How can brands create explosive social currency?

The author of this article introduces in detail the methods of creating popular short-term social currency and long-term social currency, which will help brands create popular social currency.

If you want to win over consumers in the era of "social is king", you need to use effective marketing to give brands/products/marketing social attributes, achieve the connection between users, consumption, and usage scenarios, arouse users' emotions, and expand the voice through social fission, ultimately achieving the purpose of dynamic sales.

Some brands create social currencies to meet the spiritual needs of users, such as the medals of the Keep sports app; some brands create them to satisfy users' purpose of showing off, attracting users' attention through high appearance, stimulating users' taste buds with healing products, achieving a double impact of vision and taste, and seducing users to share while achieving sales, such as the cherry blossom flavored milk tea launched by a tea brand.

Obviously, the important factor driving users to buy is the social currency that brands give to products/marketing. This is an important tool for brands to arouse users' purchasing emotions and an important lever for brands to leverage consumption and traffic. How should social currency that can link users, brands and sales be created?

First of all, social currency is divided into short-term social currency and long-term social currency. Whether brand marketing can trigger discussion and dissemination and stimulate consumption depends on whether the brand can provide users with richer social currency.

1. Short-term social currency, relying on novelty

Undoubtedly, short-term social currency can attract and activate users, and what makes short-term social currency effective is the novelty of the marketing content created by the brand, such as seasonal cherry blossom designs, limited products co-branded with well-known IPs, and highly therapeutic marketing to make users more interested.

1. The First Law of Attraction: Novelty

Creating a sense of novelty satisfies users’ curiosity and helps brands gain traffic. In today’s market homogenization, users’ aesthetic fatigue is an indisputable fact. Brands that know how to continuously stimulate users’ curiosity can help people find more fun in the details, making novelty the key to brand communication growth.

That is, breaking the inherent perception of the user about the brand, and on the basis of catering to the user's preferences, attracting people's attention and participation in the topic discussion through more novel designs or building fresh topics, while forming a richer new discussion, forming a situation where topics create new topics, so that the brand can have more social currency. For example, in the joint marketing of Luckin Coffee and Line Puppy, the brand redefined the meaning of "dog", making the lonely single "dog" transformed into a love with pink bubbles and sweetness, and Luckin Coffee also attracted the attention of users through novel content.

At the same time, the paper bags and cup sleeves jointly launched by the brand have become the source of inspiration for users' secondary creations, and "new products" such as love story picture books, storage boxes, mobile phone cases, windmills, etc. have become the materials for users to spread and play on their own. It can be seen that the first rule for a brand to be attractive is to know how to create freshness. Luckin Coffee, which has redefined the meaning of being a single dog, has successfully used topics to lead to new discussion content, winning more traffic for the brand and extending the marketing broadcast cycle.

2. Attraction and intimacy strategy: brand personification

If novelty is the key to attracting users’ attention, then an important way to shorten the distance between brands and users is to personalize the brand. Brands can enhance their affinity by establishing a closer relationship with users and showing their presence.

At the same time, brand personification with warmth, personality and emotion can also implant its own sense of symbolism and warmth into the user's psychology. In addition to realizing the remote interaction between the brand and the user, it allows more users to feel that the brand is a flesh-and-blood "friend" who understands them better.

At this time, users' sharing is more like "showing off" their old friends to more people, a natural expression of true feelings, and a comfortable lifestyle. At the same time, personalized brand marketing can easily weaken the nature of advertising and make people appreciate the brand's marketing behavior.

3. Important way to attract customers: creating consumption scenarios

Build a marketing scenario that better understands users and helps with product conversion.

The familiar scene marketing often serves the purpose of novelty and brand personalization. Scene marketing will subtly implant the brand/product into the user's life and work, so that "if I have XX" will arouse the consumer's association, stimulate the user's desire to buy, and make dynamic sales possible.

At the same time, scene marketing can also help brands build longer-term social currency. Brands can attract users' attention by building their own attractiveness, reduce users' resistance and increase their own affinity by personalization, and then help brands achieve effective reach through rich marketing scenes, so that more people are willing to actively share their lifestyles, bringing more tap-water-style dissemination to the brand.

