Top 10 Marketing Keywords in the First Half of 2023: A surge in popularity and a chaotic battle

This article summarizes the top ten changes in China's marketing industry in the first half of 2023. It not only summarizes the history but also looks forward to the future. It helps me have a more three-dimensional understanding of the Chinese marketing market and has great knowledge enlightenment value. This is an article worth reading for anyone who cares about the marketing industry.

The current business environment, communication environment, and giant ecosystem are undergoing drastic changes, and this is exactly the area that CMOs and senior marketers need to pay more attention to.

Today, Communication Gymnastics sorts out the top ten marketing keywords for the first half of 2023 to give you a holistic view of the changes in the entire commercial marketing environment. You may also be able to find future marketing trends and opportunities through these top ten marketing keywords.

1. ChatGPT ignites AIGC craze

ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022, but it was in the first half of this year that the national AI craze really exploded. In just half a year, ChatGPT quickly attracted nearly 100 million users and led to industry discussions on conversational AI, AIGC, and large models.

Bill Gates and other bigwigs have all fallen into the "ChatGPT frenzy", which has stimulated a wave of entrepreneurship and investment in the AIGC field. In China, Baidu has even launched its benchmark "Wenxin Yiyan" at full speed. With the breakthrough of AIGC, the slightly distant topic of "whether artificial intelligence will replace humans" has become closely related to everyone.

For the marketing industry, the impact of AIGC is undoubtedly far-reaching. In the article "Five Predictions on How ChatGPT Will Impact the Marketing Industry", Communication Gymnastics analyzed that AIGC tools such as ChatGPT will make the fragmented communication media environment return to centralization, and with the replacement of UGC and PGC by AIGC, the value of a large number of grass-planting KOLs and KOCs may be replaced.

From the perspective of current practical applications, AIGC has been used by many brands in the fields of live streaming and product interaction, and AI products (such as AI drawing tools such as midjourney) have begun to assist/replace the work of designers and original artists. With the passage of time and the technological iteration of AI products, AIGC tools will become an indispensable tool for future marketing.

2. Minimization of public relations crises

In the first half of this year, there were many hot public relations crisis events, such as the ice cream incident at the BMW MINI Auto Show, the discrimination incident of Cathay Pacific flight attendants, BYD being reported by Great Wall Motors, and Xiaoguo's content being violated. These events have all reached the national level of exposure. (For details, please see: "Top Ten Marketing Events in 2023: There is always a battle to become famous, and there is always a crash to collapse")

In the Internet age, brands have long entered a communication environment where public relations crises occur frequently. Whether it is brand activities, product advertising copy, live broadcast rooms, customer service interactions and other user touchpoints, they may trigger a public relations crisis and continue to ferment under the amplification of social media.

Various events in the first half of this year have shown that public relations crises are becoming more and more micro-sized. A very small action can also become the source of a large public relations crisis. On the one hand, this is because the brand's user touchpoints continue to penetrate various traffic positions, such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili. These communication platforms have become the main positions for the spread of corporate crises and risks. On the other hand, the complexity of the brand content supply chain has also increased the difficulty of brands in controlling content risks, making it difficult to prevent public relations crises.

At the same time, social emotions are complex and changeable, groups are gradually divided and separated, and the emergence of diverse communities is driving the surge of various social thoughts, which is more likely to cause conflicts in values ​​among people. In this environment, a large number of corporate public opinion crisis events have the risk of politicizing business issues. Therefore, Communication Gymnastics believes that public relations crises are no longer insignificant, but may affect the survival of the entire company. When it comes to public crisis response, a large number of brands still need to make up for it.

3. Implementation of new regulations on Internet advertising management

The State Administration for Market Regulation officially announced the "Internet Advertising Management Measures" on February 25, 2023, which will come into effect on May 1, and stipulates pop-up ads, soft-text ads, live streaming sales, etc. This also means that Internet advertising has a clearer regulatory direction, which is of great significance to the brand's online marketing communication and Internet platform operations.

The new regulations clearly define live streaming marketing as advertising endorsement. The anchor needs to assume the responsibilities and obligations of an advertising spokesperson, that is, the anchor himself needs to use the recommended products and will bear joint liability for false advertising. If he is subject to administrative penalties, he will not be able to sell goods through live streaming again within three years.

At the same time, the new regulations also mention that "when promoting goods or services in the form of knowledge introduction, experience sharing, consumer evaluation, etc., and attaching purchase methods such as shopping links, the advertiser should clearly mark the advertisement." This also further clarifies the advertising nature of grass-growing, but compared with the draft opinion, the definition of the scale of the new regulations has been relaxed, that is, grass-growing is confirmed as an advertisement when it meets the two conditions of promoting goods or services and attaching purchase methods. In addition, the new regulations also make corresponding provisions for advertisements in industries such as off-campus training, medical care, e-cigarettes, and video websites.

