You have done so many successful brand cases, can you make us successful too?

Many companies or marketers often fall into a misunderstanding when doing brand marketing: if another brand has a hit product, can I also make a similar one? What channels and how much money other brands have invested, can I also do the same? However, we should not think about problems with a programmed mindset, but should first ask ourselves, what is our basic base? We should not blindly believe in success stories, because success can never be copied.

When many customers come to consult about cooperation, they often ask the following questions:

• Can you follow the ideas of XX (the leading brand in the industry) and create a hit product for us?
• XX has done a great job. Can you make a similar plan for us to achieve the same effect?
• What channels did XX invest in? How much did he invest? What was his ROI? Can we do the same?

…

In the final analysis, it can be summed up in one sentence: Is there a three-step method for success? Can we also follow this three-step method to achieve success?

My answer to this is always: No, it cannot be copied, you can only customize it and take the path that suits you. Our solutions cannot guarantee the success and popularity of our customers.

If you see another brand becoming famous overnight and plan to follow suit, my advice is: stop first, go back to the starting point, and sort out your own basics. Success cannot be copied, and you should not think about problems with a programmed mindset.

1. Why is it useless to study cases and routines?

The advertising and marketing industry is particularly fond of talking about routines and methods, such as: five steps to write a good copy; six steps to operate an e-commerce business; seven steps to post on Xiaohongshu; eight keys to bringing goods to Douyin...

More often than not, this is not a method, but an analytical framework like the 4Ps of marketing. It is a tool, not a path. It is impossible to achieve a certain effect by following it once. Since it is a tool, different people will get different results when using it.

Companies have studied many successful cases and strategies, and followed the programmed actions, but still have no effect. I think there are two main reasons:

The first is to only see the surface and fail to grasp the key to competition.

The same is true for the transition from online to offline. If you see others doing offline business, you should also enter supermarkets and convenience stores. If you only regard offline as a channel and do not understand offline consumption scenarios and user purchasing logic, then this part of the money will basically be wasted.

For example, I saw this brand of braised snacks while shopping a few days ago:

In the online business, they know how to use attractive food pictures to attract people to click in, but they ignore this point in the offline business. There are also big problems with the level of information conveyed on the packaging. There is no attraction, the category name is very small, and it is unclear what is sold. There is no unique reason to buy. Compared with the packaging of other brands on the right, it is definitely at a disadvantage.

If this continues for a long time, poor sales will lead to the company withdrawing from offline distribution channels with higher profit margins.

This is a key difference between online and offline - user purchasing scenarios are different.

Online, you can use rich pictures, videos, and detail pages to introduce products, but offline, you only have packaging. If the packaging does not catch the eye and cannot convey effective information within three seconds, then the packaging is ineffective.

In addition, for fast-moving consumer goods, the cost of online listing is low, and multiple SKUs can be designed to present the structure of attracting products, main products, and profitable products. You can also reach the target group by buying precise traffic.

However, offline distribution channels are based on the concept of a single product. If you put it there, all kinds of people will see it. If it cannot meet universal needs, the product is too niche and difficult to buy. This is also the reason why many strange snacks and niche products were very popular online before, but they could not be sold offline.

Secondly, they don’t know what problems the tools and methods really solve and they just copy them.

The slogans of mineral water may focus on the water source, deep purification, trace elements and minerals, taste, tone and identity. The slogans are different because they need to match the endowment of the enterprise and adapt to the product positioning, price, channel and consumer groups. In short, slogans are tools, but the problems they solve are different.

After the Jimi case was released, some people said that the new logo we designed is not a super symbol and has no cultural matrix. This makes sense, but they don’t know that the main problem we solved by upgrading the logo is the sense of quality and tone, that is, it no longer looks like a private label product, so that mothers can trust the brand and think it is a big brand after seeing it, which is more critical.

Previously, a client who made sparkling water said that his product was made with real fruit juice and vitamins, and was better than Yuanqi Forest. Seeing Yuanqi Forest started with online promotion, I followed suit and put a lot of ads on Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Weibo, but the effect was not good. Later, I started to sell products through live streaming. I could sell some products through live streaming, but I couldn’t sell them without live streaming.

