An advertising marketer's 10-year insights: This article is reprinted from: FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting Management (kxpjxszyzxgl) As a consumer, the perception of a brand is merely the intuitive feel of the brand name. You can ask pedestrians or your family, "What is a brand?" They will say: "Brands are Nike, Starbucks, Dior, Audi, etc." If you ask further, they will add more brand names. For them, a brand is just a name, so you should know the importance of a brand name! Don't ask consumers what positioning is; they will ask you back, "What is positioning?" Try it if you don't believe. So just ask them when you go to the supermarket: "What do you think of Rejoice? What do you think of Crest?" You can ask about many products. Eventually, you'll find that the first association of a brand name is positioning; positioning is the first feeling of a brand name, and they are interrelated. For example, Nutrition Express (Yingyang Kuaixian) gives us the feeling of a nutritious drink that provides quick nutrition. Its success lies in taking a functional dairy route among many milk products. In reality, it doesn't have the functional effects like Red Bull, but the name places it in the category of nutritional supplements, while other similar products still use raw materials like walnut milk to express value, which, though conveying brain-boosting meanings, is not as direct as naming positioning. Category & Concept: Unique and Novel Status Apple's phone is called iPhone, standing out in the smartphone market; its essence cannot be surpassed or copied... This is a new category! Category is the product class. Fish and kelp belong to food, but kelp also belongs to vegetables; this is category segmentation. Suppose there is a deep-sea kelp with slender, delicate leaves, like a 16-year-old kelp girl. How would you sell it? Call it "Deep-sea Small Kelp"? It's still kelp, at most deep-sea, not much different from kelp sold for a few cents per pound. But in reality, the product's taste is indeed tender and fresh, yet consumers cannot perceive this, so it requires innovating a new category. So when we planned this case, we created a new species, and this new species is called: "Hai Jiaolan" (Sea Jiao Lan). What is this? It's a term for pollution-free deep-sea vegetables harvested from X meters deep after X growth cycles and processed with X environmentally friendly methods. In the future, products produced in similar environments will be called Hai Jiaolan; this is a new category. Category plays a more disruptive role than concept because it is unique. Of course, when no suitable new category can be found, concept is still a sharp sword to stimulate consumers' nerves. For example: Bai Jia Hei cold medicine—take the white tablet during the day to avoid drowsiness, and the black tablet at night for sound sleep... Concept + Name = Brand Memory Brand & Differentiation: Interlocking Personality Symbols Every brand is a goddess in the hearts of its many loyal consumers. A brand is not just about selling products; building a brand is like building a star. Besides their works, stars display a good image through attire, private life, and public activities, and through every public welfare interaction, they publish a touching real-world story. The great Jesus was nailed to the cross to save humanity; this is the Catholic Church with hundreds of millions of believers and its cross. The cross, as a prop, is both a brand story and a symbol. Similarly, the sickle and hammer representing the working class are the brand symbols of communism worldwide, and the Olympic rings represent five continents. Take LV as an example: poor boy Louis Vuitton, while working as a trunk packer for travel-loving royalty, invented the flat-top trunk. His gray canvas-covered leather trunk became fashionable at the time. Later, his son Georges, to prevent imitation, combined the four-petal pattern and LV initials into a brand symbol that influenced the world. Such a family story, with its legendary history and unique symbol, established a model image in the luxury goods sector, becoming a poison that drives countless fans crazy! If you are not strong enough, if you don't want to do free promotion for the industry, we provide a chain effect: horizontally link brand, positioning, slogan, product concept, and visual image so that when any one is thrown out, the others are naturally associated. For example, there is a patented down product that solves the industry problem of down escaping. But if we only emphasize the lock-down technology patent, it might benefit the industry. To make it serve the brand itself, we need the chain effect law. So we named the brand: Yu Jiao Rong (Jade Jiao Down), positioning: Master of Down Art, product concept and slogan: "True quality hidden deep," visual image: the female warrior Yu Jiaolong from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Advertising & Creativity: Getting Addicted to Watching Ads You might forget a brand, but you definitely remember the ads. For example: "Nongfu Spring is a little sweet," "Afraid of getting heaty? Drink Wanglaoji," "With KFC, life tastes good," "Not taking the ordinary path, Metersbonwe," "M-Zone, my zone I rule," "Haier, sincere forever," "A diamond is forever, a diamond lasts forever"... It's no exaggeration to say that a slogan can make a brand, because the slogan is the appeal of the product or brand, directly guiding purchase behavior. Any advertising creativity is not aimless; it is based on the core appeal, expressed through shocking effects, puzzling magical worlds, humorous techniques, naked sexual desires, superb artistic charm, tear-jerking touching situations, etc.