Category brand, crowd brand, scene brand

This article explores three different dimensions in brand development: categories, crowds, and scenarios, as well as their quadrant extension strategies. By analyzing brand positioning and marketing strategies in different dimensions, it solves the problem of how brands can find their own positioning and growth points in market competition. This article is suitable for readers who are interested in brand development and market positioning.

01 Category Brand

Category first is the product of positioning theory.

"In order to occupy a category in the minds of consumers with limited capacity, the best way for a brand to differentiate is to become the first, to be a category leader or pioneer, to be far ahead in sales, and then to differentiate the category, to be the only one in the sub-category, that is, to be the first in the sub-category."

This is the most basic thinking logic.

For example, if a person is hungry, he will choose from multiple categories such as hot pot, Chinese food, Western food, fast food and even instant noodles. If he chooses hot pot, he will hesitate whether to eat Haidilao or Banu.

What if there is already a No. 1 in the current category? Then create a category that can become No. 1.

When it comes to edible eggs, people think of Huang Tiane, and when it comes to protein bars, people think of ffit8. These categories were almost invisible in the original Chinese consumer market.

The best way to create new categories is to add adjectives to traditional categories.

Just like many people don't know who Amelia Earhart was, who was the third person to fly across the Atlantic alone? But when it comes to the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, quite a few people suddenly realize it.

The problem is that many new consumer forces have played this game too well. They add two or three more adjectives before the category words and mark the relevant data with *.

In other words, being the number one in a sufficiently segmented category may not be enough to support the development of the entire company. Then, the extension of the category quadrant becomes a problem.

There are many ways to extend the category quadrant.

Dyson started with vacuum cleaners and then expanded to hair dryers and electric fans. But why didn’t Dyson make rice cookers and wall breakers? Because the center of Dyson’s product quadrant extension is his core technology - high-speed digital motors.

Dyson will make any product that can use high-speed digital motors.

Dali Foods, a hidden champion in Fujian, launched its first product, the "Meili" biscuits, but later expanded its product categories to include puffed foods, cakes, beverages, health foods, and more.

The center of the extension of Dali’s food category quadrant is actually the channel.

Theoretically, he can expand whatever his more than 2 million distribution outlets can sell.

As for more new consumer forces, they do not have strong offline channels, and their main battlefield is online. Then, their core asset is user data, that is, the crowd.

02 Crowd Brand

As the category quadrant of this group of brands extends, they will gradually transition into crowd brands.

When doing business around people, the brand will have a focus - products and marketing will focus on the most valuable people , making it easier to make good products and content.

Meituan Dianping was actually the first to set an example by creating products based on the needs of a group of people.

Group buying, take-out, hotel and travel, power banks, taxis... Wang Xing said that one of the logics behind Meituan's taxi business is based on user demand. Users need to travel to go to restaurants and need to take a taxi.

But there will be a problem with the people-centered quadrant extension: blind extension - people have too many needs, do you want to do them all?

Just like Amazon once made mobile phones, they also made search and Prime. Caijing also asked Wang Xing, users may also need to look at Taobao, why don’t you do Taobao?

For an Internet giant like Meituan, it is not impossible, otherwise there would be no Meituan e-commerce now.

But Wang Xing believes that the extension of business quadrants is actually based on capabilities , just like the capabilities of online car-hailing and food delivery are very similar - they are more offline-oriented, with locations in various cities, using the Internet to improve experience and reduce costs.

Like Dyson, we use the same core capabilities to do different things.

From another perspective, when you find that your user base has too many demands, it may be that the granularity of your user profile is not detailed enough.

If you are not a brand with a strong network effect, then refine your brand population.

The maternal and infant brand Babycare targets new mothers as its target audience and provides complete childcare solutions for this group of people.

Focusing on this group of people, Babycare has become the "South Pole of the maternal and infant industry", with more than 30,000 SKUs. But you will find that new mothers also need to use Taobao and take taxis, but Babycare does not do so because they are not just the needs of new mothers.

Crowd brands were once favored by capital.

Wei Zhe of Jiayu Fund mentioned that whoever wins the market will win the world if they win the market of 25-year-old women . When discussing Pop Mart, he said that 25-year-old women like fun and easy-to-use products, which are specifically reflected in the fact that they can be shared and can be photographed and posted on WeChat Moments.

Therefore, it is very suitable for trendy toys to be a crowd brand. The proportion of female users of trendy toys is very high, and even for e-cigarettes, the proportion of female users is nearly 40%.

The greatest power of 25-year-old women is that they can help brands achieve crowd overflow.

Because young girls want to feel more mature, they will look up to see what 25-year-old women are consuming; women aged 35+ may want to make themselves look younger, so they will also look down to see what 25-year-old women are consuming.

In addition, women aged 25 may get married soon, and they will influence the consumption of their male partners, even future children, and dominate the consumption of the entire family.

Many people say that women will also age at 25, so what should we do? But there are also many 24-year-old women who become 25.

When we talk about women getting old at the age of 25, we are actually talking about the life cycle of a user.

In this regard, capital will also design a population brand matrix based on the life cycle as its business logic.

Fosun Group has previously built a consumption matrix:

When a family is formed, there are rings, gold, etc., and representative brands include Lao Miao Gold;

When it comes to pregnancy, there are pregnancy care and infant products, with representative brands such as BabyTree Pregnancy;

In the parent-child stage, baby products and early education courses are provided, with representative brands such as Qinbaobao;

In the 30s, there are also services such as workplace dressing and family travel, with representative brands such as Thomas Cook;

When you get older, there are nursing services, regular health checks, etc. Representative brands include Fosun Star Castle.

