This article is from WeChat public account:Interest (ID: SocialTouchST), author: Condi, week in security, title figure from the visual China

1, brand is not a cost, but an investment;

2, advertising is not a brand, advertising is a communication strategy, products are not brands, products are business strategies;

3. Enterprise expansion and business growth are two different things. Large enterprises do not necessarily have big brands;

4, user growth and brand building are not contradictory, but the brand is not just growth;

5, brands don’t necessarily need to spend big money, and small money can also make big brands;

6. The essential problem of brand solving: What do you need to do; thus guiding the management and management of the company;

7. From the era of brand 1.0 to the era of brand 4.0, the form of marketing is constantly changing, but brand thinking has not changed.

Because of Platinum and Hengyuanxiang, brainwashing advertisements have revived in the Internet era. It seems to be the main theme of today’s marketing industry. The forced “finding jobs” and “taking wedding photos” in the elevators undoubtedly exposed the brand’s side. Traffic anxiety and marketing dilemma, the “growth” and “brand” disputes once again caused industry debate.

The emergence of brainwashing advertisements is certainly not accidental. Some people joked that this is a “downward strike” in the creative industry. What is more, “the brand is dead”, presumably more and more brands and practitioners will The more doubts, what is the relationship between growth and brand? Must the success of the company depend on the brand? What is the brand? What is the pain point of marketing in enterprises? How do companies choose a brand marketing strategy? I believe this article can give you some inspiration.

What are the companies today worried about?

The real reason for corporate anxiety is not that the flow is tight or the channel is out of order. These phenomena are just representations. The real anxiety is that the marketing method that helps the company grow and expand is generally out of order, so there are many in the industry. The phenomenon of rushing to hospital for medical treatment has spawned many fashionable new words, such as growth hackers, private domain traffic, and fission marketing.

In the back of the failure of corporate marketing methods, in fact, the industry, the competitive landscape, the internal and external environment have undergone tremendous changes, and almost all industries are spared. Specifically, the problems of enterprise marketing mainly occur in the following four types of scenarios:

1, the traditional industry chain is broken, the business model is impacted

The Internet has spawned e-commerce and spawned new media, which has caused the industry chain and value chain to be broken and refactored. Many companies have found that offline businesses have been impacted by online businesses, while offline traditional media have beenRed KOL shocked. The business model on which many traditional enterprises depend for survival has been gradually broken, which is clearly felt in the living conditions of many manufacturers today.

2, the three-dimensional competition pattern, the traditional brand is “cross-dimensional strike” by the new brand

The barriers to entry for all industries today are greatly reduced, so the competitive pressures of companies will become more three-dimensional. For example, before you can make a consumer brand, you need to invest a lot, but today many of the industry chain support has matured, and the difficulty of starting a business has been greatly reduced. This means that competition will not only occur in the industry, but also in places you have never thought of.

For example, Nokia may not think of it, its future competitors will be new species such as Xiaomi. In recent years, many “new retail” and “new manufacturing” brands have been born, and traditional brands have been “cross-dimensionally hit” by new brands.

Even we can say that all brands are now competing with each other because they compete for the attention of users.

3, take-out eliminates instant noodles, and the industry category is directly subverted

China is undergoing a huge consumer upgrade, and many product categories will be directly subverted and disappear. Going far, I said that there are old antiques such as tapes and CD players. I am talking about instant noodles and chewing gum. The decline in chewing gum sales is believed to be due to the rise of mobile Internet apps such as WeChat, which has greatly reduced the use of chewing gum. The decline in sales of instant noodles is the rise of the take-out platform, and the advantage of instant noodles and quick disappearance has disappeared.

The elimination of certain industry categories is a historical trend. This is a test of the company’s brand horizontal expansion capability. How to make brand value migration and rebirth is a huge challenge for sunset industry enterprises.

4, corporate culture transformation conflict

The conflict of internal corporate culture may cause the brand to be confused and swayed in marketing, and the marketing effect may be directly consumed. This kind of cultural conflict is not uncommon. In the process of enterprise business transformation, after the acquisition of new teams by enterprises, the transformation of OEMs from “factory card” to “brand”, the internal culture will occur in the process of intergenerational inheritance of family businesses. conflict.

