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A What is brand upgrading?
B How should brand upgrading be carried out?
C What capabilities need to be trained for brand upgrading? This article focuses on solving the above three problems. First, return to the basic definition of "brand" to understand what a brand really is, and then you can understand "brand upgrading." I. What exactly is a brand? We choose to define "brand" from three levels: 1 Strategic level A brand is premium and leverage, simply put, it allows the brand owner to make more money. For the same leather bag, consumers are willing to give Hermès a much higher premium than a brandless bag. This premium is actually the embodiment of brand value. 2 Social effect level A brand is a credit guarantee mechanism. Just as a person without registration, without a name, without an ID card, cannot be tracked even if they commit a crime. A product without a brand, even if quality problems arise, consumers do not know who to blame. 3 Technical level Building a brand is nothing more than "content + channel + timing." This combination provides clues and a framework for all those who want to build a brand. When building a brand, avoid doing it for the sake of doing it; always remember the brand's goal. Ask yourself these three questions: ◆1. Can my brand bring me a premium? Previously, I saw a post "We chatted with a former Muji employee; this is his 'worth buying' and 'never buy' list." As everyone knows, Muji products are priced relatively high, but in fact, many of its products have shifted from self-production to OEM. Imagine, if you are the owner of an OEM factory, would you choose to cooperate with Muji or build your own brand? If you build your own brand, will you earn more than selling to Muji? If you do not yet have the ability to build a brand that can bring a premium, from a corporate strategy perspective, it is better to take Muji's orders. Of course, if you are a boss with a sense of crisis, thinking that taking orders from only Muji is too risky, and you still want to do 2C business and build your own brand, then you need to work hard on how to differentiate from Muji. ◆2. Is my product quality excellent? In my view, product quality is like the right leg, and brand is like the left leg. A person walking must alternate left and right legs forward, not one leg desperately forward while the other drags behind. Similarly, the product must first be excellent; otherwise, product quality problems will directly damage the brand. But if product quality is very good and the brand is not well built, then brand building needs to be strengthened. ◆3. Have I published suitable content and chosen suitable channels and timing? Someone asked me: "If a brand is still in the stage from 0 to 1, what is the first thing to do?" I would say: "Do positioning!" And this "positioning" is not limited to Trout's positioning theory. My understanding of this issue is that the first step of a brand is to choose the target user group. In the context of consumption upgrading, "niche brands" have become mainstream. The post-80s and post-90s generations are different from their elders; they particularly emphasize "uniqueness." Recently, as an interviewee, I participated in a shopping symposium by Youthology, chatting with a group of young people about where they usually hang out, play, eat, and buy. I found that the word young people (including myself) said most was "special." Therefore, a brand should not expect to be liked by all groups. Instead, choose a user group and do one point to the extreme; this user group will have high recognition, stickiness, and repurchase rate. Correspondingly, the content, channels, and timing must conform to the characteristics and habits of these user groups. II. How to upgrade a brand? Brand upgrading focuses more on the technical level, that is, the upgrade of content, channels, and timing. Content upgrade ◆First, premiumization; Why premiumization? Perhaps the elders of the post-80s and post-90s think that working hard and earning money to support the family is what should be done, and they rarely have the motivation or behavior of "rewarding themselves." But as the new generation of main consumers, the post-80s and post-90s, "rewarding oneself" has become a very key consumption motive. Moreover, this motive does not differ due to income level; regardless of monthly income, they all hope to "reward themselves" and hope to live a high-quality, great-feeling life. It is in recent times that "fancy breakfast shows," "beautiful sports bras," and "succulent plants" have appeared, things that would never have been popular before, and these things precisely carry the post-80s and post-90s pursuit of high-quality life. ◆Second, differentiation; Earlier I mentioned young people's pursuit of "uniqueness"; they hope to use what they consume to express themselves. Luo Pang once used "contempt chain" to describe this deep human nature. For example, those who watch British dramas look down on those who watch American dramas, those who watch American dramas look down on those who watch Japanese dramas, those who watch Japanese dramas look down on those who watch Korean dramas, those who watch Korean dramas look down on those who watch Hong Kong dramas, and those who watch Hong Kong dramas look down on those who watch mainland dramas. We have passed the era of not having enough to eat and extreme material scarcity. Consumption is no longer just about buying something; besides the tangible items, there is also identity recognition, group belonging, unparalleled experience, and so on. Therefore, a brand must find its differentiation point and not follow the crowd. Otherwise, young people will not buy it. ◆Third, new aesthetics; Each era has its unique aesthetic. Young people's aesthetics are completely different from their elders. Take emojis as an example; the post-80s and post-90s emoji style is "silly, cute, and cheeky," while the emojis commonly used by elders are a completely different style. So, if the brand's target group is the younger generation, the content should conform to new aesthetics; if the target group is square-dancing aunties, it needs to conform to their aesthetics. ◆Fourth, personification. There is warmth and emotion between people, so to be a warm brand, it must be personified. Think: Does your brand have a correct worldview?
Does it have a good-looking and decent appearance?
Is it insightful?
Does it have its own value?
If you see the brand as a person, or the brand is yourself, what would you do?
