A topic that cannot be avoided at the moment is: content drives consumption

Although countless contents are produced on the Internet every day, there are not many truly good and valuable contents. Only brands that make good contents can achieve long-term development. The era of "content is king" has arrived, and consumption is driven by content. The author of this article analyzes this and hopes it will be helpful to you.

01‍‍‍ Re-examine the brand’s content expression

This is an age of distraction.

The threshold adjective for a good drama is fast pace; "Watching a movie in five minutes" compresses two hours of viewing; many viewers have subscribed to video memberships to skip 90 seconds of ads; short videos that win in three seconds have captured the public's attention; "the lowest price on the entire network" and "linking in 1, 2, 3" are the magic weapons for ROI...

Everything seems to prove that in this fast-paced era of information explosion, brands no longer need to be the protagonists and tell a long story to reveal themselves. After all, consumers’ attention is scarce and their patience is limited.

It is true that brand video expression has become an industry consensus, but many subtle changes require brands to re-examine their video narratives.

Halfway through 2023, not a single long advertisement has appeared. In the past, Apple's New Year's films released at the end of the year could cause widespread dissemination, but the 2023 New Year's film did not make any waves.

If we go back further, we will find that since "Who is Peppa Pig?", the phenomenon of long video ads becoming a phenomenal social event that dominates social networks has become less and less common.

In the past two or three years, whether it is Jia Zhangke X Sandunban's "Jia Zhangke's Personal Statement" or Bi Gan's "Broken Heart of the Sun" for the pet brand Pidan, they are all very creative works, but they are also limited to circle dissemination.

Do consumers really no longer value brands’ storytelling abilities?

That is not the case.

In 2023, second- and third-tier celebrities have been expanding the live broadcast narrative beyond Douyin, Kuaishou and Taobao by sharing live broadcast content about their lifestyles.

At the same time, the business cooperation between domestic designer brands and second- and third-tier celebrities has also reversed the previous paradigm of fast-moving consumer goods spending money to find popular celebrities to choose as spokespersons.

This shows that domestic products, through content marketing, are slipping into the hearts of consumers in a silent way by appropriately matching brand core with consumption scenarios.

The power of brand storytelling is not being eliminated, but it needs to be updated and iterated in the increasingly competitive content marketing environment.

In the past, brands exported their self-value by shooting artistic TVCs and producing long copy that reflected their brand power. However, the era of assuming that the audience knows the brand and will stay for it is gone forever.

In the past, rapid conversion of brand effect was achieved by cooperating with traffic stars, entering the live broadcast room of top anchors, and cooperating with top celebrities. However, for brands, if they want to have traffic, they must constantly recharge the platform. Secondly, the distribution of traffic is fixed, and the top celebrities are changing, which is full of uncertainty. With all these uncertainties, the road to volume is not smooth.

It must be admitted that in the process of brands approaching consumers, it may be time for the brand's "protagonist" status to give way to content.

02‍‍ Content is the starting point of all business narratives

Although the marketing path of brands today is the same as before, it is still the path of brand-content-communication. However, combined with the symptoms of the times of scarce attention and patience, we will find that the factors of the times have unprecedentedly defined the value impact of content.

In content marketing, brands and content are still co-created, but in the past, content served products. Nowadays, the value of content itself has become the starting point of all business narratives.

In 2022, long video platforms represented by Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku and Mango TV all chose the IP+ path in addition to the traditional membership+advertising.

If the 2022 drama king "Dream of Red Mansions" is a milestone in the commercial value of content - horizontally, it uses creative mid-inserts, end-of-credits derivative programs, and off-screen joint customization with tea brands to broaden the commercial value capacity of content, and vertically, it deeply cultivates IP inside and outside the Tencent ecosystem, opening up a brand-wide integrated marketing characterized by multiple online channels and multiple offline gameplay.

Then the big drama "The Three-Body Problem" at the beginning of 2023 is a further advancement of the IP+ model.

As a science fiction drama, "The Three-Body Problem" naturally has a basis for co-creation with automobiles and 3C digital products in terms of subject matter. The co-operating car bodies in the drama have become the key elements to promote the plot, which not only meets the most basic demands of brand marketing - exposure and being seen. More importantly, the ride with content allows users to recognize and remember the brand, and even have some understanding of the brand's tone.

In addition to big IPs that became popular before they were aired, high-quality works that have been promoted in the later stages and have a strong long-tail effect are also value fields that verify the good taste of a brand. A typical example is "The Long Season", which started out strong and sold well but has strong stamina.

