There have been three leaps in the history of brand thought. The first was the publication of the classic paper "Product and Brand" in 1955, which theoretically distinguished brands from products, with brands originating from but transcending products. Since then, brand thought has flourished. The second was in the 1990s, when brand equity and strategic brand management were proposed, elevating brands from tactical tools to strategic heights. The third was around the turn of the century, with theories like brand relationships and brand communities reshaping brand concepts, making relationships a new marketing paradigm. Defining brands based on brand-consumer relationships rather than the brand itself better helps us understand the underlying logic of how brands influence consumers and clarifies the goal of brand building. Only by establishing relationships with consumers can sales be sustained; only by establishing relationships can brand power stand firm. The strength of the relationship determines the strength of the brand. With the development of the internet and social media, brands and consumers can establish more direct connections. Concepts like private domain, communities, fans, growth hacking, personas, and IP have become popular, and I believe everyone has further recognized the importance of "relationships." However, there have long been two misunderstandings about how to understand and build brand relationships. First, the belief that brand relationships are merely emotional connections. Over the past few decades, various brand philosophies have emphasized emotional marketing, appealing to consumer imagery and personality, as well as value-based advertising, heartfelt copy, and attitude videos, to make consumers identify with and resonate with brands, leading to love and loyalty. But it is highly unrealistic and difficult to make consumers strongly like and love a brand and buy only that brand. This happens only with a very small number of consumers, while most people do not project personal emotions onto brands. For example, Professor Byron Sharp, the proponent of the HBG theory, believes that emotion is of no help to marketing; consumers are fickle and have no loyalty at all. In the industry, the former CEO of Yum! Brands also pointed out that although consumers occasionally buy a brand because they like it, if a company builds its marketing messages on this basis, it is doomed to fail because the result will inevitably be vague and overly sentimental nonsense. To build relationships with consumers, the most important thing is to play with consumers and involve them in brand marketing. Participation makes consumers feel intimate and generates a sense of belonging and responsibility toward the brand. Secondly, cultural relevance creates relationships. If a brand can integrate into or create a social issue that consumers care about and voice their concerns, consumers will feel the brand is relevant to them and identify with it. Second, the belief that brand relationships are one-on-one relationships between the brand and consumers. Humans are social animals; everyone lives in social networks and is influenced by others and social culture. To leverage consumer relationships, on one hand, brands should strengthen their social public relations by leveraging social culture. Through resonance between the brand and culture, brands can maintain vitality, ensure popularity and activity, and make consumers feel familiar with the brand. At the same time, using the power of culture, brands can enhance their authority and public influence, earning consumer respect. On the other hand, brands should leverage user circles to activate user-user relationships. Brands should let a small group of consumers deeply participate in the brand, build intimate relationships with them, and use this group's influence to radiate to other consumer groups, completing brand diffusion. Through social networks and relationship operations, using interpersonal relationships to influence brand-consumer relationships, brands can stimulate sharing and diffusion among user groups, activate and repurchase from old customers, and acquire and spread to new customers. This actually means that brand building involves two things: socialization and social interaction. These are the fundamental ways brands influence consumers and the two most important pillars of brand marketing. Companies doing branding must excel at these two. The Power of Socialization 1. Socialization Creates Purchases Not long ago, I shared a case in my fan group about the packaged water brand Master Kong Boiled Water, with the poster copy "Drink boiled water for meetings." Several classmates expressed confusion and disagreement, saying, "Why drink boiled water for meetings? What's the selling point? This doesn't give a reason to buy." Photo taken at a convenience store entrance in Shanghai Hongqiao But the question is, does buying water for a meeting really need a reason? Do consumers really think for a long time about why they buy this bottle instead of that one before buying water? In fact, even Nongfu Spring, C'estbon, and Ganten can't provide a unique reason for meeting-specific water. The key is which brand consumers think of first when buying water. As long as consumers can think of Boiled Water first, they will consider buying it. What Boiled Water needs to do is not promote functionality or educate and persuade users, but establish a correlation between boiled water and meetings, so that consumers remember that boiled water is an option (preferred option) for meeting water. This April, Boiled Water launched a massive communication campaign on Weibo, with the theme "Drink boiled water for anything." Around this theme, Boiled Water designed a series of scenarios such as meetings, work starts, school openings, and ball games, aiming to make consumers think