Brand greed, anger, and ignorance

In the context of modern marketing, if a brand wants to be successful, it must have precepts, concentration, and wisdom, as well as greed, anger, and ignorance. The only way is to strategically stick to "precepts, concentration, and wisdom" and do enough "greed, anger, and ignorance" in marketing. The author of the following article expressed his views on marketing, let's take a look.

01

I believe that many people who are engaged in business have heard of the name "Carnegie". The golden sentences in his "King of Chicken Soup" "How to Win Friends and Influence People" have long appeared on Douyin, women's forums and speakers. The main purpose of the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is to tell people that if people want to succeed, the road to success is full of thorns due to the weaknesses of human nature. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is to tell people to face up to some "weaknesses" in everyone's nature, and to adapt to these "weaknesses" of others with enthusiastic praise, understanding and tolerance. Only in this way can we effectively avoid some misunderstandings in interacting with others and gain support in family and career, because everyone has defects of one kind or another, and only by being tolerant can we recognize each other.

02

In the eyes of dark marketers, they are really taking advantage of these "weaknesses of human nature" and doing marketing crazily, infinitely magnifying the desires and greed hidden in the human body, which will also turn our society into an extremely utilitarian society. Under the control of the algorithm, what you want to watch, what you want to hear, and what you agree with, the algorithm will constantly push it to you, and countless people have become "marketing brains", "TikTok brains", and "Facebook brains".

03

There is a classic "dark marketing" short story: There is a training institution in Beijing that mainly provides etiquette and temperament training courses, so it put out an advertisement, "30 days, let you become a woman with temperament". After this advertisement was put out, there were very few applicants, so the training institution consulted a "dark marketing" expert, who said that your advertisement was a failure. Even if women really have no temperament, they are unwilling to admit it, because they fully tap into their inner desires and see their real needs to become "temperamental". Therefore, the "dark marketing" expert changed the advertisement for him, and the advertisement became " 30 days, teach you how to marry a rich man". As soon as the advertisement came out, the registration phone was immediately flooded.

04

Buddha said: Keep "precepts, concentration, and wisdom" and reject "greed, anger, and ignorance". But in dark marketing, it is precisely to do "greed, anger, and ignorance".

05

Take the diamond ring that modern women buy when they get married, for example. Diamond rings are supposed to symbolize true love and commitment , but in the dark marketers’ eyes, they constantly push women ’s vanity to the extreme , leveraging their vanity to make women pay for it. From the size, quality, and color of diamonds—fine and professional grading, they also invented terms such as “pigeon egg” and “eight stars and eight swords”, constantly building the threshold for showing off and the ladder for comparison.

06

Let’s take the Double 11 of a certain cat as an example. Originally, shopping is for “enjoying the fun of shopping” , but in the eyes of dark marketers, they firmly grasp the human psychology of being born to like to get a bargain, target the “little greed” of consumers, and with the cooperation of big data, give discounts from time to time, get a 30 yuan discount across stores, get an additional discount for three items, and get a 25 yuan discount if the balance is 40 yuan - the meticulous design takes advantage of you who love to get a bargain, and then the sales of Double 11 hit a new high.

07

Education is supposed to make people grow up happily , but dark marketers have grasped the anxiety of parents. Other people's children are in Ivy League schools, so they should not lose at the starting line. If you are the last one in a small class, it will be a lifetime mistake. Children who don't learn piano may become bad...

08

But in the context of modern marketing, if a brand wants to succeed, it needs to have precepts, concentration, and wisdom, as well as greed, anger, and delusion. What should it do? The only way is to strategically stick to "precepts, concentration, and wisdom" and do enough "greed, anger, and delusion" in marketing. When Luo Yonghao's Hammer T1 was first launched, in order to avoid being a monkey, he was unwilling to set the price of his phone at 2999 yuan, but insisted on 3000 yuan. He believed that companies that set the price at 2999 or 1999 yuan were shameless. After the disastrous failure of T1, when T2 was launched, he quietly had to succumb to reality and set the price of the phone at 2999 yuan or 1999 yuan, which were so-called "monkey-playing" prices.

09

In marketing, it is necessary to awaken customers' yearning while stimulating their actions. If there are only precepts, concentration, and wisdom, brand goodwill cannot be realized; if there are only greed, anger, and ignorance, it will become PUA-style marketing, which will not go far or last long. But precepts, concentration, and wisdom and greed, anger, and ignorance cannot be reversed. You cannot blindly appeal to human weaknesses at the brand level, nor can you talk about the beauty of the world when selling. Temporary misalignment has a miraculous effect, but in the long run it will die.

