Public brand building: How to build a corporate brand and how to do To G marketing?

In the flood of brands, how to build a corporate brand? How to do TO G marketing? This article explains this issue in detail from three aspects: product brand and corporate brand, communication rhythm planning and communication content design. Let's take a look!

To talk about corporate brand building, we must first sort out the relationship and differences between the two.

For some companies, their product brand and corporate brand are the same, such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Apple, Samsung, Sony, etc.

For other companies, the two are completely separate. For example, Procter & Gamble has many product brands, but no product is named Procter & Gamble.

(This is a summary of P&G's brands in the early years. Now Pringles and other brands have been sold by P&G)

There is also COFCO Group, which owns a number of product and business brands including Fortune edible oil, Great Wall wine, Jiugui Liquor, Joylife juice and mineral water, Jiajiankang meat products, and COFCO Womai.com. However, COFCO Group is just a corporate brand and does not represent any product.

(This was also in the early years. For example, "Wu Gu Dao Chang" has been sold to Ke Ming Noodles)

In the latter case, the construction of corporate branding is independent of product branding. Product brands sell products and services directly to consumers, and consumers' cognition, memory, preference, and evaluation are all based on product brands.

For consumers, the existence of corporate brands is only to provide endorsement and prove product quality and corporate strength. Consumers do not buy corporate brands. Therefore, compared with product brands, corporate brand building faces two major challenges.

First, it is difficult for a corporate brand to be promoted continuously throughout the year.

The reason is simple, because there is no economic benefit. Corporate brands do not undertake sales tasks, and it is not appropriate to talk about product functions and benefits in communication. Instead, it becomes a pure image advertisement. Then, if you spend a lot of money on communication and continue to communicate, there will be no direct sales return. Therefore, we will see that corporate brands invest relatively less in advertising and communication.

However, consumers are forgetful and will not remember you without continuous communication. Therefore, it is a big challenge for corporate brands to set the communication cycle and rhythm.

Secondly, the target audiences of corporate brands are more diverse, and it is more difficult to consider what to communicate.

Generally speaking, brands are built for consumers to see. But this is not always the case. For example, in the past, many companies advertised, hired spokespeople, and appeared on CCTV in the early stages of their establishment. In fact, they did this for dealers to see. In particular, they invited celebrity spokespeople to attend their own ordering meetings and dealer conferences. Some companies even hired well-known agencies to provide services and would also make a big fuss about it. These were all to prove their own strength and brand reputation, to give dealers confidence, and to make them pay without hesitation.

This is especially true for corporate brand communication. Many companies need to communicate with investors, industry insiders, government officials, and the general public, which goes far beyond the scope of consumers.

For example, many companies will place large-scale advertisements before the company goes public. This is actually to attract the favor of investors and thus raise funds better.

There are also many companies that will target government departments for their communications. For example, I used to serve a client that would spend 30 million yuan every year to advertise on Phoenix TV. In fact, its target consumer groups are the working class and manual laborers, mainly in inland provinces, who basically do not watch Phoenix, so this investment is actually for government officials.

The basic logic of communication is to understand the target audience, understand their needs, pain points, psychological characteristics, etc., and then design communication content in a targeted manner.

Communication to consumers generally involves promoting product quality and functions, telling consumers what problems the product can solve in their lives and what benefits it can bring to them; or shaping the brand image and personality, conveying brand attitudes and emotions to impress and resonate with consumers.

However, for the capital market, industry, government, and the public, conventional functional and emotional routes are not suitable. At this time, we need to think about what the needs of these specific groups are and what they want to see.

In the past, we seldom thought about this problem systematically, but only considered some small points and tricks. For example, I have heard that some companies specifically chose to place outdoor billboards opposite government buildings. Now we have to fully answer how to solve these two major problems.

1. Communication rhythm planning

Regarding the first problem, there are two common ways to choose the communication rhythm and communication nodes.

1. Combined communication

Combined communication means that the corporate brand does not engage in large-scale, continuous communication, but only occasionally carries out separate campaigns, and is mainly combined with product brand communication.

In this case, the corporate brand exists as an endorsement element in the product brand's advertisements, and the corporate brand information will appear regularly in every product advertisement.

Generally speaking, 5%-10% of the information space in product ads is reserved for corporate brands. For example, in video ads, the last 1-2 seconds will end with a fixed corporate brand logo, with the corporate logo and corporate brand proposition, or the product brand logo and corporate brand logo will be used together and appear at the same time.

In print advertising, a unified visual layout is used. Each product poster has a fixed template, and the corporate brand's logo, slogan, brand standard color and auxiliary graphic elements, and even the family portrait of its product brands, are displayed in a fixed position and form on the screen.

For example, COFCO mentioned above.

In 2010, COFCO Group began to build its corporate brand. At that time, COFCO first launched a strong independent communication campaign for its corporate brand, launching a large number of TV commercials, outdoor bus shelter advertisements, etc., with the slogan "Good Products from the Industrial Chain".

After this wave of communication won the recognition of consumers and made COFCO famous, the communication of the corporate brand was hidden behind the product brand and only appeared in the corners of product advertisements. For example, COFCO information would appear regularly in the advertisements of Fortune and Joy Life.

The same is true for Founder Group’s communications. In the communications of various business brands such as Founder IT and Founder Finance, unified Founder elements will appear to strengthen corporate brand recognition and jointly promote Founder Group’s brand concept of “being by your side”.

2. Specific node propagation

Corporate brands do not communicate continuously throughout the year, but instead carry out phased communication targeting specific groups of people, selecting specific nodes, and using specific resources as carriers.

This communication method can save the company's communication resources and costs, make the company's brand building more targeted, and at the same time form continuity at a fixed node.

The specific group of people is the most important and core group of people shared by all the product brands of the enterprise. In other words, this group of people is the greatest common denominator of the consumer groups of all product brands.

For example, Unilever Group has a brand called Unilever Food Solutions, which is a brand specially created for TO B industry marketing. Because Unilever owns seasoning brands such as Knorr, Hellmann's, and Robertson's, it needs to promote to independent restaurants, fast food chains, large hotels and other catering customers, providing them with high-quality seasonings and catering solutions.

The specific group that Unilever Food Planning has found is "chefs". It targets this group with its communications to strengthen its emotional connection with them, arouse their sense of professional honor and pride, and thus influence the catering companies and businesses behind them.

Unilever Food Planning has done a lot of promotions for chefs, such as the H5 game "Searching for Chefs in a Thousands of Miles" in October 2015, which allowed chefs to gain cooking inspiration while playing the game and get samples and coupons for two new Knorr seasonings.

Another example is the “This is My Dish” campaign launched in collaboration with Meituan in May 2017, which helps chefs understand the taste preferences and consumption trends of young diners and do better business.

In October 2017, Unilever also created a Chef Day and filmed a short video titled "The Magic Spring Rolls", which tells the story of a chef who left home at a young age to learn cooking, learned the secret of cooking from the spring rolls fried for him by his grandmother, and finally opened his own restaurant.

Through this video, Unilever launched the topic "The Dish in the Chef's Heart" to engage in spiritual dialogue with the chef community and facilitate social media communication.

During the 2018 Spring Festival, Unilever Food Planning also filmed a video titled "Be a Chef, Be Extraordinary", praising them as the true heroes behind the New Year atmosphere, whose hard work allows thousands of families to enjoy the reunion. This is also to arouse the professional enthusiasm of chefs, highlight their social status and significance of existence, and make them proud of being chefs.

In addition, Unilever Food Solutions has also worked with the China Cuisine Association to form the Chinese National Cooking Team to participate in the World Olympic Cooking Competition, showcasing the charm of Chinese cuisine to the world and promoting the international development of Chinese cuisine.

Finding a specific target group gives you a handle for communication, and gives you a direction and carrier for content creation and event planning. This is also an effective way for companies to conduct B2B marketing and industry-specific communication. For example, Mercedes-Benz Commercial Vehicles targets "truck drivers" for communication, and the industrial brand YesWelder focuses on "welders" for communication overseas.

