Young people love to watch and brands love to invest in farming variety shows: 4 inspirations for marketers

The author of this article talks about the marketing methods using variety shows as a medium. Readers engaged in marketing can take a look.

Friends who surf the Internet frequently may have noticed some hot topics recently, such as #十个勤天小店#, #十个勤天蜜送检验#…

Regardless of what "Ten Hardworking Days" is, what aroused Dao Fa's interest was a program related to hot searches, the second season of the interactive reality show "Let's Farm" produced by iQIYI and Blue Sky Media, co-produced by Haixi Media and Jiangsu Satellite TV, and exclusively sponsored by Amul. In addition to the additional investment from the brands in the previous season and the brands invited by the audience, the number of cooperating brands is increasing as the program is updated. Including:

• The main products include "1 billion LGG active probiotics" and "Amul" which is active with the show
• "Hao Shi" who responded to the audience's call and quickly contacted the program team
• The "i-person" "Jinzai" who silently supports the program and is called by the "Hehuo people" to speak loudly
• …

Among them, Haoshi is a well-known local snack brand in Fujian, and Jinzai is a national snack brand that focuses on delicious and healthy snacks. Based on the habit of studying everything from the perspective of brand marketing, Daofa wants to discuss:

1. Why, in today’s new marketing era of fragmented channels and distracted user attention, has brand marketing spending on long video variety shows increased instead of decreased?

2. From the perspective of brand long-termism, how can we cooperate with innovative programs like "Let's Farm" to tap into the value that is different from traditional variety shows?

Not long ago, Daofa had the opportunity to talk with the two brands, Haoshi and Jinzai, as well as iQiyi Vice President Dong Xuanyu, and combined with the information provided by multiple parties, tried to answer the above questions.

Before starting the main text, let me introduce a few specific terms so that everyone can understand them——

• Ten hardworking people: refers to the guests of the show, that is, the ten young men who farm the land
• Hehuoren: refers to fans of the show "Let's Farm"

1. Similar to "Let's Farm", building a brand requires the "cultivation" of trust

A good brand takes time to build.

Taking Haoshi and Jinzai as examples, these brands have many things in common, such as each of them has been deeply involved in the food industry for about 30 years, emphasizes being down-to-earth in their professional fields, has a relatively high reputation in some regions, has accumulated a stable supply chain, rich offline channels, and so on.

However, these local brands that have grown by relying on channel sales are facing the test of new marketing transformation due to changes in the new online and offline channel environment in recent years.

Ye Yuehui, founder and chairman of Haoshi Foods, told Daofa that in most cases in the past, brands usually only needed to place ads on satellite TV and broadcast a few repetitive advertising slogans to attract a large number of users to pay attention and buy. Now, users are scattered across different platforms, which also puts forward new requirements for brands: it is necessary to ensure that users are reached by brand content multiple times within a certain period of time, and to make users feel that the ads are interesting so that they can form a memorable point.

Based on this insight, last year Haoshi first focused on increasing its brand voice, cooperating with iQiyi's top drama "Ning An Ru Meng" for soft implantation, and officially announced the drama's starring actor Wang Xingyue as the brand spokesperson, seizing the great exposure opportunities brought by the drama and celebrity effect, making many young people familiar with Haoshi.

This year, Haoshi decided to take the next step to deepen the brand's memory.

"Haoshi wants to tell users that 'bread is made with real ingredients'. We know that audiences nowadays don't like excessive marketing, and seeing the guests of 'Let's Farm' record their planting of crops when they were unknown, it very realistically showed the growth and authenticity of 'Ten Hard Working Days'. I couldn't help but substitute my own entrepreneurial experience from 20 or 30 years ago, and I could empathize with it all at once. Later, Haoshi cooperated with the program to provide breakfast for the farming teenagers, which was an implantation, and it was indeed an expression of true feelings," said Ye Yuehui, Chairman of Haoshi.

