The founder’s dilemma: personal IP takes a back seat, company brand takes a front seat

Compared with the company/brand IP, users often remember the founder's personal IP. This is very distressing for the founder, and the benefits obtained after deliberately weakening the personal IP are often not satisfactory. So how to transition from personal IP to company brand? Should we weaken personal IP and strengthen brand IP? The author of this article gives the answer, let's take a look.

Founders, especially those of circles and brands , are particularly concerned about one thing. On the one hand, they hope that users will remember the brand/company IP, but often users remember their personal IP.

In this case, the founder will struggle with whether to deliberately weaken his personal IP and focus on building the brand/company IP. However, the result of doing so is often counterproductive. As the personal IP weakens, users lack objects to "follow", and the brand/company IP cannot give users enough reasons to follow, which ultimately leads to the loss of traffic and weak monetization. In the worst case, the project may even fail.

How to transition from personal IP to corporate brand?

Should we weaken personal IP and strengthen brand IP?

I will elaborate on these issues.

1. The underlying logic of personal IP

Personal IP describes the story of "me", that is, it revolves around "me", and then shows the outside world what field I am in, what my identity is, the value I provide, and who I serve. By building a cognitive process, it helps users to think of you directly and find you to solve certain needs when they have them.

You are his best solution, you are unique in his mind, and you are synonymous with the professional field.

Therefore, the key to building a personal IP is essentially to establish sufficient reasons to persuade target users to find your services, so we need to answer the following questions:

1. On which platforms are my target users distributed and where can I be seen by them?
2. How do they know me?
3. What message do I want to convey to my target audience?
4. How do I make them trust me?
5. How can I entice them to buy my services/products?
6. How do I get a referral from them?

These questions correspond to the three stages of the user's process of following you, namely: understanding you, trusting you, and following you

1. 1 and 2 correspondence: understanding you

That is, which platform should you use to attract your target users? What you need to think about is how to attract target users on different platforms. This is a process of establishing connections. There are three key points to be solved here:

• What kind of person are you? (Is your personality informative, interesting, and has character? Is it to show your expertise, to help them vent their emotions, or to bring them joy?)
• What kind of content do you want to express (video, text, or multi-dimensional)
• How you want users to engage with you (view, free, paid)

The purpose of doing these three key things well is to attract target users and make them interested in getting to know what kind of person you are.

2. 3 and 4 correspond to: Trust you

When users have completed the "get to know you" stage, it means that they have a preliminary understanding of you, they know your field and the services you provide, etc. But before convincing users, there is a process of deepening trust. The core purpose of this process is to solve the question of "why choose you instead of others". Solving this problem generally starts from the following points:

• Business description (What services do you provide? What needs do you solve?)
• Professional knowledge (Why does what you say make sense? What practical knowledge points are there?)
• Case studies (are there any examples that prove your service is helpful?)
• Bigwig endorsement (Who do you stand with? What kind of circle is behind you?)
• Value output (What values ​​do you believe in? Are your three views correct?)

When these points are resolved, users are actually in the stage of getting along with you, and your every word and action will be reflected in their eyes. This stage is the stage of gradual recognition.

3. 5 and 6 correspondence: follow you

At this stage, even if users have a certain degree of recognition of you, it is not enough to make them follow you mindlessly. Therefore, to persuade users, you need to push two key points, namely, the degree to which the product/service hits the user's pain points + the degree of trust the user has in you. The former is to increase motivation, and the latter is to reduce obstacles. Only when the motivation is greater than the obstacles will users take action.

(1) The degree of impact on user pain points

Under normal circumstances, users do not have any pain points. Only when specific scenarios occur will their pain be stimulated and their needs be aroused. Only then can solutions (products/services) be introduced to facilitate user actions (transactions).

(2) How much trust do users have in you?

In the process of decision-making, users have a rational brain and an emotional brain. The rational brain will remind him whether he needs it or not, and the emotional brain will stimulate him whether he needs it immediately. In the whole process, whether hesitating or taking decisive action, there is a limiting factor, that is, whether you are trustworthy. The degree of trust in you largely affects the speed of the user's action.