In addition, certain specific groups also have high potential and high radiation power, which can help brands better establish public opinion and spread it at the social level.

For example, Tetra Pak launched a marketing campaign with the theme "Somehow Smart" in 1993, placing a large number of magazine advertisements to promote the recyclability of its own food packaging. The purpose was to establish in the public's mind that Tetra Pak was socially responsible and cared about environmental protection and advocated the recycling of resources.

In this round of communication, Tetra Pak targeted three types of people: politicians, teachers and journalists. The reason for choosing these three types of people is that they all have a common point: they are engaged in communication and have a high influence on other groups in society.

Once the target group is found, it will be easier to find specific communication nodes and carriers.

A specific node refers to a time point that is suitable for communicating with a specific target group. Companies can fix their communications at this node to create continuity.

For example, the recent screen-sweeping case "Hou Lang" is a speech video launched by Bilibili on May 3, 2020. Although Bilibili is first and foremost a product brand, "Hou Lang" has the nature of corporate brand communication, because the entire video does not talk about the Bilibili product itself, but only promotes a youth declaration and values, seeking resonance with the public.

The specific group that B Station focuses on is young people, so the most suitable node is May 4th Youth Day. Focusing on this node, B Station has been promoting Youth Day for four consecutive years.

In 2021, Bilibili’s short film was called “I Don’t Want to Be That Kind of Person”, which brought together the voices of 955 junior high school students from all over the country, and was delivered by two junior high school students on stage.

In 2022, the writer Mo Yan wrote a letter to young friends across the country, "Don't Be Blown Down by the Wind". It was presented in the form of a reading by Mr. Mo Yan accompanied by ink painting, and was jointly released by Bilibili and a number of authoritative media.

In 2023, Mr. Wang Yusheng, an 80-year-old scientist and former director of the China Science and Technology Museum, will share "How to Age Quickly".

Specific carriers focus on a certain type of resources to carry the communication of corporate brands. For example, Mengniu and Toyota mentioned in the previous lecture "Brand 30 Lectures 21 | Integrated Brand Communication" mainly use sports resources as carriers to build corporate brands.

Next, I will introduce Procter & Gamble and Hyundai to you. The same is true for them. The reason why sports are favored by many companies is that the World Cup and the Olympic Games are major events that attract worldwide attention.

Secondly, the spirit of hard work, self-improvement and health and vitality represented by sports are well matched with the image and concept that corporate brands want to create. Therefore, many companies use sports resources as a carrier and sports events as nodes to build their corporate brands.

The practice of focusing on resources and carriers is not only applicable to corporate brands, but also very effective for product brands. For example, Evian's communication focuses on three major carriers: fashion, music and dance, and sports (tennis and golf), while Red Bull focuses on extreme sports. Focusing on people, nodes and carriers will make communication sharper and more powerful, making corporate brands more memorable.

Next, I will share with you a complete case of P&G to see how corporate brands form systematic thinking in the selection of people, nodes, and carriers.

Procter & Gamble's products and brands mainly focus on household daily chemicals, beauty and skin care products, and are mainly aimed at family users. Since housewives are responsible for the purchase and decision-making of daily necessities for the entire family, P&G " Moms " are the core communication objects of the entire enterprise.

For mothers, the most suitable communication node is Mother's Day. Every year on Mother's Day, P&G creates a communication campaign to promote the entire P&G, and has designed a fixed brand theme " Love in everyday life is extraordinary ."

On Mother's Day 2018, P&G's goal was to "let love go beyond the circle of friends."

Every Mother's Day, friends' circles are filled with expressions of love, and P&G reminds everyone that instead of posting to praise mothers, it is better to take action to express love to mothers.

For this purpose, P&G created a series of print advertisements, in which P&G's product brands such as Safeguard, Head & Shoulders, Tide, and Oral-B all appeared.

In 2019, P&G’s goal is to “let love go beyond Mother’s Day”.

It shot an advertisement called "Mother's Day Wish", in which the mother swapped identities with the father on Mother's Day and got a day off as she wished, while the father became a mother for a day, dealing with the children and daily affairs, and truly felt the mother's hard work and difficulty.

P&G uses this opportunity to tell everyone that Dad’s day is Mom’s every day. So don’t just remember to thank your mom on Mother’s Day. In fact, mom is busy and dedicated to us every day in her daily life. This video fully reflects P&G’s brand concept of “Love in Everyday Life”. Mom’s daily life is not ordinary at all.

Finally, P&G also introduced its various product brands to tell consumers that "with us, dads can also be good moms." For example, with Safeguard, "long-term antibacterial protection for the whole family, dads can also be good moms," with Ariel, "a cleansing and antibacterial, dads can also be good moms," and with Head & Shoulders, "with powerful anti-dandruff agents, dads can also be good moms."

In 2020, P&G created a topic called "Mom's Salary".

P&G asked in an advertisement: If motherhood becomes a profession, how much salary does the family need to pay her? Then it launched an H5 "Mom's Payroll" to let netizens choose the various professional roles of their mothers at home and calculate their salaries, and then post them online.

Regarding mothers’ wages, P&G came up with a slogan “Daily life has a price, but mother’s love is priceless” and started two topics on Weibo: #It turns out this is the job with the highest annual salary# and #Love in daily life is extraordinary#. The reading volume of these two topics reached 270 million and 170 million respectively.

Product brands are also incorporated into this wave of communication. The various occupations that mothers do at home are all related to P&G's brands, such as "A bottle of Head & Shoulders, my mother is my hairstylist", "A bottle of Oral-B, my mother is my good dentist", etc.

In 2021, P&G created the "Happy Mom Academy" with the slogan "Happy Mother's Day, Happy Motherhood".

Perhaps it is because the media in the past few years have been talking about the hardships of being a mother, and young people nowadays are less and less willing to get married and have children, so P&G changed its perspective and told everyone that being a mother is a happy thing.

In the video advertisement, P&G presents different life scenes of mothers and shows various happy moments in their lives and with their children.

On social media, P&G and People's Daily jointly launched the topic #妈妈的100种幸福#, inviting the public to explore the joy of being a mother. This topic has received 1.6 billion views and over 1.6 million discussions on Weibo, and 390 million views and nearly 630,000 participating works on Kuaishou.

On the e-commerce platform, P&G launched a promotion called "Happy Mom, Great Gifts for Cleansing and Skin Care".

For Mother's Day 2022, P&G continued the route of 2018 and 2019, spreading the message of "Let love be more than just words."

Many young people are reluctant to share their lives and ideas with their parents. When chatting with their mothers, they often just reply with a “hmm” and get on with it. However, mothers have a talent and can understand their children’s thoughts just from this “hmm”.

So P&G tells us: "Your mom will always understand your 'hmm', and maybe she wants to hear more," encouraging young people to communicate more with their parents.

This is P&G's corporate brand communication over the past five years. It has captured the core group of mothers through continuous and fixed Mother's Day communications, and fully interpreted the brand concept of "Love in daily life is extraordinary". It has not only enhanced the corporate brand image and demonstrated P&G's warm care, but also won the public's favor and recognition.

In addition to Mother's Day, another node and carrier for P&G to carry out corporate brand marketing is the Olympics.

P&G started its Olympic marketing at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. It also created a unified brand marketing theme "Thank you Mom" ​​throughout every Olympic Games and defined itself as the "Proud Sponsor of Moms."

Guided by this theme, P&G's message for the 2010 Winter Olympics was "They are not born Olympic champions, they gradually become champions (with the help of their mothers)"

For the 2012 London Olympics, P&G created the famous "The Hardest Job in the World, the Best Job in the World" advertisement, which not only won the Gold Award at the Cannes Lions Creative Festival, but also firmly held the first place among the top ten Olympic advertisements in the world over the years.

In the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, P&G's message was "Thank you moms for helping the children get up again and again" ;

During the 2016 Rio Olympics, P&G used the campaign titled "STRONG" to spread the message that "behind every strong child, there is a strong mother."

