For the first article of 2024, I want to write something substantial, so here I share my methodology for brand marketing. This model was first mentioned in my first book, "Vivid Copy" (《传神文案》), but the book only covered a preliminary concept and viewpoint, without forming a rigorous structure or actionable steps and processes. Of course, this is also related to the book's topic; after all, it's a copywriting book, so it couldn't fully elaborate on marketing interpretation. Since I started writing this book over four years ago, I have been continuously thinking about and refining this model. I have shared parts of it at many public brand conferences and marketing summits, and have also used it to train many well-known brands and listed companies. Today's article will fully elaborate my entire system, which can be said to be the greatest achievement of my work and thinking over the past four years. If you have heard my speeches or training before, you can see the evolution and refinement, and of course, my progress. Today, I believe that any brand model or methodology should be oriented towards growth, structured around the fundamental issue of how to drive enterprise growth. Yes, the center is growth, not competition-oriented, not occupying consumer mindshare, not designing brand logos, IPs, slogans, and other communication elements. All these are means; the ultimate goal is to drive growth. Secondly, the methodology must be able to integrate data and technology, designing strategies based on data and conducting quantitative assessments. Only then can it be called a marketing large model. If it still relies on experience and intuition to set direction and strategy, and on personal taste and aesthetics to determine brand image and brand propositions, then it is no different from traditional brand thinking, just changing terminology. Let's get back to business. The Era of Stock From a growth perspective, let's first look at how companies do business, i.e., where growth comes from. As we know, the foundation of market strategy is STP, and the first letter is "S"—Segment, market segmentation. For example, thirty years ago, when goods were scarce and market competition was insufficient, a company could do business with everyone; later, companies had to choose to focus on women's or men's business; then, they could only focus on the business of white-collar women; and now, it is highly likely to be completely vertical to the independent women's market in first- and second-tier cities. The population is continuously segmenting. Another example from the industry perspective: if a company makes shampoo, it could initially sell to everyone; later, it chose to make differentiated products like anti-dandruff shampoo (Head & Shoulders), smoothing shampoo (Rejoice), and nourishing repair shampoo (Pantene), segmenting the shampoo industry into small categories; Later, it focused on men's anti-dandruff shampoo (Clear); now, it may further segment to scalp care men's anti-dandruff shampoo, selenium-containing anti-dandruff shampoo, and anti-dandruff shampoo for different hair types like oily or dry hair. In short, products and categories are continuously segmenting. Today, when companies do business, population segmentation and product segmentation are prerequisites to create differentiated value and competitive advantage. Especially for many emerging brands and startups, entering from a niche market segment is a practical path because large categories and markets are often already occupied by large enterprises and brands. Segmentation can create blue oceans and enable product innovation. Genki Forest, which has been very popular in recent years, spent a year developing over a hundred products at the start of its venture, but most failed; only Ran Tea and sparkling water succeeded. Sparkling water was not Genki Forest's first product, but it helped the company establish a foothold in the market and eventually break out. Why these two products? Because in the beverage market, mainstream large categories are already occupied by big brands: cola has Coca-Cola and Pepsi, milk has Mengniu and Yili, sugary tea drinks have Master Kong and Uni-President, packaged water has C'estbon and Nongfu Spring. Sparkling water and sugar-free tea belong to niche, segmented, and market-vacant tracks. But focusing on niche markets and seeking extreme differentiation often means limited market size and insufficient user numbers; the more segmented, the smaller the pie. Although you can say it represents a blue ocean, doesn't blue ocean mean a market gap that competitors overlook? In this case, companies should find ways to expand the small category they have focused on and created. But in reality, after segmentation, many companies emphasize occupying the category in marketing. For example, the following ads I have seen and photographed in residential areas, airports, and high-speed rail stations in the past two years: "Professional sports earphones, choose Shokz," "For olive