Click the image for details Introduction: As the 2019 Spring Festival approaches, although the festive atmosphere is not as strong as before, FMCG merchants are at their busiest. On one hand, the Palace Museum's New Year goods have sold out again. On the other hand, "The New Palace Museum" has turned the development of cultural and creative products into a hit variety show. Lidu Liquor has still not set sales plans for the new year, as it had already completed its annual plan in the first six months of 2018. Now, its Spring Festival stock has already sold out. Three Squirrels' new super-large packaging, as big as a cement bag, sold out immediately upon release, prompting the factory to rush additional orders, as almost every buyer shared it on WeChat Moments or Douyin. Almost all supermarkets and convenience store chains have set up dedicated Peppa Pig display areas, with massive distribution driven by Peppa's sustained popularity over the past two years. With the movie coming out during the Spring Festival, who else but her would be hot in the Year of the Pig? After a busy year, FMCG professionals seem to vaguely recall a viewpoint: "No IP, No Business"? Or was it "Those who gain IP, gain the world"? The IP Marketing Era: Paths for IP to Empower Brands • In the "pan" era where everything is IP, the attention economy triggers a nationwide carnival. • The power of role models: business cases achieved by super IPs. • IP marketing: connecting users, acquiring fans, secondary dissemination, community operation, forming private traffic, and achieving a business closed loop. • Under the trend, unavoidable pain points and hidden risks.

  1. The Nationwide Carnival of the Pan-IP Era In today's mobile internet era, decentralized communication and user stratification are intertwined. Professor Liu Chunxiong's statement, "Originally no niche, now no mass," fully interprets the current state of brand development. Consumers' fragmented information acquisition habits and increasingly vertical fan circles have made communication a new attention economy. Creating topics and trending on hot searches has become mainstream. People and events that ignite public attention are quickly commercialized as IP by shrewd businessmen. The traditional concept of IP has been rewritten and subverted. IP Branding – Content should be designed like a product, and products should be interpreted like content. In 2018, a photo of topic king Wang Sicong eating a hot dog while watching his e-sports team's match was captured by an enthusiastic audience member. The photo was rapidly spread and recreated by netizens, becoming an IP, which keen merchants turned into games, screensavers, and phone cases, quickly completing commercialization. It also increased his personal Weibo followers by an order of magnitude! In 2018, the Palace Museum's cultural and creative products did not stop evolving. "The New Palace Museum" was co-created by Beijing TV and the Palace Museum, where a group of young designers walked into the Palace Museum under the camera, seeking inspiration, digging out modern creativity from historical traces, and crowdfunding IP secondary creation products. It achieved both reputation and commercial success. From historical elements to IP design, to dissemination, to crowdfunding sales, it was a one-stop assembly line. As viewers, they watched the show, placed orders, and then shared on WeChat Moments, naturally driving sharing and fission. A pajama set's Taobao crowdfunding exceeded 10 million yuan! In 2018, LINE FRIENDS, one of the official emoji sets of LINE (Japan's version of WeChat), successfully opened physical stores in New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Seoul, and other cities, leaping from the chat emoji interface of 200 million Japanese users to become a world-class fashion IP brand, expanding into licensing, retail, and coffee dining. With WeChat's terrifying daily active users of 1 billion, too many excellent emoji packs are also eager to try. In 2019, Peppa Pig, already hugely popular, once again dominated screens with "What is Peppa?" moving and spreading across much of China. This is the third viral online cultural phenomenon derived from this British preschool animation within a year. The first was "Exquisite Piggy Girl," and the second was "Society Person." The viral dissemination power of these internet memes leaves traditional advertising marketers in awe. IP is too hot these days!

•IP (intellectual property) is intellectual property. IP can be anime, literature, games, art, celebrities, a character in an artwork, a story, a scene, or even emoji packs...

