Which trend should brand marketing “follow”?

This article deeply explores the new trends and challenges of brand marketing. It is suitable for marketers and brand decision makers who are interested in brand marketing.

The consumption situation is stabilizing and brand marketing is improving.

In 2024, when users are increasingly pursuing "extreme" consumption, in order to escape the quagmire of price wars, a large number of brands are targeting mind building and trying to tap into differentiated brand power moats. Spicy observed that in the first quarter, improving "brand premium" became a marketing keyword for many advertisers.

Some brands pursue higher cultural premiums: brands in different categories such as beauty, tea, and automobiles are targeting new Chinese marketing, especially in the tea circle, where a large number of joint ventures with intangible cultural heritage, museum culture, and popular ancient style content have emerged. Joint ventures such as Gu Ming and "Lotus Tower" and Yihetang and "Dream of Red Mansions" have a high influence among young users. Taking advantage of the high-memorable national style IP, brands can flexibly and quickly connect with the public and create cultural social symbols;

Some brands pursue higher emotional premiums: It is reported that the variety show "Let's Farm 2" has attracted 18 brands to join, and many brands are still in negotiation, becoming the "king of money" in the first quarter of variety show investment. With the return to the original farming records and the sense of companionship and cultivation of labor, "Let's Farm 2" grasps the spiritual pursuit of "yearning for the countryside" of contemporary young people with truth and sincerity, and has therefore won the favor of advertisers;

Some brands pursue a higher aesthetic premium: the spy drama "The Wind Chaser" has achieved a breakthrough in the investment promotion of niche mainstream commercial dramas through comprehensive innovation in content, narrative, actors and other dimensions. In addition to the theme of young people saving the country, the fresh Republican theme with finance as the incision, the refreshing narrative of grassroots counterattack, the emotional theme of master-apprentice inheritance rather than love, and the three-dimensional and in-depth creation of negative characters all enhance the quality of the series. With its high aesthetic penetration, "The Wind Chaser" has attracted bets from brands such as Wanglaoji, Tailing, Sanjiu, Tmall, Sunflower, Huiren, and Zhanma...

Currently, more and more brands are realizing that "low prices" are only a "trick" to attract users temporarily, and building brand power is the real way to create healthy competitiveness.

In response to this , Doujiao distributed hundreds of survey questionnaires to senior Internet users, trying to explore the public's aesthetic preferences for brand advertising and channel content. After the survey, we found that more than 30% of users were most impressed by long video platform ads. More than 85% of users, in addition to relaxing, have the desire to improve their aesthetic ability and pursue value recognition when watching long content.

This also means that long content is still a high-quality channel for brands to create "premium". On this long and snowy road, instead of pursuing the popular "hot wind", it is better to seek the "long wind" with high value, and seize the user's mind through deeper cultural, emotional and aesthetic touch.

01 What kind of content has “high value”?

Popular short dramas, highly exposed expert plot marketing, slices from the live broadcast rooms of top anchors that directly create conversions... These naturally eye-catching carriers are more like "fast-moving consumer goods" in the content industry. They change rapidly, can bring strong traffic to the brand, but have limited effect on mental empowerment and lack continuous and deep user penetration value.

On the contrary, "high-value" content is the "durable consumer product" in the industry. Although the quantity is limited, it has deeper emotional viscosity, higher user recognition and more lasting content influence, which can bring a broader premium space for the brand and create a continuous user following effect.

Take "Storm Chasers" as an example. This recently popular "atypical" Republican drama has ignited users' desire to watch the drama with its high-level content quality.

"The Wind Chaser" focuses on the story of the young financial genius Wei Ruolai (played by Wang Yibo) and the mature central bank governor Shen Tunan (played by Wang Yang), a pair of master and apprentice who insist on building a financial "strong country" in a special era. The young people experience changes in their positions and separations between master and apprentice in the game, but they still stick to their original intentions and gradually build faith as they grow.

This little-known special angle in the torrent of the times also brings users a more down-to-earth perception of the times and a fresher drama-chasing experience. It is reported that since its broadcast on March 21, "The Wind Chaser" has been ranked first in the ratings of the entire network for 8 consecutive days, with a peak rating of over 2.66% on Kuyun, becoming the first drama on iQiyi to exceed 10,000 in popularity in 2024.

At the same time, against the backdrop of the times, the detailed characterization is another notable strength of "The Wind Chaser". The life changes of the growing male protagonist Wei Ruolai make the process of the revolutionaries' firm belief seem particularly real. Shen Tunan's mental struggle from being a typical elite reformer in the early period of the Republic of China to completing the change of position is also delicately and movingly portrayed.