Since then, P&G's brand theme has shifted from "Mom" to "Love". The 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics' communication theme is "Love Over Bias" ;

The 2021 Tokyo Olympics is "Love Leads to Good" ;

For the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the message is “athletes for good” .

However, since the 2022 Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing, P&G has continued to launch a series of advertising and communication campaigns in China since 2020 with the theme of "Be beautiful as long as you are on the court", working with Lang Ping, members of the Chinese women's volleyball team, and an all-star lineup of endorsements from its various product brands to carry out the promotion.

In addition, some of P&G's corporate brand promotions are more sales-oriented.

One is the New Year’s Goods Festival at the end of each year, such as the Spring Festival marketing in early 2021, "Everyone is happy, say goodbye to 2020", and "In the new year, be at home for love" in 2022, focusing on the famous scenes of young people being at home during the Spring Festival.

Second, P&G has carried out cross-border cooperation with many channel brands, such as Meituan, Tmall Supermarket, Taoxianda, JD Super Brand Day, JD Home Delivery, RT-Mart, Wumart Supermarket, Yonghui Supermarket, etc., to attract traffic for P&G's product brands through joint promotion, and promote its e-commerce and one-hour home delivery services.

This is the main line of P&G's corporate brand building. It targets mothers, the core consumer group, and uses Mother's Day and the Olympic Games as nodes and carriers. Mother's Day is held once a year, and the Olympic Games are held every two years (Summer Olympics + Winter Olympics), focusing resources on building corporate brands.

2. Communication content design

The second difficulty in corporate brand building is that its target audience is different from product brands. You can promote product functions and quality to consumers, but it is different for the public, government, industry, and capital markets. When the target audience changes, the content and promotion methods must change accordingly.

This problem is not only a problem of corporate branding, but also involves B2B companies communicating with the industry and the government, as well as some places building regional public brands for the whole society. For example, Putian shoes, Wuchang rice, Liuzhou snail noodles, Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs, Gannan navel oranges, etc., will all encounter this problem.

Zibo barbecue, which has been popular on the Internet for some time, is actually a regional public brand. The reason why Zibo barbecue is popular is not because of how delicious its barbecue products are, but because of the various people-friendly and down-to-earth measures taken by the local government, such as opening a barbecue train, creating a barbecue bus line, strictly investigating taxi overcharging, and strictly inspecting the quality of catering.

For the general public, these measures have won the favor and recognition of the people, and are in line with the social psychology of people's desire to enjoy life to the fullest since this year.

For the media and officials, these measures are newsworthy. They set an example for other regions, showing people how to restore the economy and consumption, and are very consistent with the government's work tone in 2023, including promoting the recovery of consumption of life services such as catering, culture, and tourism, stimulating economic growth, and increasing the income of urban and rural residents. In short, the popularity of Zibo barbecue caters to the psychology of the people and conforms to official discourse.

From this we can see that whether it is corporate brand building, B2B corporate marketing, or regional public brand building, if you want to impress the public and influence more specific groups, your brand must have public attributes and create public value. Therefore, I call the marketing topics of these three types of entities public brand building.

There are many types of public value, including economic value, cultural value, scientific and technological innovation value, national value, etc. It depends on what the target audience cares about most.

For example, investors focus on the profitability, growth potential, market competitiveness and other commercial value aspects of the company. For the government, the government is most concerned about employment and taxation, followed by the company's contribution to the industrial economy, social welfare and technological innovation, as well as environmental protection and social responsibility.

For the general public, the general public will pay attention to whether the company assumes social responsibility, whether it inherits national culture, whether it contributes to the country and the people, how the company treats employees, and how the treatment and benefits are, etc. Therefore, many companies will invest in the construction of the best employer brand, carry out public welfare marketing, and pay attention to ESG sustainable management indicators.

Compared with other groups, the general public is more sentimental and emotional, so it is very important to communicate to the public in accordance with social sentiment and popular culture psychology. Companies like Jiaduobao, Erke, and White Elephant have all sparked heated discussions and "wild consumption" in society because of their donations; companies like Huawei, BYD, and Li Ning have also been hailed as symbols of Chinese brands for their inheritance of national culture and concern for national sentiments.

In 1986, Philip Kotler proposed the concept of " big marketing ", adding two Ps to the original marketing mix: Political Power and Public Relations .

From this, 10Ps were formed (the other 8Ps are Probing, Partitioning, Prioritizing, Positioning, Product, Price, Place, and Promotion ; the first 4Ps are strategy, and the last 4Ps are tactics), which is regarded as another revolution in the history of marketing.

Mr. Kotler believes that companies must understand the political situation in other countries and know how to deal with them in order to expand international markets. Companies must also know how to establish a good corporate image among the public. These two Ps represent new marketing skills and power.

However, public relations is not about publishing articles or finding authoritative media to write a few reports for the company. Public brand building is to help brands integrate into the public space of society. Specifically, there are four methods: participating in public issues and events, guiding public culture, creating public standards, and conducting public welfare marketing .

1. Participate in public issues and events

If you want to influence the public, one of the best ways is to make the brand part of social issues, which can naturally attract the public's attention and discussion. Companies should find topics that are suitable for them to participate in based on their industry attributes and brand value, and integrate the brand's proposition into social issues.

For example, the newly emerging maternal and infant brand Babycare White Shell has a brand concept called "Redesign for Love", which emphasizes making products with the heart of parents. If this value proposition is just a hard advertisement to promote how loving it is, it will be difficult for consumers to resonate. So, what is the correct brand posture?

The third Monday of October every year is "World Pain Relief Day" established by the International Society for the Study of Pain. On October 11 last year, the topic #Only 30% of mothers in my country use painless childbirth# attracted public attention and continued to dominate the Weibo hot search list.

Combining this node with social hot spots, Babycare launched a wave of promotions by creating a new brand topic and proposition: #Motherly love does not require pain proof, thereby speaking for pregnant mothers and encouraging them to implement painless childbirth.

Because the issue of "painless childbirth" not only concerns women but also social values, it has aroused social attention and heated discussions. Through this issue, the public can better feel Babycare's brand concept and proposition, and promote the brand to create influence and favorability in the public domain.

When it comes to public brand building, we cannot just focus on our own products and companies, but we must learn to analyze the social and cultural background, including popular culture, social hot spots, public psychology, life trends, national policies and other aspects to understand what the public cares about, what they are interested in, and what topics and content will trigger their participation and resonance.

In addition to leveraging existing topics, brands can also take the initiative to create topics and attract social attention.

For example, General Electric (GE) was founded by the great inventor Thomas Edison and is the world's largest multinational company providing technology and services. Its business scope includes electricity, aircraft engines, energy, medical and other industrial verticals.

In 2002, in order to change its outdated industrial enterprise image, GE proposed a new brand proposition "Dreams Start the Future" and launched new image advertising around the world in 2004 in an attempt to refresh GE's corporate brand image.

In 2006, in order to make the "dream" in its slogan more specific and clear, GE launched a new marketing plan "Ecomagination" in China.

Ecomagination is an issue created by GE. At that time, environmental protection issues were attracting more and more attention from people, and a series of environmental pollution incidents once again pushed environmental protection issues to the forefront of public opinion. The Chinese government also proposed the governing philosophy of "Scientific Outlook on Development" in 2003.

GE then timely proposed the strategic concept of "ecomagination", combining mankind's green dream with its creative technology, combining corporate profits with energy conservation and environmental protection, and providing profitable environmental protection solutions for global companies.

GE not only presents its environmental protection technology and products in a concise and clear manner in its advertisements, establishing a new green and innovative corporate image, but also creates considerable revenue in actual business operations. In 2009, Ecomagination's environmental protection solutions brought GE $18 billion in revenue, accounting for more than 11% of its sales that year.

In order to better promote the "Ecomagination" strategy, coordinate and communicate among various business departments and meet the needs of Chinese customers, GE China has also established a special position of General Manager of Ecomagination to be responsible for all Ecomagination affairs in China.