•IP commercialization: Intellectual property with certain influence and brand image can achieve huge market profits through IP licensing or derivative product sales (such as product labeling/publishing/release/adaptation and other copyright transactions).

• From 2014 to 2015, the "Online IP First Year" began, led by web novel IP, driven by mobile games and film/TV adaptations, the industry began to boil, with sky-high copyright fees and everything becoming IP... At the same time, mixed with good and bad, new internet forces took control, causing IP adaptation works to be born fast, become hot fast, and die fast.

• In 2018, IP showed a diversified trend, with cultural and creative types emerging strongly. IP dissemination and marketing became fully internet-based. IP commercialization returned to its original intention, and truly excellent IP commercialization cases demonstrated huge commercial returns and vitality. Why does IP need to be visualized to be more deeply rooted in people's hearts and move consumers? We can think about human nature: Everyone liked drawing or looking at pictures and cartoons as children because images are easier to recognize and understand. Even before human language and writing existed, simple drawings were used for communication and recording. And conceptualized simple images are easier for children to accept and remember than real photos. This is an attribute inherent in our DNA, becoming the simple, cute world in children's eyes. So Peppa Pig, seemingly simple and even abstract, is easily accessible to young children. A painter, in early childhood, like most people, draws children's scribbles. As age, skills, and abilities grow, the world they can depict becomes more realistic and concrete. But as the painter continues to grow, they begin to pursue their own artistic conception, and their works, to ordinary people, seem to return to simplicity, sometimes resembling children's drawings. So we see a brand IP: text – realistic image – cartoon image, each step forward brings it closer to consumers' habitual consciousness. • IP is – content productization, product contentization. Products meet functional needs

Brands generate emotional preference

IP brings user connection

Content determines vitality The core behind the IP image is: content, story, personality, and culture. Take Three Squirrels as an example again. The most beloved by fans is the bespectacled squirrel Xiao Jian, because he is naughty, cute, and cheeky, and very likable in the short animated series. The IP's own personality and content are the real turning point that triggers fan identification and resonance, not just the image itself – the so-called "persona." Zhang Xiaolong once talked at the 2019 WeChat Open Class about his thoughts on the essence of social networking, which is to sell your persona to others. So in WeChat Moments, everyone's posts are carefully chosen around your own persona. The popularity of cultural and creative IPs stems from the vast cultural connotation of our 5,000-year-old civilization, integrated into IP symbols like the Palace Museum. Inexhaustible, it originates from our innate pride and cultural heritage. How could such products not be fashionable and popular? 2019 IP Trends: Fragmented information explosion, pan-IP trends, booming cultural and creative IP commercialization – this is the most chaotic era, but also the best era for IP marketing.

  1. The Power of Role Models: Super IPs' Ability to Drive Sales IP + brand empowerment value is reflected in at least two dimensions and one result.

1. Leveraging IP to strengthen brand influence, personalized settings stimulate users' emotional preference and narrow the consumption distance.

2. The user traffic and attention brought by the IP itself. Forming traffic conversion from attention heat. Result: Ultimately, it depends on the IP's ability to drive sales, or how much the sales of IP-licensed products can increase. In 2018, the hottest IPs had ferocious sales-driving power. The most representative were the Palace Museum and Peppa Pig. Other popular IPs also had strong sales-driving power, such as "Flavor China" produced by the original team of "A Bite of China" with exclusive investment from Tencent, and the Buddhist-style nurturing game "Travel Frog." Let's look at some data on the sales-driving power of super popular IPs: Brand "Palace Museum Cultural and Creative" , IP licensing content: Palace Museum logo, Palace Museum architecture and collection exhibits. IP licensing sales: In 2015, Beijing Palace Museum's cultural and creative revenue exceeded 1 billion yuan, reaching 1.5 billion in 2017. In 2018, over 10,000 cultural and creative product categories were developed.

