Marketing should be viewed from the perspective of supply and demand. When supply exceeds demand, it leads to demand upgrading; it also inevitably leads to a shift in power (consumer sovereignty). What today's brand owners need to do is relationship marketing, scenario matching, and multi-dimensional connections.
-01- Lack of Meaning From the consumer's perspective, today's market problem is the shift in power caused by oversupply, which is an indisputable fact. But we need to carefully dissect what exactly is oversupplied and how we should view it. Look at the attitudes towards oversupply across different generations.
People of different generations have somewhat different feelings about material things. Those born before the 1990s mostly grew up in an environment of relative material scarcity. This generation has memories of poverty during their oral stage. Therefore, the most typical characteristic of this generation's material needs is quantitative satisfaction.
Based on this, it's easy to understand why an elderly lady shopping on Pinduoduo doesn't seek quality but wants the maximum quantity for the same amount of money.
We see that whether it's Coca-Cola, JDB, or Six Walnuts, they are essentially selling sugar water. They just differentiate conceptually—one says "afraid of getting heaty," another says "brain nourishment"—but essentially they are still satisfying and differentiating at a very low physiological level in Maslow's hierarchy. This is also closely related to the consumption logic of this generation.
However, with China's reform and opening up, economic takeoff, and abundant goods, those born after the 1990s grew up in an environment of relative material abundance. Especially the post-00s, they are the first generation that has truly never experienced material scarcity. Material things bring little satisfaction and happiness to this generation.
This generation is indifferent to quantitative consumption and low-level consumption. It's not that they don't believe drinking a can of JDB can prevent heatiness, or that drinking Six Walnuts can nourish the brain, but they won't buy without thinking just because of an advertising slogan.
They can soak goji berries in beer, apply the most expensive face masks at beauty salons, and have more choices to compensate for a sense of lack. But it doesn't have to be material.
They need more spiritual differentiation, at higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy, to bring true differentiated needs.
Today's so-called oversupply is essentially oversupply of low-level consumer needs, while supply for higher-level Maslow needs is still scarce.
I recently saw an analysis report saying that the search keywords for people born after 1990 and 2000 in 2019 were "loneliness" and "solitude." As someone born in the 1980s, I find it hard to understand why young people who lack nothing in terms of food, drink, entertainment, and work would be so sentimental.
Later I figured it out: as people have more choices, the satisfaction that material things can bring diminishes. In a sense, what we call expectation and hope is the reward provided by the amygdala to encourage you to achieve your goals during the process.
But this generation gets material satisfaction too quickly; they never have the chance to get the dopamine reward from the amygdala during the waiting process.
For example, people born in the 1980s have written letters. The anticipation of waiting for a reply is a reward that drives you to do something. But the post-00s were born into a networked society: WeChat replies instantly across the globe, high-speed rail and planes get you anywhere in half a day. A serious problem caused by low latency is that users don't need to wait at all; everything is instant feedback.
So this generation cannot get dopamine rewards from waiting for goals.
Now, people only feel anticipation when waiting for packages, but most of the time, what remains may be only loneliness and solitude.
When everything can be easily obtained, when all information can be quickly fed back, when users cannot get rewards through their own efforts and waiting, the core problem this generation faces becomes: lack of meaning.
What is my motivation for doing this? What is the result? What is the meaning?
-02- Content Shock Today's content supply has long exceeded people's needs. In a large information flow environment, the amount of information received daily is hundreds or even thousands of times more than before the internet era. Information overload leads to two problems: people's attention span decreases, and the time they focus on one thing shortens. This phenomenon is called content shock.
In a noisy information environment, the bandwidth for receiving information in each person's brain is limited, so people must reserve limited bandwidth for things related to themselves.
For example, if you are in a meeting room where many people are chatting and it's very noisy, you can ignore the loud talk of people around you, but if someone quietly talks about you behind your back, you will hear it immediately. Why? Because we instinctively reserve brain bandwidth for things related to ourselves.