The lively atmosphere of Qibao Street and the multi-faceted group of villains have touched the hearts of a large number of drama followers. The neighborhood characters with a lot of "flesh and blood" and the villains' battle of wits without deliberate lowering of intelligence have become hooks that firmly attract users, triggering a lot of discussion and secondary creation among drama fans, and enhancing the emotional intensity of the series.

In addition, the large number of behind-the-scenes creators from the film team make "Storm Chasers" have a fusion team of "movie + series". The pursuit of details and realistic shooting techniques also further provide guarantees for the "texture" of the series and meet users' higher aesthetic needs.

Doujiao has observed that such high-value works with high aesthetic interest and high emotional connection attributes often come from long content. In addition to "The Wind Chaser", the high-quality drama "Flower" at the beginning of the year, the innovative documentary "Eight Great Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties", and the popular variety show "Let's Farm 2" all have common characteristics. On the one hand, this is the creative strength accumulated by long video creators over many years, and on the other hand, it is also closely related to the differentiated demands of the majority of users when watching different content carriers.

During the research and communication, Doujiao found that urban emotions, crime suspense, ancient costume fantasy, historical intrigue and Republic of China legends are the top five drama types most popular among users. Compared with consuming short video content to get a sense of relaxation, they have a deeper emotional sustenance demand for long video content, and they are eager to get a sense of companionship and growth from more textured creations and more diverse expressions.

At the same time, in the survey, more than 30% of users were most impressed by the long video platform ads, and more than 76% of users expressed support for the placement of ads in long videos. High memorability and high favorability also mean that these high-value content is expected to bring more premium space for brand cooperation.

Previously, the founder of a beauty brand told Doujiao that if Chinese products want to truly take root in the hearts of consumers, they must do a good job of brand premium. "Only low-priced products means a lack of competitiveness, and are destined to fall into endless internal competition. In the end, it's all about the factory, and there will always be newer and cheaper brands. If you want to be a long-lasting brand, you still have to improve your brand power, take off the hat of an internet celebrity, and let consumers recognize your brand concept and product quality, and think that you have a reason and value for being expensive."

From this point of view, relying on the innovation, quality, outstanding character spirit and contemporary value expression of domestic high-value content, the brand can gain a wider emotional resonance, thereby gaining user love and creating a unique brand label.

This kind of content marketing is not about "planting grass" for products, but more like "planting land" for brand power. Through the clearer audience portrait and continuous emotional attraction of high-value content, it accurately anchors the target population, creates a long-term topic fermentation space, resonates with brand characteristics, and promotes user sedimentation and conversion.

02 How can brands make good use of high-value content?

Different from performance advertising with clear data feedback and real-time ROI measurement, high-value content marketing often has characteristics such as long cycles and difficulty in monitoring, and has higher requirements for brand content selection, advertising creativity and cooperation methods. However, after observing the successful cases in recent years, Doujiao found that once the three characteristics are grasped, it is expected to create a "farming" method that will stand out from the crowd.

First, on the screening side, the core is to capture the brand's target users, find high-value content that overlaps with the crowd, take the initiative, and complete the user's mind touch. Taking the brand marketing of "The Wind Chaser" as an example, observing the cooperative brands such as Wanglaoji, Tailing, Sanjiu, Tmall, Sunflower, Huiren, and Zhanma, it can be found that they are all highly popular brands with a public recognition base. Their core marketing purpose is not to create awareness, but to leverage high-quality content to enhance brand reputation and create a sense of high quality.

This is exactly in line with the audience portrait of "The Wind Chaser". As a work on the theme of financial revolution, "The Wind Chaser" shoulders both "traffic" and "quality". According to Datawin data, its core users are mainly urban people aged 25-45 in first- and second-tier cities with strong economic strength, and the gender of users is relatively balanced, which is significantly different from many popular works on the theme of ancient costume idols on the market.

"Clearly define the brand marketing goals, find the corresponding works, and then dare to be the first." A snack brand once told Doujiao when talking about drama marketing, "A high-quality team is the most important, and fresh themes are also crucial. In the past two years, many integrated themes and new tracks have appeared in the market. Betting on this type of content often has a multiplier effect."

Second, in terms of cooperation methods, the effect of a single, shallow "test run" is very limited. If you want to reap the empathy effect of high-value content, you also need to go through phased, cyclical cooperation or even continuous, long-term user reach to complete the process of converting content users into brand users.

Doujiao learned that many brands have mistakenly equated content exposure with brand exposure. But in fact, low-density and low-frequency cooperation cannot form effective brand content output. On the contrary, brands such as Amul, Sanjiu, Sunflower, and Wanglaoji, which have long-term cooperation with high-value content, are more likely to form labels that are young, aesthetic, and close to user interests.

