How to shape an entrepreneur’s personal IP?

This article delves into the strategies for entrepreneurs to shape their personal IP, and reveals how to enhance personal brand influence through the “Six Meridians Divine Sword” model. I hope it will be helpful to you in building your personal brand.

Recently, Lei Jun's great success at the Xiaomi electric car launch has made the shaping of entrepreneurs' personal IP a popular subject, and has made many entrepreneurs realize the value of their personal IP, which can even save hundreds of millions of advertising fees. Like Lei Jun, nearly 80,000 units were quickly sold out because of a launch + personal IP performance. Who wouldn't envy him? Who wouldn't want to do the same?

First, the CEOs of all car companies took part in the event and performed it themselves. Then it spread to the CEOs of all walks of life, all of whom were thinking about how to build their personal IP and how to make their personal short videos better.

The objective fact that must be recognized is that top personal IPs like Lei Jun, Zhou Hongyi, and Luo Yonghao are definitely rare, and it is difficult for most people to reach the level of Lei Jun, Zhou Hongyi, and Luo Yonghao.

However, it is still very necessary for entrepreneurs to build their personal IP. After all, in an era where self-media is the mainstream, even a little bit of personal IP charm can play a considerable value, and may even be much better than the same advertising investment.

Because in the field of personal IP, there is no winner-takes-all. As long as every entrepreneur tries his best to do something about personal IP, he can gain something, get some rewards , have his own fans, have his own little world, find his own ecological niche, and play a role in his own brand development and marketing.

Therefore, even though it is difficult for most entrepreneurs to become top-tier with their personal IP, it is still worth planning to do so.

We analyzed various successful and unsuccessful personal IP cases, combined with years of experience in incubating IP, and proposed an "entrepreneur personal IP model" : "Six Meridians Divine Sword".

The reason why it is called "Six Meridians Divine Sword" is because this method of personal IP creation is created by——

The film consists of six elements in three pairs: "character + cultural foundation", "conflict + world rules", and "situation + story content" .

See below for details:

Taking Lei Jun as an example, we made a Six Meridians Divine Sword diagram of Lei Jun’s personal IP:

It can be clearly seen from the above picture that Six Meridians Divine Sword can fully express all aspects, underlying structure and performance, emotion and rationality of an entrepreneur’s personal IP.

On this basis, it will be much clearer and more convenient to create short videos, events and public relations activities to shape the entrepreneur’s personal IP.

Let's talk about them one by one:

1. Personality + Cultural Foundation

An entrepreneur’s personal IP not only consists of the ordinary personality and character, but also the cultural foundation as part of the personality. Both are equally important.

Many entrepreneurs fail to build their personal IP because they only focus on character and ignore the creation of a cultural foundation.

Personality is purely personal. Some people are extroverts, some are introverts, some are cheerful and lively, and some are silent and thoughtful. All of these have the potential to create personal IP, and there is no distinction between good and bad, or superior and inferior.

Even if an entrepreneur is introvert, not good at speaking, and is relatively silent, it is possible to successfully create a successful personal IP.

Why can we create IP even if we are not good at words? Because we can use the cultural foundation of the character to make up for the lack of emotion and personality.

With the blessing of cultural personality, the original character defects will appear more attractive, creating an emotional personality of "reserved and reserved" and "huge inner potential", and shooting touching short videos full of inner power.

For example, Lei Jun's cultural personality is based on the culture of a tech geek engineer. This makes his speech convincing and charming even if it is not very fast or has many explosive points. Even if there are some minor problems occasionally, people can still accept it because it fits the cultural temperament of a tech engineer who is a bit of a homebody.

Other famous personal IPs, such as Dong Mingzhu, Luo Yonghao, Zhou Hongyi, etc., or experts in the field of culture and tourism such as Wang Po of Kaifeng, experts in new rural construction such as Liziqi, Zhang Tongxue, etc., and experts in the two-dimensional field also have a significant cultural foundation, forming a solid base.

From these numerous examples, we can find that among all the personalities, the power of cultural foundation personalities is actually stronger in influence than personality personalities.

This is why even if an entrepreneur is dull, as long as the cultural foundation is strong enough, he can make up for the problems of introverted personality and the ability to speak well.

