Children's Day Marketing: How Brands Can Make Money by Being Cute

The article comprehensively explains the reasons, methods and strategies of brands using "cute marketing". The author's views are relatively objective and rational, and relevant cases are provided to prove them. The structure of the article is also clear and reasonable. It is a high-quality analysis article. It can be used as a reference for brand marketers to understand "cute marketing". 

"Moeology" can be regarded as the metaphysics of marketing. It can successfully connect user groups of different ages, cognitions, educational backgrounds, hobbies, and circles, help brands find marketing breakthroughs, and create topics/content that are more in line with the brand's temperament and user preferences, bringing unexpected communication effects to the brand.

As Children's Day is approaching, brands are starting to get excited, putting a lot of effort into being cute and adorable, and starting to create a collection of happy and cute marketing.

1. Brands are launching peripheral products one after another, playing with cute marketing

KFC, which successfully broke out with Psyduck last year, worked even harder on its Children's Day marketing this year. With the marketing theme of "Oh! Happy Children's Day, cuteness gathered", it chose to cooperate with the Sanrio family and launched five peripheral products in one go, which are full of cuteness and fun.

These five cute products, including a fan, a handbag, a music box, a kettle, and a suitcase, are cute and practical, attempting to win the public's wallets with their cuteness. After all, no one can resist cute and practical products.

Hello Kitty Submarine Fan

Big Ear Dog Coconut Water Bottle

Coulomi quilted clutch

Pudding Dog Rocking Music Box

Gudetama Suitcase

In addition to KFC taking advantage of the Children's Day five-piece peripheral sets, its competitors Pizza Hut and Dicos are also not idle, and are still focusing on a cute style.

This year, Dicos teamed up with "Super Mario Bros. The Movie" to launch peripheral products. The classic Mario image captured the hearts of the public as soon as it appeared, and many people said: Dicos understands us.

Pizza Hut has chosen to collaborate with Pokémon's classic IPs Pikachu and Psyduck to launch a set meal. Users need to choose a designated set meal to randomly receive a Pokémon follower toy.

Obviously, all brands on Children's Day have chosen cute elements, hoping to play the cute card well in the public-focused holiday by launching peripheral products. What kind of consumers' psychology are being captured by brands behind their wanton cuteness?

2. Why are brands keen on cute marketing?

Brand marketing must be profit-oriented. There are three main important factors why brands are keen on cute marketing: strong communication power, more innovative communication methods, and an important way to monetize brand marketing.

Cuteness weakens the utilitarianism of brand marketing and makes the content more communicative . Let’s talk about communicative power first. People have always been unable to resist “cuteness”. With the marketing of cuteness, the utilitarianism of brand advertising has been weakened, so that consumers are no longer focused on the advertisement itself, but on the cuteness of the brand. And more attention is paid to the feelings in the content of communication, making the dissemination of brand advertising information more covert and easier for consumers to accept and spread. And users are also captured by the cuteness of the brand quietly.

At the same time, the brand injects cuteness into its marketing, realizes the collision between the brand and different elements, changes users' inherent perception of the brand, implants the cute impression into users' minds, makes users feel close to the brand, narrows the distance between the two, and makes the conversion a natural thing.

Using cuteness as a bridge, establish a new touchpoint for efficient communication. People will "feel happy because of cuteness". With this insight, brands want to use cuteness to open up the market and give the brand huge publicity.

Whether it is to attract or spread, the most important thing is to establish a deeper connection with consumers. In today's society, people's pace of life is accelerating and work pressure is increasing, so they pay special attention to spiritual satisfaction. Cuteness itself has a natural healing effect, which can stimulate people's excitement and make more people take down their defenses and armor and be willing to be cute.

When brands engage in cute marketing, they are actually paying attention to the current living conditions and needs of consumers, using cuteness to establish communication points with consumers, relying on cuteness to stimulate users' purchasing emotions, and helping marketing break the circle.

Cuteness is an eye-catching tool in today's era. There is a consensus in the marketing circle that cuteness is an important tool for brands to win users' wallets. Take Pikachu in "Pokemon" for example, which is called the "money-making king" in the cute IP world by more users.

In the "World's 85 Most Profitable IPs (2022 Edition)" released by Wikipedia, the total revenue of the "Pokemon" animation series, which ranked second in 2022, was $71 billion, of which derivatives revenue was $69.2 billion, which is enough to see the eye-catching ability of cute marketing. "Pokemon", which has been popular in the market for more than 25 years, has made the elves not only stay in the form of cartoon images, but also gradually evolved into a very healing cultural symbol with its super high popularity. At the same time, the super strong ability to attract money has also successfully helped classic IPs become the object of brand cooperation and move towards a broader market.

Among the top 3 classic IPs of 2022, Winnie the Pooh, Pokémon, and Mickey Mouse & Friends are all representatives of the cute world without exception.

The strong ability to make money has made more brands believe that as long as they take advantage of the "cuteness" train, they can find a new direction for brand mining. At the same time, with the blessing of cuteness, it can also successfully extend the brand marketing communication cycle and enhance the vitality of the brand.

3. How to do cute marketing?

Cute marketing has many advantages in attracting users, tapping into the market, and promoting communication. It can not only win the hearts of young users, but also create new topics and increase brand freshness. It can also increase brand-oriented marketing, which can be called hexagonal marketing without weaknesses. For brands, how can they do cute marketing well?

Using cuteness to heal people's hearts It is not difficult to see that the target audience of the Children's Day marketing by brands is not children but adults of today. The most important thing to attract adults is healing.

In the eyes of more people, involution is everywhere, causing people to feel anxious. Many times, adults want to face the difficulties of life with a smile on their face, and they have a sense of déjà vu that they cannot express their suffering.

The brand introduces a more relaxed and joyful cute aesthetic in its commercial marketing, which makes people visually attracted, forget their worries temporarily, and be healed and comforted by cuteness.

Playing with emotions, bringing users into a more relaxed and pleasant atmosphere. The marketing node of Children's Day on June 1st is called the "memory killer" of childhood, because emotional marketing has been tried and tested, largely due to the fact that cute marketing can bring consumers into a more relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, allowing people to imagine a better future.

Basically everyone has feelings, including nostalgia, regret, youth, love, etc. Brands that play with feelings are more likely to gain user favorability. For example, users choose Huawei more because they have their own feelings about "prospering the country through science and technology", even if the brand has never exaggerated its own patriotic feelings; consumers buy Beibingyang more because they want to make up for the loss of their childhood and help domestic soda to achieve a resurgence. It can be said that consumers' preference has given emotional marketing a unique vitality and has become a tried and tested marketing strategy for brands.

at last

In fact, it is not difficult to see that the brand's "cute marketing" is to integrate with classic IP to promote cute peripherals, take advantage of Children's Day to sell cuteness, or cooperate with big movies to promote brand communication. First, the brand captures young people through accurate insight into the living/working status of consumers, using young people's cognition of the healing feeling brought by cuteness, and shows the brand's youthful image. Second, the innate healing feeling of cute marketing makes it easier for consumers to be willing to spend money, bring marketing conversion, and achieve brand-effect integration.

Author: Mr. Bingfa

Source: WeChat public account "Marketing Art of War (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"