Corporate culture conflict is actually an internal phenomenon brought about by business models, business models, and team members. This is not only a question of brand marketing.The issue is also the issue of corporate organization and management.

You can’t find the New World along the old map, and you can’t do new marketing by following the old methods. When many companies are marketing in the face of the new environment, it is easy to go into a misunderstanding – to put the old marketing methods into new channels and new people, such as the marketing strategy under the new media, not just the tradition. The media marketing method is copied to the new media, and the truly effective marketing is fully adapted from the table and the inside.

What is growth? What is a brand?

Many business managers have done marketing for a lifetime, but all they can do is “growth” and don’t know what brand is. Many companies still have an understanding of the brand in the details of logos, VIs, slogans, trademarks, or image advertisements that make people feel “unclear”, but is this really true?

“Growth” seems to focus more on short-term business data and financial data, and the “brand” measurement standard is more multi-dimensional, not only to measure the long-term and short-term corporate development benefits, but also from the brand stakeholders, employees’ appearance and social recognition. Degrees, business profitability, user reputation, user loyalty, user repurchase rate and other dimensions and indicators. So what is the brand?

The so-called brand thinking is neither a multi-advertisement nor a stunning product, nor a user word of mouth, but a corporate strategy that first determines these external performances. Want to know what your brand is, just ask yourself a question: “WhoYou Are?”.

©Shigeo Okazaki

Brand thinking is actually defining the top-level design of the enterprise, which determines the vision, mission and values ​​of the company itself. All business, products, advertising, communication and channels are determined through the brand identification strategy. Every CEO is Should be a brand manager first.

With IKEAFor example, the vision of the IKEA brand is “to create a better everyday life for most people”, then its business philosophy is to “provide a wide range of home products with good design and functionality for the majority of consumers at low prices. Therefore, all its product development, industrial supply chain, marketing, and communication strategies will be extended around the brand business model.

The pre-brand approach has not appeared in many companies in the past. In the past, companies often found opportunities. After building a business model, brands were only used as a component of marketing strategies. The creation of such brands is easy to become hollow, and it seems to have brand power, but the reality is weak, and the decline of many Amoy brands is the best example.

If the self-definition of the enterprise is disassembled into three dimensions: the concept layer, the value layer and the product layer, whether or not there is brand thinking is whether or not a clear definition of thinking is carried out at the concept level, and other series of actions of the enterprise. , are determined by the brand vision, brand positioning, brand commitment commitment.

Because the brand is a top-level strategic design, branding does not necessarily require large sums of money to advertise, but has multiple methods and opportunities. Brand thinking is used to guide the management and management of enterprises, not only limited and external communication. It also lies in internal communication. At the same time, the definition of the direction of the brand should not be changed frequently. It is the best brand strategy to insist on doing the right thing in the right direction.

The success of the company must depend on the brand?

A lot of people may be wondering. Many companies have not invested too much in brand promotion, or have put some brainwashing ads and focused on user growth as mentioned in the opening paragraph. It still looks good. Is that the success of the company must rely on the brand? Will it die if you don’t do a brand?

This problem is actually a misunderstanding of many people’s existence, and it also opposes “growth” and “brand”, and also opposes “simple and rude advertisements” with brands. In fact, the “growth” of a company may be just an external manifestation of one dimension of brand value, or it may just be “flow growth”.

Before you think about this, let’s take a look at what has changed in brand marketing over the past few decades. Brand marketing itself is constantly evolving* and is divided into four phases:

  • Brand 1.0 – Functional Marketing Stage

In the 1960s, the marketing concept has gradually taken shape. In this period, the enterprise is only for consumers, and the demand for the enterprise is sales. Therefore, the content of the external communication is only the product features.

  • Brand 2.0 – Experience Marketing Stage

In the 1990s, brand marketing began to focus on user experience. During this period, brand competition became fierce in the market. Brand advertising began to use user testimony, user scenes to express satisfaction, and more and more concerned with consumer interaction. propagation.

  • Brand 3.0 – Value Marketing Stage

    • After the 21st century, the popularity of the Internet has begun to change the entire social environment. Brand marketing has begun to focus on social responsibility and social communication. Brands are often spread to values ​​and attitudes. The communication model has also become content with users. User participation.