oil, I only love Olivoilà," "For cheese, choose Milkground." These brand strategies are typical of occupying categories. Actually, loving Olivoilà for olive oil is fine, but the problem is consumers don't love olive oil; choosing Milkground for cheese is fine, but the problem is people don't eat cheese. If the niche category scale is not large enough, just occupying the category is not enough. Suppose the entire niche market size is only 1 billion; even if you take 70%, the whole pie is only 700 million, and scale growth has an upper limit. Especially, the marketing cost of this approach is extremely high. Considering that any category always has existing competitors, potential entrants, and substitutes, monopolizing or owning a category means huge investment, requiring heavy spending to educate and brainwash consumers. Last time, I saw an interview with Liu Bin, Vice President of Manting, and I resonated deeply. He said: "Many emerging brands, when starting to operate in the market, mostly aim to seize niche category markets, but their business profits and operating structure are actually unhealthy. The excessive proportion of marketing expenses, especially influencer placement costs, is a common problem in the industry." Niche market - occupy category: this is typical enclosure-style business logic. It only cuts a piece of cake from the existing market size but cannot make the cake bigger. It can only obtain stock but cannot create increment. It can only satisfy existing needs but cannot create new demands. So this model of dividing the cake based on existing category scale, I call it stock growth. Under this thinking, category scale is the ceiling for growth. For niche categories, the focus is not on occupying the category but on expanding the category scale. This issue is the same for large enterprises and brands. Under stock thinking, a company's growth has only two sources: one is overall industry growth, and the other is market share growth. But the problem is that today, many industries' market sizes are saturated, or even entering a shrinking era. Companies can no longer find new populations, new channels, or new platforms because the demographic dividend has ended, and the internet dividend is about to end. When the entire industry is shrinking and declining, companies still want to expand share in the entire category market and increase market share, which means "involution," only increasing marketing expenses and manpower investment, improving brand penetration, and grabbing share from competitors. Within the existing business scope, it's hard to talk about increment. Where does increment come from? This will be the biggest issue in the marketing industry for the next decade. Scenarios Create Increment Where exactly does increment come from? To answer this question, we must first return to consumer behavior, which is the cornerstone of all marketing promotion and brand building. When we do marketing, we first focus on the consumer purchase journey, which is the entire decision-making process of "information gathering - comparison and evaluation - purchase action - sharing and diffusion," and find user touchpoints from it. Consumers make purchases because they have needs. Human needs come from the superposition of desires and specific life tasks, based on personal self-concept and lifestyle. For example, if a person wants to buy an AITO M9, the purchase need may be because he got married and had children or his commute is long, needing a car for transportation (specific life tasks and lifestyle), or because he hopes to be seen as a successful person and elite of the times (desire and self-concept). Tracing this need further back, it is the combined effect of a complex inner psychological world and external cultural world, filled with too many parts that are hard to articulate and hard for marketing to reach. In short, marketing does two things: one is to stimulate demand, and the other is to influence decisions. First, let consumers generate demand, making them realize that our product can meet their life needs, solve their life problems, and is important to them. Second, influence consumer decisions so that when they buy similar products, they prioritize our brand and beat competitors in their comparison and consideration stage. The above-mentioned category occupation and various positioning slogans can only influence decisions, strengthen the brand's influence in the category, and increase the chance of consumers choosing the brand, but they cannot stimulate demand. Occupying a category does not equal occupying demand. Although many companies also cultivate consumers and try to expand category scale, their approach is often, on one hand, to increase distribution, sending products to consumers through various channels; on the other hand, to vigorously promote the product's benefits, publicize functional selling points, quality endorsements, category status, etc., trying to persuade consumers. When consumers have strong