of Boiled Water first in various water-drinking scenarios. More importantly, Boiled Water successfully turned "Drink boiled water for anything" into a meme, a trending topic, and a social issue highly watched by consumers through Weibo topics and collaboration with hundreds of brands' blue V accounts. It not only triggered brainwashing-style social diffusion, making Boiled Water's breakout unstoppable, but also made the brand a social trend, noticed by more consumers, remembered in many water-drinking scenarios, and prioritized, successfully moving the purchase pointer. In recent years, influenced by the internet, marketers like to use the term "rigid demand." But think about it: most products in our lives are not rigid demands, such as nuts, gum, and probiotics. Consumers know nuts and probiotics are healthy and know the representative brands, but do you eat them every day? Consumers don't eat them not because they don't understand the product benefits, but because they don't think of them and haven't formed habits. Like me, sometimes when I suddenly focus on health, I impulsively buy some nuts and probiotics, but after two days I forget, and by the time I remember, they've expired. Even packaged water is like this: drinking water is a rigid demand, but is drinking Nongfu Spring or Boiled Water a rigid demand? The reason consumers don't buy is not insufficient product function promotion, but because the brand lacks fixed consumption scenarios in consumers' lives, lacks salience in their minds, and lacks popularity at the social cultural level. If consumers are unaware of the brand's existence, they naturally won't choose to buy. American psychologist William James said that 99% of human activities do not involve conscious attitudes and motives; they are purely spontaneous activities, stimulated by inertia, impulse, and external environment. The importance of socialization is to help brands continuously create heat and topicality, constantly remind consumers of the brand's existence, and establish associations between the brand and consumers' life scenarios, thereby prompting purchases. To build relationships with consumers, having presence, relevance, and salience in their minds is very important. This is the prerequisite for sales and the foundation for brand effectiveness. 2. Socialization Enhances Brand Power Recently, many domestic brands have faced controversies and crises, especially being viewed by consumers as "IQ tax," "cutting leeks," or "not worth the price" due to pricing issues. Fundamentally, this is because most domestic brands have short histories and insufficient heritage, unable to compete with mature international brands in brand power. To enhance brand power, besides continuously strengthening product quality and technological content, a very important point is socialization, allowing the brand to resonate with culture, thereby winning resonance from target users and the public. This is like Huawei and BYD, which have won the respect and admiration of the Chinese people not only for their technological achievements but also for integrating more traditional culture and national spirit into their brand marketing, establishing very solid public brand relationships. In July this year, as the rainy season approached, DeRUCCI created a topic on Weibo: #Sleep Well Regardless of Wind or Rain# and released a short attitude film "Rainy Sleep." It tells consumers that the best way to get through rainy days is to enjoy a good sleep. DeRUCCI uses a good mattress to accompany millions of families through life's sunny and rainy days. On one hand, DeRUCCI's approach strengthened the brand's association with keywords like summer, rainy days, wind and rain, sleep, and good sleep (behind which are consumption scenarios). Using Weibo's progressive hot topic matrix, DeRUCCI set up multiple topics, including the main topic #Sleep Well Regardless of Wind or Rain#, as well as #Sleeping is Basic Respect for Rainy Days# and #DeRUCCI Understands Healing#, helping the brand's communication continue to heat up and dominate the hot search. During the marketing period, DeRUCCI's topics achieved over 300 million total reads, especially with social discussion heat increasing by over 200%, and the atmosphere word "rainy day good sleep" reached a concentration of over 35% in social hot words, making consumers think of DeRUCCI whenever they mention or encounter rainy days, and everyone immersively listens to rain and falls asleep. This approach effectively pulls and retains interested users, helping DeRUCCI's interest group expand by 35.3% month-on-month. On the other hand, more importantly, DeRUCCI enhanced brand power and won consumer favor and recognition by injecting social issues and cultural values. The above wave of communication helped DeRUCCI's brand voice increase by over 240%, and the brand TVC playback reached over 17 million, effectively strengthening brand imprint and penetrating user minds. #Sleep Well Regardless of Wind or Rain# not only associates with actual rainy days but also calmly deals with life's ups and downs, representing a life attitude, reflecting Chinese cultural views and lifestyle, full of poetry and beauty. Looking at this case, we find that it doesn't mention product functions at all, nor does it reflect DeRUCCI's differentiated selling points. Consumers could buy any mattress brand for a good sleep on rainy days. But DeRUCCI's approach fully demonstrates the charm and connotation of a Chinese mattress brand, creating a differentiated advantage at the brand level and enhancing brand image and reputation. Moreover, when consumers want to buy a mattress, especially in the rainy summer scenario, they are more likely to think of DeRUCCI and have more favor and recognition toward it, so the chance of buying DeRUCCI is naturally the greatest. This kind of social value will eventually be