Brand No. 1: Product power, brand power, and reach, three forces in one

This article analyzes the difficulties of brand marketing from the perspectives of product power, brand power, and reach, and provides solutions based on specific examples. It is recommended for those who want to learn about brand marketing ideas.

01 Product Strength: Occupancy Characteristics

For a long time, Amul, Chunzhen and Mosilian have been the "three giants" in the yogurt market, accounting for more than 60% of the market share. It is actually very difficult for other brands to have a place in the yogurt category through a differentiated concept.

In 2017, Junlebao Company pioneered the addition of cheese to yogurt, which not only enriched the nutritional value of yogurt, but also greatly improved the taste of yogurt. A new name was launched: Zhang Cheese La. The product was well received as soon as it was launched on the market. Within one year of its launch, it sold over 200 million packs, becoming synonymous with cheese yogurt.

How to understand products, a combination of tangible and intangible things that meet consumer needs. Not only core products, form products, and additional products, but also the understanding of categories, characteristics, and differentiation.

• Core products: physical properties, functions, benefits and value of products
• Form product: social attributes of the product packaging, form, appearance
• Additional products: product’s spiritual attributes, ideas, stories, and values

The core lies in the discovery, understanding and occupation of category characteristics.

The key to grasping category differentiation and creating hot-selling products lies in product strength. Product strength is essentially the ultimate embodiment of category characteristics in product functions and benefits.

Wang Baobao is freeze-dried fruit, Xiaoxiandun is fresh, Wang Xiaolu is fried first and then stewed, Sandunban focuses on instant noodles, and Ramen says it has ingredients and meat. These brands have surpassed certain characteristics of the original category products in their products. These characteristics may be the consumption pain points of the original category, the unmet needs of consumers, or the undiscovered new scenarios.

For this reason, we say that the essence of product power is to occupy new characteristics of the category by focusing on product functions and benefits.

The characteristics of new categories are the criticisms and pain points of consumers towards old categories, and are unmet needs.

There is only one reason why a product can become a hit: it captures the characteristics of a new category and captures new demands.

02 Brand Power: Category X Mindset

1. Category is the foundation

Category is the foundation: Thinking from the perspective of category is the first step in business. Category is the mother, the overall market and the foundation of business.

Only a rich category matrix can give birth to a strong brand vitality. So, what is the category behind the product? It is said that it is good to lean on a big tree for shade and that a pig standing in the wind will fly.

Big trees and vents are actually the bonuses that come with the category.

Business is constantly differentiating, and differentiation brings opportunities - opportunities to create new categories. Those who are one step ahead are martyrs, and those who are half a step ahead are role models. How to judge whether you have taken a step or half a step is actually a reflection on differentiation and new categories.

Discovering and selecting category opportunities is the primary business decision for entrepreneurs

Category differentiation brings new market space, and differentiation is the driving force of business development

It is obviously unwise and requires more resources to start a war in a fiercely competitive price range.

New media generates new content, new content brings in new audiences, and new audiences generate new brand opportunities.

So good that the company puts the product in front of consumers before consumers have any idea of ​​the category concept, category value, or even the category name. This approach is not innovation, but adventure, or even a challenge - a challenge to consumers' cognition.

It is important to distinguish what are trends and what are popular. Not all ships can take you to discover new business worlds. Many times, this ship may be the Titanic, which is going to take you to death.

How to judge whether a new category is a trend or a fad: We use the simplest criterion, which is based on the underlying judgment - the secrets of business are in the colloquial expressions of customers. Because consumers think in categories and express themselves in brands. At this time, we need to see, research and observe how consumers express their needs.

2. Competition depends on mindset

Competition depends on the mind: what is on the market is not important, what is in the cognition is important.

Competition on shelves is always a red ocean, but if you look at it from the perspective of consumer perception, you will find a blue ocean. That is, products with categories but no brands. This involves three dimensions: category, product, and brand.

The essence of differentiated competition is to form differentiated cognition on the consumer side, guide facts through cognition, and strengthen cognition with the help of facts. On the one hand, it is the factual differentiation support at the product level, and on the other hand, it is the differentiated cognitive segmentation of consumers.

Milk brands include Mengniu, Yili, and Bright

Room temperature yogurt includes Amul, Pure, and Mosilian

However, in the minds of consumers, there is no number one brand in the cheese category.

What you can see, your opponent can see as well, and your opponent must want to win as much as you do. This is indeed the case. In 2020, more than 150 new registered companies whose business scope or products include "cheese" were added. In the past 2021, there were more than 49 cheese stick brands on the market, which was very lively for a while.

• Cheese newcomer: Miaofei, founded in 2018, successfully won two rounds of financing in 2020 after its products were launched in 2019. Its founder Chen Yun has served as general manager of Yili Cheese Division and vice president of Meike Landou. Dr. Cheese, founded in 2019, completed equity financing in 2020 and 2021, including well-known investment institutions such as Challenger Capital and Sequoia China Seed Fund.
• Old brands are coming: Junlebao Group held a new product launch conference in Tianjin, officially launching the cheese sticks with the recipe of Zeng Cheese La Zengcong and the newly upgraded Sikeqi cheese sticks. Sanyuan, the 2020-2021 Sanyuan Cheese Development Sharing Conference, also officially included the cheese business into the company's "strategic level" project, and specially established the Cheese Academy of the Special Channel Division.