shopping desires, as long as you strengthen distribution to push products in front of consumers, increase advertising to inform consumers of the brand's existence, and repeatedly remind consumers, people will place orders. But this approach is increasingly difficult to work today. Functional promotion and category occupation essentially only brainwash consumers and remind them to buy, but it's hard to evoke demand or change user consumption habits. The marketing model is incomplete. To gain increment, you must create new consumer demand. To create demand, it's not enough to make consumers see the brand and remember it; the key is to create opportunities for product use in consumers' lives, letting the brand and consumers meet in life. John Watson, an American psychologist and founder of behaviorist psychology, was also a successful advertiser. During his time at the famous advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, he had a classic case involving coffee product promotion. Watson believed that selling coffee should not just emphasize how good the coffee tastes, but rather create more opportunities for consumers to drink coffee, thereby changing their behavior. So Watson launched a "Coffee Time" campaign in the United States, making "Coffee Time" a fixed ritual and behavioral habit in homes, factories, and offices, thus driving coffee sales. This approach of creating product opportunities in consumers' lives, in today's terms, is scenario. Regarding the relationship between scenarios and growth, I will share three viewpoints. First, only by finding new scenarios can you achieve new growth. Let me give an example. In the past two years, camping has exploded in popularity. Outdoor sports like frisbee, flag football, hiking, mountain climbing, paddleboarding, and skiing have been pursued by people. Related notes on Xiaohongshu have significantly increased, and camping and mountain-style youth have become one of Xiaohongshu's top 10 lifestyle trends of the year. And camping and outdoor scenarios are not just business opportunities for outdoor equipment and shoes and clothing; in fact, many brands in different categories such as beauty, food and beverages, and daily chemicals have found growth points from them. For example, Estée Lauder has an old product, DW foundation. How can an old product achieve new growth? Estée Lauder found that in outdoor sports scenarios, consumers' core need for base makeup is sweat-proof and long-lasting, not the concealing need in daily commuting scenarios. So Estée Lauder's DW foundation, with the main selling point of "sweat-proof and no makeup smudging," launched the #不假妆过夏天# (No Fake Makeup Summer) campaign, and on Xiaohongshu selected KOLs in outdoor sports, fitness, travel, and other related verticals to do seeding for sports scenarios, strongly covering young consumer groups keen on outdoor sports. Estée Lauder thus established the user perception that sports makeup = DW foundation, successfully evoking demand. This drove product growth: DW foundation-related notes on Xiaohongshu increased 74 times, and it achieved the top 1 sales in the foundation and base makeup categories on the platform. Although I don't use foundation, I can relate to this. Because I have a running habit, in 2023 I ran almost every morning. Of course, the cost was that my face darkened eight shades; in Guangzhou summer, the sun is already strong at 7 a.m. For sun protection, I first asked my wife to buy sunscreen for me, but the one she found good didn't feel good to me after I used it, so later I bought one myself. I thought carefully: the difference in usage experience is not due to people but to scenarios. In daily commuting scenarios, our need for sunscreen is light, non-greasy, and not whitening; in running scenarios, the need becomes sweat-proof and able to withstand strong sun exposure. As for whether it's greasy, thick, or whitens the skin, I don't care at all because I wash it off after running. This means that scenarios define needs, and needs define products (note: remember this sentence). For example, Blue Moon developed a sports laundry detergent in May 2022 based on this. In sports scenarios, consumers have the pain point of sweat odor in clothes being hard to remove, so this product focuses on the selling point of "removing sweat odor and inhibiting sweat odor," becoming a highlight of Blue Moon's "special product for special use" series. Another example is Oreo. In spring 2023, Oreo launched seasonal limited-edition flavors: peach blossom rice wine and mango pomelo sago cookies, and created a spring new product gift box. Using this product as a carrier, Oreo collaborated with Xiaohongshu to launch the #一起打包春天# (Pack Spring Together) campaign, co-produced the TVC "Spring Packing Guide," and also collaborated with 31 popular coffee shops in Shanghai to launch "Oreo Spring Special" drinks. At the same time, Oreo also partnered with Meituan to launch the #快接春天# (Quickly Catch Spring) promotion: buying Oreo on