At the same time, GE's proposal of "ecomagination" in 2006 was also paving the way for the Beijing Olympics. In 2004, GE signed a contract to become the world's top sponsor of the Olympics. At that time, Beijing promised to host a green Olympics, which was a great opportunity for GE to show itself to the Chinese people. For this reason, GE also built a "Creation Center" in the center of the Olympic Park to showcase its innovative technology.

In 2009, after tasting the sweetness of "Ecomagination", GE created a new plan "Healthmagination" to showcase GE's medical technology and equipment and convey GE's dream of "making more people healthier."

GE's posters all use a family or a group of friends and partners gathered around GE medical devices, narrowing the distance between the company and the public. GE's two rounds of communication can be said to have both shaped the corporate brand and achieved economic and social success.

In addition to setting social issues, corporate marketing can also participate in public events that attract much attention, which can also win the attention of the whole society. For example, Shuijingfang, as China's first high-end liquor brand, its initial success was inseparable from its title sponsorship of the "Annual Economic Figure Selection" for several consecutive years; for another example, Li Ning was able to take the lead in taking off and become the leader of Chinese sports brands, which was inseparable from the experience of its founder Li Ning as the main torchbearer in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and lighting the Olympic flame in the form of an aerialist.

World-class events, forums, and activities such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup are great opportunities for corporate brand building. Another example is Hyundai Motor Group, which has become a world-renowned automobile group after years of hard work from a late-rising Korean automaker. Its rise is inseparable from its participation in world-class events and marketing promotion.

I started serving automotive clients in 2014, and have been responsible for many projects such as new car launches, annual brand agency, and group brand promotion for domestic and joint venture brands. In the process of helping local automakers formulate mid- and long-term brand strategies, we studied the growth path of major international automakers in order to upgrade Chinese brands and enter the international market, and we believed that Hyundai Motor was the most worthy of reference. Hyundai Motor's rise has three magic weapons.

First, in terms of products, we should take the path of subverting the mainstream from the edge.

Hyundai Motor first entered the automobile market with cheap models. In 1974, Hyundai's first mass-produced independent model, the Pony, was launched. Due to its low price, it created a sales miracle in North America.

In 1985, another model, Excel, also used low price as a selling point. It set a sales record in Canada as soon as it was launched on the market and sold 170,000 units in the United States.

Since the 1980s, Hyundai has started to create star models, such as Sonata (the third best-selling sedan in the North American market after Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, and has now become a classic model that has undergone 10 generations and passed down for 38 years), Elantra (known as one of the "New Three" in the Chinese market, and was the national magic car that accounted for half of the domestic family car sales in the 2000s), new Santa Fe, Verna, ix35 and other models.

Finally, Hyundai began to move towards the high-end. Hyundai launched the Grand in 1988 and the Equus in 1998. In the following decade, it spent another $600 million on the development of the Genesis. It took a full 20 years to initially establish a luxury car product series, and it was not until 2014 that it launched its own independent luxury high-end sub-brand: GENESIS.

Hyundai's product route is to advance step by step, first relying on cheap models to gain a foothold, then creating 1-2 star models to create sales, drive sales and growth of the entire product line, and create more star models. After completing sufficient accumulation, finally enter the luxury market. Persevere from low-end to high-end, and gradually subvert the mainstream with the edge.

Second, in terms of technology, we should take the path of independent innovation.

There is a famous saying circulating within Hyundai, which is "First is independent development, second is independent development, and third is still independent development." They believe that the most important thing for a car company is not to do business, but to establish independent R&D capabilities.

Hyundai began developing its own models in the 1970s, and released its own engines and gearboxes in the 1990s. It was rated among the top ten engines in the world for many consecutive years. In the 2010s, Hyundai began to create its own unique vehicle design language "Fluid Sculpture", which has become the unique DNA of the Hyundai product family.

Third, in terms of marketing, take the international path.

At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Hyundai won the exclusive sponsorship rights by leveraging its host country advantage. This marked the beginning of Hyundai's overall brand building.

The 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup was held in South Korea, giving Hyundai another excellent opportunity to build its brand.

To this end, Hyundai began preparations several years in advance, cooperating with FIFA in 1999, and eventually spent 1.5 billion euros to become the official sponsor of the 2002 World Cup. This was the first and only huge investment in Hyundai's history, but the investment also paid off greatly.

After the World Cup, Hyundai's brand awareness jumped from 32% to 67%, and sales increased by 30% (Hyundai's other brand Kia also sold 375,000 and 250,000 vehicles in the United States and Western Europe, respectively, setting annual sales records). Hyundai also took advantage of this to become the world's sixth largest automaker. Since then, Hyundai has been the official partner of the World Cup for six consecutive times and has been committed to World Cup marketing for 20 years.

At the World Cup, in addition to on-site advertising and providing all passenger cars and team buses for the event as the exclusive automotive sponsor, Hyundai will also invite well-known stars to serve as spokespersons, run TV and digital advertisements, and create fan festivals to interact with football fans around the world through social media.

(Hyundai provides more than 50% of the official electrified vehicles for the Qatar World Cup)

As the world's largest sport, football has 4.1 billion fans around the world. The World Cup has helped Hyundai successfully enter the global market and become one of the world's most well-known automobile brands.

In 2009, Hyundai surpassed Ford to become the world's fourth-largest automobile brand in terms of sales. In 2022, Hyundai ranked third in global automobile sales, behind only Toyota and Volkswagen.

2. Guide public culture

If a brand wants to gain the recognition and love of the Chinese people, it is not enough to just promote its functional selling points. It must be because its brand communication presents more values ​​and cultural symbols that are recognized by the public.

For example, Huawei has two corporate image advertisements that are well known and resonate with the public.

One is the “Ballet Feet” advertisement that Huawei launched in many airports and media around the world in January 2015.

It was taken by American photographer Henry Leutwyler and is one of a collection of ballet works. In the photo, one foot posing in an elegant ballet posture forms a strong contrast with the other rotten toe. This photo won the photography award and also shocked Ren Zhengfei who saw it. He believes that this is the "pain and joyful" Huawei life.

So Huawei bought the commercial authorization for this photo and put it on with a copy of "pain and happiness".

Interestingly, this advertisement was solicited for comments within Huawei during the creative stage, and 96% of people expressed opposition. They believed that the ballet feet looked a bit disgusting, heart-wrenching and uncomfortable, but after the advertisement was finally released, it aroused praise from the society. Authoritative media such as People's Daily and China Youth Daily have published special comments [2].

In March 2015, American female singer Keyshia Cole posted this ad on her Facebook, accompanied by a famous saying by Roman Rolland, "People always advocate greatness, but when they really see greatness, they are discouraged." This news received 190,000 retweets and 460,000 likes.

Inspired by this, Huawei upgraded the ballet foot advertisement and modified the copywriting to Roman Rolland's famous quote.

Another advertisement is "rotten airplanes".

This is a photo that Ren Zhengfei saw on the Wukong Q&A website in April 2019. The photo shows an Il2 aircraft that was beaten like a sieve in World War II but returned safely. Mr. Ren believes that Huawei is like this "rotten plane" full of holes, and he has to fix loopholes while flying, so as to strive to fly back.

So he posted the photo inside the company. The photo was widely circulated and popular, and later it was made into medals and medals. After Huawei encountered US sanctions, General Ren mentioned this picture in two exclusive interviews with the media.

Later, Huawei posted this photo on its official Weibo and Xinsheng Community, accompanied by a copywriting: "Not scars, how can we get thick skin and flesh? Heroes have suffered many hardships since ancient times." "Broken Aircraft" officially turned into a corporate image advertising.

Both corporate image advertisements convey a certain value concept and have become a symbol of Huawei's spirit. In a sense, it is also a symbol of the Chinese spirit, which has aroused widespread resonance at the social level and profoundly influenced the public's perception of Huawei's brand.