So the problem we face today is: when consumers only reserve bandwidth for things related to themselves, who you are and what you say don't matter at all.
In the past, because media was scarce, advertising communication was memory-based marketing. An ad would run for ten years, repeated to make users remember, then they would go to the supermarket to buy.
Today, with content oversupply, when users see repeated information ads, the brain immediately shuts down the bandwidth for that information and reserves limited cognitive resources for things they care more about.
Now, with content oversupply, the communication method is interactive marketing. All communication must be built on relationships. If you cannot establish some connection with users, the brand's information won't even have the possibility to spread.
No matter how good your product or service is, no matter how cheap, what does it have to do with me? Why should I consume you? Why should I build a relationship with you?
-03- How to Build Relationships with This Generation? If we combine commodity oversupply and information overload to look at this generation of consumers, you'll find that in an environment of material abundance, information explosion, and convenient communication, this generation of consumers is significantly different from the previous generation in cognition, behavior, expression, and judgment of material things.
Two behavioral science professors at the University of San Diego conducted a 26-year study from 1982 to 2008, surveying more than 16,000 college students across the United States to evaluate their performance in various campus organizations. The results showed that since 2002, scores related to students' narcissism levels have significantly increased.
Famous American author Paul Roberts proposed four reasons to explain what created this narcissistic trend:
- Parents increasingly value their children's self-esteem when raising them;
- Loans are more convenient. In the past, economic conditions imposed huge constraints, but now, when you're out of money, there are credit cards and various financial apps. It's easy to gain a sense of self-identity from overconsumption;
- Media programs, especially reality shows, constantly convey a culture of self-affirmation;
- Internet social software allows us to show ourselves at any time, easily block others, and unfriend people we don't like.
Such an upbringing and social environment naturally make this generation pay more attention to their own feelings, prefer to communicate with people who share their values, emphasize their own worth, and ignore external evaluations and feedback.
Facing the behavioral logic of this generation, how to make them identify with you and be willing to build a relationship with you will become a very important research topic in marketing in the coming years.
If you want a group of narcissistic people to identify with you, Professor Li Yuhui mentioned two methods in organizational behavior:
Make them think you are awesome; Make them think they are awesome.
Making them think you are awesome is easy to understand:
1. Expert in a certain field: A master in a certain field, such as a basketball star, food or beauty blogger, who gains consumer recognition based on professional ability that surpasses most related enthusiasts.
2. Technology leader: Products are unique, absolutely leading, and very scarce in the relevant field. Apple is a typical example: the best experience, the fastest speed, the most complete ecosystem. Unique and irreplaceable. Moutai's difficulty in getting a bottle, the more expensive it is, the more people drink it, is also a representative of this phenomenon.
There is also a type that is both professional and leading in a certain field, such as Elon Musk, who has achieved all the grand promises he made. This makes everyone willing to pay for his dreams.
The second way to build relationships—making them think they are awesome—I think is a marketing method that most enterprises facing homogeneous competition can learn from and consider. I call this marketing method Lego-style marketing.
So-called Lego-style marketing, as the name implies, means the brand provides consumers with a semi-finished product, requiring consumers and the brand to work together to complete a "work." When this work is infused with the user's "wisdom" and "labor," it naturally becomes a very important "meaning" in their hearts.
This meaning cannot be measured by price for consumers, and the brand owner, you, and your role are merely the background.
We can understand it this way: In the past, products were actors and consumers were the audience. Now, consumers are actors and the brand is the stage.
And the product is the "work" co-created by the brand and consumers.
-04- Sovereign Co-creation Let me give a very popular example that Teacher Cai Yu recently mentioned in Dedao's Business Reference to illustrate the internal logic of this co-creation:
There is a cosmetics store called HARMAY in Sanlitun, Beijing, which is very popular. You have to queue to buy cosmetics. During Double 11, you have to wait more than an hour to get in.
