If there is one term that has dominated the industry in the past two years, it is undoubtedly 'emotional value.' Whether it's brands, agencies, or industry media and self-media, everyone is touting the importance of emotions, and consumers are indeed buying into it. Today, involution and anxiety permeate society, and people generally live in a state of low energy. Naturally, consumers welcome anyone—whether another person or a brand—who can bring them joy, comfort, and stability. So what exactly is emotional value? How can we leverage this value to empower brand marketing and communication? In this article, let's delve into this topic in detail.
Marketing that leverages social emotions is good marketing.
In fact, for a long time, focusing on consumer emotions and experiences and conducting emotional marketing have been mainstream theories and thoughts in the branding and advertising industry. It's just that in the past, we didn't use the term 'providing emotional value' but rather 'emotion-driven.'
Coca-Cola has two famous quotes that have been widely circulated. One is from its former global vice president of marketing, Ramiro: "Most human actions are driven by emotion." The other is from former Coca-Cola Europe president J.W. Joyce: "You will not find a successful global brand that does not express or include a basic human emotion."
These two quotes contain the theoretical basis for why emotions/feelings are important. First, consumer behavior is irrational; people make decisions primarily based on intuition, impressions, and emotions, rather than logic, ideals, and calculation. Every decision is mainly controlled by the emotional center of the brain, so appealing to emotions/feelings is crucial for influencing purchases.
Second, due to increased product homogenization, companies must create differentiation by injecting emotion, shaping brand image and personality, and giving the brand emotional value (also called perceptual value or experiential value). Moreover, emotional value can significantly enhance brand premium, so appealing to emotions/feelings is also very important for building a brand.
In fact, emotional value is a key component of brand value. A brand's core value consists of three levels: functional value (also called physical value), emotional value, and symbolic value (also called social value).
However, since the rise of the internet, when developing products and building brands, people prefer to talk about pain points, rigid demands, high frequency, ultimate functionality, and cost-effectiveness. Emotion was once considered outdated and useless sentimentality, even seen as a 'smart tax,' and emotional marketing was set aside by industry professionals. But in the past two years, as the industry has started talking about emotional value again, this is not a new invention but a cycle, a retro trend. The importance of emotions/feelings has never really gone away.
But in the marketing industry, especially in the internet field, the phenomenon of 'language corruption' is always particularly severe. Whenever a term or concept becomes popular, it is quickly abused.
Today's touted 'emotional value' has actually far exceeded the standard definition of emotions/feelings in psychology. In psychology, emotion more refers to an instinct, a reaction we have when stimulated by the outside world. Emotions are implanted into our nervous system through genes. For example, we feel happy when we see beautiful people, feel cute and affectionate when we see adorable babies, instinctively fear snakes, feel joy when drinking Coke or eating delicious food, and feel disgust when seeing dirty things. Emotions are instinctive. Feelings, on the other hand, are influenced by conscious thought and are implanted into our nervous system through culture. They mainly refer to relationships between people. For instance, we love or hate someone, feel confident and proud of ourselves, or feel envy or jealousy toward others. All these feelings point to interpersonal relationships and are strongly influenced by social culture. Feelings are relationships between people and are advanced social cognitive emotions.
The difference between emotion and feeling is like the difference between weather and climate: weather changes three times a day, while climate remains stable over a longer period.
Comparing this definition to what we tout today as emotional value—such as longing for travel, returning to nature and pastoral life, enjoying relaxation and ease; or experiencing 'bloodline awakening' and falling in love with new Chinese-style fashion; or turning to metaphysics when in doubt—these are not actually personal emotions and feelings, but rather refer more to a 'social emotion,' a collective cultural psychology of society, which is the symbolic value in a brand's core value.
Is social emotion important? Of course. In fact, among all emotions, it is far more important than personal emotions and feelings. Let me state a viewpoint: only marketing that leverages social emotions can truly trigger collective resonance among consumers, create social heat and topics, and become a phenomenal viral case.
For example, in the first half of this year, the phenomenal automotive case 'Great Wall Cannon'—a blogger shouted 'Great Wall~Cannon!' which triggered a nationwide viral imitation. Great Wall Motors promptly followed up and participated, leading to a market value increase of 17 billion yuan. Another example is one of the 2023 annual marketing cases: BYD's 'Together, We Are Chinese Automobiles.' This year, BYD followed suit and created an advertising video titled 'How Difficult Chinese Brands Are, How Brave They Are,' paying tribute to Chinese brands that persist in their overseas journey, once again triggering strong resonance and discussion.
This is the power of social emotion: it can instantly bring hundreds of millions of people's attention and pursuit to a brand and help the brand become part of social culture. Of course, if a brand's communication content goes against mainstream social emotions, the consequences are extremely severe, as seen in many brand failures in the past two or three years. I won't elaborate further here.
