---
title: "Dialogue with Cai Yu: What This Generation of Users Wants Is Not Touching, but Complicity"
description: "In the first installment of our series on business narrative, we invited Cai Yu, author of the Dedao course 'Cai Yu's Business Reference' and the book 'Emotional Value.' She believes that after oversupply, sales ability becomes crucial, and sales ability is narrative ability. Narrative is our filtering, narration, and interpretation of information, selling a certain proposition to others through various actions. Today, a company's content and narrative capabilities should be part of its product strategy, even its corporate strategy; relegating them to marketing is an underestimation."
author: "梁将军"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2025-04-16"
language: "en"
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---

# Dialogue with Cai Yu: What This Generation of Users Wants Is Not Touching, but Complicity

> In the first installment of our series on business narrative, we invited Cai Yu, author of the Dedao course 'Cai Yu's Business Reference' and the book 'Emotional Value.' She believes that after oversupply, sales ability becomes crucial, and sales ability is narrative ability. Narrative is our filtering, narration, and interpretation of information, selling a certain proposition to others through various actions. Today, a company's content and narrative capabilities should be part of its product strategy, even its corporate strategy; relegating them to marketing is an underestimation.

**Source** | Liang Jiangjun
Recently, while preparing the 2.0 methodology for business narrative and related courses, I have been seeking individuals or companies in the business world who practice narrative concepts, hoping to help everyone understand the underlying logic of narrative and the energy behind it from multiple perspectives.
Fortunately, for the first installment, we invited Cai Yu, author of the Dedao series 'Cai Yu's Business Reference' and the book 'Emotional Value.' Teacher Cai's insights into the business world and her exploration of emotional value align perfectly with the philosophy pursued by business narrative.
For example, she believes that after oversupply, sales ability becomes important, and sales ability is narrative ability. Narrative is our filtering, narration, and interpretation of information, selling a certain proposition to others through various actions. Today, a company's content and narrative capabilities should be part of its product strategy, even its corporate strategy; relegating them to marketing is an underestimation.
I had originally chosen a date to interview Teacher Cai, but she said, 'There's no sun that day; shall we change it?' What kind of different thinking and inspiration can someone who even cares about 'adding a bit of sunshine' to an interview bring us?
**A Business Observer's Recluse Narrative**
**Making Products with Anti-Influencer Logic**
Liang Jiangjun: You once said you entered the business circle as an observer. Can you talk about your past career experience?
Cai Yu: After graduating from university in 2003, I worked as a business and finance journalist for over a decade. In 2012, I co-founded Huxiu with Li Min, left in 2016, and joined Dedao. Around 2020, I moved to the business line and started creating original content products.
Liang Jiangjun: When selling knowledge products, most people like to emphasize that they are not observers but practitioners. Why do you rarely emphasize your entrepreneurial experience in your self-introduction?
Cai Yu: I didn't deliberately avoid mentioning my entrepreneurial identity; I just think it's not that important in my observation of the world.
I see myself as a filter and sensor. When I lead everyone to observe the business world, what people really care about is what's happening in the world and what interesting perspectives and ways of understanding exist. My identity isn't that important. It's like the child who shouted that the emperor has no clothes; people don't care what that child's name is.
Liang Jiangjun: Aren't you worried about low purchase rates? Because when many knowledge products launch, many people come for the author.
Cai Yu: I think **content itself is a validator of value. If a piece of content requires you to shout loudly to push it out, it means it's not good content, or its time hasn't come yet.** Content will prove its own vitality.
Liang Jiangjun: You're making products with 'anti-influencer logic.' Why does it sell better than many experts?
Cai Yu: My self-set role is to explain business to people who don't understand it. I want to tell even the general public who don't care about business that there are important business changes that have already affected or are about to affect your life, what these things are, and what methods of observing business look like. When explaining to the public, there's a premise: I won't compete in depth or show off techniques.
Because I think the things I tell users and the examples I give should be things they can also reach. If I went to great lengths to sit down with Liang Wenfeng for an hour, the content would certainly be exciting, but it would just be showing off. It wouldn't be relevant to a doctor in a small county town.
After figuring this out, I tried to use public information as much as possible when building my business framework. I hope to sort out the context and perspectives behind the information for the public.
The outsider's perspective, the coherence of business context, and the fun I provide as a generalist might be why people like my course.
Liang Jiangjun: Everyone uses public information for content. Your advantage is your unique perspective and context, right?