Therefore, entrepreneurs should build their personal IP in this way:

• In terms of personality and character: just be natural and return to nature. When creating content, be unpretentious. When shooting short videos, try to shoot casually instead of sitting upright. Show more empathy in the content, and you will be naturally charming.
• Work hard on the cultural foundation of the personality: deeply explore the cultural background that entrepreneurs and enterprises rely on, find the subculture and its groups with the most cultural aura, and let entrepreneurs base themselves on this to create IP content, so that they can first capture the niche and then expand to the masses. Because all cultural phenomena gradually spread from the niche to the masses.

The essence of IP is culture, and personal IP is personal character + culture. Therefore, the way a good entrepreneur builds his personal IP is to give full play to his character and nature while focusing on the construction and shaping of the cultural foundation .

2. Conflict + World Rules

People like to watch people and things with conflicts. This is human nature.

People like to see the protagonist encounter conflicts as he grows, conflicts due to imaginary enemies, and conflicts in order to achieve goals. A story with ups and downs will definitely have conflicts.

Only personal IPs with conflicts are the ones that attract attention and become topics of discussion.

Where do conflicts come from? They come from breaking the existing rules of the world.

Because what we are working on is a personal IP and not a TV series, it is better to avoid those kinds of purely interpersonal conflicts of the kind of family matters. Although they can attract attention, in the long run, an entrepreneur who is obsessed with interpersonal relationships will definitely not make a good impression on people, but will instead backfire.

Therefore, the conflict of an entrepreneur’s personal IP is best to come from challenging the world and breaking the rules, which can make people admire, respect and praise him.

Let’s take Lei Jun as an example. He is really good at creating conflicts, and they are conflicts between role models and imaginary enemies.

When he was making Xiaomi mobile phones, Lei Jun always wore black T-shirts and jeans. It was well known that he was imitating Steve Jobs, so he was nicknamed Lei Jun. At the same time, when he first launched the mobile phone, he issued a declaration to challenge Apple. At the first press conference, he encouraged everyone to throw away their iPhones, which had a good dramatic conflict effect and was easily spread.

Now when making Xiaomi electric cars, everyone noticed that Lei Jun quietly changed his clothes and put on a light-colored suit, dark shirt and dark trousers similar to Musk, so everyone jokingly called him Resk.

Interestingly, Lei Jun himself also responded directly to this. In a humorous tone, he said that he felt aggrieved and depressed because black T-shirt and jeans are the most standard attire for programmers and engineers, and are not unique to Jobs.

There was also a suit similar to Musk's. In fact, Musk himself only wore that suit once, but people found out about it for comparison. Then, Lei Jun said in a very relaxed and self-deprecating way that he had been wrongly accused...

From this we can see that it is not only necessary to create conflicts, but also to promptly and directly respond to the topics caused by the conflicts. In this way, the conflicts become a serial story that continues to bring joy to people watching.

Zhou Hongyi is recognized as a master at constantly provoking conflicts. From the early 3Q war, he has always presented himself as a challenger.
So much so that in July 2017, several years after he had been silent, someone wrote an article titled "People Miss Zhou Hongyi", saying that they needed a challenger like Zhou Hongyi. Zhou Hongyi quickly responded with an article titled "Zhou Hongyi: To the People Who Miss Me", saying "You don't miss me, you miss people who tell the truth, you miss challengers, and you miss the sound of Internet gunfire". Until recently, he attracted widespread attention again because of his confrontation with the new Internet celebrity Cheng Qian, and took the opportunity to fire back, rejuvenating himself and becoming a big-name Internet celebrity again.

Another person who is best at creating conflicts is of course Luo Yonghao. It is worth noting that Lao Luo is really growing. From constantly being enemies with others to lowering himself during the debt repayment live broadcast, the object of conflict has changed from others in the past to self-transcendence. This is a very outstanding personal progress.

After research, we found that the best and most exciting conflicts are often conflicts between individuals and the rules of the world. Conflicts that break routines, break through innovations, and make the world different are the highest level and most valuable conflict stories.