10

Goodwill makes people trust, and pain makes people act (those who are interested can read "Great brands have mastered the ultimate art of "persuasion"" at the bottom of the article. This article has an in-depth analysis of pain and desire). Brands accumulate goodwill, and sales pinch pain. Trust may not be expressed for ten years, but hatred can't wait to take revenge tonight. In the business world, only with sufficient "economic foundation" as support can companies make more good and beautiful investments. Why do branding and sales need to be done at the same time? Because brands promise good things in the future and continue to deliver, while sales solve the pain of the present. Let companies invest in beauty.

11

In marketing, we talk about the 4Ps of marketing, namely, product, price, place, and promotion. As an indispensable part of the 4Ps, promoting sales is the only way to establish the 4Ps of marketing. From the perspective of communication, brand promotion needs positive guidance, while sales are driven by pain points and desires. It is not enough for a brand to just make people feel good; it is even more not enough for a brand to only sell. Treating promotion as a rhetoric will not solve sales problems. Treating rhetoric as promotion may have a counterproductive effect.

12

Huiren Shenbao's brand advertisement can be said to be a textbook-level advertisement for promoting sales. Huiren Shenbao's advertisement selected the most sunny and brightest scene of "morning exercise" to inspire the truth, goodness, and beauty of human nature and the yearning for a better life, in order to gain the interest and goodwill of potential customers. However, it is just planting grass, which cannot make the elderly pay to pull it out immediately. Goodwill is not enough! So how does Huiren Shenbao convert it at the sales level?

13

Soft bribe: Give two bottles to the elderly leader for free. If you buy through him, you can also get a box of eggs. Repeatedly say that this is the welfare he brings to the small group. What is this taking advantage of? Petty greed and vanity. Let the opinion leader get benefits and face, and have a good word, this is to break the ice. Regret medicine: Limited time and price, this is the standard of the sales process. If you miss this village, you will never get this shop again. If you don’t make a small bargain, you will lose it. If you don’t make a small bargain, you will feel that you have lost. Everyone has the fear of losing. Buy now, so as not to regret it in the future. Herd effect: Name and say that so-and-so next door has bought it, and so-and-so who exercises with you in the morning has also bought it, to arouse the desire to follow the crowd and the desire to compare, which has been tried and tested. Soft intimidation: This trick is very insidious, use it with caution. When chatting, inadvertently reveal the information that an elderly person fell and was hospitalized. This is soft intimidation, which arouses potential fear. The elderly are most sensitive to this kind of news. Of course, there is a bottom line issue, which cannot be fabricated or used as the main means.

14

If we regard the yearning for beauty as the A side of marketing, and people's pain points and desires as the B side, then we can use some methods to convert from B to A to conduct marketing. The effectiveness of "B to A" is far better than pure A side marketing. Pure A side marketing is not lethal enough, unless you are already a brand worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Only then do you have the strength to only focus on the A side.

Jiang Xiaobai's "Solemn Statement" series is a way of "B to A". The statement seems to acknowledge all the B-side comments, but in fact it is to fully release the B-side emotions through jokes. First empathize and then give a correct answer, and finally launch the "product statement", which reverses from B-side to A-side, winning a large wave of traffic and goodwill. In the past, there was a very active advertising person named Luo Dazuo on the Chinese Advertising Forum. We often discussed advertising online. He did a classic B-to-A real estate advertisement for a place called "Merrill Champagne Town". He integrated the seven deadly sins of the B-side of human nature: pride, jealousy, laziness, gluttony, greed, lust, anger... with romantic culture and craftsmanship, and transformed them into seven beautiful life experiences.

15

In addition, we must remember that we must believe that the world is beautiful, and don't always market the B side of the product. In the short term, marketing is greater than brand and product; in the long term, brand and product must be greater than marketing. The B side of human nature can be "B to A", and once the B side of the brand and product is established, there is almost no possibility of "B to A". We must use the B side with caution. The higher the "B content", the greater the effectiveness, but the greater the moral risk and technical difficulty. The B side of human nature is close to what Freud called the "id", which is stronger, more impulsive and more powerful than the A side. The energy of the "id" is powerful. Because it has been suppressed in daily life, it has accumulated huge rebound force, lurking at all times to find opportunities to attack, and once released, it will burst out with the power of a flood and beast. The B side of human nature craves instant satisfaction, so it can be transformed immediately. This is the underlying logic that B-side marketing can be established.

16

We see through the sins and evils of human nature, but we must still believe that the world is beautiful. In the business world, the best way to believe is to "embrace" it. Only those who "embrace" it can survive.

Author: Liu Yichun

Source: WeChat public account "Liu Yichun's Brand Business Innovation (ID: shangyeyiguohui)"