—this is the characteristic of creativity. For example, the American Snickers "You're not you when you're hungry" campaign captures the characteristics after hunger. When people are hungry, they become weak like women and the elderly, and they search for food like zombies or pregnant women. This expression gives a strange shock and humorous impression that is unforgettable. In summary, the role of advertising creativity is: 1. Save on the number of ad placements; it's like love at first sight—one encounter is enough to make one sleepless with longing. 2. Facilitate interactive communication, because a good ad creative is like a film work; vivid and interesting creativity makes people want to share. 3. Showcase brand strength; ads represent the company's value orientation. Making a tasteful ad is the beginning of shaping the brand image. 4. Enhance affinity; to some extent, liking the ad means liking the brand. 5. Drive sales; naturally, it follows. Hot Topics & Promotion: Four Ounces to Move a Thousand Pounds The characteristic of modern commercial society is that products change rapidly; perhaps heavy investment results in no chance to even launch. Living in an era of internet information explosion, what do we watch?—Hot topics. In other words, catching a hot topic catches consumers' eyes. If he doesn't even look at you, will he fall in love with you? Hot topics can be roughly divided into two types: one is positive hot topics like news and exchanges; the other is negative hot topics like scandals and entertainment. In business operations, we can leverage hot topics—create hot topics—and rely on online promotion. Promotion methods mainly involve building a data-rich public opinion environment on the internet, creating Baidu optimization like SEM, Baike, Q&A, and Knowledge Hall, publishing press releases through dozens of national portal sites, and industry sites and SNS sites, hiring internet water armies for in-depth dissemination on forums and blogs, and using keyword + technical optimization to increase page views. Do you still remember the Guizhentang live bear bile extraction incident? This is a typical self-created hot topic promotion case. It adopted a normative marketing strategy, challenging social morality to cause widespread controversy. The purpose was to attract attention with live bear bile extraction. Attention to what? Some might say such hype only brings disgust and negative impact. If you think so, it just achieves their goal. What they want to tell us is: "Real materials!" As a special product, the target consumer groups are different. Take those who eat shark fin; they worry not about the life of animals, but about the authenticity of the product... In summary: 1. Throw out topics, such as scandals, industry insider information, social norms, free technical training, etc., through various creative titles. 2. Massively bump posts; write attractive posts, hire water armies to pin them to the top and make them hot. 3. Attract onlookers; Sina, Tencent, Tianya, Mop forums or blogs have daily traffic of hundreds of millions. As long as they are highlighted, they can get hundreds of millions of views daily, becoming the biggest beneficiaries. 4. Launch accordingly; when these topics become hot, the product appears with the heat, listing its advantages, thereby greatly attracting the attention of target audiences. It's a bit like the AIDMA law: Attention-Interest-Desire-Memory-Action. Media & PR: A Good Reputation Is the Only Reputation As the saying goes, different trades are separated as if by mountains. Some people are scared when they hear about appearing on CCTV, but it's not that scary. Choosing some appropriate product placements at the right time can play an immeasurable role. These placements are arranged in media environments such as news reports, industry scans, film and TV settings, and program props. Of course, this relies on PR methods, which are our specialty. Currently, we have resources from over 1,000 online portal sites and social media (forums, blogs, Weibo), and have established good cooperative relationships with CCTV, major satellite TV stations, newspapers, and outdoor advertising media. Logo Design: The Key to Winning for New Brands The logo represents the brand; it is a symbol that creates self and differentiates from others, like Colonel Sanders, the Starbucks siren, Shell Oil, Ferrari's horse, etc. It reflects the brand's spiritual connotation and has unique visual recognition. Most European and American brands have a very special pattern as their LOGO, but many companies, in order to immerse themselves in a so-called international, minimalist brand trend, even remove the Chinese name with special meaning and replace it with a row of English letters of unknown meaning, or some don't do any processing. This is called simple and plain. Take Apple and Samsung: you might have seen knockoff phones that swap Samsung's