Cai Yu: Today, everyone subscribes to 500 public accounts, Douyin accounts talk about finance, and Xiaohongshu bloggers teach you how to get rich. People don't lack information; they lack a perceivable and relatable person who can coherently connect all the important things, filter them, and tell them what they can ignore. I think my column solves this problem.
The fourth season of my 'Business Reference' column has just launched. It doesn't start with changes in the business world but with a large special topic of dozens of lectures, explaining the business landscape, called 'Super Landscape, Super Problems.' I hope an ordinary person can sit in their study and roughly understand how the world behind business operates.
Liang Jiangjun: Is 'Super Landscape' a narrative for the course?
Cai Yu: You can understand it that way. Narrative is actually a very important keyword. I think **narrative is our filtering, narration, and interpretation of information, selling a certain proposition to others through various actions.**
The way to sell a proposition can be rational argument, or it can use stories to bypass rationality and move people on an emotional level, making them buy your proposition.
The most typical example is Buffett. His 'snowball' concept is his main narrative.
His actions are his narrative, his financial reports are his narrative, his shareholder letters are his narrative. All his actions are him constantly arguing that what he's doing is right and valuable, thereby summoning more followers.
Of course, I can't compare to Buffett, but I think when I do my column, it's a similar approach. People might see my column with different perspectives and themes each time, but my narrative is consistent. This is essentially related to the historical view I commonly use.
Liang Jiangjun: You use a historical view to plan business content? What kind of historical view?
Cai Yu: Everyone has a different perspective on the world, such as historical view, people's historical view, hero's historical view, and the postmodern historical view that young people like. My own historical view is called 'anti-entropy historical view.'
I think human history has continued because there have always been generations of enterprising people fighting against various forms of entropy. Business history is also a kind of history, but it's what's happening today; we're just in the midst of history.
Around us, especially in today's era, the most visible, large-scale, and transparent group of enterprising people are business players. When you understand their actions and how they interact with society, several threads emerge, and that's the business landscape. Once you find the landscape, when you understand any new information within it, the conclusions you draw are more testable.
Super Landscape might seem different from my other courses' perspectives, but it's just different from others; for me, it's consistent. I still strive to understand things from a universal perspective, within a broader business landscape, with the same explanatory power for other things.
Liang Jiangjun: Super Landscape is a narrative, Buffett's snowball is a narrative. Why do many enterprises also need their own narrative?
Cai Yu: I think the important reason is that **today, the discourse power has shifted to the demand side, meaning oversupply. After oversupply, sales ability becomes important, and sales ability is narrative ability.**
Where did we first hear the keyword 'narrative'? It was in the financial industry, especially the secondary market. The ability of all bosses who go to ring the bell to convince others to fund them is actually 'narrative,' but back then it was called storytelling ability, not narrative.
Even the previous generation of enterprises, especially those close to the consumer market, rose on narrative ability. For example, Naobaijin, Apollo, and Oriental Hericium.
Especially by 2015, many industries in China had overcapacity, and product quality was well-tuned. A large number of local Chinese new consumer brands rose.
The differentiation capabilities everyone had were two:
First, proximity to the supply chain. Second, narrative ability more familiar with local culture. At that time, it was said to use internet thinking to redo all industries. In fact, isn't internet thinking just being closer to users, with faster response in narrative and market emotional resonance?
For example, Pinduoduo seems to achieve business growth with low prices and freebies, without needing narrative. That's not true. Huang Zheng said consumption upgrade isn't about letting Shanghai people live like Parisians, but letting people in Anqing, Anhui, afford kitchen paper and eat good fruit. That's narrative. Abstracted, the proposition it sells is 'make it easy to buy anything in the world.'
This is a parallel to Alibaba. Previously, Alibaba built its e-commerce monopoly using the narrative 'make it easy to do business anywhere,' which stood on the seller's side, solving sellers' problems. Pinduoduo, on the other hand, built a user narrative and carved out a huge piece of the e-commerce market.
Since the reform and opening up, Chinese business narratives have never stopped. Especially today, with oversupply, people realize you can't sell without narrative. Because everyone's product lines are at the passing line or even the gold line, and consumers are less sensitive to quality, narrative is another breakthrough.
**Survival Rules for Enterprises Under Emotional Value:**
**Understanding the Context Behind Emotional Needs**
Liang Jiangjun: When did you feel that 'emotional value' could be made into a standalone course?
Cai Yu: Emotional value existed before the pandemic, but it was called 'social currency.' When you see the term social currency, you realize its emotion is very explicit. When this term is placed before you, you feel that emotion must collide with an external person to gain satisfaction. But after the pandemic, around 2020, I strongly realized that emotion itself is becoming value, even detached from the need to find an object to complete verification.