Since social emotion is so important, how can companies capture this emotional value and leverage social emotions?
Hot topics are the smallest unit of social emotion.
To understand and study the various social emotions of today's era, the best way is to observe and analyze the social hot topics that happen every day, and see what's on the trending searches. Trending searches aggregate social news from various fields, serve as an arena for different public opinions to collide, a barometer of public expression, and also a manipulator of agenda-setting, a concrete manifestation of traffic thinking. It can be said that trending searches are a direct reflection of the emotions of the times. Social hot events and topics are the smallest unit of social emotion.
Let's look at another example: 'Black Myth: Wukong,' which recently grabbed countless trending topics. You can analyze from these trending searches which social emotions fueled the phenomenal popularity of 'Black Myth'—is it the collective sense of honor and pride triggered by the first domestic 3A game? Is it the classic IP of 'Journey to the West,' one of the four great classical novels, which carries traffic and national sentiment? Or is it the inspirational story of the game development team? The fan accumulation and long-termism of releasing trailers on August 20 for several consecutive years?
I have also mentioned my own practice in my public account and various reader groups several times: at the beginning of each year, I create a new document in my phone's memo to record those social hot topics that are business-related and reflect social psychology, and I review and compare the corresponding hot marketing events and business phenomena. By continuously tracking social hot topics and trending searches, I study changes in social cultural psychology, capture subtle social emotions, and thus find marketing directions and content topics. I regard this work as a basic skill for advertising and marketing professionals, and it is also the starting point of today's marketing.
When doing marketing, you can't just focus on your own product and differentiation from competitors; you should also pay attention to the social emotions, popular culture, and values behind consumer psychology and behavior. To do marketing, you need to 'Think different' and even more 'Think big.' Without profound insight into social culture, there is no effective operation of brand content and communication. After all, culture is the decisive factor behind all behavioral phenomena. Insight into consumer needs is the underlying logic of business, and deep insight into culture is the superstructure of business.
This year, Sina News created an IP program called 'Beyond the Heat Wave,' which focuses on and documents influential figures of the era who are shaped by trending searches and who shape them. In simple terms, it interviews and records people who are always on trending searches. The host, Lu Yu, uses a hot-topic interview style to converse with guests, allowing these trending figures to face netizens' hot comments directly and respond truthfully and bravely. More importantly, this is not a traditional sit-down interview and dialogue program; it also uses a reality show format to delve into guests' daily lives, spending half a day or a full day to authentically present their personalities, values, lifestyles, interests, etc. The format is richer, more interactive, and the pace is more direct and lively.
So far, the program has interviewed Fan Zhiyi, Zhou Hongyi, Liu Huan, He Youjun, Qi Wei, Chen Meng, etc. The guest lineup covers football, singing, esports, performing arts, sports, AI technology, automobiles, and various other industries. It can be said that this lineup basically represents the main trending topics of the past year, offering a glimpse into social and cultural changes. I've already watched a few episodes featuring Fan Zhiyi, Chen Meng, and Zhou Hongyi, which I found particularly interesting.
For viewers, this program not only helps us deeply understand the stories behind the guests, their emotions and personalities, and their true attitudes toward public opinion. More importantly, their stories are also the stories of this era. This program and these trending figures provide us with a new perspective on social observation, helping us better understand the internet public opinion field and social emotions. So I strongly recommend everyone to watch this program, and of course, I also recommend brands to consider cooperating with the program. For brand marketing, the most important thing is to leverage hot topics and become a hot topic, integrating oneself into society, making every marketing action both deep and hot.
High-quality IP is a concentrated harvest of social emotions and hot topics.
In today's era, the biggest change in marketing is that in the past, brand communication and diffusion relied entirely on the brand itself: carefully crafting advertising creativity, spending huge advertising fees on placement, and using powerful advertising brainwashing and media bombardment to push to consumers, driving brand exposure and awareness, so that people notice and remember it. But now, for a brand to break out, it must first design topics and content that users are interested in, ignite them through social media trending searches, then enter community circles for discussion and co-creation, thereby involving more people in participation, and ultimately becoming part of public opinion, triggering collective resonance and diffusion.
When it comes to social media and the public opinion field, we cannot avoid mentioning Weibo and Sina. In particular, Sina News can be said to have maintained two major advantages: hot topics and content. Throughout 2023, Sina News' Weibo account matrix reached 160+, with over 3,200 hot topics throughout the year, and active ecosystem traffic exceeding 700 million. At the same time, it launched 30+ IP programs throughout the year, with content formats including video, graphics, animation, live streaming, offline activities, etc., which are very rich and diverse; content types include character interviews, creative TVCs, data reports, column customization, etc., with extremely strong content influence and trending search operation capabilities.