In addition to these two advertisements, the public also has the "Shan Hai Jing". Huawei is nicknamed by netizens as "registered a complete book of "Shan Hai Jing". Mobile phone chip brand "Kirin", server chip "Kunpeng", artificial intelligence chip "Sheng", etc. These names from ancient divine beasts show their supernatural powers and revive their powers, which reflect Huawei's romantic imagination of future technology.

For example, the server platform is called "Taishan", which is stable enough at first glance; there is also the operating system "Hongmeng", which comes from books such as "Zhuangzi" and "Huainanzi". "Journey to the West" records: "Since Pangu broke Hongmeng, he opened up the distinction between the clear and the turbidity." Hongmeng is a chaotic energy before the world was separated. The operating system is called Hongmeng, and the belief and momentum of opening up the world came out at once.

In July 2019, Honor Notebook also conducted a marketing event, which joined hands with 18 designers to repaint and restore more than 50 strange beasts in "Shan Hai Jing".

This set of "New Beasts" uses 18 Honor full-screen MagicBook Pro notebooks for seamless splicing, allowing the public to feel the magnificent picture of Chinese traditional culture and the romance of Huawei-style fusion of tradition and modernity.

For example, BYD. When it comes to this brand, many people will immediately think of its dynasty series models. The inheritance and interpretation of Chinese traditional culture by Qin, Tang, Song, Yuan, Han and other people can be said to be very extreme. In addition, BYD also has the family design language of "dragon face", which combines the concept of modern Western industrial design with Chinese traditional culture.

In December 2022, BYD released the high-end car brand "Looking Up", using Oracle's "electronic" character as the brand logo.

In April 2023, BYD released the technical brand "Yun Yan". "Yun Yan" is the car of ancient Chinese emperors. The word "Yun" is paired with "Yun" as the name of BYD's intelligent body control system, which is also a combination of intelligent technology and traditional culture.

From these cases, it can be seen that Huawei and BYD are appreciated and supported by the Chinese people and are regarded as symbols of national brands. In addition to the achievements they have made in their respective industries and the technical level they have, from the brand level, they have all incorporated spiritual connotations, led public culture, and cleverly injected warmth and respect for historical culture into brand concepts and connotations. No wonder they occupy such a high position in the minds of the people.

In August 2018, I took the invitation from a magazine. At that time, they wanted to make a special topic on national brands. The point I expressed in my article was that if I want to become a brand that represents China in the minds of Chinese people and on the international stage, it is not based on large sales, high popularity, and high advertising fees, but because of protecting the rights and interests of Chinese consumers and being worthy of the people's trust, especially to become the endorsement of the Chinese spirit, Chinese aesthetics, and Chinese style.

A national brand can be said to be a more advanced form of public brands, which means that the brand is recognized by most citizens. To become such a brand, a very important way to shape a brand is to rely on the power of culture.

In recent years, more and more brands have begun to focus on exploring traditional IPs, which is a good method and shortcut for shaping the cultural value of brands and leading public opinion.

British writer and diplomat Norman Douglas once said a famous saying: "You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertising." As the most direct presentation and carrier of a brand, the information it conveys represents the brand's image, attitude and values.

In advertising, a brand should convey the national spirit and style of self-improvement and striving for as much as possible, and reflect China's excellent culture and aesthetics. This is the real national brand. It is not enough to only seek profit and not have spiritual elevation. Brands are not only a reflection of national strength and economic strength, but also a reflection of a country's charm, culture and national spirit.

As we all know, our country has a long history and splendid culture, and it can be said to be a treasure house of traditional IPs.

These IPs are cultural symbols that most members of society can recognize and recognize. Using them for marketing can effectively reduce consumers' cognitive costs, and consumers can understand what these IPs are promoting at a glance.

Moreover, IP represents a certain collective cultural psychology. Using them can reduce the social communication cost of brands and create social consensus [3].

For example, Xtep opened a show at the mountain gate of Shaolin Temple, and successively launched the Shanhai series and Shaolin Temple joint series based on "Shanhai Jing";

For example, Li Ning joined hands with the Dunhuang Museum to launch the "Dunhuang Tuo" series of products and held a marketing event in Dunhuang Yadan Devil City, telling the story of a Chang'an boy riding a horse to explore the Silk Road, reflecting the brand philosophy of the youth's spirit and rejuvenation;

For example, Cha Yan Yuese has created a national-style brand image and cooperated with the national dance drama "Dream of Red Mansions" to launch a limited theme cup set and a limited-time "Dream of Red Mansions Theme Store";

For example, Natural Hall invited Yang Shuyun, the chief designer of the 1987 version of "Dream of Red Mansions", to create a customized lipstick for Dream of Red Mansions, and use relief shapes to perfectly restore the classic scenes in Dream of Red Mansions;

For example, in its 2018 solar term poster, each solar term is compared to a goddess, thus creating the 24 solar term goddess of Pechoin, which brings solar term marketing to life...

These traditional IPs include historical figures and events, classical literary works, classic dramas, films and TV shows, traditional myths and fairy tales, folk legends and folk culture, etc.

Using them in brands and marketing through joint, borrowing, imitation, recreation, etc. can effectively amplify the brand's voice and enrich brand connotation and assets.

However, the key to IP marketing is not superficial co-branding, but core fit. You cannot just apply an IP shell and design a co-branding product with its name and pattern, but you must integrate its cultural connotation into the brand.

At this point, many foreign brands are also worth learning about the exploration of traditional IP when conducting marketing in my country.

For example, McDonald's. In 2013 Spring Festival marketing, McDonald's created the monster "New Year" based on traditional Chinese myths. The New Year beast that eats fries, hamburgers, and red bean pie is loved by consumers for its cute and cute style and well-behaved personality. Many people strongly demand that McDonald's launch New Year beast dolls to buy and collect.

McDonald's recreation of the "New Year Beast" IP not only fits the cultural atmosphere of the Spring Festival and the Chinese sentiment of longing for reunion, but also adds to the joyful atmosphere of McDonald's, allowing McDonald's to win the recognition and love of more Chinese consumers.

For example, Pepsi. During the 2016 Spring Festival of the Year of the Monkey, Pepsi invited Liu Xiaolingtong to endorse the speech, created the Monkey King memorial jar product, and filmed the story of four generations of the Zhang family inheriting the monkey drama and bringing happiness to thousands of households, conveying Pepsi's brand philosophy of "bringing joy home".

At the same time, Pepsi also took advantage of the marketing of Liu Xiaolingtong on the Spring Festival Gala, which became a phenomenal marketing event of the year. It can be said that it made a full interpretation of the Year of the Monkey.

There is also Toyota's marketing in its own country. Toyota launched a brand battle called "Reborn" in 2012 in order to revitalize the group's brand image in Japan. During the communication, Toyota, on the one hand, moved the three Japanese warring state heroes Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, played by Takuya Kimura, Take Kitano and Masato Sakai, respectively;

On the other hand, he created a live-action series of "Doraemon" grown-up version, with his wife, Satoshi Kiki, Nobita playing Nobita, Asami Mizukawa playing Shizuka, and Jean Renault playing Doctor Cat, which is loved by Japanese consumers. There are historical figures and animation works, which is a clever use of Japanese cultural IP.

Traditional IPs are all-encompassing and grand, with people, objects, scenery, stories, rituals, texts, and patterns... For enterprises, guarding such a treasure house without knowing how to use it can be said that they enter the treasure mountain and return empty-handed.

For example, why can’t tea brands use Lu Yu for marketing? Furniture brands can use Lu Ban locks, drones can use "Zhuangzi. Xiaoyaoyou", and Zhao Feiyan can use weight loss, etc. What we lack is not IP and culture, but the vision and ideas, imagination and creativity of applying IP.

3. Create public standards

Many people have heard a saying: First-class companies make standards, second-class companies make brands, and third-class companies make products.

For public brand building, building standards means that companies can set rules of the game and become leaders and talkers in the industry.

From a competitive perspective, companies can limit access to other companies by raising standards, weaken their competitors' competitive advantages, and have the opportunity to master pricing power and obtain excess profits.