letters to ride on its coattails, but have you seen a knockoff phone with the Apple logo? Would they dare? What matters is which has more personality and recognition? Everyone understands that for a brand as famous as Samsung, we can't even spell its LOGO, so where is the connotation, where is the recognition? VI Design: Not Uniformity, but Personality A uniform army, even if one person is special, the morale of the whole army will drop. The purpose of VI is to do standardized and unified attitude. Perhaps this is the reason for the excitement and pride when watching the National Day military parade. VI design is undoubtedly the foundation for winning consumer trust... American sci-fi movies like Spider-Man and Batman leave a deep impression mainly because of their uniquely designed costumes. VI design is definitely not simple uniformity; impact focuses on deep impression VI image design research. Advertising Creativity: A Spectacular Blockbuster We often encounter ads inserted into an engrossing TV drama; how annoying and boring is that? I think no one likes watching ads, but now we are changing... We aim to make watching ads as gripping as watching American blockbusters, as relaxed and happy as crosstalk and sketches, as pleasing as art works. The only purpose is: "Dear, give a good review!" Packaging Design: Eye-Catching to Be Competitive Packaging displays and protects products normally, but in modern business, information is transparent and homogenization is severe. Product packaging becomes a magic weapon to distinguish the product's own value. A milk tea client needed a packaging design. After visiting, I found that all dairy beverage packaging has a milk flower with fruit, called fruit-flavored milk tea. In short, coffee flavor is paired with a few coffee beans, and so on, occupying the entire picture to highlight the subject, complementing the product name and trademark. It's like walking down the street wearing clothes with the word "person" on them, afraid others might mistake me for a ghost. Finally, I decided to break this status quo, capturing the interests of target consumer groups: shrink the milk flower and ingredients. For student consumers, use cartoon fashion themes; for young consumers, use floral love themes; for middle-aged consumers, use oil painting art themes... When these packages are displayed on shelves, compared to the monotonous milk flowers, they are more connotative and eye-catching. Brochure Design: The Yeast That Induces Cooperation A brochure is an order? Someone said that, but it's not an exaggeration. Distributors want to select products, consumers want to select products. When choosing one or more products, what they get is not just a brochure, but a brand impression. Are the images realistic? Is the layout reasonable? Is the texture fine? Is it easy to read?... DM Design: A Reason Not to Throw It Away The role of DM is to promote, equivalent to handing out tickets on the street. Whether consumers come to the cinema depends on the DM design. How to design it to be tempting? Interesting product function concepts? Absolutely real ultra-low discounts? Coupons? Gift vouchers? Online Store Design: Details Determine Sales In the era of online sales, you can't do without an online store. Whether the store is effective depends on whether it has brand style. Friends who have opened online stores know that whether a product can become a hit depends on design: multi-angle close-ups, comparisons with similar products, even video simulation tests, etc. Are those beautifully designed images really used by celebrities? Are they teaching you how to match or promoting? Terminal Design: Customers Start with Experience As the direct sales position, the terminal not only needs eloquent beautiful salesgirls, but also bright and neat uniforms, exquisite and eye-catching display shapes, and flexible and applicable activity materials. Store design is not only the unity of style, but also the clever arrangement of space. Good terminal experience can attract every customer to go deeper and participate in the purchase. Reply with the following keywords to categorize and read related professional articles: Sales Supervisor, Second-Tier Management, Regional Manager, Distributor Management, New Channels, City Manager, Competition, 2015, Manufacturer-Dealer Game, Product Stagnation, Terminal Visit Management, Route Management, Deep Distribution, Internal Management, Sales Skills, Profit Improvement, Recruitment, Distribution, Daily Management, Team Motivation, Trade Promotion, Sales Misconceptions, New Product Launch, Township Market, New Product Pricing, Sales Target Achievement, Closing, Market Visit Inspection, Baijiu, Beer, Sales Increase, Agency Products, Channel Crossing, KA, Terminal Visualization, New Market, Market Operation, Learning, Book Recommendations, Inventory Management, Sales Novice, Consumer Promotion, Execution, Old Products, Expired Product Handling, Model Market, Investment Promotion, New Media, Distributor Development, Performance Appraisal, Assessment, Annual Planning, Shopping Guide, Morning Meeting, Display, Transformation, Inventory Pressure, Holidays, Distributor Cost Control, Channel Operation, Marketing Theory and Laws, Brand Truth, Order Meeting, Team Management, Training, Work Report, Work Report.