03Scene Brand

But we also see that many brands do not conduct marketing in the dimensions of "category" or "population", but directly jump to the scene level.

For example, there is a brand similar to chicken soup pot in Chongqing, and its slogan is "If you don’t want to eat hot pot, eat Liziba Liangshan Chicken."

For users, if they don’t want to eat hot pot, they have many other options, such as dry pot, grilled fish, and small noodles.

The marketing of Liziba Liangshan Chicken focuses on one scenario - the scenario where people are discussing what to eat when they don't want to eat the hot pot category that is the locals' first choice.

At this time, Liziba Liangshan Chicken became the first brand that came to mind. Later, in Chengdu, the spread of "If you don't eat hot pot, eat grilled fish" also promoted the rise of a grilled fish brand.

Marketing competition begins to focus on scenarios.

Of course, this is not a new thing. Classic advertising campaigns such as "Only Melatonin for gifts", "Drink Red Bull when you are tired and sleepy", and "Chew Extra after eating and drinking" have all transcended categories and entered the scene.

But they have one thing in common, that is, they are within the scene.

Starting from August 2022, I have tried to define such a brand as a scene brand.

The construction of scene brands actually has two advantages:

First of all, by expanding the scene, it can raise the growth ceiling of the brand.

Melatonin is used as a gift. Although there are other health brands, tea, tobacco, alcohol and other categories in the gift market, Melatonin has become the number one brand in the gift-giving scene. This is also the reason why it achieved sales of 1.2 billion in just two years after its establishment (2000).

You know, the health care product market, which was dominated by Sun God, Sanzhu Oral Liquid, Red Heart K, and Anli, was already a red ocean. Melatonin reconstructed the product scene and directly found a blue ocean market for itself.

Similarly, domestic tea brands have never been able to grow big, but Xiaoguan Tea has directly entered the gift-giving scene and set a benchmark. When you buy Xiaoguan Tea as a gift, are you giving tea? What you are giving is the thought of the person with a clear price tag.

In the past, if you gave a cake of Laobanzhang to a customer and told him it was worth 20,000 yuan, he might think you bought it on Pinduoduo for 9.9 yuan.

Secondly, by focusing on scenarios, it can form a staggered competition with category giants.

The coffee drinking scene, led by Starbucks, is almost always the third space. In the years since then, COSTA's black leather double sofas, Mancafe's old-fashioned and similar handmade chairs have all competed with it in the third space.

Unfortunately, Starbucks has already occupied the third space’s mental positioning. The homogeneous following of latecomers such as COSTA is, after all, just to make themselves familiar and help Starbucks accelerate the education of market consumption habits.

How to compete with such coffee giants? Focus on other scenarios.

For example, Luckin Coffee, a coffee brand that started out as a takeout company, does not provide a third space solution like Starbucks, but more of a commuter coffee solution .

In order to quickly seize the brand share in this scenario mindset, Luckin Coffee immediately switched from direct operation to franchising after the financial fraud incident was exposed, using 5,000+ stores to occupy office buildings and using scale to declare its scenario competitiveness.

In addition, there are large-scale scene implantations, such as in the hit TV series "Please Call Me Director", in which managers and directors of capital companies drink Luckin Coffee during their commute.

In this scenario, what kind of products do users need?

The first should be the requirement for fast commuting.

Therefore, Luckin Coffee has set a rule for its stores: "Complete an order within two minutes", whether the order is for one cup or more than ten cups.

This is not necessary in Starbucks. People come here to enjoy a slow life.

The second one should taste better.

In Starbucks, people’s demand for the third space is far greater than coffee itself. But the real demand for commuter coffee is to drink a real cup of coffee, otherwise it would be faster to buy a bottle of Nongfu Spring.

At this time, it is necessary to set off the professional blending of Luckin's WBC World Barista Champion team, the preferred Ethiopian sun-dried Sidamo beans, and the premium Arabica seasonal green beans.

If Luckin's mind capture is a high-profile approach and not suitable for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, then you should learn the scene design of Jiang Xiaobai's expression bottle.

There are at least five sub-scenarios for the liquor industry: business reception, banquets, family banquets, leisure drinking, gifts, etc.
Traditional brands such as Moutai and Wuliangye mainly occupy the business, banquet and even gift markets, but Jiang Xiaobai chose the smallest leisure drinking market.

In the early days of their business, their main focus was “small gatherings, small drinks, small moments, and small moods”, and they focused on the scene of a few good friends eating barbecue at a small square table at a roadside stall.

Whether or not they are young people is not important. So when people say that Jiang Xiaobai is a young wine brand, it is actually not appropriate.

In such a scenario, what are the user needs?

Do they need the status symbol and aged wine taste of Moutai? Obviously not. What they may need is

A vehicle for expressing emotions, or a starting point for creating topics.

The sentimental copy on the bottle is actually the key to Jiang Xiaobai's seizing this scene. By constantly providing corresponding scene guidance on Weibo, Douyin and now Xiaohongshu, Jiang Xiaobai has almost become the only choice for users in this scene.

Previously, when I was having a barbecue with my friends on the roadside, the first thing he asked was "Do you want Jiang Xiaobai or beer?"

Instead of "Wine or beer?"

This means that, at least in the minds of some people, if they want to drink liquor in this scenario, they should choose Jiang Xiaobai. The segmentation of scenarios has allowed this brand to grow in the stagnant liquor industry.

Author: Huang Xiaojun, WeChat public account: Public account: Jingyan Brand Laboratory (ID: JingyanLab)