Peppa Pig: In 2018, retail sales of Peppa Pig series products reached 8.955 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.7% compared to 8.266 billion in fiscal 2017. Its strong performance in the global retail market brought parent company eOne 741 million in related revenue, a year-on-year increase of 21%.

Alibaba: In 2018, Ali Fish focused on building commercialization models for two IPs, one being the movie version of "Eternal Love" (Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms). The movie's merchandise licensing covered Alibaba's top ten industries, including apparel, beauty, food and beverages, home goods, and more, with over 60 brands joining. More than 100 SKUs, including Purcotton, Xiaoguan Tea, Arawana, Huiyuan, Meikang Fendai, Yumeiren, Roseonly, and other derivatives were displayed. Wooden combs carved with peach blossom patterns and engraved with "Three Lives" and "Three Worlds" respectively, priced at 132 yuan per pair; a peach blossom printed round fan priced at 45 yuan; the Three Lives Three Worlds version of women's perfume priced at 228 yuan... Target sales of 300 million yuan. If this is still copying the successful business model of Western IP commercialization, in China's mobile internet era, more new and gratifying evolutions have emerged:

  1. IP Marketing Based on User Connection When brands connect with users through IP and IP content, fans will express their circle and preferences through IP products, sharing to showcase their identity and even life beliefs. In this process, IP and brands will enjoy the greatest dissemination dividend – social fission influence. The vast fan base will continuously interpret, create, spread, and fission in incredibly imaginative ways. All traffic platforms are battlefields for fans to showcase their individuality: WeChat Moments, Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu. Forming secondary dissemination and multiple fission waves of influence. What IP products need to do is no longer to invest in a CCTV advertisement or buy traffic on e-commerce platforms. Instead, they need to serve fans, provide them with excellent content, and creative cross-industry cooperation gameplay. Let users find users, rather than buying users. Fully enjoy the precise fans and traffic brought by fission users.

• Step 1: Arm yourself with technology first, establish a user and data middle platform, and use methods like one product, one code to allow products to interact directly with consumers and acquire official account fans.

• Step 2: Establish a brand communication matrix and partner institution matrix. Two WeChat accounts, one Douyin, Xiaohongshu – wherever users are, that's where the battlefield is.

• Step 3: Content creation and dissemination marketing, achieving a dual approach of saturated attacks on precise channels and user sharing and dissemination on broad channels.

• Final step: Achieve fan user and data privatization, form brand private traffic, and achieve a see-now-buy-now business closed loop through mini-programs. Continuously operate and maintain fans, waiting for the next product launch and a new round of trending topics.

• Basic work: Restructure the enterprise organization and heavily invest in young people. Quote a sentence: In the past, the most expensive was location

Now, the most expensive is traffic

In the future, the most expensive is fans Appendix: Some classic social dissemination reference cases Barter a paperclip for a house

Ice Bucket Challenge

Wang Sicong eating a hot dog

What is Peppa?

  1. Calm Thinking Under the Trend Haojiayi, which secured licenses for Peppa Pig dairy products, Paw Patrol, and Octonauts, bet correctly. In 2018, it suddenly opened up the national distribution market, fully enjoying the dividends of super IPs, and further formed a multi-IP, multi-brand matrix. However, when discussing IP operations, they also lamented, "After more than half a year of operation, it's not that easy. It's too easy to form short-term behavior, and we need to view it rationally." Brands like Durex copywriting, Xiaomi Mitu, NetEase Yanxuan, Three Squirrels, Jiangxiaobai, Lidu, and Uni-President Xiaoming chose to practice internal skills, incubating and building original brand IPs over the long term. They summarized a relatively consistent pattern, centered on users, based on products:

• Brand IP needs to add storytelling, expressiveness, personification, values, ritual, topicality, internet celebrity power, design aesthetics, and cross-border interpretation.

• Word-of-mouth recommendations become social currency, and products become carriers for consumers to spread their own values and attitudes.

