The idea is great, why isn’t it a hit?

Nowadays, more and more companies are working on creativity, but most of the creativity has a mediocre response and no effect. Why is this so? This is because advertising creativity, in addition to being "creative", must also become a "mass information consumer product". Only by providing "information compression" can the public pay attention, spread and share it. So, how to make creativity an information consumer product? Let's take a look.

Today, more and more companies are working on creativity, but most of them fail to take off! Even if they spend millions of media budgets, the response is mediocre and there is no effect.

Why is this so? Because we have entered the era of comprehensive information consumption, and the competitors of advertising creativity are celebrity cheating, world wars, social events, etc. If your advertising creativity is just "creative", it is not enough. You also need to make your creativity a "mass information consumer product". Only by providing "information compression" can the public pay attention to you, spread you, and share you.

In a word: If you want your advertising creativity to be a hit, it must become a hit product for information consumption!

01 Order in disorder: Information reconstructs the virtual world

In 1840, after the Opium War, China was forced to open its doors. A hundred years later, until 1949, China had gone through a century of turmoil and established the new China. 1840-1949 is called modern history. People's lives were to meet the most basic survival consumption. Except for officials, landlords and gentry, ordinary people had difficulty eating meat all year round.

From 1949 to 1978, mass consumption was still based on frugality and eating and wearing clothes. After the reform and opening up, China truly connected with the world, and international economic and trade exchanges began, and the market economy began. This period was the era of basic life consumption.

In 1979, 1G mobile phones were born in Japan. Five years later, Motorola mobile phones became popular all over the world. In other words, humans began to enter the era of wireless communication. This was an epoch-making period. Because technology turned information into digital signals and began to fly around in virtual time and space.

In 1991, mobile phones became popular in China. They cost more than 10,000 yuan each, had poor signal, and required a long antenna to make calls. In fact, that year, GSM technology was applied in Finland, which was the 2G era. Mobile phones became smaller, the voice quality of calls was better, and text messaging was available. Information dissemination began to gradually move away from human-based dissemination technologies such as post stations and postmen.

In 1998, Japan's NTT introduced 3G networks; in 2001, the first 3G commercial network was operated by South Korea's SK Telecom. I don't understand the technical standards, I just know that mobile phones can realize applications and services such as video calls, mobile Internet, and online videos.

Please note that during this period, China's four major portals began to be established, and the Internet era began to take off. Later, forums, blogs, and posts appeared, and information exchange became a new lifestyle. People went online to write blogs and communicate virtually online.

In 1999, QQ was born, making online social networking possible. Online information began to explode, and everyone could become the center of information and publish their own voices to the world through the Internet. How can ordinary people become popular? The first generation of Internet celebrities, such as Sister Furong, Sister Feng, Luo Yonghao, and Mu Zimei, made their debut quickly with their personality and weird style, becoming a topic of discussion among the whole nation.

In a sense, the year 2000 was a period of tremendous change in the Internet era. It was the first consumption dividend of the Internet era. Because information began to become a consumer product! Information was scarce, and authoritative media decided what to publish and what not to publish. Information dissemination was controlled by the elites, and TV stations and newspapers had the right to speak on information.

The opening of the Internet has allowed everyone to speak out, and authority has begun to become negative. Ordinary people can also become the center of online events, and everyone has the opportunity to become famous for 5 minutes. WeChat was born in 2011, and Douyin was born in 2016. The general public still constitutes the fundamentals of media traffic, becoming the information creators of the network platform and nurturing this large commercial platform. During this period, people basically had no worries about food and drink, and everyone was an "information demander and creator", producing various information every day. In other words, we have entered the era of information consumption.