In the future, live-streaming e-commerce and KOLs will bear more legal responsibilities, especially in matters involving consumers' life and health and false advertising. It is particularly important to strengthen their own compliance management and internal review mechanisms. They have the responsibility to ensure the authenticity of the goods or services they endorse, which will also promote the compliance development of the entire Internet celebrity ecosystem and Internet marketing ecosystem.

4. A "stop updating trend" appeared on Bilibili

On April 2, "Bilibili UP hosts initiate a wave of suspension of updates" became a hot search. However, the term "suspension of updates" may be a bit exaggerated, but what cannot be ignored is that behind the "Bilibili suspension of updates" is the distortion of the platform's content business ecology. Bilibili, a "platform for young people", is also facing huge commercial pressure and doubts from brand owners.

Bilibili was once the most popular platform during the "Chinese concept stocks fever" in the past two years, and it achieved mass popularity through the concept of "Generation Z" and marketing campaigns such as "Hou Lang". However, Bilibili's advertising business is difficult to achieve product conversion, so it is more regarded as a platform for brand advertising.

Now that the craze for "Chinese stocks" has passed and the macro environment is volatile, companies have been cutting back on brand advertising investment. This has caused Bilibili to face double pressure in the capital market and advertising and marketing business. Bilibili's strategy has also been wavering, and strategic directions such as de-gaming and short video have been questioned and challenged. The "stop updating trend" emerged against this background.

For UP hosts, the share of B Station’s creation is not enough to cover the content cost, and a large number of UP hosts are still “generating power with love”, which has become a chronic problem of the platform. For brands, B Station has marketing value, but the shortcomings of the platform’s commercialization tools also make marketing more difficult.

In the article "Will UP Hosts and Bilibili "Perish Together"?", Communication Gymnastics analyzed Bilibili's business dilemma. For enterprises, Bilibili's marketing value and marketing returns are relatively vague. In today's sluggish consumption and shrinking budgets, Bilibili's communication expenses will obviously be greatly reduced, which further aggravates the deterioration of Bilibili's business environment.

5. Price war in the automotive industry

According to the notice issued by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments at the end of 2021, the national new energy vehicle purchase subsidy policy, which has been implemented for 13 years, officially ended on December 31, 2022. This also triggered a price war among new energy vehicle companies in the first half of 2023.

In January 2023, Tesla slashed its prices globally, and then BYD released its new Qin model, lowering the entry price to less than 100,000 yuan. Other mainstream brands followed suit. In early March, all brands under Dongfeng Motor Group launched a limited-time subsidy policy, prompting the price war to spread from the new energy vehicle market to the fuel vehicle market.

According to the data released by the China Passenger Car Association, the slowdown in growth has become the main theme of the new energy vehicle market in the first half of the year. Under the future trend of new energy vehicles, fuel vehicle companies are facing the problem of transformation, and the friction between car manufacturers is intensifying. In May, Great Wall Motors reported BYD, which was the first time in the history of China's automobile industry that a company in the same industry publicly complained. Automobile marketing is an important market segment in the marketing industry. In the future, the advertising war and public relations war between car companies will undoubtedly become more intense.

On July 6, Tesla, BYD, Weilai and 16 other automakers jointly signed the "Automotive Industry Commitment to Maintain Fair Competition Market Order", promising not to disrupt the market's fair competition order with abnormal prices. Only two days later, the clause was deleted because it violated the spirit of the Anti-Monopoly Law. The price war among automakers may continue. The automotive industry has now reached a deep-water development stage of survival of the fittest, and some auto brands will inevitably be eliminated from the market.

6. Metaverse concept recedes

The concept of the "metaverse", once touted as the future, has gradually receded. When investors discovered that the business prospects of the metaverse were not as bright as initially expected, the pace of capital withdrawal began to accelerate, and some companies began to shrink their metaverse businesses or completely withdraw from the market.

On March 9, Tencent's digital collection platform Huanhe announced that it would be offline on June 30. Tencent's XR business plans to change the hardware development path and adjust the relevant business teams. On May 19, the head of Baidu's Metaverse project "Xiran" was revealed to have resigned, and some members of the Xiran team have transferred or resigned. In addition, ByteDance's PICO business also laid off 15% of its employees, and ByteDance's "Metaverse First Shot" Party Island was offline in 2022...

Meta, the giant of the Metaverse, is also not doing well. According to the financial report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022, Meta's Reality Labs business unit had revenue of US$727 million, a year-on-year decrease of 17.1%, and a net loss of US$4.279 billion, a year-on-year increase of 34.57%. The decline of the Metaverse business is in stark contrast to the current popularity of AIGC business.

