How to make a brand younger?

Times are changing, and brands need to change too. After a brand enters the mature stage, as marketing efforts and popularity increase, it will experience a low growth rate. The purpose of brand rejuvenation is to allow the brand to enter a period of rapid growth again. So how can a brand be made younger? Let's take a look.

01

Many companies believe that the reason for brand aging is that their brands lack the personality, temperament and language style of young people in the marketing and communication process.

But the actual problem faced by the brand is that not only young people are unwilling to buy it, even those born in the 1970s and 1980s are unwilling to buy it, as they think the brand is too old and cannot keep up with the times. When Nianzhi was providing brand innovation services for the century-old brand Ju Heung Garden, it found during consumer interviews that when it asked consumers why they no longer consumed Ju Heung Garden products, a 70-year-old consumer actually gave feedback saying, "Although I grew up eating Ju Heung Garden products, the current Ju Heung Garden brand is too old-fashioned and cannot keep up with the times."

In a situation like this, what’s the point of changing into a set of internet celebrity clothes to attract the post-90s and post-00s? If changing the language style can solve the problem of brand rejuvenation, then marketing will be too easy. The lack of young people’s personality, temperament, and language style is only superficial. The key reason is that the company does not have a deep and thorough understanding of brand aging.

The reason for this has a lot to do with the fact that brands originated in the West. Many of the words we use now are translated from English or Japanese. People's misunderstanding of brand aging stems from translation problems, just like Marketing is translated into marketing, which leads many people to mistakenly believe that marketing is sales. Many people think that marketing is a scam like describing rotten apples as biological fermentation and selling combs to monks.

In fact, real marketing starts with the product, finding out customer needs and then producing products. The purpose of marketing is to make sales unnecessary. Most of the marketing issues discussed in the market now are sales issues.

Brand aging is actually an anthropomorphic term, which refers to the situation that after a company's brand enters the mature stage, as its marketing efforts and brand awareness increase, its sales growth rate slows down or even declines, and the brand enters a state of high visibility and low growth rate.

02

Brand rejuvenation does not mean making your brand look like an internet celebrity brand or using so-called youthful terms, because these things may not necessarily be the temperament and tone of your brand itself.

Image, language, design, and communication are just the appearance of brand rejuvenation. The core of brand rejuvenation is to make old brands that are experiencing growth fatigue re-enter a new rapid growth cycle and return to a high growth rate. The specific approach to brand rejuvenation will become clear when the brand rejuvenation project is carried out around the two indicators of increasing brand awareness and achieving a high growth rate.

03

One of the strategies for brand rejuvenation: achieving healthy generational replacement of customers through market repositioning.

The age structure of users of each brand is different. As the brand develops, it is necessary to maintain older customers while also paying attention to younger customers.

However, these two types of customers often have different cultural concepts and consumption habits. It is difficult to satisfy the consumption motivations of both types of customers through one improvement strategy. At this time, it is necessary to evaluate the market needs of each age group and reposition the market.

04

The second strategy for brand rejuvenation: launching full-cycle customer relationship management.

As the consumption environment and social culture change, customers' consumption motivations will change. If brands fail to understand the changes in the sense of the times and consumption motivations, they will lose customers. Therefore, brands need to adapt to the changes in customers, constantly change and upgrade, and maintain customer relationships throughout the entire cycle.

05

The third strategy for brand rejuvenation: follow the theory of brand evolution, conduct brand life cycle management and evolution, launch brand extension and contraction, and carry out brand rejuvenation projects from the customer's perspective.

No matter how well a brand or a product develops, it will eventually hit a ceiling and become difficult to meet the complex and ever-changing market demands. The purpose of brand life cycle management and evolution is to find the second growth curve.

This involves creating or acquiring new brands, or cutting off brands or products that are not doing well and have become a burden, in order to maintain sufficient cash flow. At the same time, it involves upgrading the brand to be younger from the perspective of customers.

06

Brand rejuvenation cannot be done in a self-contained way. It is necessary to attach importance to user participation: when customers have problems using products, the first thing they do is to contact customer service. Poor communication with customer service will lead to bad reviews and loss of customers.

Some time ago, some users complained about the difficulty in contacting customer service on Tencent products, so netizens followed suit and asked, "Does Tencent have customer service?" In fact, when customers make suggestions, it is a process of two-way communication. How to respond to customers' suggestions is the key to brand change.

Traditionally, brands are owned by companies, and customers are just consumers. However, brands today are shared by companies and customers. Brands that cannot integrate with customers are likely to become outdated due to their indifference to the times.

07

To make your brand younger, you need to integrate it into the life scenes of your target customer groups: There is an instant noodle brand in Japan that makes the middle of the instant noodles into a groove shape. When customers cook noodles and beat eggs, the eggs fall into the groove of the instant noodles, giving them the appearance of the sun.

Customers will be surprised to take photos and humorously explain that "I ate sunny-side-up eggs today." The sense of life is to express thoughts and feelings about life from a novel, euphemistic and humorous perspective in real and boring life.

With the improvement of social productivity, product quality is no longer scarce for consumers, but the brand's sense of life is scarce. In this regard, many Internet celebrity brands have done very well, allowing their products to appear in different scenarios and become an indispensable part of life.