In the information consumption era, the first is that there is a lot of information, and everyone is producing information; the second is immediacy, and information is available and updated at any time; the third is weak relationships, and new information constantly replaces old information, and information is external to the body; the fourth is aestheticization, and information platforms need topical content, and it is easier to recommend people eating shit than dogs eating shit; the fifth is voyeurism, and people can be anonymous so they are fearless, they can express themselves truthfully, or they can vent maliciously; the sixth is explosiveness, just like the spread of cancer cells, it spreads explosively, and so on.

Therefore, the trend of this information generation also determines that the creativity of advertising communication must be in sync with the environment and become an information hot product that can be consumed.

02 Interweaving and splitting: the ambiguous purpose of hot product information

The virtual world separates people's existing space.

First, when people pick up their phones, they enter a virtual space, watching other people's lives and having a kind of "God's perspective." As long as they withdraw from the moment, they can become a high-ranking spectator, consuming the content of all information platforms.

Second, when people put down their phones, they return to their real lives, face their own hardships in life, clock in at work, collect their mid-month pay, and live their lives step by step, caught up in real joys and sorrows.

The medium between the two worlds is information consumer goods. Information consumer goods, like connectors, are interwoven in these two spaces. After the interpretation, refinement, and reconstruction of real life, the life scenes in the real world are filmed as consumer content in the virtual world, which is provided for consumption by all people in real life. This mechanism is not point-to-point, but scattered-to-scatter or face-to-face. The platform provides a trading venue, allowing everyone to evolve into data signals to communicate with each other.

As a result, a state of "free competition" will emerge. What content is more likely to go viral, what information is more likely to spread, and what images are more likely to attract fans are in competition all the time. Coupled with the "fuel" of the platform's big data push, the online world is full of dramatic kills every day. In order to gain traffic (the attention of real people), people will do anything to release the source of all kinds of evil in human nature.

The advantage is that the virtual world is like anarchism, which has a big name but no authority. Because everyone can become an ism, build their own virtual religion, become a leader and chief, and enjoy freedom and support beyond reality. The disadvantage is that the psychological gap of the general public will be infinitely magnified, and onlookers will want to move to the center. "Use any means necessary" and "profit-driven" will devour all the light of civilization accumulated by mankind, and fall into a more disordered and chaotic state.

However, smart people will not worry too much. As a bonus of the times, ordinary people will have the possibility of turning over. There will definitely be countless "explosive product information" born from this for public consumption. It is irreversible.

In the era of information explosion, popular information consumption products have several characteristics.

1) Emotional lethality. The group amplifies the emotional value of the hot product information, making the content an infectious disease that spreads rapidly among the crowd;

2) The type of anti-strange and true love. Catering to the human weakness of "getting tired of the old and liking the new", the platform's popular content always cannot escape the type of "anti-", "strange", "true" and "love". Anti- is extreme, strange - is special, true - is natural, and love - is empathy;

3) Consumption function. The most important feature of hot product information is that it can be consumed, spread, and shared. If an article, a short video, or a photo does not have a consumption point, it cannot be spread from person to person, let alone become a hot product.

Let’s take a look at the hot product events in 2022. From the “Winter Olympics” at the beginning of the year, a collective carnival of value; to “Liu Genghong boys and girls”, the need for home fitness has become a social challenge; to “Wang Xinling’s comeback”, a ignition of youthful memories; and “Dong Yuhui” represented New Oriental’s breakthrough, the output of content against the anchor circle; and the village’s “Second Uncle” has become a cultural phenomenon; and the World Cup “Messi” fever has once again ignited the group’s passion…

These hot products seem to have no purpose, but they hide vague purposes such as "emotional release", "desire to show off", "silent social interaction". In other words, the information itself is to satisfy emotional social interaction and complete the expression of "I" again and again. In essence, they are all to complete a psychological sentence of "Look how XXX I am". XXX can be "taste", "powerful", or "healthy", but in the end it is all a sense of superiority, and it is the natural psychology of people to prove that they are "superior".

In other words, "superior" is actually the magic of human nature that information explosive products want to summon.