    • Brand 4.0 – Individual Marketing Stage

    From around 2010, new media has gradually become a way for users to obtain information. Each individual can have its own brand. Brand marketing is more focused on the value of personal ability. Today’s online red, KOL, KOC are The embodiment of the rise of individual communication energy.

    We often think that these four stages are alternately produced, but in fact, they coexist with each other, that is to say, a company may need to consider the function selling point of brand 1.0 and the individual marketing of brand 4.0. Law, which is why we still see simple and rude hawking ads still effective today.

    So what kind of marketing method should the company use to best match its own needs? It depends on the stage of brand building in which the company itself is located.

    The founder of Nike sneakers, founded in 1964, was only selling Taiwanese sneakers imported from Japan in the United States. The well-known first-generation NIKE A-Gump shoes could also be seen as a copy of OnizukaTiger. Starbucks, which opened in 1971, was only a coffee shop on the street. It did not have any grand ideals in the third space. Today’s development has added the fourth space on the Internet. Dyson, founded in 1974, is actually the earliest. It’s just that the founder Dyson used to sell some small invention machines; but they all grew up to be great brands and applied a colorful brand marketing approach.

    Image from the web

    The brand building of each enterprise can be divided into four stages: the initial stage, the growth stage, the maturity period, and the maintenance period. The specific goals and appeals of each stage are different.

    The brand in the initial stage mainly solves the problem of consumer cognition and trust, and builds the strategic source of the enterprise itself; the brand of the growth stage needs rapid expansion to establish market advantages and solve the problem of the growth space of the enterprise; the mature brand has reached The industry’s leading position requires defensive marketing maintenance; while the maintenance period brand is stable and the ceiling is visible, and new strategic opportunities are needed to upgrade the brand.

    For a company, the brand marketing meanings defined in different stages are different, and the marketing methods used are different. Back to the initial question, must the company’s success depend on the brand? In fact, it depends on how you define success and define brand marketing. But if a company wants to “grow” rather than just “grow”, the long-term value brought by brand building is a circumstance, any great company. Have a great brand.

    Corporate Marketing Compulsory Course: From “Traffic Growth” to “Brand Growth”

    In the era of the individual value of the current marketing 4.0, the “marketing growth” model of traditional enterprises has become inefficient, and the value of brand community management is constantly highlighting, which is also a compulsory course for enterprises in the new era environment.

    The traditional “marketing growth” is to drive business transformation through marketing itself. The idea is to reach potential users through large-scale delivery, and then through a series of funnel conversion mechanisms to screen accurate users. But this traditional marketing thinking is oneA kind of “division mode” constantly requires high reach and high conversion rate to achieve high user number growth.

    But today, when media is fragmented and individual communication forces rise, companies need to manage brand equity to achieve “brand growth.” Driven by “brand growth”, companies need to run their own brand fans, and then through the operation of core users/brand loyal fans to achieve the spread of influence, continue to reach more potential users, and achieve the spread of social voice volume. . In this “brand growth” orientation, the user growth and brand influence of the enterprise will present a “multiplication mode”, which will greatly improve the efficiency of communication.

    Part of this picture is from the network

    Under the “Brand Growth” model, managing brand communities has become especially important, and the brand community requires both internal management and external management:

    From the internal management of the brand community, the brand needs to turn its first-line workers into the brand’s callers, to build consensus on the inside, to motivate the colleagues to act, and to build personal and brand influence on the external platform through continuous voice. Force, so as to cover more brand fans and brands to follow; from the external management of the brand community, the brand needs to grasp the core users to carry out refined operations, activate the core users / KOC sharing enthusiasm, and participate in creating communication content To pull in more target users and brand followers.

    From “marketing growth” to “brand growth” is a must for corporate marketing in today’s environmentThe transformation of ideas must also make the company’s marketing model more efficient and help the company to move toward a great brand.

    *Note: The theory of brand evolution is detailed in “Brand Strategy Evolution” 2019, author Okazaki Maosheng

    This article is from WeChat public account: when interest (ID: SocialTouchST) , Author: Condit, Ann weeks