08

Brand rejuvenation requires making good use of existing user consensus: consensus is the recognition of group culture and the brand power that unites people. Want Want is an old brand in the snack industry that has influenced a generation, but it has also encountered the problem of brand aging.

In recent years, Want Want has launched larger snacks. QQ candies have become larger, small steamed buns have become larger, snow cakes and rice crackers have also become larger. Li Ziming, a student in the third grade sixth class in the Want Want milk commercial, has also become teacher Li Ziming in the third grade sixth class.

From the products to the characters in the advertisements, it reflects that the customers have also grown up. This has a strong appeal to customers who have shared experiences. These customers have a common understanding of the times and a resonance with the times. Want Want has become a partner-level brand.

09

When old brands are working on their brand rejuvenation efforts, they need to avoid certain misunderstandings and pitfalls, because sometimes it is easy for us to make serious business judgments based on our intuition. For example, the brand is aging, mainly because our user base is aging, so we should enter the youth market. Such "emotional" thinking can easily lead to the failure of a company's brand rejuvenation project.

10

Avoid pitfalls when targeting young people: Be cautious when entering the youth market. Brands cannot achieve rejuvenation by simply catering to young people, but facing the booming youth market, brands can easily lose their minds. Traps always fall from the sky in the guise of pie in the sky.

Back to the basic situation in China, the people born in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are the main groups in Chinese society. Their careers and marriages are stable, their consumption needs are extensive and their purchasing power is strong. However, the number of people born in the 1990s and 2000s is relatively small, their career development has just started, and although their consumption desire is strong, their purchasing power is generally insufficient. Not every category is dominated by young people, and not every brand deserves to take young people as its core market.

Hema Fresh's target customers are mainly white-collar workers aged 20-35, most of whom are single, not very price sensitive, prefer small packages, freshness and no need to store, and are accustomed to placing orders through apps. Hema Fresh's product features are very consistent with the needs of young customers.

As a representative of traditional supermarkets, Carrefour’s customers are mainly women in their 40s, who value cost-effectiveness, have more disposable time, and like to go shopping. However, due to its anxiety about growth, Carrefour fell into the trap of the young people’s market, built its own APP, and deliberately catered to young people. However, due to the mismatch between corporate resources and young people’s characteristics, it not only failed to attract high-quality young customers, but also lost many old customers to Pinduoduo’s low-price temptation.

So, is the youth market a good business opportunity? On the one hand, despite the test of the epidemic, China is still developing, and the consumption willingness and consumption ability of contemporary young people are generally stronger than those of the previous generation. On the other hand, there is a blank cognitive dividend in the youth market.

The blank recognition bonus is that consumers, due to their youth or remote information environment, have received little brand information and have not yet formed a fixed brand recognition and preference. Relatively speaking, it is easier for brands to capture the minds of these customers and obtain long-term benefits.

However, considering the macro demographic factors, the youth market is not optimistic. The birth rate in China and even the world continues to decline, and there are fewer and fewer young people. However, there are more and more entrepreneurs in the youth market. In 10 years, the youth market will form a situation where there are more wolves and less meat. Even if you are at the forefront of the market, you may not be able to fly. After all, there are too many pigs and not enough typhoons.

China is gradually entering an aging era. In recent years, China's population dependency ratio was 5/14, that is, 500 million people did not work and 900 million people worked. However, 15 years later, the population dependency ratio was reversed, with 900 million people not working and 500 million people working.

In order to maintain the current level of wealth in society, the social value created by each young person in the future must be twice that of today. These phenomena are also worthy of attention from today's brands. Although young talents are the future, what is more important is that only by surviving can there be a future.

11

Pitfalls to avoid when targeting brand rejuvenation: Try to avoid marketing ideas that have no strategic value.

In the past two years, brands that are transforming themselves into young people have been most interested in marketing creativity. For example, cross-border joint ventures and IP cooperation are euphemistically called "marketing trends." However, marketing creativity that does not meet the current brand development issues and has no scientific basis will not only fail to improve the brand and performance, but will also waste marketing resources.

Many brands waste countless manpower, material resources and resources when engaging in joint ventures, but sales have not increased much. When we are creative, we must think about whether the creativity has strategic significance for the brand. Kotler mentioned in "Marketing Management" that there are four purposes of communication: creating category demand, increasing brand awareness, shaping brand image, and prompting consumer willingness.

In fact, the order of these four purposes coincides with the brand life cycle. At different stages, the key issues of the brand are different, and the purpose of communication is of course different. Under different strategic considerations, we just need to make enough creativity that fits the strategy, and then persist and continuously improve. There are many marketing tricks, but no sales growth. This is what we need to avoid as much as possible when rejuvenating the brand.

12

Pitfalls to avoid when targeting brand rejuvenation: Don’t be obsessed with precise traffic and performance advertising.

After determining the brand rejuvenation plan, the brand needs to spread the word to customers. At this time, whether to purchase precise traffic and performance advertising becomes an important issue. In fact, precise traffic, performance advertising, and the integration of brand and effect can easily make brands suffer from marketing myopia.

13

Finally, I would like to remind you again that the purpose of brand rejuvenation is to allow the brand to enter a period of rapid growth again. High growth rate is the goal, and everything else is just a means.

Author: Liu Yichun

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