Facing the attack from new and old competitors, the problem is not how to defeat the competitors, but how to quickly create the cognitive advantage of the Meiji Landou brand. Meiji Landou knows that competition only takes place in the consumer's cognition, and the method to seize the cognitive vacancy is to launch a saturation attack in the blank mind by "sea, land and air".

Two Tigers and Meiji Landou have been launched by land, sea and air to capture the minds of consumers: relying on the elevator advertising bombardment of Focus Media and the brainwashing advertising songs of Two Tigers and Meiji Landou, Meiji Landou has captured the minds of consumers.

When we first launched the Focus Media, we thought that the four words "Miacole" were difficult to remember, so how could we make them memorable? We decided to use songs to spread the word and make people remember Miacole. We found the French nursery rhyme "Two Tigers" and adapted it into "Miacole, Miacole, cheese sticks, cheese sticks..." It is very familiar to everyone - Chai Xiu, Chairman of Miacole.

03 Reach: Content, Scenarios, KOLs

1. Content

What is content? It is pictures and texts organized around the selling points of the product. For example, in the context of all milk brands working on natural pastures, adopting a cow starts with the cow, and the selling points are based on what kind of cow and what kind of milk it produces, and the selling points are highlighted by content around the cow's diet and daily life.

for example:

Brand level: Good cows lead to good milk

Corporate level: We don’t produce milk, we just raise cows for our users

Promotion level: good mood, good food, good housing, good work, good family background

• When in a good mood, every cow will listen to music, do SPA, and enjoy medicinal baths
• The food is good, and the daily food cost for each cow is about 80 yuan.
• Good living, each cow is equipped with a "pregnancy care home", "delivery room" and "kindergarten"
• Good job, every cow has "paid" annual leave and regular physical examinations
• Good origin, every cow is of Australian descent, and pedigree files can be found

2. Scenario

Scene: A collection of people, time, place, and events. For example, being sleepy or tired is a scene, being a little hungry or sleepy is also a scene, eating hot pot and being afraid of getting a sore throat is a scene, and giving gifts during the Chinese New Year is also a scene.

The needs of people in the market are naturally awakened at a specific time and place, resulting in consumption events. For example, moon cakes are indispensable on August 15th, rice dumplings are indispensable on Dragon Boat Festival, lively gatherings with relatives and friends are indispensable on Spring Festival, and people always have to stock up on things on Double 11.

A scene is a complete consumption behavior, an event with time, place, and people.

A scene contains an automatic and spontaneous need satisfaction

For example, busy young people work during the day, have coffee to refresh themselves, and snacks to relieve stress. At night, there seems to be no third choice except bars, KTVs, and cinemas. Therefore, a new bar built for young people, Helen's Bistro, was born.

Helen's Bistro has become the midnight Starbucks for young people. It is currently the largest bistro in China and a bar where one can consume without stress. Young people nowadays always have indescribable pressure and need a pressure-free space to soothe their emotions.

Helens provides a differentiated choice for young people in terms of cost-effectiveness and environment.

3. KOL

KOL: Nowadays, a brand that doesn’t know how to promote products has no chance of being promoted. KOLs are trusted agents of new brands, active media players, and the shortest distance between consumers and brands. New consumer brands that can quickly become popular have undoubtedly found KOLs that match them.

The logic behind choosing KOLs is the logic of brands sending signals to potential consumers. The signal source must be strong, the signal coverage must be large, and the signal must not be interrupted.

The signal source must be strong: The KOL itself must have strong influence. A KOL with 1 million followers is different from a KOL with 100,000 followers; a vertical KOL is different from a non-vertical KOL. When choosing, you should first choose vertical and then general vertical. The more vertical the information source, the stronger it is.

For example, Xiaoxiandun chose Zhang Yuqi, Zhang Ziyi, Jing Tian and other celebrities who are labeled as "lady" and "exquisite". While bringing high exposure to the brand, it also subtly established the credibility of Xiaoxiandun among potential consumers.

Signal coverage should be large: Coverage is a measure of magnitude, and large coverage means trying to increase the magnitude as much as possible. This magnitude is best to be a phased magnitude under the same keyword.

For example, Perfect Diary has achieved the ultimate in coverage. At most, I received 10 advertisements in a month, 4 of which were from Perfect Diary. "Cooperating with Perfect Diary is quick and easy. They pay directly without saying anything, which is very worry-free - said a Xiaohongshu blogger.

In the early days, Perfect Diary put all its resources into Xiaohongshu. It built a pyramid-like layout: including top and mid-level influencers, as well as passers-by and ordinary people for large-scale advertising (top influencers for product endorsement, mid-level influencers for large-scale promotion, and passers-by and ordinary people for customer testimony). The lower the frequency of advertising, the more budget there is.

The signal cannot be interrupted: the essence of long-termism is not to cross the big cycle, but to continuously penetrate the small cycle; it is an ability and action to cross the small cycle and see through the big cycle. Each small "peak" represents the new consumer brand that continuously transmits signals to consumers, traversing from products, brands, competing products, categories, cross-categories, and scenarios, and finally establishes a unique brand mindset.

For example, the mature brand Feihe milk powder has long been conveying a core concept that it is more suitable for the physique of Chinese babies. Of course, this statement does not stand up to thought. Does it mean that foreign milk powder is not suitable for the physique of Chinese babies? Obviously, this is not the case. However, cognition is greater than facts, and signals cannot be interrupted. Repetition can establish cognition and then influence cognition.

Author: Houshan Keju, Source: WeChat public account “Lao Gao Business and Brand”.