03 Advertising creative logic: "Look how XXX I am"

Why do many creative ideas seem to be very creative but never go viral? The most critical problem is that they are not content that can be spread and cannot be used as a tool for showing off. For example, if I want to send a funny content to my friends to show how humorous I am, this content has social attributes and can be used to show off.

The same goes for advertising creative content. You need to appeal to the magic of human nature and turn your information into a hit.

How to create a hit product? I can summarize it in one sentence: Look how XXX I am. It contains three elements:

1. "Look at me" indicates the angle, and the angle should be drilled

"You look at me" is a kind of opposing connection. It shows the relationship between "advertisers" and "consumers". Advertising creativity is always a work of communication, a process of connecting "you" and "me".

Originally, there is no relationship between "flowers" and "people". But when you look at it, you feel happy and a relationship is established between you and it. This is the projection of human emotions onto objects, creating a hidden connection.

Your creativity is essentially about creating this "feeling", this secret connection. "You look at me" indicates a relationship. I first made a move that attracted your attention, and finally you became interested in me, completing a communication.

This is the logic of the creation of information hot products: send a message - receive a message. There is also a most important link in the middle, called the medium. You transmit information through a carrier, and I receive information through a channel. Different carriers will lead to different relationships.

On TikTok, our relationship is that of netizens; in class, our relationship is that of classmates; in the company, our relationship is that of colleagues; in the toilet, our relationship is that of the same sex, etc. In different scenarios, the relationship is different, the intimacy is different, and the way of getting along is also different.

It is most important to understand the relationship between you and your consumers and the field in which your relationship takes place. There is a fundamental difference between a car on land and a boat on water, even though they are both containers. WeChat media, Douyin media, Weibo media, Focus Media, train media, airport media, etc., segmented scenarios are the first prerequisite.

2. "How much" indicates the degree, the degree must be enough

No matter which medium you are in, your creativity must have a transcendent concentration. That is what I mean by "how much". "How much" itself is an adverb of degree. For creativity, degree or concentration is also very important. Human beings live in a competitive society. In fact, your advertising creativity and your content must show a "degree" that exceeds ordinary products.

It cannot be too ordinary, it needs to be of a certain degree. For example, if a brand finds a spokesperson, for an ordinary person, its degree is higher. However, if a brand finds hundreds of artists together and they sing the same song, then the concentration of "this song" is very high, and the "degree" is very high.

This is the content concentration of "Beijing Welcomes You" for the 2008 Olympic Games. It is strong enough and intense enough.

Similarly, your creativity must also have a breakthrough "degree". "Degree" does not mean unique, but "enough". You need to be dangerous enough, fresh enough, interesting enough, amazing enough, bloody enough, explosive enough, etc. If your creativity is not powerful in "degree", then it will be difficult for it to break out and become the kind of influential content.

3. "XXX" indicates content and is closely related to human nature

What do we want to consume when it comes to information consumption products? Or, what do we want others to consume when it comes to creative content? This is “XXX”.

"XXX" is the blank that needs to be filled in by the creative content. It can be thrilling, such as shooting a creative short film at the highest place in the world; or doing a split across two cars. Combined with the second element, the degree must be enough, to reach the degree of "how much".

It can also be happy, such as Ma Sanli singing rock, funny and interesting; like looking up to drink water, you will escape a disaster. It can also be warm, such as a pig triggering intergenerational emotions, etc.

"XXX" can also be controversial. For example, speaking up for women or complaining about boys' sexual preferences. "XXX" must be clear and specific, so that the creativity can trigger corresponding emotions and spread.

In short, "Look how XXX I am" is the underlying creative logic. Only when your advertising creativity becomes a popular information product that can be spread, can the creativity exert a wider influence.

"Explosion" is actually a kind of extensiveness, a greater influence. "Look how XXX I am" provides a reference logic.

Author: Qu Tailang, WeChat public account: Qu Tailang (ID: qutailang1991)