From the consumer's perspective, standards make brands a benchmark among similar products, and become the quality basis and core decision-making elements for consumers when choosing corresponding products.

For example, Intel's classic "Intel Inside" establishes public standards, which not only forms a business alliance between Intel and PC manufacturers, but also influences consumers' choices. The "Wintel" architecture composed of Intel and Microsoft has long monopolized the voice of the PC industry.

For the creation of regional public brands, since the products of public brands are not produced by one household, but are produced by many merchants and enterprises, and share a brand, the formulation of standards is even more important. Only by unifying standards can the public brands win the choice and trust of the public and protect the sustainable development of the brand.

For example, the classic case of American New Kiss Orange is a typical example of successfully branding and standardizing agricultural products. It is currently the largest brand among citrus products in the world. Many people should be familiar with it. Oranges with "sunkist" can often be seen in fruit stores and supermarkets. This is New Kiss.

The Novels originated in California, USA, where the sun is abundant, the oranges produced are particularly fresh, the flesh is juicy and sweet, and they are larger in size, brighter in color and fragrant in smell.

Initially, the sales of citrus were handled by agents, while farmers who grew citrus were in the early stages of action. Not only did the agents slash the prices of citrus, they also used consignment to completely transfer market risks to the citrus farmers.

To change this situation, in August 1893, more than 100 representatives of California's orange farmers jointly initiated the Fruit Sales Association to provide transportation and sales services to local orange farmers. This association is the predecessor of Xinqis, and its full name is "The South California Fruits and Agricultural Cooperatives".

In order to better sell fruits, the association hired an advertising company to create the "Xinqisi" brand in 1908 and registered a trademark (Xinqisi's English name Sunkist means "Sunkist", symbolizing that Xinqisi orange is full of sunshine and of good quality during its growth). In order to maintain its brand value, the association has formulated unified product standards for Xinqisi.

In the variety cultivation and planting process, Xinqisi has been cultivated through years of scientific research and variety improvement and repeated experiments. The annual average temperature of the origin is required to be above 15℃, the minimum temperature in winter is not lower than minus 5℃, and the rainfall is 1500-2000 mm per year and the distribution is relatively even. During planting, the association also has a scientific and technological team to assist fruit farmers to provide them with a series of professional training and services from planting to picking.

During the picking process to the finished product, the association not only formulates product grading standards, and uses a full set of assembly lines to automatically select fruits and packaging to ensure the size and color of the fruits and the quality is uniform. Fruits that do not meet the standards will be sent to the processing plant to produce beverages.

A fruit tree information archive management system has also been established to record the variety, quality characteristics and maturity period of each fruit tree. The maturity period can be accurate to week, which greatly improves the speed of fruit purchase, and only takes 2-3 days from order reception to packing and transportation.

Finally, in the transportation and sales process, Xinqisi solved the key preservation technology. Even if stored for a year or two, it will not deteriorate. The juice, taste and color are still the same as when you were just picked. Therefore, Xinqisi can be sold to any corner of the world without being restricted by time.

Moreover, the outer skin of each Xinqisi is labeled with a barcode, which not only indicates the brand, but also has a registered and certified number, recording the type, size, code and origin of fresh fruits, which can be traced back to the packaging factory and responsible person of each fresh fruit. Xinqisi also has a full-time inspector who visits packaging factories, wholesalers and retailers every day to ensure the implementation of quality regulations [5].

In 1952, the association officially changed its name to "Sunkist Growers Inc.". In the 1970s, the brand of Xinqis expanded to lemon, grapefruit and other fruit products, and expanded to 6,000 fruit farmers, and began to expand overseas markets.

Xinqisi has established a global sales network and customer management system, and every year, it dispatches representative offices around the world to pass on orders back to its headquarters. The headquarters distributes orders to more than 60 packaging factories, and the packaging factories then purchase fruits from fruit farmers.

The income generated by unified sales of products will be distributed according to the business transaction volume of each member, and then each member will pay membership fees according to his or her own business volume to maintain the company's operations.

Xinqisi Company operates through a contract system, and fruit farmers, orchard management companies, and packaging factories voluntarily join and become shareholders. Each joining grower must sign a written membership agreement with Xinqisi. They form regional exchanges or local associations in each region, and the regional exchanges elect a council to manage the entire company.

This clear division of labor operation model, clear distribution mechanism of interests and a strict organizational structure helped Shinkis become the first commercial agricultural cooperative organization to have been in the first 100 years.

Xinqisi not only establishes a brand and maintains brand value by unifying product standards. Moreover, since the first day of establishing the Xinqisi brand, it has vigorously promoted the brand across the United States, striving to make the brand the consumption standard for consumers to buy fruits and eat breakfast.

In 1916, Xinqisi proposed the brand slogan "Drink an orange" and launched a large-scale advertising campaign. Xinqisi not only became synonymous with oranges, but also created the orange juice product that became popular in the world later, changing the breakfast habits of Americans, and laying the foundation for the creation and development of the juice industry.

In 1920, Xinqis used the first movie star endorsement brand and launched commercial radio advertisements on the East Coast of the United States for the first time.

In 1922, Xinqis used vitamin C as a point of appeal in advertising for the first time. Since then, the health of oranges has been deeply rooted in people's hearts, and drinking orange juice has become a daily life habit for many consumers.

Xinqis also entered the top ten best-selling soft drink brands in the world half a century later.

In 1926, Xinqis printed the brand trademark on fresh fruits for the first time, strengthening the brand mark.

In 2003, Xinqisi launched a global trademark licensing program, authorizing dozens of products from more than 50 countries to use their brands and produce and sell them under its supervision. This program helped the Xinqisi brand significantly increase its brand awareness and influence worldwide, and brought large patent fees to Xinqisi fruit farmers, allowing farmers to enjoy the excess profits created by the brand [6].

Public standards include product standards and consumption standards. Xinqis’ approach is to set up unified product standards for non-standard and decentralized agricultural products, creating a very differentiated agricultural brand. Then, through marketing and promotion, the brand has turned into a consumption standard, which has affected the lifestyle of global consumers, and thus created high premiums and sustained returns.

Previously, I shared the case of Liuzhou snail noodles. China is a country that eats noodles. Every province and city has very well-known rice noodles foods, such as Changsha rice noodles, Nanchang Mixed Noodles, Chongqing Spicy and Sour Noodles, Guizhou Huaxi Beef Noodles, Zunyi Lamb Noodles, Yunnan Bridge Rice Noodles, etc. So why is snail noodles so popular that it has achieved nationalization?

This is because the snail noodles have a unique taste, are addictive, and have taste memory, which satisfy consumers' curiosity and pursuit of stimulation. On the other hand, it is thanks to the local government's creation of the public brand of Liuzhou snail noodles.

As early as 2010, the Liuzhou Municipal Government formulated the "Snail Noodle Into Beijing Project" to encourage snail noodle catering merchants to go out of Liuzhou and Guangxi and expand the national market.

In 2012, "China on the Tip of the Tongue" was popular nationwide. The first episode of "Gift of Nature" introduces the "Big Head Sweet Bamboo Shoots" produced in the mountains and forests of Liuzhou. As the raw material for snail noodles, the Tip of the Tongue program team gave the finished snail noodles a 10-second shot. Liuzhou local area keenly captured these 10-second opportunities and began to devote itself to building snail noodles into a city business card.

In 2014, snail noodles achieved a major breakthrough in pre-packaging technology, and the local area began to standardize and guide factories with certain qualifications to upgrade products to pre-package.

In 2015, Liuzhou City also proposed the development concept of "industrialization, standardization, branding and scale", transforming small workshops from the past into large industries. As a result, snail noodle companies ushered in a small peak in registration, and brands such as today's well-known snail bawang, Haohuan snail, and Xiluohui were all established in 2014 and 2015.

According to data from Red Funnel Inquiry Tianyan Check, the number of snail noodles registered in 2014 was 1,775, an increase of nearly 143% year-on-year [7].

In 2016, the local government issued the "Liuzhou Snail Noodle Local Standards" and began to build a snail noodle industrial park.