reflected in sales. Sidney Levy, the founding father of brand thought, at the age of 91, revisited the origin of branding. He believed that the word "brand" originated from "fire" and "burning," and that branding is about injecting burning passion and inner spirit into products, igniting people's hearts. Therefore, brand building is not about planting grass, promotions, or live-streaming sales, but about using socialization to inject culture and values into the brand, making it part of social culture, forming a shared ritual and tradition among groups, and becoming a social consensus. Socialization is the process of building group consensus for a brand. To leverage this social power, brands should think more and study social hot topics and trending topics, analyze social cultural trends and national consumer psychology. Then, Weibo is an unhesitating platform; it is the public opinion field of the entire society. Weibo has refined hot topic marketing methods, from national festivals, sports events, and national events, to mass entertainment and TV network hot topics, to various niche vertical hot topics and solar term hot topics. Doing hot topic marketing well can maximize the leverage of public domain traffic and social attention. For example, last Spring Festival, Lancôme 196 leveraged the Spring Festival and Spring Festival Gala hot topics to create topics like #National Peace and Prosperity Makeup# and #Color That Can Withstand CCTV's Camera#, capturing national sentiment and, with the endorsement of CCTV aesthetics and celebrity same-style, brought efficient conversion of product sales. Another example is the emerging maternal and infant brand Babycare White Shell, which on October 11 last year leveraged the niche holiday "World Analgesia Day" to derive the social topic #Only 30% of Women in China Use Painless Delivery#, creating a wave of hot topic marketing with #Motherly Love Needs No Pain Proof#, speaking up for pregnant and postpartum mothers and encouraging women to use painless delivery. Babycare's wave of communication also captured social psychology, triggering public discussion and resonance, achieving big results with a small budget. This topic once continuously topped the hot search list at number one. Moreover, it successfully conveyed brand philosophy and values, greatly enhancing user favor and effectively improving brand power. Additionally, due to the success of this topic, it became part of Babycare's long-term brand operations, continuously speaking out and investing resources in related activities, accumulating social assets for the brand. These two cases are effective uses of Weibo hot topics, powerful proof that socialization enhances brand power, expands communication power, and strengthens sales power. 3. Socialization Is Greater Than Precision Traffic There is a famous saying in the advertising industry: "I know half of my advertising budget is wasted, but the problem is I don't know which half." It refers to the broad audience of traditional media, where ads are often placed in front of many non-target consumers. So since the rise of the internet, the first change it brought to the advertising industry is "precision." With data technology, we can precisely place ads to the target audience we want to reach. In March 2011, CBN Weekly published an article feature "Internet Companies Are Dismantling the Traditional Advertising Industry," emphasizing that "precision technology and big data are subverting the value of traditional advertising placement," which is exactly this point. In today's traffic-driven era, corporate marketing often overemphasizes conversion numbers, caring about every click and touch of the target audience, the performance contribution, and the resulting costs. But the question is, if you push your ad in front of consumers, will they definitely see it? More likely, consumers don't even notice the ad exists, or they turn a blind eye and remain indifferent. You should know that for an ad to work, it must be divided into two steps: first, noticing the ad's existence; second, consumers can remember/recall which brand's ad it is. Professor Sharp conducted a study showing that among all people reached by an ad, 60% are not interested and don't pay attention. Secondly, of the remaining 40%, another 60% see the ad but can't remember whose ad it is, and may even mistake it for a competitor's. This means that the people an ad can truly influence are only 16% of the total reached. A brand's advertising effectiveness will be good only when it is in an atmosphere and heat of public attention and discussion. If a brand lacks social popularity and only does precision placement and performance ads, only reaching its own targets, the final result will definitely be greatly diminished. The so-called "precision" is actually not precise, but further pushes up advertising costs and wastes advertising expenses. The book "The Attention Merchants" emphasizes that competing for attention is the most fundamental logic of all business activities and the opening at the top of the sales conversion funnel. How much attention a brand can get determines the magnitude and efficiency of final conversion. It's not wrong to focus on results in marketing, but don't forget that the source of effect conversion is the brand and socialization. In today's social environment, for a brand to gain broad and lasting attention, a very good approach is to use the Weibo platform to implement social communication through hot topics and trending topics. Socialization is an amplifier and a larger flow of traffic, whose significance far exceeds simple performance placement. At the end of 2021, Jiangxiaobai posted 100 statements in a row on Weibo. These 100 statement posters were designed vividly and interestingly, not only cleverly popularizing product quality but also winning consumer affection with humor