How did I save 30 million in advertising fees by creating a "hot topic" in 3 steps?

Brands have made chasing hot topics the mainstream of creativity, constantly stirring up consumers' emotions. The author of this article introduces the factors for Durex's successful marketing, the three major techniques for creating hot topic marketing - hunger marketing, event marketing, and hot topic reprocessing, as well as how brand people should cleverly deal with the sudden emergence of hot topics. Let's read together!

We all know that when consumers pay less attention to a brand, it means that they will easily switch to other brands due to external stimulation. This is why almost all brands regard chasing hot spots as the mainstream of creativity and constantly stimulate consumers emotionally.

There is nothing wrong with chasing hot topics. The essence of marketing is to deeply "seize" consumers' fragmented time in targeted scenarios. Where consumers' attention and time are, the brand's exposure and investment should be there.

1. Durex becomes a hot spot indicator

Among them, Durex is the one that has mastered hot spot marketing to the extreme, becoming a hot spot indicator that almost all brands pay attention to.

I think Durex's success is based on the following aspects:

Built-in topics: Compared with other brands, Durex products naturally have more topics and room for imagination, which plays a key role in secondary dissemination.

Successful positioning: Durex = hot spot. Through a series of popular cases and the bandwagon effect, Durex’s positioning was amplified and shaped by the marketing industry.

Content assurance: Durex's product quality in the past few years was basically able to achieve content that was close to but not vulgar, full of creativity and perfectly in line with hot topics, and was unanimously praised by everyone. Of course, this was also inseparable from the credit of the Huanshi team behind it.

But there is only one Durex, and the development path of each brand is difficult to completely replicate, so the reality we often see is that many brands chase hot topics just for the sake of chasing hot topics, but only a few can truly open the minds of consumers.

On the one hand, many brands are "hastily" launched to take advantage of hot topics, regardless of product positioning and brand tone, and forcibly ride on the hot topics. More brands are just copying and pasting, and in the process of chasing hot topics, they lose themselves and become cannon fodder.

On the other hand, consumers’ demand for hot topics is not very sticky. “Instant” information can quickly attract users’ attention, but it is difficult to generate value purely by relying on consumer enthusiasm. In addition, facing the exaggerated hot marketing forms, more and more consumers have tended to activate psychological defense mechanisms to resist the control of their consumption behavior by leveraging marketing.

Furthermore, not all hot spots can be pursued by enterprises. Chasing some hot spots may turn out to be a disaster for the enterprises rather than the icing on the cake.

Even the old driver Durex has repeatedly failed in recent years due to chasing hot topics, such as the "419 Sleepless Night" interactive marketing that was singled out for being explicit and vulgar.

419 is pronounced as four (for), one, nine (night), which means one-night stand. In order to catch up with this trend, Durex followed the same routine it used to flirt with other brands on Thanksgiving Day in 2018, and launched joint advertisements with catering brands such as Heytea and Ele.me. However, due to its vulgarity and sexual innuendo, it aroused the disgust of many consumers.

Durex x HEYTEA joint poster

Gender marketing is nothing new, but Durex's copy "Tonight, not a drop left" obviously objectifies women and is too vulgar, and was unanimously criticized by consumers as "disgusting" and "vulgar".

Therefore, hot spots are a double-edged sword. Blindly following them will only lead to a thankless task and may even damage your reputation.

Instead of flying around like a headless fly, I think there should only be two types of hot topics that brands should really pay attention to: those that are relevant to themselves and those that they actively create.

What are the hot spots related to oneself?

For example, in 2019, Audi advertised on Infiniti’s WeChat Moments due to Tencent’s blunder. In the end, the car brands were the ones who did a better job in following the hot topics in this incident, including many competition posters between car companies and fast-moving consumer goods. They all created attention in areas that consumers paid attention to, their own areas of expertise, and points that were closely related to the brand.

What is actively creating hot spots?

I define it as: insisting on opening up channels between online trends, consumers and brands while being consistent with one's own brand tone, turning products into social tools for brands to connect with consumers, and using valuable activities and content to communicate with consumers in a more professional and in-depth manner.

2. 3 Tips to Create Hot Marketing

1. Light and fast hunger marketing

Hunger marketing can strengthen consumers' desire to buy, which is beneficial for expanding the brand's appeal. It is a way for brands to create explosive products with small gains and big risks.

Hunger marketing should have three conditions:

Hunger Marketing Communication Law

(1) Sufficient basic traffic: The biggest problem with hunger marketing is the lack of traffic. How can there be "hunger" without people? Therefore, it is very important to actively find the traffic entrance of the product and maintain the sensitivity of traffic. This is the "lightness" of brand investment;

(2) Maintain moderate hunger: Hunger marketing does not mean limited supply, but creating gaps, scenarios or opportunities to make consumers feel "hungry", which is the core of causing the speed of dissemination to be "fast".

(3) Providing social currency: When a product is endowed with social attributes, it becomes a social currency with its own traffic. As long as there is enough talk, consumers can become brand communicators, actively sharing products to help spread the brand. This is the result-oriented way for an event to "explode".