What’s interesting is that the story of “Let’s Farm” begins with planting rice, while Jinzai focuses on deep-sea anchovies. Field crops and marine life are so different, why did Jinzai choose to cooperate with this program?

When communicating with Daofa, Jinzai Brand Director Zhou Jie mentioned the spiritual core of the brand and "Let's Farm".

"Through the content of the program, 'Let's Farm' tells today's young people to 'believe in the power of the land'. In the eyes of the founder of the Jinzai brand, this down-to-earth, steady and pragmatic spirit of struggle is consistent with the brand spirit that Jinzai Enterprise continues to implement. After seeing the efforts of the ten young people, the chairman also hopes to contribute to their careers. Moreover, agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery are essentially inseparable. "

Zhou Jie told Daofa that, in fact, before coming into contact with "Let's Farm", Jinzai was already the No. 1 snack brand in the deep-sea anchovy category, and it officially launched its brand upgrade in August last year. It is striving to transform from a typical channel-intensive brand to a consumer brand.

However, the public knows very little about deep-sea anchovies, which have rich nutritional value. Jinzai hopes to strengthen the category awareness among young groups through cooperation with "Let's Farm".

DaoFa learned that most of the program viewers are young people from first-tier and new first-tier cities. These people are willing to embrace new things. They also have a stable demand for snacks in a fixed content consumption scenario. The large user base and high acceptance of new categories provide good conditions for Jinzai to carry out deep-sea anchovy category education. The high-profile and radiating pan-entertainment young people in more high-tier cities across the country also accelerates the breaking of brand regional recognition barriers.

Simply put, the reason why brands repeatedly mention and recognize "Let's Farm" is that the key is the innovation of the program content and format:

"Ten Hardworking Days" uses real labor to gain rewards. From the first season of "doing one thing well" to the second season of "making it bigger and stronger", it constantly emphasizes sincerity and cultivation, and continues to bring viewers an immersive companionship experience. Dong Xuanyu, Vice President of iQiyi, believes that this emotional need is mutually contagious, which is not only reflected in the team spirit of the ten teenagers, but also in the audience's love for the guests as "electronic friends", their recognition of their own "Hehuo people", and their support for the program through various online and offline methods.

The more abundant the supply in the consumer market, the more brands need to learn this step-by-step approach from "Let's Farm", giving users a sense of security like a familiar face, so that everyone can shorten the consumption decision-making process when making choices. As a successful slow variety show, "Let's Farm" also provides a long-term and stable space for trust endorsement.

2. Explore users and the industry chain: the core of reputation is deep co-creation

Unlike traditional seasonal long-video variety shows, "Let's Farm" adopts a network-style broadcast structure, including feature long videos, behind-the-scenes short videos, live broadcasts, etc., which provides greater creative space for brand marketing.

Whether it is the program's exclusive title sponsor, Amul, or Haoshi and Jinzai, they are not limited to conventional forms of implantation such as brand appearances, guest broadcasts, patch ads, and mid-insert ads. They will also enjoy other new forms of exposure rights based on their own delivery needs, including "Let's Farm" guest vlogs, joint live broadcasts, etc.

The change in the form of implantation is fundamentally because the communication context between the brand and the user has changed. If local channel brands want to embrace new marketing, they must learn to think from the perspective of others and express content more from the user's perspective.

Dao Fa saw that in the second season, Amul had the need to promote the new portable package of "Little Golden Crown". It was not limited to the conventional "hard exposure", but was assigned to the farming teenagers as a business order task in line with the development trend of the program. "Ten Hardworking Days" Li Hao created a short advertising film in which the teenagers appeared. At this point, Amul's placement has become different from traditional advertising materials.

Li Hao also released a pre-production Weibo post to show the audience the behind-the-scenes footage of the short film creation. The audience can see the production process of the short film from conception to implementation. From the audience's perspective, this short film is not a cold material, but a very personal emotional expression, which naturally resonates more. Through this cooperation, "Shige Qintian" earned 8,888 yuan in labor fees, and the brand also met the needs of promoting new products and new packaging. More importantly, the brand actually gave back to the labor of "Shige Qintian", increased the audience's favorability, and achieved a win-win effect for all parties.

