Mid-year Thinking Bureau | 5 trend observations and thoughtful suggestions about brands!

The author observes the trend of brands and makes suggestions in five aspects. From the value of the brand to the ultimate brand building, from cost-effectiveness to brand innovation and vitality, and finally data-driven business, the author makes suggestions on brands in five aspects. I recommend this book to interested students to study together.

1. The value of a brand is not the founder’s self-conceit

The value of a brand lies in the value it creates for users and the solutions it provides to them, rather than the founder’s own imagination.

A Harvard University professor said in his book that manufacturers sell 0.5-inch drill bits, thinking that customers buy them because of their good quality and reasonable price, but after research, they found that this was not the case.

The customer bought a 0.5-inch drill bit specifically to hang a family photo or a doctoral diploma. In other words, the manufacturer thought it was selling a drill bit, but in fact it was selling beautiful life memories.

Many founders are sentimental people. They are easily involved in something. If they like a product or a thing very much, they will dive into it. Unfortunately, most of the time, they don't think about market research, product design, model demonstration, etc., but just live in their own little world of sentiment.

I have seen too many founders’ self-imagination fail, so what I want to say is that any founder should think over and over again before starting a business:

Your value is the value you create for users and the solutions you provide to them , not just your own revelry.

Although your product is very good, it does not mean that users will buy it. On the other hand, there are many good products on the market, but why there are not many products that can satisfy users is because there are too many homogeneous products.

So why you? How can you make consumers choose you from many competitors? You need to highlight the value of "super good". If you make something that you feel great about but users think is dispensable, it will definitely fail.

Today's consumers not only want to eat eggs, but also want to eat organic, nutritious free-range eggs, and eggs laid by hens with special values. What does it mean to have eggs laid by hens with special values? It is when companies operate chicken farms in accordance with the concept of sustainable development and in a responsible manner to consumers that they can produce hens with special values.

Therefore, we must go beyond the narrow product perspective and deeply understand what value we create for our customers .

2. Doing one thing to the extreme is better than doing 10,000 mediocre things

Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, described “extreme” like this: driving yourself crazy and suffocating others.

In a speech, he used the case of Blizzard Studios to explain what "extreme" is.

"Blizzard Studios is an extreme example. The recent release of Diablo III is 12 years after the last game in the series, Diablo II. During these 12 years, Blizzard Studios has continuously adjusted and remade the game, constantly innovating and overthrowing itself, just to make a truly satisfactory product."

Since the day Xiaomi was founded, the spirit of pursuing excellence has permeated every detail of its work.

In 2013, a new Xiaomi phone was about to be launched, but the wallpaper for the phone screen had not yet been determined. Lei Jun almost drove all the designers crazy for the wallpaper issue.

"If anyone talks to me about company strategy, I will directly ask him whether the wallpaper has been painted. If not, go back and paint it. If it is finished, I will give you 1 million yuan in cash."

This is what Lei Jun said in an interview with the Beijing Morning Post on May 10, 2013.

After looking at more than 40,000 wallpapers submitted by netizens and works designed by designers with great effort, he was still not satisfied, so he started offering a reward of 1 million on Weibo to find a suitable mobile phone wallpaper.

This news shocked the industry, and a large number of designers resigned and returned home to specialize in wallpaper painting.

In order to find a picture that is truly suitable for the Xiaomi mobile phone screen from the massive amount of pictures, Lei Jun selected day and night. According to him, he looked at more than 1 million pictures.

Lei Jun said: Now all mobile phone companies are using millions of photos to solve the problem of a wallpaper, because smartphones are becoming more and more homogeneous. How can we stand out? We can only find a way to become better.

You have to drive yourself crazy, suffocate others, and do one point to the extreme, only then will consumers remember you.

The success of a company is not achieved by slogans, but by how much cost and energy you invest in its core sectors.

When creating products, brands should never do something "almost" in terms of design. In the eyes of Steve Jobs, products are either excellent or rubbish.

3. Innovation can lead temporarily, while cost-effectiveness can lead continuously

Mixue Ice City, many tea drink entrepreneurs will call it a troublemaker in the industry. The prices that have been raised with great difficulty will fall into chaos with its arrival. 2 yuan ice cream, 3 yuan lemonade, 20,000+ stores, it is a model of making a fortune in silence;

For Mixue Bingcheng, which has made low prices its competitive advantage and has been in business for 20 years, "affordable low prices" is its killer weapon to outperform its competitors and suppress them in disguise. Most brands can only choose to avoid price cuts. Tea brands on the market, such as Coco and Gongcha, are generally priced at more than 10 yuan.

You can experience this picture:

Heytea said: My grapes are freshly peeled.

Mixue Ice City said: You can buy a large glass of lemonade from me for 4 yuan;

COCO said: I am cheaper than HEYTEA and taste better than you.

Mixue Bingcheng said: You can buy a large glass of lemonade from me for only 4 yuan.

For third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, this price has strong penetrating power, hitting the characteristic of college students' weak purchasing power, and has a high status in the hearts of college students.