In 2018, Liuzhou City spent more than three years applying for the "Liuzhou Snail Noodle" geographical indication certification trademark. This is very important for industrial development, because it means that only snail noodles produced in Liuzhou can be called "Liuzhou Snail Noodle".

Many well-known brands that later entered the market, such as Liangpinpuzi, Sansquirrel, Baicaowei, etc., chose to manufacture locally in Liuzhou, which allowed Liuzhou to enjoy the industrial dividends after the market exploded.

Back then, Liuzhou also began to build a snail noodle town in Taichung Town, Liunan District, establish a high-standard snail noodle raw material production base, and develop the industrial model of "leading enterprises + professional cooperatives + farmers".

Form a complete industrial chain from raw material procurement, production and processing to logistics distribution, sales and promotion, and promote the coordinated development of raw material breeding (rice, snails, bamboo shoots, beans, ducks) in the primary industry, deep processing of the secondary industry, leisure agriculture and rural tourism in the tertiary industry, and form the integration of the three industries.

In 2020, Liuzhou established the first snail noodle industry college, opening 7 majors to cultivate talents. At the end of the year, the production and sales of bagged snail noodle reached 10.56 billion yuan, and a total of 1.1 billion bags were sold throughout the entire network. Snail noodle became the double-10 billion industry in Liuzhou: the output value of bagged products, raw materials and auxiliary industries all exceeded 10 billion yuan.

It is precisely with Liuzhou's industrial support for snail noodles and the product standard setting, brand protection and promotion of Liuzhou snail noodles that snail noodles have become popular. After seeing this trend, many celebrities, Internet celebrities and top brands have intervened and supported.

For example, in 2019, the internet celebrity brand Li Ziran entered the market, and many other brands such as Yuanqi Forest and Leshi launched co-branded products with Haohuannao. Variety shows such as "Everyday Upward" invited celebrities to try snail noodles in the show, which made Liuzhou snail noodles completely explode and bloom in full swing.

In 2019, there were 4,041 registered snail noodles, an increase of 21% year-on-year; 6,769 new snail noodles were added, an increase of 68% year-on-year; 8,294 new snail noodles were added, an increase of 58% year-on-year [8].

Implement branding through the establishment of product standards, turn regional products into public brands, and then turn brands into consumer standards through marketing and promotion. This is the standard practice for building regional public brands.

4. Carry out public welfare marketing

The last common practice of public brand building is to carry out public welfare marketing. Because of its public attributes, public welfare marketing can establish the social responsibility image of the enterprise and enhance the reputation of the enterprise. Good public welfare marketing can also arouse the attention and heated discussion of the entire society, and even trigger a consumption frenzy [9].

In July 2021, Henan was raining heavily, and Hongxing Erke generously donated 50 million yuan, and then became a hot search on Weibo. Netizens rushed into Hongxing Erke's live broadcast room and offline stores, sweeping away its products.

Earlier, in the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Jiaduobao donated 100 million yuan. At that time, a post appeared online asking to ban Jiaduobao and let it disappear from the shelves in China! ——It means that if you buy a can on the shelves, buy a can of it and buy a short Jiaduobao. The topic of "banning Jiaduobao" has become famous all over the country, triggering a wave of buying consumers.

These two things are the most famous cases of corporate charity behavior in recent years. We are talking about charity marketing here. Since we regard charity as a type of marketing, we will talk about charity from the perspective of marketing rather than from the moral perspective.

From the perspective of social responsibility, enterprises as citizens of society should do their best and resources and do public welfare and charity according to national plans, the more they will be better.

From the perspective of business operations, enterprises do charity rather than blindly doing good people and good deeds, but try to choose charity projects related to their own industry and meet their own strategic requirements, and after doing charity, they must also spread and promote them. To achieve a double harvest of social benefits and corporate benefits is the pursuit of charity marketing, so that companies can have more motivation and continuous investment in charity.

Specifically, when a company chooses a public welfare project, there are three core criteria:

1) Comply with corporate strategic requirements and industry development trends

2) In line with brand value and image

3) Reflect product functions, and your own products can participate in it

For example, Autohome, as a well-known domestic automobile media and community, conducts public welfare marketing to focus on children's ride safety and promote child safety seat legislation. This is in line with the development trends of the automobile industry and society, and child safety is also a high-profile issue of society's concern (on June 1, 2021, child safety seats were included in the legislation and officially implemented).

For example, the dairy company Aoyou created a celebrity charity marketing to "protect the first milk" in 2014, advocated breastfeeding and popularized the concept of scientific breastfeeding. This is in line with the attributes of the milk powder industry and is also of great help to enhance the value and image of the Aoyou brand.

For example, the water enterprise Nongfu Spring will carry out a charity campaign on World Water Day on March 22 every year, and put forward brand propositions such as "beautiful China, beautiful water" and "the quality of water determines the quality of life". This is in line with the industry attributes of packaging water and also reflects the natural and original product selling points of Nongfu Spring, thus effectively affecting user decision-making.

There are many types of charity projects. Companies need to choose the most suitable projects for them and then do a good job in charity marketing. Companies still need to work hard on these aspects.

First of all, public welfare marketing should focus as concretely as possible, target specific groups of people, create specific tasks, and set specific action instructions.

When it comes to charity, many people will think of big words such as boundless love, dedication of love, kind thoughts, and grateful people, or shout slogans emptyly. We must care for a certain group. But how to do it specifically? Abstract empty concepts are difficult to impress the public. You have to set specific goals for clear people, and take concrete actions.

The "Ice Bucket Challenge" that was popular all over the world in 2014 was targeting ALS. Although many people enjoyed watering and did not donate, ALS, a rare disease, is well known worldwide.

The phenomenon-level public welfare marketing "1 yuan to buy paintings" initiated by Tencent Charity in August 2017 is aimed at autism. Tencent Charity displays some paintings of people suffering from autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other brain development deficits. Participants can pay 1 yuan to purchase an electronic version of the painting to support them as a donation.

Both charity actions focus on specific target groups. Only by focusing on the population can we design clear charity tasks and actions, so there are more explosive points in communication, and more recognizable and memorable points for the public. For example, today, the number of patients with depression increases, and society's attention and reports on depression is also increasing. This is also a direction that companies can consider when doing charity marketing.

Let’s look at the other two charity actions, one is the “free lunch” that has been well-known to the public in recent years. The event is to promote donation of 3-4 yuan a day to provide rural children with a free lunch to help them improve their nutritional status and grow up healthily.

There is another very outstanding "Books and Crossing the Ridge". It is a charity campaign jointly initiated by Cainiao Station in March 2021, in conjunction with One-way Space and Heaven&Hell. The specific form is to collect idle literary books from the whole society, and everyone donate a book together to let children see a bigger world and become better people.

This public welfare poster designed by books is also quite outstanding. For example, "She shouldn't just chase chickens, ducks, cows and sheep, she can also be a "Kite Chaser", "He shouldn't be just a bastard in the village, he can also be people's "Little Prince", "She shouldn't be silence, she can also learn "Scream" and so on.

To help rural children, these two public welfare projects focus on actions in one meal and one book. The event format is simpler and the content of the event is more specific. The public can clearly know what you want to do and how to participate at a glance. This is particularly important. Simple and specific activities are more convenient for people to participate, and expand the effects and social influence of public welfare actions.

There is also the charity project "The Power of Walking" initiated by the famous actor Chen Kun. Its form is a week-long hiking walk in the mountainous area from July to August every year to observe oneself, exercise the mind, and convey a positive attitude towards life.

Johnnie Walker, a whiskey brand that seeks "forever forward", once launched the marketing promotion of the "Yulu" question campaign with Chen Kun to encourage young people to strive for their dreams.

Participants simply ask themselves a key question to promote themselves and then develop an action plan, and they have the opportunity to get support from the Johnnie Walker Forever Forward Fund and get out of their answers. This form is a question.

