Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “bread Business School” (ID: mantousxy), Author: the Wang Zhi, editor: Junjie, MS.
Car accident rate is higher, why do we think flying is more dangerous? Why do important things have to be said three times? Why do home improvement brands like to advertise in train stations? Have you ever thought about the reasons behind the above questions?
Many scenes that are commonplace in daily life actually contain very interesting principles behind them. The formulation of corporate brand strategy is based on these principles.
A British company called “System1” (System1) found through research that there are 3 very key elements for a brand to succeed: famous, affectionate, and tangible. The better the business of the brand that emphasizes the “Three Haves”, the stronger the brand.
Among them, “famous” is usually the ultimate goal of marketing and is closely related to the brand’s market share.
So, how does a brand gain popularity?
Wang Zhishang, the marketing mentor of Mantou Business School and the former managing director of Ogilvy Consulting, made a special explanation in his new book “Brand Creates Growth”.
The content of this article is excerpted from “Brand Creation and Growth”, which is mainly divided into 7 parts:
1. Shortcuts to availability
2, I like what I am familiar with
3, what I have heard is good enough
4. Repeat, repeat, repeat again
5. The relationship between popularity and market share
6. Popularity is penetration.
7. Hooks and physical availability
Accessibility shortcut
Let me ask a question first: do you often fly by plane? If so, please allow me to ask another question that is not very lucky: Are you worried about aviation accidents? Do you think it is safer to take an airplane or to take a car?
It seems that everyone thinks that flying by plane is more dangerous. Whenever aviation accidents are mentioned, the pictures and stories in the news will come to our minds: broken wings, burning wreckage, loved ones forever…
If these impressions make you feel uncomfortable, then I want to tell you a truth that can comfort you: In fact, flying by plane is much safer than by car.
According to statistics, for every 5 million traffic accidents worldwide, only 20 aviation accidents will occur.
Since the probability of occurrence between the two is so disparity, why do our impressions are completely contrary to the facts, and it seems that taking an airplane is more dangerous?
This illusion comes from the “accessibility shortcut” in the brain. Simply put, our brain has an inertia.
If a certain messageIf we can recall it the fastest, we will naturally think that this information is more important and more real, and its importance and authenticity are higher than other hard-to-remember information.
So we all tend to quickly judge things based on information that is easy to think of, recently obtained, and has a clearer impression.
This effect was proposed by Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1973. Among the many experiments they did at that time, there is an interesting example, you can also try to answer this question:
Among English words, are there more words that start with the letter K, or are there more words that start with K as the third letter?
Most people will answer that there are more words with K as the first letter, because we are more likely to think of words starting with K, but it is not easy to recall words with K in the third position.
But in fact, K appears more often in the third position of English words (and also L, N, R, and V). Because it is easier to remember, you will feel that the probability of existence is higher. This is a kind of “accessibility shortcut” bias caused by intuition.
Going back to the previous question of flying is also the result of our being misled by “accessibility shortcuts.”
Because every aviation accident happens, the media will always report it, and it often contains visually impactful disaster scenes and heart-wrenching human tragedies, leaving a deep impression in our minds.
Relatively speaking, traffic accidents are very common, and most people are not surprised, and most of this kind of news is also forgotten (and most of them will not appear in the news at all).
So when I ask questions, your brain can easily extract information from those impressive crash scenes.
Because this information is easy to obtain, we feel that it is more “rememberable” and “common”, so we misjudge its probability of occurrence, and think that it is more likely to cause accidents by plane and should be more dangerous.
If the principle of “accessibility shortcut” is applied to a brand, it is easy to understand why “brand awareness” is the most important indicator of brand marketing, precisely because of the same principle:
The easier the name of a brand is recalled by us, the more we feel that the brand is better and more important.
In our minds, popularity will turn into familiarity, and familiarity will turn into preference. A large number of scientific experiments have confirmed this.
I like what I am familiar with
As early as 1960, psychologist Robert Zayonz conducted a series of related experiments.
He asked the subjects to look at some different figures, including random geometric shapes, meaningless figures, and some Chinese-like characters (the subjects of course are Westerners who do not understand Eastern languages), and then asked them to compare Which one do you like.
After repeated experiments, he discovered a very simple rule: People naturally like the shapes and words that they have seen the most times, simply because they feel familiar. And this sense of familiarity can even be realized subconsciously.
Stanford University once did an experiment in which subjects were asked to look at pictures and they looked at 10 different polygons.
The key point is that the subjects saw the picture for only one thousandth of a second; humans could not “consciously” see what their eyeballs saw in such a short period of time, but the signal at this moment would still be captured by the brain Receiving at the unconscious level.
Then the researcher showed the subjects two more polygonal patterns, one of which appeared in the previous 10 pictures, and the other was a new pattern.