Only when you answer questions 1-6, users will truly consider you an IP. Otherwise, to them, you are just a powerful person with nothing special. I subjectively believe that personal IP is not just about the quantitative data such as the number of fans, reading volume, and playback volume, but that you are the only choice in his circle.

2. Two Directions of Personal IP

1. I proactively define the tags that users should remember me by

Under this guidance, what we actually do is to establish a persona, then extract corresponding tags based on the persona, and then output content madly around the tags, repeating it continuously until it occupies a place in the user's mind.

The most typical example is Liu Siyi, who posts 10 Moments a day, one video and one article. This is an extreme test of a person's content output ability (even if there is a team), energy, efficiency, etc. Once there is insufficient content supply or an accident, the person's image will easily collapse or be gradually forgotten. In short, it is simply overwhelmed by the content output ability. But the advantage is that the start is very fast, and the disadvantage is that it is easy to lose energy later. (Boss Liu is energetic and is a special case)

2. I let my users define my labels through my behavior

Under this orientation, personal IP will have relatively less content output. It is usually necessary to establish clear values, organize some activities, embody one's own values ​​in them, and let users perceive them, so that users can define you and label you.

We have all heard others mention Yiren, who is humble, low-key, very capable, has a positive outlook, and has a way to make money. He himself rarely appears in public, or madly exports himself, but there has always been a legend about him in the world.

I have previously summarized some of my observations in the early stages of Shengcai's development, and found that he would only speak up when there were some turning points in the operation of Shengcai, such as when the Great Voyage came out and when Shengcai was recruiting members. In daily life, he would answer almost every question and interpret his values ​​with actions. In addition, he rarely publicly outputs his various labels to emphasize his so-called personality.

I think under this guidance, what is needed is to persist in implementing your own ideas for a long time, gradually influence users with actions, and let users form an understanding of you. The advantage is that once it is formed, the subsequent ceiling will be higher and the pressure will be less. The disadvantage is that it takes a long time and it is difficult to stick to the so-called original intention. (Many founders cannot resist the short-term temptation and cannot persist in this way)

No matter which orientation you choose, just choose the one that suits you.

3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Personal IP

advantage:

• Low communication cost: Labels make things easier to remember and appear more three-dimensional and vivid.
• Super strong stickiness: fans tend to follow you, making it easier for you to close deals.
• Super high voice: the number of fans covered and the influence on the platform can bring a steady stream of cooperation opportunities.

shortcoming:

• Poor transferability: It is closely related to personal characteristics, and the same model cannot be transferred to another IP, which is easily resisted/ignored by users.
• Low ceiling: The user group corresponding to a personal IP is relatively limited, and it is difficult to cover other user groups.

4. How to transition from personal IP to brand

When it comes to personal IP, it is difficult to put on a label, and it is even more difficult to take it off. The label corresponds to the track, and the size of the track determines how much bonus you can reap. From the perspective of personal IP, the scale that can be covered is actually limited and difficult to replicate. This is also the main reason why capital does not like to invest in personal IP companies. At this time, many bosses will start thinking about building a brand.

In my humble opinion, if personal IP is a one-man show with many stars supporting the moon, then branding is a show with a group of people. It is precisely because of the existence of various roles that the brand is more vivid and three-dimensional, and its vitality is stronger. Therefore, I think that the transition from personal IP to brand is the process of building a group of people.

References of successful transition:

Companies that have done well in this regard include Jiaogepengyou, Dedao, New Oriental, etc. Due to the length of this article, I will only mention the transformation case of Jiaogepengyou.

Lao Luo once mentioned the view on personal IP to company brand. Here I will summarize it for you:

Many people use the IP they sign (or the boss themselves) to make their personal names infinitely famous, but no one knows the name of the company. A company selling goods on Douyin must be a channel company. You can't just make the IP famous for a long time, but lose the company brand. This is problematic.