Meituan delivery not only had discounts but also gave away custom frisbees. Today, Oreo's overall growth strategy consists of three parts. First, expand category share. Oreo launched half-portion products to lower the trial cost for new users; also developed more product flavors, and a multi-product matrix of cocoa sticks, cocoa crisps, mini Oreos, and thin Oreos, increasing marketing investment to grab market share. This is a fight for the stock market. Second, expand new category business. Oreo extended to new categories like cakes and ice cream, and also cooperated with McDonald's to promote desserts. Finally, create new consumption scenarios. Target scenarios like camping and afternoon tea to tap new consumption demands, break the growth bottleneck of the biscuit category, and break through the scale ceiling. Of course, developing new categories like cakes is also to create more consumption scenarios and create a brand-new brand experience. Interestingly, for different growth methods, Oreo also chose different media and channels for implementation. The main battlefield for expanding category share is Tmall and JD brand flagship stores, focusing on increasing promotion and sales; new products like Oreo cake are promoted on Douyin, strengthening product display and stimulating user trial purchases; new scenario development is placed on Xiaohongshu and Meituan, focusing on camping scenarios for seeding and conversion. Finally, let's look at Chacha瓜子 (melon seeds). This is a Chacha product package I photographed at a convenience store a few months ago. You can see the front of the package has promotional copy like "Weekend arrives, Chacha arrives," "Go empty your mind," "Go chase the wind," and the back has a promotional activity: scan the code to win a 10,000-yuan travel fund from Fliggy. When I shared this design in my fan groups, there happened to be a colleague from Chacha's marketing department in the group. He further shared the travel scenario materials and product displays that Chacha built in supermarkets, as well as the newly launched gift box product "Chacha Weekend Travel Box." By now, everyone should understand that Chacha is focusing on the weekend travel scenario, which determines the entire communication and promotion design. The scenario determines the communication theme "Weekend travel, Chacha is good," determines product design, packaging design, promotional copy, terminal display, and promotional activities; It determines the content marketing strategy: Chacha chose travel, lifestyle, parenting, and drama KOLs, focusing on keywords like "travel," "holiday," "snacks," "melon seeds," "Chacha," and "travel box" for exposure and seeding; It also determines promotion nodes, such as Chacha can specifically carry out promotional activities on weekends and holidays, and every Friday, it discounts in offline supermarkets. For the melon seed market, do consumers not eat melon seeds because they don't know that Chacha melon seeds are large, plump, and fragrant? Or because they don't know that eating more nuts is good for health and the brain? I think not. Consumers don't eat melon seeds more likely because they lack scenarios for eating melon seeds in their lives; they don't think of eating them, and haven't developed a habit of eating them regularly. Scenarios create opportunities for consumers to eat melon seeds, thereby stimulating demand, prompting purchases, and cultivating habits. A couple of days ago, Luo Zhenyu gave the 2024 "Time Friend" New Year's speech, mentioning the story of Principal Li Xigui from Beijing No.1 Experimental School. Principal Li promoted a series of teaching reforms by compressing the 10-minute break between classes to 5 minutes, creating a chain reaction. Luo Zhenyu said: "Principal Li often says, how can people solve problems? Not by sitting there discussing ideas every day, but by going deep into the specific scenarios and actions of this world. Simply put, it's these six words: Once specific, it becomes profound." For enterprises, the greatest value of scenarios is that they are real and specific in consumers' lives. Concrete scenarios are easier to grasp in product development, brand operations, and marketing promotion than abstract concepts like customer-centricity and insight, and thus become growth drivers. Moreover, for consumers, scenarios are fragments of life details; human life is composed of specific and subtle scenarios. People are always in scenarios, and needs always arise in scenarios. Therefore, grasping scenarios means grasping pain points, needs, consumers, markets, and growth. Second, products without scenarios not only lack growth but also lack the necessity to exist. Finding new scenarios to gain new growth, conversely, means that if a product cannot find a usage scenario, it has no growth and no value to exist. Many products fail not necessarily because of the product itself, but because they don't find a scenario in consumers' lives. For example, Google Glass failed due to