From the perspective of the marketing industry, in the past, metaverse marketing remained more at the conceptual level, rather than going deep into business scenarios. Metaverse marketing of a large number of brands was superficial, such as releasing digital collections, launching virtual spokespersons, co-promoting with digital human IPs, conducting online activities through metaverse 3D space, using cyberpunk-style advertising design, etc. Once the user's novelty period is over, a large number of homogeneous marketing activities are difficult to activate users and bring practical business help, and metaverse conceptual marketing is bankrupt accordingly.

The decline of the Metaverse is also a response to market demand and technological maturity. Although the Metaverse has great appeal in concept, there are still many challenges in practical application and commercialization, which will take a lot of time to solve. With the release of Apple Vision Pro in 2023, the ecosystem of MR/VR/AR may gradually begin to be built, and the world of the Metaverse may not be far away from us.

7. A big battle in the coffee market

On May 31, Kudi Coffee announced the opening of its 3,000th store in Beijing World Trade Center. Just one week later, Luckin Coffee announced that the number of stores had exceeded 10,000, making Luckin the first domestic coffee chain brand with 10,000 stores.

After projects such as Qu Xiaomian and Tongue Hero failed to meet expectations, Lu Zhengyao and Qian Zhiya returned to the coffee chain market. With new and old grudges, Kudi Coffee ignited a coffee war with Luckin Coffee. After Luckin Coffee launched a 9.9 yuan per cup event to celebrate the 10,000 stores, Kudi Coffee successively launched group purchase coupons of 8.8 yuan per cup, 5.8 yuan and 3.8 yuan per cup, and even launched a 1 yuan or even 0 yuan coffee drinking event, and the coffee industry became involuted.

The coffee market has attracted much attention because it is one of the few categories of markets that can see growth. In recent years, a large number of coffee brands have emerged, including McDonald's McCafé, KFC K Coffee, Manner, Mixue Ice City Lucky Coffee, Santonban, Yongpu, and Sumida River. Even Blue Bottle Coffee, the global representative of boutique coffee, has begun to expand in China. The coffee market has become one of the most dynamic areas in the consumer industry.

In the past few decades, the Chinese coffee market has undergone a generational change every ten years. In 1997, the average customer spending of Shangdao Coffee, the representative of restaurant coffee, was about 45 yuan, and was later replaced by Starbucks at a price of about 30 yuan. By 2018, Luckin Coffee occupied the middle market with a price range of 15-20 yuan. Now brands such as Lucky Coffee and Kudi are thriving in the low price range of 5-15 yuan. At the same time, in the instant coffee market, the Nestle three-in-one coffee, which cost 1 yuan in the early years, has also begun to upgrade to freeze-dried instant coffee such as Santonban. (See the article "Some Views on the Coffee Market" on May 9, 2021)

As fast-moving consumer goods, coffee brands have a large budget for online and offline marketing, which has activated the entire marketing industry. At the same time, coffee has also become an important means for brand expansion and brand premium. For example, brands such as Sinopec, PetroChina, China Post, Convenience Bee, Tong Ren Tang, and Li Ning have all started selling coffee, while luxury brands such as LV, Gucci, Armani, Dior, Tiffany & Co., Fendi, Bulgari, Prada, and Burberry have all opened coffee shops around the world. Coffee is not only a lifestyle, but also a marketing method.

8. WeChat accelerates commercialization

In the atmosphere of "preventing disorderly expansion of capital" in the past few years, Tencent no longer insisted on investing in the ecosystem, and "dividend-based reduction" of "Tencent-affiliated" companies such as JD.com and Meituan was considered to be "de-investment banking". In an environment where cost reduction and efficiency improvement are the main theme, Tencent began to continuously shrink its business, eliminate marginal products, and personally promote commercialization.

According to financial report data, as of March 31, 2023, the combined monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat reached 1.319 billion, and the monthly active accounts of QQ mobile terminals reached 597 million. With such a huge amount of traffic, WeChat's commercialization began to accelerate this year, and the video account, which Ma Huateng called "the hope of the whole village", became an important highlight.

WeChat will start charging merchants a technical service fee starting January 1, 2023. Merchants will pay the platform a 1%-5% technical service fee for each item they sell based on the "actual amount paid by the video account user (including shipping costs) + payment subsidy". This part of the revenue will be incorporated into Tencent's enterprise service sector. For video account merchants, there is no free lunch anymore.

