Live streaming has brought e-commerce into the "shopping era"

Nowadays, people shop more online, but they still need to compare and select goods, so the process of comparison and selection can be regarded as shopping. Let's take a look at the author's explanation~

More than 10 years ago, when Tmall was still called Taobao Mall, it filmed a TVC about an empty city with the theme:

Just because no one goes out on the streets doesn’t necessarily mean no one is shopping.

The busy streets and shopping malls were empty, and there were even wild animals on the streets. It turned out that everyone went shopping online.

However, online shopping at that time was just browsing the web. Various commodities lay quietly in small grids. There was no hustle and bustle of real streets, no shouting of store clerks and enthusiastic shopping guides. Buyers and sellers quickly promoted the development of classical e-commerce through text and expressions.

Later, Li Jiaqi became popular, and e-commerce entered the era of live streaming. In 2021, Taobao changed its slogan to "It's so fun to shop."

Before, I never understood why those people shopped in the live broadcast room. Why would they wait in the live broadcast room for several hours just to buy something?

Are they looking for cheap prices? Except for a few big anchors who have bargaining power with upstream suppliers and can bring down prices, the things sold by ordinary anchors are not cheap, but there are still many people watching. The salesperson who sells cars in a 4S store live broadcasts thousands of people watch online. The auntie who live broadcasts doing farm work in the rural fields has tens of thousands of people watching, and the sales of agricultural products in the store are amazing.

Then I realized, they were! On! The! Street!

From Taobao to Video Account, from Douyin to Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, countless live broadcast rooms have built an endless commercial street, like a prosperous Great Wall. Those carefully decorated live broadcast rooms with handsome men and beautiful women are like various brand flagship stores on the street; those that broadcast on the street are like noisy street snack stalls and fried nuts stalls, with big speakers next to them, and the boss holding a microphone shouting not to miss it if you pass by; those that broadcast in the fields are farmers who have picked fresh fruits and vegetables and come to the market. Their simple faces come in front of the camera and tell you, "Look, the big radishes grown by myself are still covered with mud, and they are crispy when you take a bite. Brother, it's sweeter than first love!"

This is just shopping!

As a marketing practitioner, when there is only a fine line between selling luxury goods and selling kebabs, what can this brand do?

01

Create the brand’s own live broadcast room using the standards of an offline flagship store.

It is impossible to build brand assets in the live broadcast room of a top anchor. Your brand is just a pallet to them, and every item sold is building a brand for the anchor.

Brands need to create their own live broadcast rooms, weakening the anchor and strengthening the brand experience. Just like the brand's physical store. Although the operation of live broadcasting is now very mature and many brands have started to do it, I rarely see well-designed brand live broadcast rooms. It is necessary to move the brand's mature offline consumer experience online and redesign the consumer journey according to the brand's tone and product attributes. With the development of spatial computing devices, there is a lot of room for this in the future.

02

Create branded content that taps into social conversations.

If brand content cannot enter the social agenda, then its placement will seem out of place, no one will pay attention to it, no one will discuss it, and even if you buy traffic to place it, it will just be passed by.

It can be a post on the boss's WeChat Moments, a serious TVC, an article, an event, an outdoor advertisement, or an art installation. The form is not important. What is important is to get into the social topic.

When it comes to social topics, the most important thing is to capture social sentiment.

For example, during the Spring Festival, workers who have had enough of takeout can finally go home and have a few decent reunion meals. Ele.me boldly launched a set of subway advertisements with the slogan "I wish you a happy New Year without eating Ele.me", and the brand's favorability was immediately maxed out. In contrast, another advertisement promoting pre-prepared New Year's dishes seemed a bit silly.

03

More opportunities to build brand equity are offline.

The right to distribute online traffic belongs to major platforms, while offline traffic belongs to the brand itself. We need to look at offline marketing from the perspective of pan-live broadcasting.

For example, the giant bags that LV launched in Zhangyuan and Huangpu River in Shanghai last year not only attracted a wave of offline traffic, but also attracted many people to take photos, check in and share them spontaneously. This is equivalent to turning ordinary people into anchors and turning ordinary people’s social accounts into a small live broadcast room, successfully entering the social agenda. If you only do a fake outdoor advertisement online, you won’t have such an effect.

For example, THE NORTH FACE used CG technology to put a down jacket on London's Big Ben, and the fake advertisement successfully fooled many professionals; but it still held an offline flash mob in Zhangyuan, where explorers wearing giant down jackets sat on the roof, and the street ski resort in the city center became a gathering place for trendy people. My personal feeling is that this year is the year with the highest market penetration rate for The North Face.

When online live broadcast rooms are not enough to showcase the brand image and consolidate brand assets, offline positions are still the strongest "brand arena".

Luo Zhenyu once mentioned the concept of total national time. Internet information is exploding every year, but the national information consumption time is constant. Whoever occupies the consumer's time will occupy the main business field.

Brand advertising in the future must be more valuable brand content that competes with general entertainment content for consumers’ time. In addition, it must make consumers feel that it is worthwhile to waste their time on such content and make more people willing to waste their time on it.

Author: Chen Wuyong, WeChat public account: Chen Wuyong (ID: wuyongzhiyong2022)