Liang Jiangjun: What inspired you at that time?
Cai Yu: It was Know Yourself from Qiantang. In 2020, they launched an app called Yue Shi (Eclipse). The earliest version of this app was like taking out the mood groups from Douban, providing a space for people with less positive emotions to find a place for themselves and find companions.
After browsing some of their groups, I was quite shocked. Many people expressed their feelings there, like 'It's okay to not be well' and 'I want to go crazy.' After a group was created, thousands of people quickly gathered. At that moment, I suddenly realized that the less positive emotions of China's younger generation had become so strong and large-scale that they needed an independent community and group to carry them.
In the past, when we were less positive, we'd say 'we're quite down' and unconsciously use derogatory terms to mock ourselves. But today's young people openly say 'my corpse is warm' and 'this thing is a 'dark spot essence,' referring to 'corpse spots.' They increasingly legitimately express that negative emotions are reasonable.
At that point, Qiantang's Yue Shi quickly inspired me.
Liang Jiangjun: When did you realize the term 'emotional value' would become popular?
Cai Yu: In the second half of 2023, I knew it would become popular. Because consumers' dissatisfaction with the supply side was growing stronger. It wasn't that you launched a product and I thought it was bad, but that you couldn't keep up with the awakening of my needs.
From then on, the market started mentioning 'conscience domestic products.' For example, Erke donated to the Henan flood relief, and later White Cat and Bee & Flower were 'wildly consumed' by young people. The emotion young people expressed was 'If you treat my society well, I'll treat you well.'
Later, Wuling proposed 'People need what, Wuling makes what.' They produced various styles of MINI cars based on user ideas. But the products that best represented this slogan weren't cars; they were masks in 2020 and later river snail rice noodles. **When enterprises proactively respond to demand-side needs, they receive unexpected traffic and transactions.**
Also, after the Spring Festival in 2023, Zibo exploded, concerts everywhere exploded, and many people started exploring obscure small cities for cultural tourism, including many buying houses in Hegang, all spontaneously initiated by buyers.
But the supply side was completely unprepared. Everyone was shocked: Why did the overwhelming traffic come? Why did I become an internet celebrity? Why can't I stay popular? People pondered these things for half a year. By the end of the year, Harbin figured it out, catching the traffic and turning it into sustainable traffic.
In this process, I found that the supply side has been chasing the demand side. The demand side has become clearer and more urgent about what it wants, but the supply side hasn't caught up. When I realized this, I made a dedicated course on emotional value.
Liang Jiangjun: Which enterprises seem to do emotional value marketing but actually do it in a 'cringe' way? I've observed many brands talking about emotional value, but their emotional investment in users is hypocritical.
Cai Yu: Let's not name specific cases; you can search for 'backfire' and see many.
Before this, everyone lived in a prosperous era and was tolerant of pleasantries. If you told me you had feelings, I'd understand it as pleasantry. After all, you don't hit a smiling face. But today, I think everyone has become 'scarce.' First, because the overall business growth has slowed; second, after oversupply, consumers have more choices, and we're in an era of information explosion. People realize that when you narrate to me, you're also consuming my attention, but my energy is limited, so I need to examine you more carefully and be more demanding and picky.
Foreign brands are actually good at playing the emotional card, but in many past years, when they played it, they often 'pointed at emotion with emotion,' meaning they didn't place emotion in a logical context. So their emotional card was thin and couldn't withstand the test and impact of social changes.
Liang Jiangjun: For example, emotional transmission like 'silk smooth' is no longer recognized by consumers.
Cai Yu: Right. Its pun is about small beauties. But consumers might have wanted 'small beauties' the day before yesterday, and today they don't. The brand hasn't followed the evolution of social emotions. In fact, you need to understand the context of changes in people's emotional needs to do emotional transmission well.
This might be related to the era, politics, culture, institutions, family of origin, generational trends, and even population structure.
'Silk smooth' isn't bad, but it's too abstract. When consumers see brands as lighthouses to aspire to and worship, abstraction is fine. But when consumers realize 'I need to be self-centered' and 'I annotate the classics with my own meaning,' they start to examine whether you fit into my scenario.
At this point, abstract emotional expression is hard to land. Essentially, this is the relationship between the leader and the supporting role.
When you're a leader and I'm your follower, you just say you're good, and I just worship and bow. But when you're my supporting role, I need to think: Are you suitable for my life? At this point, 'silk smooth' needs to re-examine itself.
Let's look from the 1990s, when a large number of foreign brands flooded into China, the Pierre Cardin era.