I told him that Yuanqi Forest, which is recognized as a representative of new consumption, already had hundreds of thousands of offline retail outlets before it became popular online, and the number exceeded 1 million two years ago. It took Nongfu Spring more than 20 years to reach more than 2 million outlets.

The key to competition in fast-moving consumer goods lies in offline channels. If you don’t understand this and just follow the trend and make 0-sugar, 0-fat sparkling water, no matter how outstanding the product is or how many internet celebrities and KOLs recommend it, you will only be paying tuition to the market.

Yuanqi Forest is doing online marketing to build brand awareness, which means that offline channels have been running smoothly. Online social media placement solves the problem of brand awareness, reaching new groups, creating new content, and finding new scenarios. It cannot be regarded as the main sales channel because beverage products are purchased casually, and offline is the key battlefield.

When a company does business management, including when we do consulting, we must learn some cases, tools and methods. However, if we don’t learn the essence and don’t have first-hand verification, and only rely on what others say and second-hand information for guidance, then problems are bound to arise.

The biggest cost of learning is not time or money, but learning the wrong knowledge, putting it into practice on this basis, and finally paying for your own wrong cognition.

2. Before expanding outward, ask yourself what your basic foundation is?

Consumer goods companies are very concerned about new channels and new strategies because innovation is too fast and competition is too fierce. Among the entrepreneurs I have met, the first one who loves to learn is the restaurant owner, and the second is the consumer goods owner. I often see them attending various big-name summits and learning various traffic fission courses.

Because new channels gather new groups of people and bring new demands. The birth of a new channel may bring about a group of new brands.

Looking back at the new concepts in the marketing field in recent years, such as growth hacking, distribution fission, private domain traffic, content seeding, and live streaming, they are also innovations at the channel level.

New channels often mean a window period, which is the so-called "channel bonus". But the bonus will disappear sooner or later, and the advantages built on information asymmetry will soon be overtaken. Therefore, new consumer brands can only look for and rush to the next window.

Sometimes it’s better to change your thinking. Instead of chasing trends and relying on external forces for growth, you might as well ask yourself a question first: What is the basic foundation of our brand?

The so-called basic market means that the user needs can be met through stable and high-quality products, and this demand has been verified. The product has a reason to be repurchased, and users can buy it in specific scenarios and channels, thus establishing a unique brand mindset.

If the basic foundation is not well established, relying solely on external traffic is like drinking poison to quench thirst.

After the company opened, I contacted a friend who was doing live streaming e-commerce in Hangzhou, hoping to ask him to recommend clients. My friend told me that in their circle, brand marketing and strategic planning are not easy to do, and most customers only care about the ability to bring goods and data returns. But today, live streaming is not easy to do either.

I asked those customers what happened later, and I learned that they basically returned to offline. In the past, many customers would invest in a few live broadcasts, because without live broadcasts, there would be no sales. Later, as traffic costs rose and data declined, many customers stopped doing live broadcasts because investors did not support them. The remaining ones are either start-ups that invested hundreds of thousands of yuan to test the waters, or supply chain brands that sell products under their own brand at extremely low costs. They all have one thing in common: except for being cheap, they have no special features.

Big brands have a basic market, and they open new channels to explore and increase sales. Even if they don’t open new channels, it will not affect their overall sales. For start-up brands, if they bet on new channels when their basic market is unstable, it is often a gamble.

The medium is the information, and the medium filters the audience. If a brand is always associated with labels such as internet celebrities and product influencers, and cannot enter people's daily lives and become a stable solution, then it will not be able to escape the fate of internet celebrities - quick birth and quick death.

After the new consumption boom, a large number of new brands have collapsed. A very important reason for this is the neglect of building a basic base: insights into user needs, exploration of product consumption scenarios, building of product core competitiveness, establishing channels, and designing reasons for user repurchase.

Without solid underlying thinking, traffic and growth will only magnify your mistakes, and once you get on the highway, there is no turning back.

As for what a senior online said, building a consumer brand from 0 to 1 is easy, simple and quick, and there is a general formula: 5,000 articles on Xiaohongshu + 2,000 questions and answers on Zhihu + a live broadcast by a super anchor = a new consumer brand.

Today, this formula has also failed.

To this I would like to say: If the core driving force behind a brand’s growth comes from programmed traffic purchasing, and others can also copy it by spending money, then this brand essentially has no core competitiveness.