• In one sentence: Brands or products that you don't want to take a photo of and post on WeChat Moments after buying are not good IP products. Industry Pain Points Whether empowering brands through classic IPs or continuously incubating proprietary IPs, the following confusions and considerations will be faced, which we can also call the current industry pain points: • All brand owners hope to cooperate with top IPs, so top IP prices are instantly bid up, and brand decision-making difficulty and risk increase geometrically.

• Top IPs only want to cooperate with top brands, leaving the vast majority of waist brands unattended.

• Waist brands also want to cling to top IPs, but they lack money, and the vast majority of waist IPs are unattended.

• Top IP licensing is chaotic, with multiple cross-licensing, making it impossible for brands to distinguish authenticity.

• Due to the lack of industry standardization, IP parties and brand parties cannot understand and communicate effectively, resulting in poor cooperation efficiency and often missing business opportunities.

• Brands cannot obtain credible data to choose suitable IPs; decisions often rely on leaders' subjective judgment, lacking big data scientific decision support.

• Hot topics are not equal to IP; hot topic IPs have short life cycles and high commercialization risks.

• The most reasonable sales commission model for IP licensing cannot effectively monitor actual sales, leaving IP parties helpless, forcing them to increase the proportion of one-time licensing fees, further raising cooperation barriers.

• IP agency companies mostly originate from advertising consulting and cultural content industries, with severe specialization bias, lacking understanding of the chain owner – the brand, especially traditional sales channels.

• IP channel resources are beginning to integrate: gradually concentrating in AT groups, game copyright numbers are tightening, content creation policies are tightening, web novels and new anime are monopolized by platforms, and traditional IP agency models are narrowing.

• New competition: more and more channel-based brand IPs are self-incubating.

• Original IP incubation has a long cycle, high investment, high risk, and poor initial commercialization capability. Summary and Reflections As the largest production and consumption market, China's IP derivative licensing sales in 2018 were nearly 100 billion yuan, but still less than 1/10 of the US. With further strengthening of copyright protection and pan-entertainment consumption upgrades, IP business will become one of the few high-growth potential sectors. How can brands leverage this, and how can IP content achieve commercial development? Capital attention, consumption upgrades, opportunities for new brands and products, monetization of social traffic, and the rise of KOL sales-driving – this soil has become very rich in nutrients. 2019 is destined to be the first year of the rise of pan-IP commercial marketing in China. In my 20-year career, the first decade was spent in original IP content production, and the second decade in retail chain and B2B supply chain operations. Finally, I have the opportunity to connect IP and brands in an all-round way. Please allow me to make a very hard advertisement: The classic case companies mentioned in this article and more industry experts will gather at the Chengdu FMCG Conference in March, invited to attend the IP Empowerment Brand Summit Forum to discuss and deliberate on IP "breakthroughs"! They are: The largest content platform: iQiyi and Tencent Animation & Comics

The hottest IP parties: Palace Museum Cultural and Creative "The New Palace Museum" and Mango TV

Alibaba's only IP integration operation segment: Ali Fish

Brand representatives: Tsingtao Beer, Peppa Pig + Haojiayi

Emerging channel brand: Three Squirrels

And the closed-door matchmaking dinner salon eagerly awaited by many participating brands and IP parties, to find your ideal partners. Forum Highlights: •The forum theme is the first to comprehensively interpret IP + brand commercialization trends from a full industry chain perspective, achieving mutual brand empowerment. •Dry goods cases: Palace Museum Cultural and Creative, Peppa Pig, Three Squirrels, film/TV, brand, and channel experts sharing cases. •Core value: Connect IP parties and brands, discuss methodologies, break cross-industry barriers. •In-depth closed-door private board dinner salon for face-to-face in-depth communication among participating enterprise executives. IP Conference Specific Arrangements Registration Method [IP Brand Empowerment Session] Limited-time exclusive discounted price 199 yuan! Learn more about the main venue information Click "Read the original text" to register now...