At that time, Chinese enterprises were learning from foreign brands, and no one realized they needed to be themselves. It wasn't until the emergence of new consumption in 2015 that people realized they needed to make national trend brands, conscience domestic products, and realize who I am as a local brand.
What is the posture of Europe and America in China? Because the Chinese market is a latecomer market for European and American brands, the card with the highest cost-performance ratio is 'I am the leader.' They constantly argue 'I am the best' to open the market.
At that time, consumer enterprises made brands by copying European and American ideas. Look at Xiaomi in earlier years; it was obvious. When Xiaomi first came out, it used leader logic, often saying 'If you're not convinced, run a benchmark.' This was arguing I'm the best and worth following.
But from the moment they mentioned 'participation,' Xiaomi realized they needed to make their own local brand. Every successful product and marketing Xiaomi does today is truly independently answering 'Who are Chinese consumers? What do they need?'
**Every Enterprise Should Place Itself in a Larger Landscape**
**Solve Problems for Other Units in the Landscape**
Liang Jiangjun: You mentioned some enterprises consult you on business issues. Because your perspective isn't purely commercial, I guess your advice differs from ordinary business consultants. What advice have you given them?
Cai Yu: All kinds. At the end of last year, many city cultural tourism departments came to me.
For example, Shenzhen is a city with few traditional cultural tourism resources. Their first words to me were: 'We Shenzhen have no cultural tourism resources.' I said: 'That's not the case. Before thinking about how to do cultural tourism, you need to answer me one question: Who do you want to stand with, and use what resources to earn whose money?'
If you compare with Hangzhou, Shenzhen has no West Lake or antique towns, so of course. But that's not the only cultural tourism. China also has the identity of 'infrastructure maniac.' If you treat Shenzhen as an entry point for the outside world to understand 'infrastructure maniac,' Shenzhen has good cultural tourism resources.
For example, you could build a gorgeous tourist center next to Huaqiangbei, setting tasks for tourists like a script murder game.
After tourists arrive at the center, let staff lead everyone in 3D printing, spending 3 hours assembling a bone conduction headset or a small humidifier. After assembling, print the shell, fill in the address, and send it home as a gift for family. Wouldn't Huaqiangbei become as fun as the Great Tang All Day Mall? You don't need to learn from Hangzhou or Xi'an.
Also, Shenzhen has so many hardware manufacturers. Shouldn't Shenzhen cultural tourism hold an annual Chinese electronic New Year gift awards? And release a list price.
Because every second half of the year, all Chinese people worry about what gifts to give. New Year gifts, birthday gifts, gifts for the elderly, gifts for children, gifts for husbands and wives, etc. Shenzhen's factories hide so many hidden talents; isn't that a good cultural tourism resource?
Furthermore, we all know the Canton Fair and the China International Financial Fair. These are transaction-oriented ToB international exhibitions. But can you learn from the comic convention approach and hold a muscle-flexing electronic consumer exhibition?
In January this year, when I watched the 'News Broadcast,' I found they spent a long time on the Hainan Film Festival, and then 'Focus Report' continued. If we assume decoupling will happen, and the world splits in two, doesn't the Eastern Hemisphere need an Oscar? Following this line, doesn't the Eastern Hemisphere need a CES? Can Shenzhen do it? If Shenzhen doesn't, will Hefei do it one day?
Liang Jiangjun: It feels like cultural tourism is competitive because everyone's perspective on cultural tourism resources is singular.
Cai Yu: Right. We've always limited cultural tourism resources to small bridges, flowing water, famous mountains, and great rivers. That's not the case. What content best expresses China and allows everyone to participate? If you give people action suggestions and plans, they'll be willing to play in your place.
The most typical example is the concerts in recent years. Why do concerts drive cultural tourism? Because people know what they can do when they go.
So, today, all cities with Chinese characteristics, when exploring their characteristics, can first answer: 'What can people come here to do?' After answering this question, they can redo their cultural tourism planning. Not every place needs to build antique towns and hot spring resorts.
Take Tianjin, for example. Tianjin people are natural comedians. Can Tianjin cultural tourism issue a call for submissions every year or quarter? All tourists visiting Tianjin collect 10 Tianjin jokes on the street, attach their round-trip air or train tickets, and the cultural tourism department reimburses the tickets for quality content. This doesn't cost much, but as content accumulates, you can publish a book every year. Content settles in the process, and your culture interacts with the outside world.