3. Don’t trust success stories. Success can never be replicated.

We have served many successful brands and done many successful cases. But I tell you the truth: these clients can also succeed without us. It’s just that they don’t present the solution process and key actions as cases like consulting companies do. Consulting is actually the icing on the cake. There are still many hidden champions who make a fortune in silence.

Why do we need marketing consulting? The answer is to reduce the cost of trial and error. Enterprises understand production and operation, but they are weak in marketing and communication, and are willing to spend money to find experts to solve this problem.

We have helped large companies upgrade their brands and have also worked on successful projects from 0 to 1. However, these projects only made us more proficient in the practical operation of tools and the application of methods. When we start new projects, we have a clear idea of ​​how much we can help customers and how much we can help them. No one dares to say that they will help customers succeed 100%.

Similarly, companies should not believe that if they catch the bonus pig, they can also fly. Seizing new channels can indeed gain some first-mover advantages, but if the advantages cannot be transformed into competitiveness, then others will soon have the advantages.

I have come into contact with some beauty brands that started as WeChat merchants in the early days, seized the supply chain cost advantages and WeChat channels early on, accumulated a large number of users and funds, and then switched to self-owned product research and development and traditional channel management, returning to the right path and crossing the cycle. From WeChat brands, they upgraded to counter brands.

Why are companies still so keen on new channels and new ways of playing? After the growth of the Douyin platform was limited, the most popular platform is Xiaohongshu. Consumer goods have flocked in, and people who create personal IPs, paid communities, and sell courses have also gone there. A friend who tasted the sweetness of promoting Xiaohongshu some time ago suggested that I should also go there, saying that many KOLs and consulting companies have also settled in, and the number of fans is growing rapidly.

It’s because the secrets to success they promote are simple, quick, and easy to use, and even a novice can do it. For example, the seven-step method to create a hit product, half an hour a day, and you can easily lose 20 pounds in a month, and you can make a stable income of over 10,000 yuan from your side job by making short videos for a month...

From ancient times to the present, in all walks of life, the routine templates are almost the same, and there are always people who continue to do so and never get tired of it.

For most people and businesses, there are no secrets or shortcuts. It’s just about persisting in doing the right things and repeating simple things.

Some people also say that capital can replicate success. If you have money, what channels can’t you do? What spokespersons can’t you hire? Indeed, capital is also a factor in success. But if you look at Evergrande Ice Spring, even if the backup funds are sufficient, if you don’t follow the basic market logic when making a bottle of mineral water, you will also encounter Waterloo.

Capital can magnify advantages, provided that the basic foundation has been forged. What capital cannot catalyze is your core competitiveness, and this competitiveness can take you through the cycle.

4. Two final words

I rejected a client some time ago. This client runs a fitness chain with five stores. Thanks to the large base of fitness people in Beijing and the increased health awareness of people after the epidemic, the number of his members has grown rapidly since the New Year. But the model is still traditional: selling membership cards and buying private lessons.

Customers know that I have served Leke before: During the epidemic, Leke’s store openings increased against the trend, and now it has more than 1,000 stores, making it the fitness brand with the largest number of stores in China.

He also wants to upgrade the brand and increase traffic to achieve an effect where the stores are popular and in short supply, and then open them up for franchising.

I told him that Leke's underlying model was different from his and could not be copied. In addition, even if we provided services, we could not guarantee a hot effect. In the end, because of the different concepts, I took the initiative to give up discussing cooperation.

I know that even if we sign the cooperation agreement, his expectations are very high, and they cannot be lowered before the actual implementation. He will only make higher demands on us. If they cannot be achieved, the cooperation between both parties will be very painful and will end in a bad mood.

Of course, the company wants to sign new customers and create industry cases, but we can only cooperate on projects that conform to the basic laws of business. If you don't follow the basic logic of the industry and create miracles, you can't do it no matter how much money you are paid.

The success of every person and every brand cannot be replicated. If there is any secret to success, I think it should be:

Respect the laws, seize opportunities, be down-to-earth, seek truth from facts, adapt to local conditions, play to one's strengths and avoid one's weaknesses, persevere, and make breakthroughs and innovations.

These are the common points and necessary conditions for success.