On the other hand, Haoshi’s cooperation with “Let’s Farm” is itself a result of co-creation with users. In March this year, Haoshi saw the call in the comment area and quickly participated in “Let’s Farm”, contracted the breakfast of the teenagers, and appeared in the main film while eating, which triggered “Hehuo people” to actively search and buy the same product.

Later, this co-creation extended beyond the program. The slogan of Haoshi's official live broadcast room, "Eat Haoshi when you are tired of farming, grow bigger and stronger and go public," was inspired by the proposal of "Hehuoren". The anchor of Haoshi, who didn't know much about "Let's Farm" at the beginning, now speaks fluently with fans of the program when they are connected to the microphone, showing a kind of tacit understanding of two-way running - this kind of relationship is rare in traditional variety show placement.

Haoshi Douyin Official Live Room

Ye Yuehui, chairman of Haoshi, revealed that after cooperating with "Let's Farm", Haoshi not only gained a precise customer base based on the program's audience, but from a business perspective, the revenue of Douyin's official flagship store in March this year also increased several times year-on-year. More importantly, the team observed that Haoshi's brand power has greatly improved.

For example, Haoshi organizes random user surveys internally. A few years ago, the brand awareness was only a few people out of every thousand. After the cooperative program was broadcast, Haoshi became familiar to more people, especially offline college students. Some college students even took the initiative to send back pictures and cue the official Haoshi, saying that they saw Haoshi bread in their school.

With more and more positive feedback, this year, Haoshi will also focus on improving brand favorability, hoping to increase its influence threefold.

Speaking of Jinzai's cooperation with "Let's Farm", the brand actually joined the game long before the New Year, but has been silently supporting and contributing. As a result, "Hehuo people" called on the brand to speak louder and taught "iZai" how to speak. Jinzai brand responded quickly and actively interacted with users.

One thing that makes the brand feel very emotional is that “Hehuo people” are not the silent majority, they are enthusiastic and good at sharing.

For example, when the Jinzai team was still exploring, some "Hehuo people" were worried about Jinzai and spontaneously started selling Amway products. There were more than a thousand pieces of content on social platforms alone where users actively posted recommendations for Jinzai products.

Jinzai brand director Zhou Jie said that after the collaboration with "Let's Farm", the team saw the potential for online user participation, and the enthusiasm of online e-commerce channels and offline dealers was also mobilized. They expressed the hope to accelerate the empowerment of terminals, drive traffic to channels such as Douyin/Tmall online e-commerce platforms, Yonghui/China Resources, and integrate marketing to achieve product and sales integration.

The comprehensive effect of Jinzai brand's promotion, whether from the data of sales/official store's scoring weight, or from data dimensions such as search index, popularity, topic exposure, and participation, the enthusiasm of online users to participate cannot be underestimated.

In addition, Daofa found that more and more companies are willing to take advantage of the opportunity of the program broadcast to disclose the strength of the industrial chain and high production standards, not only to increase brand exposure, but also to increase the brand's influence in the industry and user reputation.

For example, during the "Ten Hard Days" strawberry planting season, Amul provided them with the contact information of Dandong strawberry suppliers. The young people's visit to the Dandong strawberry source area to learn about the planting not only helped to enrich their product line, but also gave the majority of users a more concrete understanding of the raw materials and production of Amul Dandong strawberries.

Jinzai's brand director also said that the in-depth cooperation with "Let's Farm" is not limited to content, but will further explore the upstream production chain of the enterprise.

Live broadcast of Farming Bar

Earlier, through the live broadcast of "Let's Farm", it was discovered that "Shige Qintian" went to Jinzai's factory to learn the entire production chain from fresh products to popular snacks. As for the future, Jinzai is also thinking about how to cooperate with "Shige Qintian" in a deeper industrial chain.