Content and hot topics are the key to today's marketing. Today's brand marketing has entered a content-centric era, and the standard for good content is the ability to bring in social culture, resonate with social emotions, and create topics that can be discussed by the public and replication factors that can be imitated by the masses. Brands can use this high-quality content to create topic heat and integrate into the social trend atmosphere. This heat and atmosphere are extremely important for brand power enhancement; brands can use it to shape prominence and social popularity, improve reputation, enrich brand associations, and amplify brand meaning. If you don't believe it, look at the operations of brands like Xiaomi, Huawei, and BYD. These brands can be said to be the most representative and successful Chinese brands today, and their success is the success of socialization.
On the other hand, the social hot topic atmosphere is also particularly important for sales. Of course, this view is a bit counterintuitive because we usually think that hot topics and trending searches only stimulate people's attention and discussion, keeping the brand in people's eyes and mouths, but they don't directly affect people's wallets. But in reality, whether based on the marketing logic of the funnel model (expanding the audience opening), the psychological logic of framing effects and retinal effects (changing perceptions and attitudes), or the social logic of imitation laws (forming trends and group imitation), trending searches can bring hot sales.
During this year's National Day holiday, tourism in Shanxi was unprecedentedly popular. The Xiaoxitian scenic area is located in Xi County, Linfen, Shanxi, with a county population of only 90,000, but during the 6-day National Day holiday, it received 90,000 tourists. The topic '#A small county with a population of 90,000 sees over 10,000 tourists in a single day#' became a hot topic during the holiday. Why is Xiaoxitian so popular? Why does it bring so many consumers? That's because of the trending topics brought by the filming locations of 'Black Myth: Wukong.' When 'Black Myth' was released in August this year, Xiaoxitian and a series of filming locations attracted widespread attention, becoming social hot spots, generating a series of trending searches like '#Black Myth Wukong filming location ticket sales surge 3 times#' and '#Black Myth filming locations will integrate the game into scenic area explanations.#' This hot topic-driven sales phenomenon continued into the National Day holiday.
From a business perspective, 'Black Myth' is a major IP. Behind a major IP is a concentrated presentation of social emotions, and from a major IP, many fragmented hot topics and topics can be broken down, thus firmly grasping public attention. Like last year's major IPs, such as Luckin Coffee's cross-industry collaboration with Moutai to launch the sauce-flavored latte, the mobile game 'Done! I'm Surrounded by Beauties,' the Subject Three dance, and Harbin's 'Southern Little Potatoes' and 'Northern Little Frozen Pears,' these also concentratedly reflected social emotions and ultimately created a series of hot topics.
High-quality IP can be said to be a concentrated harvest of social emotions and hot topics. Therefore, today's brand marketing must create IPs and leverage good IPs. For example, Sina News created 'Weibo Open Class' for BYD, which not only witnessed BYD's global layout of the new energy industry chain, showing the story of Chinese manufacturing technology going global and brands going global to share with the world, but also integrated the brand into the era's context, transforming the era's context into marketing language. Another example is Sina News' creation of the #FAN肆热爱# China Basketball Team Fan Meet-and-Greet event for Lancôme, combining the youthful passion and heroic demeanor of the women's basketball team with Lancôme's brand image and values.
Also, leveraging the hot topic of 'Celebrating the Second Year,' Sina News created 'Master Tian's 'Smart' Home Secrets' for China Unicom, integrating technology into humanities, blending cutting-edge technology with ancient costume history, and integrating technology into humanistic entertainment. It's almost like helping Sina News, a media platform, become a creative hot shop.
Earlier, I mentioned Harbin, which became hugely popular at the end of last year. Against the backdrop of 'Erbin' becoming hot, Sina News created a trend-following marketing campaign for Fuerjia, cleverly using hot topics to enter the market strongly. The topic '#What exactly is the relationship between Erbin and Erjia#' became a topic people loved to discuss.
With the support of trending searches and high-quality content, Sina News can be said to have grown wings and seized the wings of commercial imagination.
This year, Sina News has also created more original content columns, such as 'Hummingbird,' 'Former Editor-in-Chief,' 'Leading Youth,' 'Picture Data Room,' and 'On the Scene.' These contents are IP programs, but they are also a concentrated capture of social trending searches and a concentrated salvage of social emotions.
In today's era, when doing marketing, you must bring emotional value, and our understanding of this emotion is mainly social emotion. We should observe and capture social emotions in social hot topics and trending searches, and encapsulate and leverage social emotions in high-quality IP content. When brand emotions merge into social emotions, when marketing language merges into the era's context, then the brand will be seen by more people, brand value will be perceived and recognized by more people, and brand marketing actions will be resonated with and participated in by more people.