Then the subjects were asked to answer which of the two polygons they thought they might have seen and which one they preferred.
It was found that the subjects obviously liked the polygons that they had “seen” before, but no one knew which one they had seen before.
There is also a term in psychology called “simple exposure effect”, which means that the more and more familiar things we are exposed to, the more we tend to like them, regardless of whether it is a word or a picture. A picture, a song, is still a brand.
The book “Hit Makers” written by Derek Thompson addressed this effect and talked about an interesting example in life: our faces.
Most people’s faces are not completely symmetrical, and the faces we see every day are the faces that are reversed by reflection in the mirror. This opposite face, on the contrary, is what everyone is most familiar with.
So when we see ourselves in the photo, we always feel weird and uncomfortable, because it is not the most familiar face in the mirror that we like every day. (You can also see your face turned back to the original position through the repeated reflections of the two mirrors. That is the real look of you when others see it, but you will always feel a little awkward when you see it.)
Why do humans form such an innate preference for familiarity? Scientists have a sharp explanation:
This is the self-protection ability developed by our ancestors during the evolution process. The reason is simple-if you can recognize the animal or plant you have seen, it means that it has not killed you.
What I have heard is good enough
The above discussion can explain the role of brand awareness in our lives.
If you are facing a category that is rarely contacted or unfamiliar, and the product knowledge is very lacking, you don’t know where to choose. At this time, if you see a brand you have heard or known, you will naturally have a preference and a preference for it. A sense of identity.
For many years since then, the painting has been missing until the thief was arrested in Florence, Italy when he wanted to dispose of the painting, and the painting was able to be reproduced, and the work of restoration and return became international attention. focus.
In 1919, the experimental artist Marcel Duchamp added some beards to the face of the always smiling “Mona Lisa”, which caused a sensation and evoked the height of other artists “spoofing” this painting. interest.
So Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and other masters of art, used this painting to create a variety of new works, making the “Mona Lisa” face again and again Once attracted the attention of the world, it has become ubiquitous today.
For more than a century, this painting has been repeatedly exposed before the eyes of the world due to various coincidences. The smile of the Mona Lisa in the painting has become the most well-known and most familiar smile among all mankind. The global preference created in this way naturally created its unparalleled global status today.
So today’s international art critics give this work the highest evaluation, but whether it is popular because of its high artistic value, or because it is popular and everyone agrees, this is actually a very paradox problem.
If you look closely, there are actually many similar phenomena around us. The market operation of popular music is a topic that is often studied.
Just like “Smile of the Mona Lisa”, in several new songs that sound good, why does one of these new songs stand out and become a hit while the others remain silent?
The difference is often in the matter of “duplication.” If a song is deliberately promoted, it is constantly broadcast on the radio, short videos are always played, and the gym continues to sound, it will make more people hear its melody inadvertently. People are familiar because of repetition, and because of familiarity. Preference, so “playing songs” has always been an important promotion work for record companies.
So we also have to recognize a stark fact: in the business world, “popular” and “first place” can be manipulated to a large extent.
For the power of repetition, Kahneman said this: “An effective way to convince people of misinformation is to repeat it, because it is difficult for people to distinguish the difference between familiarity and truth.”
So please remember, the easiest way to make your brand more famous is to “repeat, repeat, repeat”. Isn’t there a saying “tell important things three times”? This is the truth.
The relationship between popularity and market share
Since brand awareness can create consumer preferences, it can naturally drive business.
The principle is this: Everyone will form a list of brands for the categories that are fairly familiar in daily life. Usually, the brands that can be included in the list are 3-4 on average for each category.
For example, when it comes to mobile phone brands, I will immediately think of Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, and OPPO. I have to think about other brands before I can tell them.
The function of brand awareness is to put your brand in this list.
Of course, the higher the popularity, the easier it is for people to think of it, the more they will be ranked first in the minds of the people, the more they will be favored, the more opportunities to be chosen, and the more likely they will be to occupy the largest market share.
This is why usually the brand’s first-mentioned popularity share is equal to the brand’s true market share.
For the measurement method of popularity, I would like to make a supplementary explanation by the way.
As mentioned earlier, awareness evaluation requires consumer sampling research through quantitative research. In research and statistics, there are several levels of different measurement methods and indicators for visibility.
Usually the order of asking consumers is as follows: first ask “When it comes to this category, which brand do you think of first?”
The consumer’s answer is “first mention popularity”. Everyone will only have one answer, which is the most well-known brand in this category in his mind. This proportion usually corresponds to the brand’s market share, so this is the most important number in the visibility survey.
Then the survey questionnaire will ask the second question: “What else? What other brands would you think of?”
This part of the answer is called “Not Prompted Awareness”, which is a brand name that consumers can actively think of. Being able to appear in this at least means that consumers can still think of you proactively.
