618, Crazy Thursday, Friends of Time, etc.; the visual symbol is the image of the IP. The most familiar one is probably the cat head symbol that can be seen everywhere when Tmall Double 11 comes every year; there is a more convenient and pleasing way, which is to directly design the name of the IP into a visual symbol, which is simple and easy to use.

2. Continuous operation: Repeatedly do it over a long period of time to form cognitive potential and influence

The key to whether a marketing campaign can become an event IP lies in whether the campaign can be carried out repeatedly over a long period of time. If it is just a one-shot approach, it will be difficult to form cumulative cognitive potential and influence, and naturally it will not be possible to build it into an event IP.

Luo Zhenyu was able to turn his annual speech into a nationwide New Year's knowledge feast. In addition to his personal influence, there is another core factor that cannot be ignored. He packaged the annual speech into a highly recognizable and resonant speech event IP "Friends of Time".

3. Update and iteration: constantly create freshness to attract user interest

Everything has a life cycle, and what we can do is to extend its development and maturity period as much as possible; a marketing campaign IP cannot escape this rule. Although long-term repetition can enhance memory and recognition, it will eventually face the fatigue and negative mentality of consumers over time.

If you want to prolong the heyday of an event IP, continuous iteration of gameplay to keep it fresh is essential; one of the very important reasons why Tmall Double 11 has been unpopular in the past two years is that it has encountered a bottleneck in gameplay innovation. Faced with the complicated full-reduction mechanism and red envelope collection game every year, consumers have become tired of it.

4. Multi-party collaboration: Collaborate with marketing, operations, sales and other departments to achieve marketing goals

Many people mistakenly believe that marketing activities are the responsibility of the marketing department. However, marketers with certain operational experience know that if a single soldier works alone without the coordination and support of other departments, he will ultimately not achieve the desired results.

In a complete marketing chain, there are many links that need to be completed in collaboration with front-line departments such as the operations department, sales department, and business department, while some links need to be coordinated with mid- and back-end departments such as the product department, technology department, and legal department. Only when all departments work together and specialize in their respective links can the marketing results be maximized.

The IPization of marketing activities can not only solve the problem of the value of marketing activities being underestimated internally, but also solve the long-standing problem of how to link brand and effect. In this way, the investment in each marketing activity can accumulate into a powerful potential energy, successfully realizing the maximization of brand value and business value.

Author: Lao Pao; Source public account: Lao Pao OG (ID: 1087527)