3. Long video variety shows, a stable carrier for brand culture construction and dissemination

Now, let’s go back to the two questions we started with:

Why are brands like Haoshi increasing their investment in long video variety shows such as "Let's Farm" even as channels are changing?

How can brands make good use of the marketing value of this type of innovative variety show?

The answer actually already exists in the question.

The brand cases mentioned above show that local channel brands should keep pace with the times and embrace new marketing, and change their original brand-centric thinking to a more consumer-centric one. However, this transformation cannot be achieved overnight, and requires the joint efforts of the brand team and all channel partners. At this time, choosing a marketing carrier that fits the brand's current development stage is often more effective.

Based on this understanding, looking at the cases of Haoshi and Jinzi, we find that "Let's Farm" has many inspirations for the new marketing transformation of local brands.

The first point is about judging whether the marketing channels/carriers are in line with the brand’s development stage.

In terms of scale, compared to some traditional variety shows that bring in traffic as soon as they are broadcast, "Let's Farm" is positioned as a slow variety show. The IP of this program was created from scratch and was successfully cultivated by the production team, brand and audience. The traffic is also accumulated slowly. It is more suitable for brands that transform in small steps, hope to grow with the program team and the audience, and pursue long-termism .

Secondly, in the past, the choice of programs that brands chose to cooperate with meant demonstrating their size, strength, and expectations to the B/C end, but now there is an additional dimension of values.

"Let's Farm" has entered its own traffic stage after its second season. As the program has a precise audience, "Hehuoren" recognize the value of the program from the bottom of their hearts. The fan stickiness far exceeds that of some traditional variety shows, and the brand has gained far more than shallow exposure. "As long as you support "Let's Farm", you are a 'Hehuoren'."

The brand has the identity of "Hehuoren", which shortens the distance of communication with users. Once the program IP is added and combined with a high stickiness potential customer base, it is easier for the brand to have a say in channel partners and promote resource integration.

Third, the new brand marketing methods are largely influenced by the audience’s preference for content, and multi-party co-creation is the general trend.

Take "Let's Farm" as an example. The audience's expectation for brands to appear in the program is no longer about hard advertising placement, but about how the brand plays with the program team, guests and the audience.

The more playful a brand is, the more likely it is to receive attention and support from the "Hehuo people". The enthusiasm from the audience will also inspire brands to continuously explore user operation methods that are more suitable for them.

The fourth point, which is also easy to overlook, is how the brand team can leverage the new marketing transformation opportunities to feed back into the business development strategy.

In the several cases in this article, Haoshi realized the importance of matching brand marketing forms and channels during the cooperation period; Jinzai started the brand and program IP cooperation, using omni-channel interactive marketing to strengthen the communication with consumers.

As Dong Xuanyu, Vice President of iQiyi, said, in the future business and content ecology, variety shows are a powerful carrier for brand culture transmission. Looking further, long-form video variety shows bring greater stability to the internal construction and external expression of brand culture, and are more sustainable in long-term communication.

4. Analyst Comments

In the many variety show placement cases in the past, few had the depth of communication between brands and users that could compete with "Let's Farm".

For brands like Haoshi and Jinzai that are in the transition period, "Let's Farm" has flexible content and form, better co-creation and in-depth development, and a controllable dissemination rhythm. It is also a leading long-form video variety show that has been verified by the market. It is indeed rare.

Respecting content means maximizing the value of content. We understand that some brands that have reinvested in "Let's Farm" have extended this season's cooperation to a full year, setting up key marketing nodes in each quarter and continuing to co-create with the program in terms of content, products, and IP licensing and peripheral development.

Perhaps starting with iQiyi's "Let's Farm", using long video variety shows as content carriers, the rhythm and gameplay of brand year-round marketing will also open up new possibilities in the future.

Author: Chu Qing, WeChat public account: Knife Skills Research Institute