Among the top 10 anchors in China, many of their most loyal fans only know the anchor’s name, but not the name of his company. This means that your channel brand has not been established, which is a big disadvantage. If something happens to the anchor one day, the company will basically be gone or lose a large part.

I don’t do many live broadcasts on “Jiao Ge Pengyou” at the moment, but the performance is still there. Since the first day of the establishment of “Jiao Ge Pengyou”, we have always emphasized “Jiao Ge Pengyou”. At that time, the “Jiao Ge Pengyou” live broadcast room was still called Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast room. My colleagues and I mentioned it repeatedly and very naturally during the live broadcast. Until this spring, I withdrew from the management, and the company changed the name of Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast room to “Jiao Ge Pengyou” live broadcast room. Although there was a little impact, it was not serious, because we established the channel brand.

Finally, I want to emphasize that you need to build a good account and a good company in the live streaming e-commerce track, and at the same time promote the brand through marketing and communication. This means you have completed the construction of a channel brand, and then you just need to sell the products you make in this channel.

From personal IP to company brand, Jiaogepengyou seems to have done a good job. Later, with the opening of Jiaogepengyou matrix accounts, vertical accounts in various fields began to operate, and a large number of well-known anchors were born, such as Wang Tuo, Dali, Li Zheng, etc., and the brand of Jiaogepengyou was established.

5. Should you weaken your personal IP and push your brand to the forefront?

But many founders still have questions:

Should you weaken your personal IP and push your own brand to the forefront?

To answer this question, I think we must first understand the difference between a company brand and a personal IP.

1. The difference between company brand and personal IP

A brand cannot grow as quickly as a personal IP; it has a lag.

A personal IP may be interesting and informative, and then through the consolidation of labels, it can be recognized more quickly.

When it comes to branding, users first understand and use your product, and then form a vague perception through the experience gained from your product/service. As you continue to refine, a brand label is eventually formed. Therefore, the entire cognitive link is longer and the process of establishing a label is slower.

Maybe you will say that many companies have quickly established their brands through a large number of advertising campaigns. But in my opinion, that can only be called a famous brand, not a brand. Because once the advertising campaign is weakened, users will not have any clear memory points about you, let alone a place for you in the minds of users. If we look at the well-known brands in the world, without decades or even hundreds of years of accumulation, it is impossible to create a real brand. Advertising is a means to shorten this process, but it cannot replace it. Compared with personal IP, the road to building a brand is actually longer and there is still a long way to go.

2. Should we weaken the issue of personal IP?

In fact, the initial accumulation of many bosses comes from the management of personal IP. After starting a company or a brand, many bosses will have an idea at this time, which is to "separate personal IP and company's brand IP". Usually they will begin to choose to weaken their own IP.

But from my observation, after doing this, few people can achieve the same level of their company's brand IP as their original personal IP. When they want to continue to strengthen their personal IP, they will find that their influence is not as good as before, and the influence of the company's brand IP is slow to build up.

So my opinion is that if your organizational ability, product ability, and content marketing ability are not established and have a continuously enhanced operating state, don't easily weaken your IP. Before your company reaches a certain level, it is mainly based on personal IP, but you must start planning early.

If you want to strengthen the company's brand IP, the best way is not to weaken your own personal IP, but to incubate many auxiliary IPs to form a whole synergistic effect. At present, our trust migration process is actually like this: because you trust this person, you believe that his products will not be bad, and because the products continue to give you a good experience, in your cognition, as long as it comes from this brand, you will have a relatively stable expectation, so here it becomes trust in the brand.

To sum it up, the path is: trust people - trust products - trust brands.

If you watch Luo Yonghao's live broadcast carefully, you will find that his whole rhythm is that Lao Luo broadcasts live around the clock, bringing out Xiao Mu, and then bringing in a bunch of new anchors. As more and more people come, live broadcast rooms of different categories begin to appear, and each live broadcast room has a corresponding anchor. Up to now, Lao Luo is the host of each live broadcast room.

Author: Zhizhong

Source: WeChat public account "Shixian Operation (ID: yyshixian)"