and self-deprecation. Although not everyone has the patience to read all 100 posters, the topic #Jiangxiaobai Posts 100 Statements in a Row# trended on hot search, forming public opinion and involving more consumers. This round of communication enhanced Jiangxiaobai's brand reputation at the public level, won public favor, and improved brand image. This is actually a very important thing for Jiangxiaobai at present, much more important than simply communicating to its target audience that "Jiangxiaobai has new products with better quality." Brand building is not just about influencing the target audience; non-target audiences are sometimes equally important. Earlier this year, FENDI collaborated with Heytea, and Moutai collaborated with Luckin Coffee. For high-end and luxury brands like FENDI and Moutai, if they only pursued precise reach to target users, there would be no need for these collaborations. But Porsche has a good slogan: "Many know, few understand." The so-called high-end is that many look up to it, and few own it. Without the admiration of the many, the few would no longer want to own it. So high-end brand marketing cannot only target high-end groups; it must be done for the public, forming influence at the social level. In the Moutai-Luckin sauce-flavored latte collaboration, although there was an expected online narrative that Luckin made a fortune and Moutai lost badly, with a 19-yuan cup of coffee seriously lowering Moutai's status as a famous liquor and high-end grade. But in fact, Moutai also benefited greatly from this cross-border collaboration, because one hot topic after another increasingly strengthened Moutai's halo effect of national attention and discussion, consolidating Moutai's status as the "national liquor," making people think of Moutai immediately when mentioning baijiu, and further expanding the penetration and influence of sauce-flavored baijiu in the liquor market. If this is true for high-end brands, it is even more so for mass brands. Because one major psychological driver of consumer purchases is herd consumption and authority worship: I buy what everyone buys. Therefore, in a socialized atmosphere, the effect of traffic is maximized, and sales obstacles are removed. Socialization is the source of traffic and heat. With this continuous living water, brands have power, vitality, and sales momentum. From the perspective of brand building, helping brands achieve socialization is Weibo's most important value. It allows brands to fully integrate into users' life scenarios and win user recognition through cultural resonance. The Energy of Social Interaction 1. Social Interaction Forms Participation, Participation Builds Relationships In 2022, Ele.me created a free order activity on Weibo. This activity didn't directly issue coupons or cash back, but used gamified Q&A. Ele.me posted interactive questions for free orders on its official Weibo, and netizens guessed the free order time based on clues. With this gameplay, consumers responded enthusiastically, playing with great joy, and various wonderful jokes and memes emerged. #Ele.me Free Order# frequently trended on hot search (about 20 times in total). This activity not only successfully broke out of its circle, but also had very good topic continuity, being both popular and well-received, becoming a major marketing hit last summer. So this year, the second season of Ele.me free orders has started, and so far, the total cumulative exposure has exceeded 8 billion. Many brands do promotions, attracting consumers with discounts, benefits, buy-one-get-one, full reductions, and freebies to stimulate sales. But these conventional practices often attract a group of "wool party" (deal hunters) who disappear without a trace after taking advantage, leaving nothing for the brand. Ele.me's approach fully utilizes Weibo's social ecosystem and hot topic gameplay, sticking with a group of users and achieving retention and activation. This is several times more effective than a simple promotion, and the brand has also gained enormous influence. Consumers participate in Ele.me's activities not just for free orders, but because they are willing to play with the brand. In this social process, consumers develop closeness and favor toward the brand, and with this relationship, there is long-term retention. We used to think that attitude determines behavior, but social psychology has long confirmed that it's not attitude that determines behavior, but behavior that influences attitude. How we act changes our attitudes. If consumers frequently participate in brand marketing activities and interact with the brand, their attitudes will naturally "follow" their behavior, generating corresponding favor, recognition, and belonging toward the brand. This is like good friends: it's hard to say whether it's because the friendship is deep that they often play together, or because they often play together that the friendship deepens. In "The Little Prince," it says: "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." Because the little prince watered his rose, put her under a glass globe, shielded her from the wind, removed caterpillars, listened to her complaints and boasts, and often sat in silence with her, she is his rose, and this single one is more important than all the roses in the world. 