"Ice Bucket Challenge" is watering, "The power of action" is walking, and "One hour on Earth" is turning off the lights, and ant forest is planting trees. Doing one thing to the extreme is better than doing ten thousand things mediocrely. The same is true for public welfare marketing. Repeating a public welfare action for ten or twenty years is a good deed that will last forever.

Secondly, public welfare marketing should be branded and operated as a continuous product and IP.

When doing charity, enterprises should not just be a one-time transaction, but should continue to do it. Continuing to do charity not only benefits the society, but also allows enterprises to gain long-term benefits. The key is to use charity marketing as a brand to operate and create charity products and IP. Public welfare brands can help enterprises accumulate assets in the long run.

For example, Ant Forest launched by Ant Group is an independent and sustainable public welfare product.

Ant Forest was launched in the Alipay Charity Section in August 2016, aiming to promote energy conservation and emission reduction for the public. Here consumers can transform their various low-carbon consumption behaviors into "green energy". Energy can be used to virtually plant trees in the APP. If it accumulates to a certain extent, it can be turned into a real tree and planted in areas that urgently need ecological protection.

On World Environment Day on June 5, 2020, Alipay released a set of data: As of the end of May 2020, there were 550 million participants in Ant Forest, with a total of 200 million trees planted, with a planting area of ​​more than 2.74 million mu, and carbon emission reduction of more than 12 million tons. It can be said that Ant Group has invested huge investment and made outstanding contributions to China's environmental protection cause.

Although Ant Forest's achievements are inseparable from the super APP Alipay it relies on, its various functions and process designs are independent and complete, and it has created a broad and long-term influence for Ant Group.

Another example is "One Hour on Earth", which is a very classic public welfare IP design. It was initiated by the World World Natural Science Foundation to the world: Starting at 20:30 on the last Saturday of March every year, the lights will be turned off for one hour. Although the power consumption of turning off the lights is minimal, it inspires people's awareness and responsibility to protect the earth through a concrete form of action and publicity, expressing the spirit of sustainable development and the determination to resist climate warming.

Therefore, since its launch in Sydney in 2007, the "Earth Hour" has become one of the world's largest environmental protection actions in the second year, with an amazing spread. The simple and specific form and continuous IP operation have made this event persist for 16 years and affected the world.

To build a public welfare brand, we must design unique and independent names, recognizable LOGOs, fixed activity forms and time nodes, specific tasks that can be summarized in one or two sentences, and then continue to operate, accumulate and iterate.

Like the car brand Chevrolet, it has jointly created a public welfare brand "Red Chalk" with "21st Century Business Herald".

"Red Chalk" has been operating in 2006. It is a rural education program that calls on and organizes well-educated business people to teach in rural schools, helping to improve the weak teaching force in remote areas and promote the development of local education.

Bridgestone also has a public welfare brand "Happy Tangram" jointly initiated by Southern Weekend.

Since 2009, it is a large-scale public welfare activity focusing on rural children's education in economically underdeveloped areas. The specific form is to provide music and art textbooks for rural primary schools through the combination of "donation of growth classrooms" and "second classroom teaching support", and pass imagination, creativity, beauty and happiness to local children.

From a marketing perspective, "Red Chalk" and "Happy Tangram" are both very successful public welfare brand designs. Their names and logos are great, very recognizable, and have public attributes, which can make people have beautiful associations and wishes. In terms of communication, Chevrolet and Bridgestone also pay great attention to norms and integrity of this brand, and both public welfare brands have been in operation for more than ten years.

Finally, public welfare marketing should also introduce social mechanisms to strengthen consumers' sense of participation and create social effects.

In order to create social influence in public welfare marketing, another focus is on opening up the participation link, calling on and inviting everyone to participate. The power of an individual and an enterprise is weak, and only by driving the public together can social influence be created.

The reason why the "Ice Bucket Challenge" triggered a global watering trend is because it designed a naming mechanism. After the participants poured themselves a bucket of ice water, they needed to name three people to continue the event. The naming person either accepted the challenge within 24 hours or donated $100 for "Amyotrophic Frostbite".

In this way, the fission effect of 1st, 3rd, 9th, and 9th, 27th is naturally formed. Moreover, people are also very happy to participate in this activity. It is not only charitable, but also full of stimulation and challenges.

Tencent Charity’s “1 yuan painting purchase” can become a phenomenal charity event because it takes advantage of WeChat’s social attributes and designs a mechanism for automatically generating posters in H5 for participants to post on WeChat Moments.

Participants only need to spend 1 yuan to post a circle of friends to show their love. The threshold for participation is very low, but it provides people with huge social incentives, so it instantly exploded in the circle of friends, and millions of people participated in this action in just half an hour.

The “Ice Bucket Challenge” and “One Yuan Painting Purchase” are both very successful charity Campaign. They have triggered widespread audience participation and created unprecedented popularity and screen-filling behavior. Overall, if public welfare marketing wants to mobilize the enthusiasm of the public to participate, the core of these two elements must be:

One is to combine social media to design participation mechanisms.

Like the social gameplay of "Ice Bucket Challenge" relies on Weibo in China, which has a bit of a name and @others participate; "One Yuan Painting Purchase" uses WeChat to forward the Moments with one click;

Ant Forest is endogenous to Alipay. It uses gamified elements to design a growth system with points, badges, and rankings. Users can watch the trees they plant grow little by little like pet cultivation. Charity has become more vivid and interesting, and it also has social attributes. Users can interact with friends and share green energy.

Second, social currency is provided to inspire participation in the name of love.

Public welfare activities will not bring material benefits to participants, and even make them pay money. However, public welfare activities can give people spiritual rewards, such as gaining joy and sense of accomplishment to help others, realizing self-worth, or shaping a public image of personal generosity, kindness and loving.

With the name of love and charity, people are more willing to share on their social media and show their good personal image to others. This is also the logic of "one dollar shopping for paintings".

Social media, social mechanisms, and social currency are all for helping public welfare activities to get involved in more people and bring the social influence of public welfare to the extreme.

Some people may say that individuals should not leave their names or promote their good deeds in a place, and enterprises should not pursue utilitarian returns when doing charity, but they should not ask about the gains in public welfare. But you should listen to me first and tell me a short story.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a law in Lu State that people in Lu State became slaves abroad. If someone could redeem him, they could go to the treasury to reimburse the ransom after returning to China. Confucius' disciple Zigong redeemed people abroad, but refused to receive the ransom.

After Confucius knew about this, he criticized Zigong. He said that receiving a ransom does not harm his virtue, but no one is willing to redeem people after not receiving the ransom. The reason is very simple. Zigong redeems people without ransom, and established a lofty moral standard. If someone redeems people in the future, he will be embarrassed to ask for money, so he has to not redeem them.

Another time, another disciple of Confucius, Zilu, saved a drowning man. The man gave Zilu a cow as a token of gratitude, and Zilu accepted it. When Confucius knew about it, he was so happy that he said that the people of Lu would definitely be brave enough to save people.

Confucius looked at it in detail and saw it far, and was worthy of being the greatest educator and thinker in ancient China. This story is also my view on charity marketing. Doing charity is a good deed and deserves encouragement and praise. But if a company itself can benefit from charity marketing, it will inevitably encourage the company to invest more resources to charity and influence more companies to do charity.

Brands are public. Whether it is public relations, charity, or public brand building, it is essentially about building a voice in the public space of society, thereby affecting specific target groups. The right to speak is the ultimate pursuit of enterprises in marketing , and it creates the greatest space for survival and development for corporate brands.

Public discourse power includes user reputation, industry standards and social public opinion.

The purpose of creating public standards is to help brands gain voice in the industry and influence consumer decision-making; while participating in public topics and events, guiding public culture, and carrying out public welfare marketing are to help brands win public opinion support at the public level and create positive reviews and reputations of the target consumer group.

Only in such an environment and atmosphere can the brand win the most psychological recognition and purchase support from people.

Discourse is power, discourse is power, it determines the upper limit and ceiling of a brand's growth.

Author: Empty-handed

Source official account: Husband