Take Sunflower Pharmaceuticals as an example. In the middle and late stages of the broadcast of "The Wind Chaser", as the story unfolds and the fate of the characters changes, the fans have established a deep sense of social companionship with the content and the cooperating brands. After the sunflower advertisement appears, a large number of empathetic comments such as "Seeing little sunflowers, you know the plot is halfway through" and "Little sunflowers win" will float across the screen. The brand has become a seasoning for users to chase the drama, effectively improving memory and liking.

Similarly, the four major brands, Golden Dragon Fish, Haier Group, Lvyuan Electric Vehicles, and Sanjiu, also re-invested in "Let's Farm the Land 2" this year after cooperating with the first season of "Let's Farm the Land" last year. Take Lvyuan Electric Vehicles as an example. In the first season, Lvyuan quickly responded to the desire of Hehuo people to "want electric vehicle sponsorship" and gained a double harvest of traffic and word of mouth. This year, Lvyuan continued to respond to Hehuo people and "became bigger and stronger" with Shiqitian, further gaining the recognition of users. Such continuous, long-tail high-value content cooperation has truly enhanced the emotional stickiness between the brand and users and strengthened the irreplaceability of the brand.

Third, in addition to traffic, high-value content also has strong IP attributes, which is expected to achieve multi-dimensional promotion effects in consumer extension. Especially in the past two years, film and television drama destination marketing has become popular, and cultural tourism consumption has become popular. A large number of high-value film and television content has become a key factor affecting users' cultural tourism consumption.

In the past two years, iQIYI and Ctrip have conducted in-depth content cooperation on the same check-in locations in TV series and movies, which has also led a large number of drama fans to walk into the magnificent scenes in the drama and experience immersive cultural and tourism experiences. When "The Wind Chaser" was popular, Ctrip specially launched a special travel page for Jiangxi, the hometown of the male protagonist Wei Ruolai in the drama, equipped with a variety of travel attraction packages, and cooperated with cultural and tourism celebrities to release short video content on Jiangxi cultural and tourism through the drama, achieving wider dissemination.

Such IP leverage can also effectively convert the spillover popularity of the series into popularity of cultural and tourism destinations, and create more channel exposure opportunities and natural traffic for travel destination communication.

At the same time, a large number of local governments have also actively cooperated with IPs to cheer for their hometowns. Ji'an, Jiangxi, as a famous "red base", is an important place in "The Wind Chasers" to promote the plot and guide the male protagonist's steps. The Ji'an government also took the initiative to work with the drama party to promote the content. At the end of March, Ji'an Culture and Tourism posted a blog saying that "The Wind Chasers" has made a big score for my hometown. In April, the official blog of Jiangxi Culture and Tourism called on "Wei Ruolai to come home often" and released many related content. On April 5, when the main creators of "The Wind Chasers" met live, Wang Yibo, Li Qin, Wang Yang, Wang Xueqi, Lan Xiya, and Song Shuai also enthusiastically participated in the interaction, "cheered and cheered" for Ji'an, and welcomed the majority of "wind chasers" to go to Ji'an to taste the food and visit the beautiful scenery.

Obviously, there is more room for exploration of high-value content in offline consumption. As long as local governments and tourism agencies follow up properly, they can hope to use content incisions and celebrity effects to create a large amount of eye-catching and effective "consumer content" and achieve intuitive offline conversions.

Overall, high-value content has advantages such as clear crowd portrait, strong long-tail effect, diverse implantation space, and strong consumption promotion. Brands can obtain an extended effect with greater national influence through in-depth cooperation and matching operational methods, and achieve clear user conversion while gaining brand power enhancement.

At present, industry marketing channels are constantly changing, and the speed of user interest shifting is accelerating. It is certainly popular to chase temporary hot trends and follow up on "fast-moving consumer goods content", but seizing the "long wind" of high-value content and anchoring long-termism are the effective ways to solidly build brand power and create truly differentiated cognition.

If you want to complete marketing cooperation for this type of content with a higher cost-effectiveness, focusing on potential content tracks with strong development potential is an effective way to improve ROI. The pioneering brands have demonstrated the high commercial potential of red-themed content through cooperation with "The Wind Chaser". In the future, the main theme content such as the revolutionary theme "The Lonely Boat" and the national drama "Northward" are worthy of special attention for a large number of brands that are eager to build brand moats and seize the minds of users.

Author: Guo Jian

Source: chopped pepper spicy (ID: ylwanjia)