If you don't know it, you might find it strange: isn't it just a cosmetics store? If you haven't heard of HARMAY's stores, I suggest you search on Dianping and Xiaohongshu first to see the pictures, reviews, and videos that other users have posted of HARMAY stores, and see what the store looks like.
HARMAY started as a Taobao store in 2008, initially selling overseas high-end skincare products like La Mer, SK-II, Estée Lauder, and Kiehl's. Since 2017, HARMAY has opened offline physical stores in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing. This immediately made it a hot topic in the retail industry.
In terms of decoration style, HARMAY's stores are a bit like IKEA. Unlike other cosmetics stores that go for a delicate, colorful style, it adopts an industrial warehouse style. With reinforced concrete walls and oversized stainless steel shelves, it's novel and immediately attractive.
Moreover, the decoration is precisely its core value. From the perspective of emotional value, you'll find that the core product of HARMAY's offline stores is not cosmetics, but the store itself as an "internet-famous check-in spot."
Take the Beijing store as an example: every corner of the store is a particularly good photo spot, specially designed for girls to take photos and selfies. The moment you step into a HARMAY store, you enter an immersive internet-famous exhibition.
Its display cabinets are like a huge rotating sushi bar. A beautiful spiral staircase connects the first and second floors. On the second floor, there are five themed rooms of different styles. Some rooms are dedicated to travel-size skincare, some to perfumes and fragrances, some to niche brands, some are makeup rooms, and some are art display areas.
If you don't buy anything, that's fine. You can spend an afternoon or a whole day here, taking selfies everywhere, trying products freely, and even experiencing the sorting and shipping of products firsthand, feeling the logistics chain of new retail.
This is very special because there are many cosmetics counters and stores that let girls try makeup, but there are very few beauty stores that let girls try makeup while browsing an art exhibition and can't help taking photos to post on social media.
If you really spend an afternoon here, you enjoy an immersive selfie experience, and the emotional value you get is "beauty and goodness." In the past, to enjoy this experience, you had to buy cosmetics, go home, put on makeup, and then search for an internet-famous spot to take photos. HARMAY provides all of this in one stop.
After experiencing such a beautiful exhibition, can you resist buying a few small lipsticks or foundations as souvenirs when you leave?
Is HARMAY's product cosmetics? Actually, it co-creates a beautiful experience with users, as well as beautiful photos that can be posted on social media.
This model can actually co-create many "works" with users.
For example, I sell rice, but what I provide to consumers is not the rice product, but a piece of land of suitable size. Consumers can experience spring planting, summer weeding, and autumn harvesting on this land, and finally harvest their own "fruits." How much do you think this bag of rice is worth to this consumer?
I sell liquor, but what I provide to consumers is not the already brewed product, but an invitation for consumers to work with the brewer to make a wine that belongs to them, brewed by their own hands. How much do you think this bottle of wine is worth to the consumer who participated in the brewing?
Note, this is not C2M, customizing for consumers, nor is it just letting consumers participate and listening to their opinions. It is about completing a work that belongs to them.
In the era of consumer sovereignty, what we need to do is not just give consumers more choices, nor just become the best choice for consumers. What we need to do more is hand over the right of creation to consumers themselves.
Why co-create with consumers?
In Maslow's hierarchy, the highest need is "self-actualization," and the ultimate goal of self-actualization is creation—to realize a "work" that one wants to accomplish in one's heart.
This work can be anything, and in essence, it can be in any form. But what we need to think about is: why do consumers consume? What is the meaning of doing this? Through this ritual, what can consumers gain beyond material things?
Are we really selling products? We are helping consumers realize some kind of "meaning."
Of course, building relationships is not limited to these two methods. You can also build relationships directly with consumers, or use others' relationships to do business. Finally, you can turn relationships into channels and turn relationships into business.
| Founder of New Distribution, FMCG industry channel expert, author of over 400,000 words of original FMCG industry research articles. For communication, you can add WeChat by long-pressing. When adding, please indicate your company, position, and name.
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