At the same time, under the new Internet Advertising Management Measures, WeChat also regulates public account cooperation. WeChat officially requires public account operators to promote goods or services in the form of commercial cooperation with third parties. After June 30, 2023, they should publish them through Tencent's official advertising platform (Tencent Mutual Selection Platform). At the same time, starting from June 1, 2023, the public account mutual selection platform service fee will be reduced to 5% of the cooperation amount. Public accounts, which have always been lenient towards commercial cooperation, have begun to charge "tolls".

In addition, WeChat's commercialization has also extended to WeChat for Business. In March this year, WeChat for Business, which had been free for seven years, announced its charging policy and began to gradually charge on June 22 through gray testing. According to the charging standards of WeChat for Business, each company has a free quota of 2,000 external contacts. If the number exceeds the limit, it needs to pay. The overall price is equivalent to 0.1 yuan per year for each external contact friend. WeChat for Business is an important private domain operation tool for many brands, and charging will also bring private domain operation costs.

In short, WeChat is accelerating its commercialization, and video accounts are also opening up more functions and entrances, extending to live e-commerce, local life and other fields. Tencent's ecosystem is an indispensable part of online marketing, and the construction of its marketing closed loop and the introduction of commercialization policies will also affect countless brands.

9. Alibaba changes its leader

618 just came to an end. At noon on June 20, Alibaba released a major news. Zhang Yong (Xiaoyaozi) announced that he will step down as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group in September this year. Joseph Tsai and Wu Yongming will take over the positions of chairman and CEO.

Alibaba's change of leadership is the result of the announcement at the end of March this year to split its businesses and promote the implementation of the "1+6+N" organizational reform. Under the new structure, Alibaba Holding Group's influence on specific businesses will decline, and each business group will have greater autonomy. Business groups such as Cloud Intelligence, Cainiao, and Hema will promote independent listings.

Zhang Yong founded Tmall and was also the initiator of the Double Eleven shopping festival. He also promoted the mobile transformation of Taobao. However, in recent years, Taobao e-commerce has paid more attention to the consumption upgrade needs of the Tmall sector, and has not successfully blocked the sinking e-commerce such as Pinduoduo. In the field of live e-commerce, it faces the pressure of Douyin e-commerce, and Alibaba's core e-commerce business is threatened.

In an internal meeting in late May, Jack Ma judged that the next opportunity was Taobao rather than Tmall, and Alibaba's e-commerce should return to Taobao. Similarly, after Liu Qiangdong returned to JD.com last year, he also repeatedly emphasized the need to return to the core of retail and regain the low-price strategy, saying that "low price was the most important weapon for JD.com's success in the past and will be the only basic weapon in the future." It can be seen that both Alibaba and JD.com's two major e-commerce platforms are once again pointing to "cost-effectiveness", which will also bring many changes to the future e-commerce operations of enterprises.

10. Local life chaos

Local life is a super large market with a scale of trillions, and has the characteristics of rigid demand and high frequency of entry. With the recovery of the offline market in 2023, Internet platforms will once again focus on this field.

As for Alibaba, in March this year, AutoNavi announced the official merger with Koubei, the in-store business of Alibaba's local life. In the future, all of Alibaba's local life in-store businesses will be integrated into the entrance of AutoNavi Maps. At the same time, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, two traffic platforms, are also actively participating in the local life competition. Kuaishou officially entered Hangzhou in April 2022, and plans to launch strong operations in cities such as Shanghai, Qingdao and Harbin. Xiaohongshu launched the local life official account "Tuposhu" in April of the same year, and launched a group buying function.

What has attracted more attention from the market is the battle between Douyin and Meituan. Local life is ByteDance's new story. Douyin entered the local life field by entering the in-store and hotel and travel business. Douyin first attracted users with subsidies and low prices, and achieved rapid growth in the in-store business last year, but Meituan did not pay attention. Since March this year, Meituan has started a large-scale counterattack. In addition to low-price subsidies, Meituan has also launched live streaming to bring goods.

According to media reports, Douyin's local life transaction target this year is nearly 400 billion yuan. Among them, the target for in-store and hotel and travel business is 290 billion yuan, and the target for takeaway business is 100 billion yuan. The takeaway business (home delivery business) is considered to have deep barriers, involving the establishment of a local fulfillment system, and is a core competitiveness of Meituan. In June, Douyin's takeaway business was exposed to have not developed as expected and gave up the 100 billion yuan target.

Douyin's "goods find people" and Meituan's "people find goods" business logic are different, and were previously considered to be misaligned competition, but as their respective sizes expand, the confrontation between Douyin and Meituan is inevitable. The battle between Douyin and Meituan in local life will be an important highlight of the market this year, and it will also affect the marketing direction of countless local businesses.

Author: Communication Gymnastics Business Group

Source: WeChat public account "Spread Gymnastics (ID: chuanboticao)"