2. Social Interaction Creates Fans, Fans Form Diffusion There is a famous 1990 rule in marketing. Its meaning is that a brand should influence 9% of related people through 1% of core people, and then use this 9% to radiate to the remaining 90% of ordinary people, thereby achieving brand diffusion within the group and conversion across different circles. For any brand, most of its consumers are the "silent majority," indifferent to the brand, without emotion, and not actively participating in brand marketing activities. To leverage the mass consumer group, the best approach is to use the power of core fans. Like Lululemon, which became the world's second-largest sportswear brand in just a few years. Its key to success is using fitness instructors and yoga teachers as brand ambassadors, leveraging their personal social influence to drive the core consumer group of fitness and yoga enthusiasts, and then using this group's word-of-mouth and recommendations to radiate to the general public. Another example is Patagonia, which has become very popular in recent years. It also captured the IT elites of Silicon Valley and financial elites of Wall Street, and through their demonstration effect, triggered a nationwide frenzy and imitation of Patagonia. McDonald's is also like this. Since KFC's "Crazy Thursday" triggered a national carnival, many people joked about when McDonald's would come up with a big move to counter KFC. Now the big move has arrived: "McDonald's Church" (Maimen). "Maimen" initially was a meme spontaneously created by consumers online. At the end of 2022, McDonald's officially "claimed" Maimen, frequently mentioning it in daily Weibo operations, creating content around it, and releasing Maimen emojis and Maimen literary memes. On the other hand, McDonald's also began repeatedly using Maimen to interact with Weibo netizens. This official meme-playing approach drove more and more consumers to self-identify as "Maimen believers" and spontaneously create a large amount of content for Maimen, helping Maimen completely break out of its circle and become McDonald's iconic marketing event, involving more people. For brand marketing, it is important to be good at using the social web, influencing mass consumers through loyal fans and interpersonal relationships. As the saying goes, the best advertising is still word of mouth. Compared to official brand marketing messages, consumers are more willing to trust recommendations from real users. Specifically, through brand socialization, brands build intimate relationships with a few consumers, turn them into fans, and then use their sharing, recommendations, and voices to influence the public. Especially in the current era of diminishing traffic dividends and consumer segmentation, only by strengthening interaction and co-creation with fans can truly circle-breaking communication be achieved. Brand socialization can bring greater and more sustained brand influence than buying traffic to sustain. To do this well, brands must fully understand consumers and social cultural psychology. At the same time, better utilize Weibo's ecosystem, find good hot topics and gameplay to enter, strengthen connections with consumers, and thereby leverage the power of hundreds of millions of users. 3. Social Interaction Is Greater Than Private Domain In recent years, a very popular marketing concept in China is "private domain." Although the essence of private domain is also to manage customer relationships, strengthen connections with customers, and enable customers to achieve retention, activation, and monetization in the brand's own channels and marketing positions, in actual operation, private domain essentially means pulling groups and issuing coupons. In fact, many brands are not suitable for private domain, which is determined by product attributes. Only products with decent average order value and high repurchase frequency are suitable for private domain, such as Luckin Coffee, whose private domain is very successful because coffee can be drunk every day. But there are still many products, not to mention durable goods like cars, home appliances, home furnishings, and consumer electronics, but also FMCG products like laundry detergent, shampoo, and condiments that I have served in the past, which are difficult to do private domain because these products can be used for about half a year after one purchase. So how do you operate private domain during those six months? For these categories, the goal of user management is obviously not to add WeChat friends and pull groups, or even repurchase. Instead, it is to establish closer user relationships through socialization, share and recommend the brand through fan word-of-mouth, and in times of crisis, they are willing to speak up for the brand and support it. Looking at the best entrepreneurs at home and abroad today, they are all very good at using this power, such as Lei Jun and Li Xiang on Weibo in China, and Elon Musk on X abroad. Only after a brand has established social interaction with consumers can subsequent private domain operations, group pulling, and selling be logical. Without a relationship, meeting someone and immediately asking to add WeChat and pulling them into a private domain group to sell is a group chat that will soon be folded, blocked, unfollowed, and blacklisted. Social interaction is greater than private domain. From a brand perspective, socialization strengthens the brand's association with culture, gains public opinion and word-of-mouth support at the social level, and earns the brand authority and respect. Social interaction, on the other hand, strengthens user relationships, gaining a group of "self-water" (organic advocates) in normal times and fan support at critical moments. At the same time, both make the brand more intimate and familiar to consumers. These indicators and dimensions are the foundation of brand power. From the perspective of marketing growth, socialization can expand the brand's opening, attracting more traffic and users through hot searches and topics; social interaction can improve existing user stickiness and leverage more users through users' interpersonal relationships and social networks. Socialization is responsible for "pushing," and social interaction is responsible for "pulling," forming a closed loop. Grasping both means grasping the essence of brand marketing and mastering the underlying logic of how brands work.