Let me share a case of MINISO going viral and see how our team used small investment to gain huge traffic and carry out hunger marketing.

That year, a netizen uploaded a video of MINISO body spray on the TikTok platform. Because the scent of this body spray is similar to Jo Malone and it only costs 10 yuan, it was labeled "affordable Jo Malone" by users. It received more than 400,000 hits and was forwarded to major platforms.

Video of MINISO body spray posted by fans on TikTok

The popularity on Douyin has made MINISO's fragrance spray a phenomenal hit, and the store was once sold out. Some people even bought all the fragrance sprays in the store and sold them online at the original price to earn traffic, or sold them for 2 or 5 yuan more to make a profit.

As the topic becomes more and more widely discussed, we immediately placed orders to replenish the stock. However, since it takes time for suppliers to produce products and deliver them to stores, it takes at least 10 days for the fastest time to arrive at the store. How can we seize the traffic during this blank period of time?

Our team immediately planned and did several things:

We selected shelves in prominent locations in nine cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Tianjin, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Wuhan, and cleared out one layer. We created the appearance that all MINISO body sprays were sold out on the empty shelves and posted "apology letters" to attract consumers' attention and stimulate their curiosity and desire to buy.

Apology letter from the store

This kind of inability to buy makes consumers' desire to buy stronger, just like the desire for possession, the more you want it, the less you can get it, and it becomes a spontaneous topic in a wider range. More and more users begin to pay attention to and search for related terms such as "MINISO Jo Malone Perfume", which makes our brand index rise rapidly.

At the same time, we went deep into the Douyin platform and used multiple Douyin KOLs as the voice of the event. We filmed the Jo Malone alternative perfume, which was sold out offline after it became popular on Douyin. It became a must-have online celebrity hot product overnight, reinforcing the concept of "out of stock + crazy buying" and guiding people to follow the trend.

Because of the previous continuous fermentation, we don’t even need too much hype to bring our own aura of popularity. Users who grab the products will also take photos to show off on major social platforms as soon as possible, and finally spontaneously follow and generate a lot of high-quality UGC produced by consumers themselves.

Facing consumers’ rising desire to buy, we took advantage of the situation and selected two stores in Guangzhou to start selling the “Internet celebrity spray” at 20:00 on the evening of April 13 and 17:00 on the afternoon of April 14, the day the product was put on the shelves. The first 30 consumers who bought the Internet celebrity spray in each event would receive a set of MINISO’s Internet celebrity hot-selling products. We created hunger marketing through limited time and limited quantity.

After restocking the stores, we also found several good-looking KOLs to go inside the stores to shoot videos and live-stream the entire process, which once again attracted many netizens to watch and spread the message spontaneously online.

The MINISO Jo Malone body spray incident not only brought huge exposure to the brand, but also dominated our screens in the spring of 2018, with overall product sales increasing by 323%.

2. Event Marketing

In this world of social media, the biggest change is that user sovereignty has begun to reverse. The new generation of users prefer brands that have personality, warmth, and are approachable, rather than those that are always high and mighty.

Therefore, at the appropriate time, brands can "set the pace" and create things, making the brand appear more capable of handling things, which is also a major way to create hot spots.

How to play?

Focus on users, know users, understand users, and have fun with users. Stir the hearts of young people and hit the itch points. Where there is heat, there is marketing.

A brand must first be fun and interesting. Fun is not pure hype, but the brand must be smart and interesting, and it must be reflected in products, services, marketing and other aspects, becoming a culture and spirit.

Sharing joy with others is better than enjoying it alone. Let users play with you. From experience to emotional satisfaction, and stimulate the user's "drama spirit" potential, play with consumers, let them play with the brand, and grow together.

Let’s look at a case.

When MINISO opened its Indonesian branch, one of our bags was snapped up by consumers on the opening day, and the shelves were sold out in less than half an hour. We filmed this popular scene and sent it back to China, where it quickly went viral on social media platforms.

It just so happened that during that period, MINISO in China obtained the peripheral authorization for the popular IP "We Bare Bears", and stores began to stock new products of We Bare Bears one after another. We decided to use the Indonesian rush buying incident as the source point and combine it with the promotion of We Bare Bears' new products to create an event marketing.

Our campaign focuses on three interesting points:

First, the fermentation of the ghost video. We edited the Indonesian rush-buying video creatively into a ghost video titled "【Oh No rush】Unlock a more magical rush-buying posture than that of Chinese aunties", and released it on the homepage of Bilibili [Ghost Channel] as the focus picture, and then ignited it through A-site and Weibo.

Ghost animal videos spread on B station

The entire video is based on the magical "OH NO" in the 23-second stock footage as the creative thread. The funny and silly brainwashing song quickly attracted a large number of viewers and received over 3 million clicks.

Second, we launched an H5 game online that allowed consumers to count money within a limited time. The H5 game screen was designed using the IP image of We Bare Bears, combining the warm and healing image of We Bare Bears with the pressure of the hot topic "Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" on Weibo at the time, giving this money counting game the meaning of releasing pressure.

