From New Marketing to Scene Marketing When I was studying in the 1980s, it was very popular to use words with the prefix "post-", such as post-industrial society. At that time, many foreign futurists talked about such topics, and I was very interested. For example, "The Third Wave" and "Megatrends", but China had not yet entered the industrial era, so I had no feeling for post-industrial society. Later, I learned that the prefix "post-" is a kind of context. An era is about to pass, but the new era is still vague and difficult to define, so the prefix "post-" is used to indicate that an era is about to pass. Entering the 1990s, the internet rose and entered the internet era. Thus, the term post-industrial era disappeared, and after post-industrial society came internet society. Entering the 2010s, e-commerce became widespread, and the internet penetrated traditional commerce. Therefore, Ma Yun proposed the "Five New": New Retail, New Manufacturing, New Finance, New Technology, and New Energy. Now it seems that not all "new" have been realized; New Technology and New Energy have landed relatively well, New Manufacturing has made great progress, but New Retail has relatively failed. Not only did Ma Yun propose the "Five New", but all walks of life, based on the logic of "using the internet to redo the industry", proposed various words with the prefix "new". For example, Zhao Bo, founder of New Distribution, proposed "New Distribution", and I proposed "New Marketing". What is the difference between the prefix "new" and the prefix "post"? The prefix "post" means the old era is about to pass, and the new era is still unclear. The prefix "new" means the new era has arrived, but the subject is still unclear. "Post" will always pass, and "new" will always become clear. Thus, New Distribution is clearly B2b, and New Marketing is clearly scene marketing. Therefore, New Marketing is scene marketing in a hazy era, and scene marketing is clear New Marketing.
New Marketing Is an Analytical Framework for Scene Marketing Orientation is implicit, deep in thought. For example, those who shout user orientation all day may be product-oriented at heart. If scene marketing is on the lips, but the analytical tool is 4P, then it is still user thinking. We often encounter this situation in our daily work. Speaking of scenes, but thinking often returns to user segmentation. An important achievement of user thinking is the 4P analytical framework. Many people call 4P the 4P theory, but it is actually an analytical framework. When encountering marketing problems, using the 4P framework to analyze is roughly correct. So, I say 4P is a universal analytical framework. The good thing about "New Marketing" is that it proposes a new analytical framework: scene, IP, community, and communication. It is this analytical framework that extends to scene marketing. Scene is the product logic, IP is the brand logic, community is the connection logic, and communication is the marketing logic. The above paragraph actually aims to establish a correspondence between new marketing and traditional marketing. Because the analytical framework of traditional marketing is 4P. In the analytical framework of new marketing, scene is the starting point. Therefore, new marketing is scene-oriented. In fact, when initially proposing the analytical framework of new marketing, it was not very certain, but there was a sense of direction. At the crossroads of the frontier, one must have a sense of direction. Perhaps the future path is unknown, but one must have a good sense of direction. When I interviewed a boss 20 years ago, he mentioned the sense of direction of the teacher. First, when 101 questioned "How long can the red flag last?", he said "A single spark can start a prairie fire"; when the teacher had a route disagreement with Zhang Guotao, he said "Resist Japan in the North"; when major powers wanted to "divide the river and rule", he said "Cross the Yangtze River". A sense of direction is not a direction, not a path, but a general direction. From a sense of direction to direction requires exploration. After "New Marketing", it was actually a period of method exploration, seeking direction through methods. The road that can be walked is the road. Whether the scene-oriented road can be walked depends on whether the IP and community roads can be walked. The IP road has been walked by many enterprises, but the main communication media has changed from blogs to WeChat, and then to Douyin. The main media has changed, and the communication logic is also changing. On the contrary, the brand road is becoming increasingly difficult. However, brand is a lighthouse, and I never deny that brand is still needed. Because IP is often nonsensical, but brand carries values and is more enduring. The most difficult road in new marketing is actually the community road. Some may say that community-based marketing was once very popular! For example, WeChat business. The boom of community commerce is mostly cutting leeks, which is abusing community and is the edge of marketing. The real community road is bC integrated user operation. That's right. User operation that reaches C-end through b-end is the community road that can support industry giants. User operation is definitely the main direction in the future. The main body of user operation is not online, but the combination of three-dimensional space, and bC integrated user operation is the right path. Offline strong relationships, community strong interaction, and online convenient transactions. This is user operation based on three-dimensional space. Therefore, many people find "New Marketing 3.0: bC Integrated Digitalization" difficult to understand, not knowing its value in the New Marketing trilogy. User operation is not abstract; it is user operation based on concrete scenes. It is in the scene that the true needs of all members in the scene are discerned. At this point, new marketing has walked through from marketing orientation to analytical framework, and also in marketing driving force. Traditional user-oriented marketing has four support systems: correspondingly, scene-oriented marketing also has four support systems: New marketing is not only scene-oriented, but also has an analytical framework, a driving force system, and organizational guarantees. This way, it will not face the troubles of many marketing theories: theory on the lips, analysis returning to habits, and action without organizational support.