These consumers of Mixue Ice City have the same feeling when they visit Mixue Ice City again and again - "It's so cheap, not bad to drink, and much better than mineral water."

The reason behind this is that Mixue Ice City understands the needs of its target users and grasps their humanity. While all major brands are scrambling to seize the high-end tea market and becoming internet celebrities, Mixue Ice City is targeting and seizing consumers in the low-price market that are ignored by most people.

Price is always the last straw that breaks the camel's back when upgrading, and it is never the first step. This means that affordable and high-quality products are always the good genes with a broad mass base.

4. Brand innovation requires hard-to-copy team genes

Brand innovation requires not only a good business model, but also a team gene that is difficult to replicate. Take our old friend Panda Buzou Cake as an example.

Many members of the Panda Buzou Cake team are old colleagues who have worked with the company for a long time. In addition, young people born in the 1990s and 1995s are very common in the Panda Buzou office.

Most of them are students who have just entered the society. They are not as slick as old-timers and are more malleable. At the same time, the vitality of young people is in line with the concept of happiness that PandaBuzou conveys - not just sending cakes, but sending happiness, surprises and touching moments.

This corporate culture has been throughout the development history of PandaBuzou, and the team has been working hard with the spirit of learning, reflection, hard work, and mutual sharing.

The following are the core team capabilities that are needed to achieve the strategy of "Panda does not leave":

1. The first is the user-side’s ability to continuously innovate to optimize the user experience.
2. The second is to replicate creative ideas and good services and to have the management capabilities to implement them.
3. The third is the ability to acquire customers through offline marketing and online operations at low cost.

In terms of team building, because the company is service-centric, colleagues are equivalent to Panda’s first customers, and the experience is continuously optimized internally by celebrating colleagues’ birthdays.

At the same time, the brand has formed its own innovation methodology. For example, the team hands over their mobile phones in a room and conducts a long brainstorming session. For example, the team finds the strongest person in the field and concentrates on learning his ideas. Everyone then summarizes and refines them, follows their instructions, and reflects and improves.

In terms of organizational management, Panda Buzou pays great attention to cultivating the team's ability to implement creative ideas and standardize services. To this end, Panda Buzou has spent a lot of effort to find people with the same values ​​and innovative ideas, and has set up reasonable promotion space and treatment, reward and punishment mechanisms.

The talent strategy of PandaBuzou is quite simple: it does not deliberately pursue recruiting outstanding people, but recruits relatively ordinary but suitable people, stimulates their potential, and finds a group of ordinary people to do an extraordinary thing.

So what I want to say is that sometimes, the development of a company, especially in the early stages of its establishment, does not require too many so-called "talents". The team needs people who are highly consistent with the company's values ​​and are willing to actually get things done .

5. Data-driven business is a cyclical process

Data-driven business is an iterative process that provides both chicken soup and spoon, both goals and methods, and both guidance and flexibility.

Taking MINISO’s new media operations as an example, I would like to share with you how MINISO used data-driven operations for new media when I was in office.

In the first step, we set the minimum number of readers for the official account header image to be 30w+.

The second step is how to best achieve our goals? Look inside and outside, see through ourselves and others.

Internal vision: We will compile statistics on all historical article data of the public account on a weekly basis, such as image and text type, number of readings, number of likes, number of comments, number of shares, number of collections, push time, etc., and make these into detailed tables to facilitate future testing, optimization and upgrades.

External observation: Look for accounts whose tone and target audience are as consistent as possible with our official account, so as to ensure the identifiability and accuracy of the target audience. Then use third-party platforms such as Xinbang and Xiguabang to find popular articles in related industries, and then find the account, or directly lock the list.

After you have a group of target accounts, what you need to do is to analyze the content selection of these target accounts, and observe them over a long period of time to understand what content they are posting, which topics will have better effects, and make summary statistics.

The third step is to analyze all popular articles and extract replicable experiences.

We will systematically sort out the popular articles and find out the commonalities among these articles, such as the title, topic selection, and growth brought by activities, summarize the experience, and refer to it for the next iteration.

The fourth step is to use cash rewards to motivate operators.

We will give cash rewards to editors for popular articles. For example, for every article that has more than 1 million views, the editor will be rewarded with 800 yuan in cash. There will also be group rewards for reaching certain KPIs. Commissions will also be rewarded for monthly BD cooperation.

This will motivate our operations partners to be more attentive in content output, which is a mutually beneficial situation for both parties.

To summarize the above:

1. Establish data goals and use them to motivate growth.
2. Conduct target analysis and analyze rationality based on internal and external factors.
3. Conduct benchmark analysis to extract replicable successful experiences.
4. Provide action incentives to promote front-line goal achievement.

Therefore, data-driven business is an iterative process that provides both chicken soup and spoon, both goals and methods, and both guidance and flexibility, so that subordinates are comfortable with the execution and leaders are satisfied with the results.

Author: Sister Mulan

Source public account: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)