In addition to dramas, variety shows with reality shows and competitions as underlying elements are another field that uses strong labels to expand life scenes and conduct consumption demonstrations.

From the perspective of the audience, variety shows capture the most dynamic young people in the consumer market. Romance variety shows and workplace variety shows are the A and B sides of love and bread for contemporary young people. Slow variety shows depict a pastoral utopia outside of fast life, and competitive variety shows stimulate the senses. Youth culture and lifestyle are hidden in the variety show field of subtle human nature.

For brands, this is a good place for new products to greet consumers and for classic brands to showcase their vitality.

Apart from these contents that involve the general public, scenes such as music festivals and concerts that target vertical groups of people have their own group spirit. When brands are involved, it is natural for consumers to empathize with them.

A typical example is the May Day holiday this year, when "colorful flags fluttered" at many music festivals, including the Taihu Bay Music Festival, Jinan Wheat Field Music Festival, Beijing Strawberry Music Festival, and Infinity Music Festival. Music fans used "flags" as tokens to find group belonging in the utopia created by music, and brands also found an implantation point that is closer to consumers in the flags.

Concerts and music festivals have in common that sponsors and consumers experience two or three hours of immersive emotional resonance together, and will be automatically included in the list of "friends".

Involve more brands, expand multiple channels, carry an IP, and use content as a transportation hub where brands gather and then rush to different scenarios.

This is a highlight moment when content is king, and it is also an iteration and innovation of the brand marketing model combined with content co-creation.

03‍‍ A snap of the fingers that resonates with the times

In the past, when brand marketing created big events, the brand was the protagonist. Whether it could hit the mood of the times and create a wave of the moment was a gamble. In an era when consumers’ voices were relatively weak and social media channels were single, brands had a natural advantage in the communication chain. With a single channel, the dialogue with consumers was top-down, and it was relatively easy for brands to become lifestyle leaders for consumers.

Nowadays, a wide variety of channels accommodate a hundred contending voices, and popular trends have been changing with each passing day. Brands still need to communicate with consumers and resonate with them, but how to tap into social emotions is a major issue facing brand marketing.

The reality is that it is already difficult for brands to predict consumer sentiment and lead consumer preferences through a major event.

The era of mass content is gone forever, and the era of segmentation has arrived, dividing the content into slices of different eras according to the groups of people and preferences.

It may seem chaotic at first glance, but it actually has a coherent structure.

Looking through the hot topics updated daily on social media, you will find that the topics involved are nothing more than social hot spots and cultural and entertainment events. Social hot spots are the birthplace of cultural and entertainment creation, and the two have long been inseparable.

Whether it is the various entertainment preferences radiating from the much-discussed film and television dramas and variety shows, the offline youth culture phenomenon driven by online entertainment, or the lifestyle created by music and major events with super-strong communication power, they all ultimately point to the overall trend of content-driven consumption.

The difference is that the identity of consumers has changed from being a passive position of being pushed by content/brands to being the wave makers themselves.

It is often difficult to predict which direction an original content will go after secondary creation and discussion on a social platform.

For example, no one could have expected that in 2023, it would not be the top star but the various supporting roles that would soar in discussion through the drama.

From Brother Qiang and his sister-in-law, to Tian Huan’s killing madness, to the mute Fu Weijun, those flawed lives and human natures shine brightly in the fragmentary highlights, which coincides with the current mood of consumers and becomes the trend of spring and summer 2023.

What brands need to do is not necessarily to be consumer leaders, but to make friends with consumers by using the emotional synergy guided by content.

After all, while the Internet is narrowing the information gap, an all-round perspective of equality is permeating into every aspect of life. It is difficult to be a guiding light in other people's lives for a long time, but being friends allows you to walk together and develop more emotional ties.

Based on this, if content is regarded as a ship, the modern social and consumption context is a river, and the collision between the audience/consumers involved and the content forms a wave of a stage.

Content drives consumption. In the short term, it may be an opportunity for brands to break out of the constant roll. In the long term, it is a way for brands to resonate with the times and build long-term value. In the future, we will also use a series of special content to delve into multiple content fields such as dramas, variety shows, live music, and youth culture, and specifically explore how brands can grasp the narrative of the times and social emotions in content with different attributes, give full play to the value of good content, good products, and good platforms, occupy the minds of users, influence consumption decisions, and create the wave of the times.

Author: Erdong Chen, Producer: Wu Duidui, WeChat public account: Wu Duidui