Here are a few points on how to use conflict to shape an entrepreneur’s personal IP:

1. The conflict must come from within, which means turning the entrepreneur’s inner desires and dreams into conflict;
2. The conflict must be an equal relationship, not a superior-subordinate relationship. For example, when Lei Jun turned his role model into an imaginary enemy, his mentality must be equal to that of Jobs and Musk; when Zhou Hongyi confronted Cheng Qian, his mentality was also equal.
3. It is best if the conflict is a challenge to the established rules of the world. In this way, the entrepreneur will have the aura of a challenger, better demonstrate his personal energy, and be able to attract followers more easily.
4. It is important to respond promptly, quickly and positively to the development of conflict, so that hot spots can continue to gain new topics and the story can continue to have new chapters.
5. The best outcome is to have your own unique label in the world rules. This label may be a disruptor, an innovator, or the best imitator. All are good.

3. Situation + Story Content

What I want to say in this paragraph is that the essence of all stories and content is to create a "situation".

What is “situation”?

It is "a realm with empathy value, composed of various contents, stories, feedback and interactions" .

In the previous article, I said that Lei Jun is a " science and engineering man + endorphin mentor", in which the science and engineering man is a rational and objective personality, while the "endorphin mentor" is a personality full of "situations". Lei Jun is very good at triggering life motivation intentionally or unintentionally, which makes his short videos and speeches easy to stimulate people's endorphin, not just dopamine. Dopamine can only bring excitement similar to watching porn, while Lei Jun's life-motivating content produces endorphin, a kind of energy.

Therefore, "situation" is the realm that an entrepreneur's personal IP can reach. It determines the smell of the air in the entrepreneur's world; determines good and evil; determines the emotional connection with the audience, and ultimately determines the aesthetic style of the IP.

"Situation" consists of two halves of content. One half is short videos, speeches, research and development of excellent products, daily work, daily life, charity activities, public relations actions, etc. made by entrepreneurs and teams themselves. This is only half.

The other half is made up of the feelings of the audience and listeners, as well as the public opinion. Their feedback, judgment, dissemination and discussion constitute the other half, and together with the entrepreneur’s own content, they complete the personal IP.

Therefore, “context” equals autonomous content + audience reaction.

It represents various empathy and shared values ​​with people. Only with empathy can it be an IP.

We have conducted in-depth analysis and classification of situations, see the figure below:

Basically, every entrepreneur’s personal IP or internet celebrity has one or more of these emotional energies.

Don’t think that all entrepreneurs’ personal IPs are Superman-related. It is true that Superman heroes are the most common among entrepreneurs, but at the same time there must be other emotions involved to make it richer and more emotional.

For example, Musk often has a mean and mean vibe.

In addition to being a superman, Lei Jun also has a strong passionate vibe and some uncle-like cuteness.

Luo Yonghao often gives people a silly and stupid feeling, but also a kind of cute contrast.

As for Zhou Hongyi, many people once felt that he had an anti-heroic temperament.

Therefore, entrepreneurs may wish to take a serious look at themselves and see what kinds of situational energy are contained within them.

As long as you truly understand the emotional energy in yourself, you will become more energetic when creating content and stories.

Now, let's combine these three combinations together:

IV. Conclusion

1. If your eloquence and appearance are not so outstanding, it doesn’t matter. By setting up a cultural foundation, you can bring great support to the IP personality;

What is the setting of cultural foundation? To put it bluntly, it is what the entrepreneur loves? What are his interests? What kind of cultural sentiment does he have? Then, by repeating, strengthening and amplifying these points, the content will not be so purely commercial.

2. Entrepreneurs must have the qualities of a challenger, creating conflicts with certain role models or imaginary enemies. Conflicts bring charm, and breaking the rules of the world brings even more charm;

An entrepreneur’s personality should be topical and conflicting, preferably challenging the established rules of the world. This will give him the aura of a challenger, highlighting his personal charm and easily attracting followers, onlookers and commentators.

3. Creating a personal IP is more than just short videos. Entrepreneurs can also mobilize various resources to create content and stories, which together form a holistic and unique situation.

In other words, entrepreneurs need to create "situations" through story content, and the situation of each entrepreneur's personal IP is often not single, but complex. It can be superhuman, cute, and exciting.

The last sentence - the market for entrepreneurs’ personal IP will be very competitive, but the world is big and there is still room for every entrepreneur to stand on the ground.

Author: Chen Ge Li WeChat public account: IP Fried Rice