How do you want your friends to evaluate you? Like the Michelin tire category, because of its cartoon image and the Michelin food guide, the brand becomes impressive. Channel upgrade ◆First, everywhere is a channel; Use your curiosity to discover new channels and uncommon channels. Previously, when talking about "channels," one immediately thought of common channels like TV, newspapers, subways, airports, elevators, etc. But today, all places where your target users can see, hear, smell, and touch are channels. If you can discover a new channel or an uncommon channel, the corresponding customer acquisition cost will be greatly reduced. ◆Second, cost-effectiveness first; When choosing a channel, you must first measure from three aspects: How many target users does this channel cover?
What is the customer acquisition cost of this channel?
How difficult is it to enter this channel? Prioritize channels with low entry difficulty, low customer acquisition cost, and large user coverage. ◆Third, observe other brands' channels; Think about whether this channel is effective and whether it can be borrowed. For example, when taking the subway or flying, analyze the ads placed in different positions and forms, which are effective, which are ineffective, and if you did it, how would you improve? Thinking and analyzing more like this helps your own brand's channel selection. ◆Fourth, remember a rule: "High investment, high return; low investment, zero return; zero investment, there is return." If you only have a budget of 120,000 yuan a year, do you spend 10,000 yuan per month or spend 100,000 yuan at once? Xiaohongshu is a cross-border e-commerce platform familiar to girls; its rise happened almost within a week. It concentrated time and high investment to get high returns. If it spent a little money and invested a little each month, it would hardly see any results. However, in the extreme, if you invest nothing at all and think of special methods and channels, there will be returns instead. The most common story is that Xiaomi initially had no marketing budget, lurked in various forums posting and pulling people, and finally found 100 enthusiasts, thus building up. Timing upgrade ◆First, closely combine with your strategy; Strategy is not something that can be shelved once formulated, but must be integrated into daily guiding thoughts every minute Should some things be done?
When to start?
With whom to do it? These three questions must be determined in close conjunction with strategy. ◆Second, cleverly leverage trends; Leverage industry hot topics and social hot topics to do borrowing with a correct worldview. When everyone is paying attention to one thing, your voice is more likely to enter users' minds. ◆Third, evaluate first; A plan must be evaluated before execution; never follow the trend or act impulsively. III. Capability training to support brand upgrading How to do brand upgrading well? For individuals, I suggest training three capabilities to meet the upgraded requirements for talent in brand upgrading. ◆1. Observation training We all have judgments and opinions about the shops, restaurants, physical products, advertising pages, etc. we encounter. For example, a classmate said she likes desserts very much, but she has two different feelings about Honeymoon Dessert and Tangzhi Dessert. Usually, when we have these feelings, we let them flash by. Observation training requires that after having these feelings, we list at least 10 reasons for these feelings. For example, she felt that Tangzhi Dessert was more upscale than Honeymoon Dessert. Why? Here are the 10 reasons she listed: ➀ Is the lighting in Tangzhi store brighter?
➁ Does Tangzhi use more elegant colors for dessert containers, while Honeymoon uses orange, which seems enthusiastic but not upscale enough?
➂ Is the overall price of Tangzhi higher than Honeymoon?
➃ Does Tangzhi's popular item "Fenfenxue" remind people of snow mountains, and snow mountains give a colder feeling?
➄ Is Tangzhi located in a more upscale area?
➅ Is the air conditioning temperature in Tangzhi generally lower than Honeymoon?
➆ Are the staff uniforms in Tangzhi more elegant?
➇ Is the taste of Tangzhi desserts more authentic than Honeymoon?
9 Is the menu color of Tangzhi more upscale and the material better than Honeymoon?
10 Is Honeymoon an old brand while Tangzhi is younger? ◆2. Empathy training When encountering a problem, we have ideas and solutions that come to mind immediately. Considering that most people have similar IQs, the ideas and solutions that different people come up with at the first moment may also be similar. In this situation, I require myself to give up the first ideas and solutions that come to mind, and always think twice before acting. Empathy training requires that when thinking, I think more about how others would think and how users would think, stepping out of my own thinking framework and putting myself in others' shoes to figure out their thoughts. ◆3. Curiosity training As we age, many people lose curiosity and take most things around them for granted. But think carefully, there are not so many things that are taken for granted. For example: "Why are license plates blue?"
"Why do people have hair on their heads?" Curiosity training requires that I ask at least 10 obvious but actually not so simple questions every day. The benefit of this training is to discover different ways of doing the same thing, find new ideas, and thus achieve the effect of "zero investment, there is return." Li Qian, well-known brand marketing expert. Founder of Emotional Snacks, former Managing Director of Green Mountain Capital, former Chief Editor of Tencent News. Columnist for 36Kr's "300 Days of Brand Thinking Practice," initiator of the internet brand learning community "Brand Training Camp," and the highest-rated marketing expert on the knowledge payment platform "Zaihang." Focused on brand and communication for over 10 years, helping more than 300 companies build their brands. During his time at Tencent, he founded China's first internet data news column "News Encyclopedia" and was the lead founder of the WeChat subscription account "News Brother" with tens of millions of followers. He is a brand expert with multiple perspectives of investment, content, and entrepreneurship.