2. Long-term social currency relies on content

Short-term social currency can create novelty through appearance and novel marketing concepts, allowing marketing to play a greater role. The long-term social currency of a brand focuses on long-term deep cultivation to occupy the minds of users, making every marketing of the brand worth looking forward to. At the same time, it can also help the brand accumulate users and build a unique brand asset.

1. Adhere to the principle of content being king and continue to produce content with strong brand characteristics

What supports the long-term effectiveness of a brand's social currency is its unique content. And those brands that insist on content being king are enjoying the dividends that long-term social currency brings to the brand.

For example, Nongfu Spring, which sells water because of its creativity, uses the most beautiful advertising films to bring users into the brand's beautiful ecological environment, allowing more people to be "conquered" by the brand's advertising. Recently, Nongfu Spring has once again launched a wonderful Changbai Mountain series of advertisements, implanting the brand's natural, healthy and environmentally friendly product concepts into the minds of users.

The ads still use good looks and novelty to win the hearts of users. The rarely visited natural environment, precious plants and animals, and other content make more people willing to let down their guard and appreciate the ads, turning watching ads into a happy thing. If the content is remarkable and users are happy to watch it, then the advertising effect is self-evident.

With the accumulation of communication content, the brand has also subtly built its own moat, and occupied the minds of users through differentiated content, successfully widening the gap between itself and its competitors. It has also turned content into a brand communication asset, making "Nongfu Spring = healthier = beautiful advertising film" a fixed communication symbol in people's minds.

2. Incubate cultural IP and achieve long-termism

It can be said that one of the ways for brands to create long-term social currency is to stick to the same theme and continuously output content that can attract users. Incubating cultural IP is to occupy the minds of users through content, form user stickiness, and build longer-lasting brand assets for brands. It is also another way for brands to create long-term social currency. In the era of social media, the representative of creating cultural IP that successfully occupied the minds of users is Mixue Ice City. The brand brought the Snow King IP to users through repeated screen swiping, allowing the Snow King's stalks to successfully occupy the minds of users.

From the magical brainwashing of "Mixue Ice City, sweet" to the visual impact of "Snow King turns black", to the cute appearance of Snow King IP, in addition to the brand's marketing content being deeply rooted in people's hearts, it is also inseparable from the secondary creation of users and their enthusiastic participation in topic discussions. Mixue Ice City has also swept the Internet with its topicality, strong interaction and communication, and successfully implanted the cute image of Snow King IP into the minds of users, becoming a source of happiness for young people. Not only that, users are even willing to become brand public relations for Mixue Ice City.

When someone said that Michelle Ice City was low-end, many supporters of the Snow King IP took the initiative to help Michelle Ice City with public relations, saying, "I don't mind your poverty, and you don't mind my low-end!" From passively accepting advertisements to enthusiastically participating in discussions, and then to voluntarily doing public relations for the brand, the change in user mentality and behavior proves that the Snow King IP is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Michelle Ice City has also subtly highlighted the characteristics of the brand's main focus on the sinking market, and successfully gained waves of goodwill, making more people willing to pay for the brand.

3. Gain insights into users’ daily lives and bring them into the scenarios set by the brand

Still insisting on focusing on content, brands that have insight into the user's living conditions and understand the user's consumption psychology will bring users into the marketing scenarios set by the brand, so that users will immediately think of the brand when they have needs. RIO Weixun is one of the brands that has successfully achieved sales by creating consumption scenarios to stimulate users' desire to buy.

After understanding the lonely living environment of users, the brand launched "Tips for One" to reach users' usage scenarios, allowing more people to find that tipsiness is a more relaxed state of life, a light luxury and a small happiness with a strong sense of ritual. Therefore, when consumers feel lonely, they will immediately think of the romantic "Tips for One", and then the consumer's purchase behavior becomes a natural thing.

In an age when anything can be posted on WeChat Moments, RIO Weixun allows consumers to share on their own initiative. When consumers share their lives on WeChat Moments, it becomes the brand's social currency, and builds a bridge for the brand to communicate with more users, thus achieving longer-term brand communication.

Write to the end

The essence of social currency is the circulation attribute generated by the brand through the self-propagation of users, that is, the brand symbol/product is constantly mentioned on social media/friend circles, forming the social currency expected by the brand. At the same time, every appearance of social currency has evolved into a new opportunity for communication between brands and consumers, making brand marketing more than just traffic.

Author: Mr. Bingfa

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