When it comes to the third question, the researcher will list all the brands in the category as a table for the respondent and ask him, “Which other brands do you know?”
This part of the answer is called “post-prompt awareness”, which means that after seeing the name, at least how many people know the existence of your brand.
Among the three, the most important thing you must value is the first-mentioned popularity, and the market leader must be the first-mentioned brand with the highest popularity.
So, next time someone wants to discuss brand awareness with you, please make it clear which level of awareness he is discussing.
Fame is penetration power
Brand awareness is closely related to the brand’s market share. Therefore, making a brand more “famous” means to expand its market share in marketing. As far as the marketing department is concerned, the most direct assistance that the sales department can provide is to make the brand more famous.
“Famous” can expand its market share because its popularity will increase the brand’s penetration or penetration in the market, that isMore people start to use your brand.
Professor Sharp repeatedly emphasized one important point in the book “Non-traditional Marketing”:
The growth of brand business is not from heavy users of the brand, but from the participation of light users and non-brand users. They can expand the overall sales of the brand. Therefore, if the business is to grow, we must focus on expanding the popularity Rate instead of letting people who already buy more often.
This is very different from the marketing concept that everyone has formed a mindset. If you are interested in learning more, you can find a lot of analysis data of his proof in Sharp’s book.
There is a set of data which is particularly inspiring to me, let me share it briefly:
We have all heard of the twenty-eight rule, applied to marketing, and it is usually interpreted as “in the composition of your business, 80% of the performance comes from 20% of customers.”
This kind of interpretation has become the theoretical basis for beliefs such as “Grasp the 20% users” and “cultivating consumer loyalty”.
But according to the famous “20:30:50” rule deduced by Professor Gerald Goodhart, the real situation is:
20% of the heavy customers contributed 50% of the sales, 50% of the light customers contributed 20% of the sales, and the middle 30% of the customers contributed 30% of the sales-the contribution of the heavy customers, in fact It’s not as big as what we simply and rudely explain with the rule of twenty-eight.
The reason why popularity can attract light users and non-users of the brand to join the ranks and drive the growth of penetration is because of a very simple truth:
Awareness can make light users and non-users who are unfamiliar with your brand more likely to think of you, and a high percentage of them are relatively unfamiliar with the category-when they are unfamiliar with the category When you need to buy, it is usually the easiest to choose a well-known brand in the category.
For example, I rarely buy bottled water, so when I want to buy it, I will buy the Nongfu Spring that I think of first.
So we can also summarize it like this: the brand’s popularity represents the brand’s penetration.
Since “Famous” is so useful, in order to make the brand famous, besides “repeating, repeating and repeating” the brand name, what else should be paid attention to?
Hooks and physical availability
To make people think of you more easily, another “hook” is the hidden goal that the brand satisfies, which is the starting point for thinking at the top of the brand strategy model.
When a consumer has a certain demand, his brain will quickly automatically find the answer in a range, one range is category, for example, what luxury car brands do I know? The other scope is the goal. What are the car brands that make me look the most decent?
ThisIt’s why being famous is critical, but to be truly strong, a brand cannot be just famous, it needs to establish a brand proposition and shape an association.
Whether it is to strengthen brand awareness or to strengthen the relationship between the brand and consumer goals, it is all about making people think of you more easily. What is established is the “psychological availability” of the brand to consumers. This is mainly Achieved through branding and advertising.
Don’t forget that equally important is the “physical availability” of your brand, which is how easy it is for consumers to see/find your brand in the physical world. The key to this part is to distribute goods. Of course, in today’s world, this includes the distribution of goods through physical channels and the distribution of goods through electronic channels.
The so-called distribution not only allows products to enter more stores and platforms, but also includes the “visibility” of brands and products that can be seen in channels:
The place you want to appear should be the position on the shelf that is close to the shopper’s line of sight, not the corner that they have to bend over or get down; what you want to grab is the number one on the consumer’s mobile phone. Screen or screen 2, instead of swiping to screen 59 to find you with cramps.
I think this is very easy to understand.
The visibility of the brand in the channel will also create brand exposure and increase the visibility. Especially because in the channel, shoppers who see you are already in a shopping mentality, and it is easier to absorb your information.
On the other hand, of course, it will also make your products easier to choose, and even allow shoppers to put you in the shopping basket without going through the conscious purchase process.
It’s like you take a can of Coca-Cola on the shelf of a convenience store while you are thinking about something.
If the brand has not achieved physical availability, no matter how well-known it is, no matter how much advertising it does, it will be in vain, because consumers will never see your product.
Don’t think that this is a truth that a three-year-old child understands. In the real world, there are actually too many problems that cannot keep up with the distribution of goods.