Counting Money H5 Activity

The entire game targets consumers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Users who participate in the game and rank in the top ten of the score ranking list can use their scores to go to MINISO stores and participate in the "10 seconds to buy any product for free" activity. The "counting money" game mechanism is very interesting, and the free prize incentive has instantly set off a social platform for this h5 game, attracting more than 100,000 people to participate in the game.

Third, the store staged a 10-second campaign to clear out MINISO products. We selected the top 10 players in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, and asked them to go to MINISO direct stores through game information to participate in the 10-second free product grab event. The rules of the event are that consumers have 10 seconds to move the desired products to the designated counter, and the products successfully placed on the counter can be free of charge.

Because it was the first time we tried the form of rush purchase and free meal, it attracted a lot of attention from passers-by and fans’ sharing on social platforms, which also provided us with a good secondary dissemination.

Therefore, creating a topic requires the team to have extremely fast reaction speed and super coordination and execution capabilities from creativity, theme, content to details, so that consumers will find every point of this marketing event interesting. This will make it easy to detonate and promote the brand.

3. Hot spot reprocessing

Let’s take the battle between Tencent and Lao Gan Ma as an example.

The incident originated from a "Joint Marketing Cooperation Agreement" signed between Tencent and Lao Gan Ma that year.

At that time, Tencent agreed to use QQ Speed ​​and related resources to promote Lao Gan Ma chili oil, but after the advertisement was made, Lao Gan Ma delayed paying the advertising fee of 16.24 million yuan, so Tencent directly sued Lao Gan Ma.

However, due to a plot twist, Lao Gan Ma responded that it had never cooperated with Tencent, and Tencent was actually deceived, and the incident turned into a big drama.

The layman watches the excitement, while the expert watches the doorway. While enjoying the melon, let’s take a look at how Tencent cunningly processed this hot topic, whitewashed itself step by step, and made itself into a silly white goose?

In the first wave, Tencent first made a witty comment on Bilibili: The chili sauce at noon today suddenly didn’t smell good.

Soon after, the official Weibo account of "Silly Penguin" stamped itself as a naive person and started the topic #Tencent Thousand Bottles of Lao Gan Ma Seeking Clues About Scammers# to divert attention.

Tencent x Laoganma incident

The head of Tencent's public relations department even personally took part in the discussion, using a self-deprecating tone to say "You are such a fool" to create another wave of laughter. At the same time, he posted a picture of 10 bowls of rice with Lao Gan Ma in the cafeteria, and wrote "You should be more careful in the future!"

What’s even more amazing is that, following DingTalk’s example, Tencent also updated a video titled “I’m the silly penguin who ate fake chili sauce” on its official account on Bilibili, facing the ridicule of netizens in a way that was abject and self-deprecating…

In fact, the logic behind this drama has not been made clear at all, but because of Tencent's wave of self-deprecating operations, the focus of the incident has been blurred, and the spectators have been plunged into a "HAHAHAHAHA" carnival.

As for what the truth is, who cares?

Therefore, Tencent's seemingly strong brand fell into a trap and admitted defeat, but in fact it had a great strategy behind it. It not only whitewashed itself, but also gave itself a strong advertisement, killing two birds with one stone! In this hot topic, Tencent basically "wins by doing nothing", because no matter how it responds, it will attract a lot of attention.

For brand owners, how can they cleverly take advantage of this unexpected hot topic to promote their brand?

(1) Based on correct values.

The "Tencent Laoganma incident" is a public relations incident. No matter how to respond, we must be based on correct values, not avoid or hide the problem, and all "routines" and principles are inseparable from the word "sincerity".

(2) Respond quickly

Hot topics are time-sensitive. Grasping hot information at the first opportunity and making creative use of it will be of great value to brand communication.

(3) Topics should be interactive

Hot spot processing must also fully consider the user's sense of participation, because only by allowing users to participate in it will it be easier to achieve secondary dissemination of the topic.

Just like in this hot event, relying on the deep-rooted images of "copycat", "pay to play", "sue at the slightest disagreement", "Nanshan Pizza Hut" in the minds of the public, "Tencent is in trouble and everyone likes it" is popular with the public. In this case, Tencent might as well show weakness and admit its imperfections, establish the image of a "silly white goose", accept the ridicule of the whole network, and expose its grievances and embarrassment to the public.

Then, by creating voices that are favorable to themselves, they transform all disadvantages into enthusiasm that the audience is willing to see change and that they can harvest in large quantities - to put it bluntly, it is like cutting leeks, which is equivalent to handing a sickle to the user, and bringing a wave of hot marketing that is just right.

Finally, whether it is hunger marketing or event marketing, our goal is to get products off the shelves, into the lives of consumers, and stimulate their emotions with social scenes.

When a brand walks onto the traffic red carpet and stands under the spotlight, whether it can continue to gain traffic and win the hearts of consumers depends on the brand’s own long-term operational capabilities.

Author: Mulanjie, WeChat public account: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)