Source丨Teacher Liu's Scene Marketing ID丨liuchunxiong1964 Scenes have three groups of six factors: time/place, role/process, emotion/ritual sense. The first two groups have been interpreted, but emotion has not been addressed until now. Emotion is something everyone has, every day. The more familiar, the more misunderstandings, the harder to interpret. The simplest questions are the hardest to reach consensus on. This emotion is not that emotion First, let's quote the viewpoint of Cai Yu, who proposed emotional value. The emotion referred to by emotional value is not private emotions like personal joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness, but public empathy. In the digital age, people are likely willing to reduce personal, individualized emotions in order to intersect with certain social groups, that is, emotional resonance. They use the same catchphrases and emojis to express their stance and align themselves, seeking to join a community, such as anime fans or fans of a hit drama, thereby gaining a sense of belonging. The more people a common emotion covers, the more private emotions people have reduced. Two key points to understand emotional value: first, "reducing" personal emotions. This is somewhat unexpected and differs from most people's instinctive understanding; second, empathy is to pursue a sense of belonging, especially in specific scenes, different from traditional organizational belonging. Cai Yu is right. Empathy is the sense of belonging in the internet age, different from that in the traditional era. Understanding the above concepts, we know that commercial emotional value is not "providing emotional value to your wife," nor is it what people commonly understand as "emotional intelligence," but the greatest common denominator of emotions in a certain circle. It is not private emotional satisfaction, but public emotional satisfaction. So, emotional value is actually empathy value. Why is emotional value favored? Cai Yu's emotional value has a specific boundary: individuals are connected to a flat digital society. This is a major difference between modern commercial emotional value and traditional understanding of emotional value. In traditional business, brands can only provide empathy. Only in the internet age can they provide empathy capability. Empathy is I understand your feelings. Empathy capability is I have the same feelings as you. Empathy is "thinking what others think," empathy capability is "being anxious about what others are anxious about." Why emphasize that empathy capability is in "individuals connected to a flat digital society"? Chinese society has entered an affluent society, but the digital age has brought great loneliness to people, such as a homebody lifestyle. How to solve this loneliness? It is through internet-based life participation, and then empathy in participating in life. Because digital society enables people from different regions to "participate in life" across regions. Or, massive numbers of people in different times and spaces can interact through the internet. Internet interaction platforms include early BBS, blogs, Weibo, and now WeChat, short videos, live streaming, etc. In the interaction process, empathy is easily achieved. If we think along this line, there are three types of interactive scenes: First, offline scenes. Christensen said scenes have three major values: functional value, social value, and emotional value. However, offline scenes require people to be in the same time and space. For example, eating together requires being in the same place at the same time. The cost is relatively high. Second, interaction in the same time but different spaces. For example, live streaming, where groups watch simultaneously from different locations. Third, interaction in different times and spaces. For example, WeChat, where a group member's message can be seen and interacted with two hours later in another space. The second and third types of scenes are the new scenes described by Wu Sheng in "Scene Revolution." Their role is to greatly improve the efficiency of interaction and reduce the cost of interaction, making public empathy easier. Emotional value is favored, besides the flat digital society, I think there are two other factors: first, the great satisfaction of material needs, turning personal desires toward psychological emotional satisfaction, even without the internet; second, information civilization shapes new lifestyles, transitioning from industrial civilization lifestyles to information civilization lifestyles, such as the emergence of homebodies and distributed organizational systems, bringing the disappearance of traditional belonging, and society needs to find new belonging. Cai Yu's definition of emotional value emphasizes "reducing" private emotions and gaining belonging through empathy. This is precisely a manifestation of personal anxiety in the early stage of information civilization society. Life participation is the prerequisite for empathy Industrial civilization brought about human alienation, as Chaplin performed. The internet (information civilization) has brought new alienation. Especially during the transition from industrial civilization to information civilization, various maladjustments and anxieties require psychological comfort. Emotional value is reflected in this aspect. It is important to understand that emotional value provides a sense of belonging. Where does the sense of belonging in the digital age come from? First, gathering in specific scenes, such as specific internet spaces; second, life participation. Agricultural civilization used the family as the unit of life and production, with clan settlements. Adjacent land, inevitable neighbors, is a tribal lifestyle characterized by geography. Industrial civilization separated production units from life units, with people following machines, bringing human alienation. Therefore, Drucker said that economic organizations are also social organizations. People find a sense of belonging in social organizations. The difference between digital scenes and offline physical scenes is that there is information interaction, but it is a virtual space, with loneliness. The lonelier, the more homebody; the more homebody, the lonelier. Digital society is a tribal lifestyle built on the virtual space of the internet. Industrial civilization separated humans from nature, and information civilization separates humans from each other. When does a consumer feel that a brand empathizes with them? Cai Yu said the simplest standard is to test empathy in specific life scenarios. Simply put, it is life participation. So, how to participate in life in the digital age? First, individuals gather in internet communities; second, offline gatherings are rarer and more precious. Zhao Yu, deputy secretary-general of the White Wine Circulation Association, said, "Chatting online for ten years is not as good as meeting offline; shaking hands ten times is not as good as having a drink together." Scenes are slices of lifestyle and manifestations of social relationships. Consumer empathy is definitely not abstract, but concrete. Why put products in specific life scenarios? Because today's brands are the result of interaction, not the result of one-way communication in the past. The relationship between products and brands and consumers is deepening from social participation to two-way life participation. Products must participate in users' lives, and users also require brands to disclose their lifestyle and attitudes, allowing users to participate and comment. In