Liang Jiangjun: Basically, your advice still revolves around the super landscape, helping cultural tourism find breakthrough points. Whether Shenzhen or Tianjin, they need to place themselves in a big map, find super problems, and ultimately turn the problems under the landscape into actions with users.
Cai Yu: Yes. Place yourself in a larger landscape and solve problems for other units in the landscape.
Traditional enterprises have a singular perspective, thinking that the market is the whole world, and other external forces are hindering their relationship with customers. That's not the case. The social system is a complex system. To do business well, you need to see the whole picture like playing chess.
**Narrative Prophecy in the AI Era:**
**Brands with Complete Personalities Are Less Likely to Be Fragmented by Algorithms**
Liang Jiangjun: I've been thinking about a question recently: If we enter an era of full AI implementation, how do we do marketing? For example, if I buy an air fryer then, I might not look at KOL recommendations at all. I'd directly ask AI, and it would give me the answer and a detailed plan, telling me why I made this decision and why I need it.
In this scenario, original corporate marketing methods might all be dismantled. Brand grass-planting notes and emotional TVCs might be filtered out by AI because AI is very rational. How should a company transmit emotion to a person through AI?
Cai Yu: I haven't thought about marketing alone, because I think **corporate content and narrative capabilities, today, should be part of product strategy, even the entire corporate strategy. Relegating them to marketing is an underestimation and cannot be fully realized.**
In the future, when AI truly evolves to AGI, I think people won't distinguish who is AI and who isn't; they'll only distinguish who is more charming and who attracts me more. Whether it's a real Liang Jiangjun sitting here or an AI Liang Jiangjun, I might just judge who is nicer and more fun, and I'd be willing to chat with that one for another hour.
So, **in the true AI era, I think people will become more sensitive to charm. For a brand to be charming, it must have personality integrity.** But today, many enterprises and brands do marketing that is just responsive marketing.
Liang Jiangjun: Or they have no personality.
Cai Yu: Right. Many brands have no personality but do events. Push on Women's Day, push on New Year's Day. Even if 'Nezha 2' becomes popular and I ride the trend, it's still following events, without a complete personality setting or continuous charm. Your personality needs to be real to be charming, and it needs continuity to accumulate a consistent impression and trust in a person's heart. I think this is very important.
Returning to a brand, when you build a personality, you need to accomplish at least two tasks: First, increase users' trust in you; second, increase their aspiration for you. When you balance both, you won't be easily fragmented by algorithms for AI use.
Liang Jiangjun: Fragmentation is scary. Of course, the algorithm's logic is that you're not systematic or structured. In human terms, it's like you have no personality or haven't role-played yourself. Role-playing yourself means your content is fragmented, but it feels like a whole.
Cai Yu: Right. I can feel your personality is consistent; you're a whole. But most enterprises are cold labels, like leader, No. 1 in XX. They have no personality, and algorithms might dismantle them. But if you have a personality, even if algorithms dismantle you, you still have charm.
Earlier, Yu Jun said users are not people but collections of needs. Is this statement still valid today?
For example, Nezha is a character with strong charm. Can you dismantle him into countless need fragments? Of course, but what you get is still him. And his completeness has value that can't be dismantled. I think this is the differentiated value of a brand to users in the AI era.
Liang Jiangjun: Our past brands were mechanically pieced together, with arms and legs separate. A normal brand should be in a quantum state, whether whole or split, it's a whole; the individual reflects the whole, and the whole is also the individual.
Cai Yu: It's actually the difference between the functional era and the emotional era. In the functional era, everyone just needed to have something to use. At that time, brands sold products mainly in two ways: First, 'I have good things here'; second, 'Me too, me too.' But in the emotional era, having good things isn't enough; everyone has good things. When the whole world is 'me too,' where are you different? Why should people stop at your place?
So, I split product value into three parts: functional value, emotional value, and asset value.
From my perspective, meaning counts as an asset, and a very valuable one. If you can extract the value proposition behind the product, that's meaning asset. It even goes beyond emotional value and has a more profound impact on people. Our social needs are evolving in this direction.
**Final Thoughts**
In an era where information and algorithms dance together, narrative is no longer a literary rhetoric that adds icing on the cake, but a survival rule in the business world. Teacher Cai Yu explained a truth: When oversupply becomes the norm, narrative is competitiveness, and every enterprise must master the art of injecting propositions into people's hearts.
The power of narrative transcends function, reaching emotion and meaning. AI may deconstruct data in the future, but it's hard to shake the resonance of the human heart. If future brands don't want to be fragmented by algorithms, they need to traverse the noise of technology, shape a complete personality, and become a lighthouse of meaning in users' hearts.


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