Scene Insight The reason why marketing's user orientation holds is due to user segmentation, or market segmentation. The finer the segmentation, the more accurate the grasp. This is the soul of user orientation. However, user orientation has a fatal bug: the finer the segmentation, the harder it is to reach. Whether it is traditional marketing's "people looking for goods" or the internet model's "goods looking for people", this problem exists. So, what is the soul of scene orientation? Many people's scene orientation is actually scene segmentation, a kind of user segmentation. User segmentation was never intended for reach. In traditional marketing in Europe and America, channels are third-party, and brand owners can only achieve information reach (such as advertising). In traditional marketing in China, in addition to information reach, there is deep distribution to b-end, and even terminal orientation. There is a certain opportunity for reach. What truly prompted me to make up my mind to say "New Marketing is Scene Marketing" was participating in Jiang Xiaobai's Meijian scene marketing workshop with Teacher Kong Shou, forming a definition of scene. There are many definitions of scene, the most famous being Christensen's "Jobs To Be Done". I queried GPT and the answer was seven elements: time, space, role, goal, situation (background), interaction, and emotional atmosphere. From a marketing perspective, I now think it is more reasonable to use the following elements: time, space, role and relationship, job to be done, procedure (process), emotion, and ritual sense. The above definition is divided into three parts: The first part is the hard constraint boundary of the scene: time, space, role and relationship. The second part is the soft constraint or new demand of the scene: job to be done, procedure. The third part is the output of the scene: emotion, ritual sense. The first part determines the huge difference between scene orientation and user orientation. User orientation is the same needs of the same users, so it is necessary to segment to find more similarities. Scene, on the other hand, finds the same needs under the same time and space, different roles and relationship backgrounds. These same needs determine the "job to be done" and the process. This is the second part of the scene elements. The third part, after completing the job to be done, what is output is emotion and ritual sense. These are exactly the elements that marketing can use. The soul of scene marketing is in the above scene elements. By discerning the tasks under specific hard constraint boundaries, discerning needs, and finding "solutions". Therefore, scene marketing proposes not products, but "solutions" composed around products. Discerning scene needs is not the personal needs of users; providing solutions is not a pure product solution, but the product is part of the solution. This is the soul of scene marketing. It is at this point that it surpasses user-oriented marketing.
Deep Reach into Scenes Scenes can have many subdivisions. However, the scenes I talk about in scene marketing are first consumption scenes. Discover needs from consumption scenes and find solutions. But there are many scenes. Consumption scenes, sales scenes, production scenes, promotion scenes, etc. Without reach, correctly understanding consumption scenes, scenes can only be imagination. Deeply entering consumption scenes, discovering that users are vivid, and user needs are constrained by the environment and social relationships. So, how to reach scenes? The answer is bC integration. Reaching consumption scenes without trust endorsement is interference with users. Of course, not all consumption scenes can be reached, so I also call consumption scenes that can be deeply reached seed scenes. Compared to user research, deep reach into scenes will be more accurate in understanding needs.
The Third Marketing Paradigm How to view the value of scene marketing? Recently, I communicated with Teacher Kong Shou of the Scene Research Institute, and he said scene marketing is the third marketing paradigm. I agree. Marketing has three major orientations: product orientation, user orientation, and scene orientation. Three different orientations establish three different marketing paradigms. Product orientation is the marketing paradigm of the scarcity era, based on the common needs of different users. User orientation focuses on user individuality when products are abundant. Therefore, user orientation manifests as continuous segmentation. Scene orientation has two different thinking directions: first, the social nature of the scene determines the scene task, and time, space, character relationships, and roles become the hard boundaries of the scene; second, what meets scene needs is not just products, but solutions (jobs to be done). This is the marketing thinking of the affluent stage, also the marketing thinking under the internet environment, and is a marketing system produced by the combination of the above two. Although the term scene has been hot for more than a decade, and even abused. After the reform and opening up, many people proposed various marketing theories, but overall they did not break away from the 4P system. Behind the 4P system is user orientation. Without scenes, one can only reach abstract users; users in scenes are vivid. Without the internet and self-media, large-scale information reach to users can only be hard advertising and public relations models, while the IP model that creates miracles through internet UGC fission is possible. After the "New Marketing" trilogy, there is no more new marketing, only scene marketing.
【New Order · Symbiosis】 The 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference Time: March 17-19, 2025 Location: Chengdu, China