two-way life participation, consumers empathize with the brand and also feel the emotions of others, gaining emotional belonging. In life participation, personal emotions are filtered out (reduced), and public emotions are felt. This is exactly the empathy emphasized by emotional value. So, in three-dimensional space, different scenes have different levels of participation. Online participation is convenient; offline participation is multidimensional; community participation is high-frequency. Life participation is a very good concept. However, participation must not become life interference. How to achieve life participation? The answer is "life proposals." Tsutaya Books' strategy is to sell "life proposals," selling travel books with suitcases, and cookbooks with flour. The purpose of scene marketing is to provide "solutions," not to sell products. Solutions make the scene ecosystem more adaptable. Commercialization of emotional value The commercialization of emotional value has four links: emotional insight, emotional expression, emotional resonance, and emotional monetization. This section only briefly describes the logic; the UGC expression and dissemination of scene emotion will be discussed in a dedicated article later. Emotional insight is not about insight into an individual's emotions, but about public emotions. This is a difficult problem, not everyone's strength. Emotional expression includes designing emotional elements, emotional expression paradigms (such as emotional copy, BGM, emotional scenes, etc.). This is the core content of internet communication; otherwise, it cannot reach the traditional scale required for commercialization. Emotional resonance requires the first push. Sometimes, emotional expression is amateur UGC, but amateur UGC is accidental. Organized and invested resonance, whether online or offline, requires structures like KOL and KOC. There is a saying on the internet about "mouth substitute." A mouth substitute is someone who "speaks my heart for me." The inner emotions of ordinary people are expressed by a mouth substitute (KOL) in a more dramatic, accurate, and sharp way, thus creating emotional resonance. Then, this feeling of satisfaction must be transmitted, letting people feel my emotions. For example, liking, posting on Moments, and re-creating (more UGC), etc. For the commercial monetization of emotional value, Douyin is the first choice, followed by other e-commerce platforms. Douyin is also called interest e-commerce. Careful analysis shows that online brands, besides competing on cost-effectiveness and low prices, emotional value is a very important value point. However, we also find that online brands find it difficult to survive offline. Of course, there are many factors, but when emotional value resonates, online channels do have the advantage of seamless connection. The fate of emotional value Biology tells us: fast-growing lives are short-lived. The same is true for business operations. The internet has boosted many emerging companies, but over time, it is common to rise and die quickly. The past "CCTV bid champions" were like this, and so are the new consumer brands in recent years. Where are the former bid champions today? Where are the former internet celebrities today? The new consumer brands that were extremely popular a few years ago have almost disappeared now. The founders of new consumer brands almost all came from the camp with empathy capability. They tasted the dividends of emotional value and also suffered from the fleeting nature of emotional value. When an emotional value becomes popular, it becomes extremely popular; when it disappears, it vanishes without a trace. The main body of emotional value is young people, and the label of young people is a pit. One generation of young people denies the previous generation. In recent years, online brands that have been popular, except for Baixiang, Wahaha, and Jinxing, which caught the "torrential traffic," most have become short-lived brands. Why does this phenomenon occur? There are many types of human emotions. One is eternal emotions, such as love, friendship, trust, sincerity, and goodness. Most brands that have stood the test of history imply such emotions. Another is short-lived, fleeting, and changeable emotions, such as people's joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. Current emotional value marketing mostly uses such emotions, which are easily stimulated and easily disappear. The first type of emotion, although eternal, lacks self-communication capability and requires continuous investment. Internet platforms are not friendly to such emotions. The second type of emotion is particularly easy to stimulate, suitable for UGC-style self-communication, reaching the density of commercial communication in the short term, and quickly commercializing. Therefore, it receives great attention. Cai Yu divides commodity value into functional value and emotional value. We should not forget Marx's famous duality of commodities, namely the natural and social attributes of commodities, that is, use value and value. Use value corresponds to functional value, so should value correspond to emotional value? Simply classifying the social attribute of commodities as emotional value is wrong, or at least shallow. Therefore, over-focusing on and utilizing short-lived emotional value, and eventually being covered by new emotional value, is normal. Emotion is the climax of the scene The final discussion of this article focuses on offline scenes. Offline scenes have three groups of six factors: time/place, role/process, emotion/ritual sense, with complete scene elements. Christensen, who proposed the concept of jobs to be done, said there are three types of jobs: functional, social, and emotional. Personally, I think they correspond to time/place, role/process, and emotion/ritual sense, respectively. Among the three groups of scene factors, the emotional factor is the most special. Is emotion a "job to be done" or a "solution" in the scene? Perhaps both. Therefore, emotion is a special variable in the scene. First, emotion is definitely one of the jobs to be done. When entering a scene, users have emotional expectations. For example, attending a wedding banquet certainly has expectations of festive emotions. From this perspective, emotion is a "job to be done." For another example, attending a party, the choice of time/place is an "explicit" expression of emotion, and the role/process of party participants is an "implicit" expression of emotion. Second, emotion is also a solution. There is emotional expectation, but the way emotion is presented is actually the "solution." At a wedding banquet, the couple must drink the cross-cupped wine, but how to drink it is the solution. As mentioned earlier, emotional value is empathy. People entering the same scene have choices, making it easier to reach consensus on empathy. This is the difference between deterministic "jobs to be done" and vague "needs." Emotion is the climax of the scene, and ritual sense is the memory of the emotional peak. How is emotion generated in offline scenes? The most suitable way is ritual sense. Immersive experience has three senses: entertainment, participation, and ritual. Because as long as a scene has a sense of ritual, it must be the focus of all present, and it can mobilize everyone's emotions. In the era where everyone is a self-media, ritual sense is the sense of taking photos. Taking photos and posting on Moments are standard actions. This is the source of UGC and a necessary action for commercialization.