lack of scenarios; when would ordinary people need smart glasses? Curiosity and novelty are not sustained universal purchase motivations. Another example is Segway, once hugely popular and considered by Jobs as important as the PC, but in the six years after its launch, it sold fewer than 30,000 units, with dismal sales. Segway believed it would completely revolutionize human transportation and that everyone would own a self-balancing scooter, but in reality, only security personnel and workers in airports, factories, and golf courses use it, with extremely narrow application scenarios. Scenarios are the foundation of product power; a product must occupy at least one core application scenario. Third, the more scenarios a brand occupies in consumers' lives, the greater the growth it achieves! Let's continue with cases. First, look at the Red Bull story. Looking back at Red Bull's nearly 30-year development in China, a single product selling over 20 billion, its growth path is the continuous expansion of scenarios. In 1996, Red Bull's first slogan in China was "Cars need gas, I need Red Bull." Why this slogan? Because Red Bull wanted to focus on long-distance driving scenarios. For drivers, drowsy driving is fatal, so they have a rigid demand for Red Bull. For Red Bull, gas station convenience stores naturally became sales channels. The driving scenario defined Red Bull's angel users, pain points, promotion methods, and sales channels. Around 1998, Red Bull changed the slogan to "Drink Red Bull when thirsty, drink more when tired and sleepy," Promoting in chess and card rooms, mahjong tables, offices, sports fields, etc., with the main scenario becoming family life. In 2004, Red Bull changed its main scenario to "sports field," targeting teenagers and college students. In promotion, Red Bull introduced F1 to China, sponsored NBA, World Cup, and other events, promoted marathons, street dance, extreme sports, and invited Lin Dan and the Chinese badminton team as endorsers, all sports resources. At the same time, Red Bull's brand proposition shifted to "energy," with slogans like "My energy, my dream" (2004), "Energy, unlimited" (2006), "With energy, create new legends" (2012), "Your energy, beyond your imagination" (2013), etc. This is because after SARS, people's health awareness soared, and vitamin-added sports drinks began to rise. 2004 became the first year of sports drinks in China. The explosion of sports drinks posed a fatal challenge to Red Bull because at that time, consumers considered Red Bull a sports drink. Therefore, to differentiate from sports drinks, Red Bull first proposed the concept of "energy drink" and heavily advertised around the word "energy." At the same time, to compete with sports drinks for market and users, Red Bull began to lock onto sports scenarios. In 2009, Red Bull set its sights on the "office." In the ad, the scene became staying up late to work overtime, and having a can of Red Bull; and in 3,000 office buildings in 14 cities across the country, it launched the "Red Bull Time" free distribution activity. By 2013, Red Bull launched the "Red Bull Time, Morning Renewal Energy" promotion, further focusing on morning distribution, reminding consumers to have a can of Red Bull when sleepy at work. The 2004 promotion theme "Red Bull Morning Energy, Enjoy Unlimited" was also like this. After 2014, Red Bull began to focus on "communities and campuses." In well-known universities in 8 cities, it launched the "Have a can of Red Bull, make a friend" welcome drink activity for new students, and carried out many community promotion activities. At the same time, it incorporated more music and entertainment elements into marketing, held Red Bull Unplugged concerts, and sponsored variety shows like "Super Brain," "Sesame Open the Door," "One Stop to the End," "Smile Pride," and "Tonight 80 Talk Show." From gas stations, family life to sports fields, offices, campuses, and communities, the superposition of these scenarios helped Red Bull capture different niche populations, penetrate every corner of consumers' lives, and place products in various channels, collectively creating Red Bull's big market. Now let's talk about the iPad story. When Apple launched the iPad in 2010, the industry was full of pessimism. For example, Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt said: "Can you tell me the difference between a big phone and a tablet?" Mika Majapuro, Lenovo's global senior product marketing manager, said: "Lenovo will not launch its own tablet because users need a physical keyboard." Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, the authoritative IT research and advisory firm, commented: "Users either buy a laptop with a larger screen or a phone with a smaller screen; products in between remain unpopular." In addition, Bill Gates' view was also typical. He believed: "We are trying to launch products that users like to use in meeting rooms; the iPad is obviously not. Users need to input text, take notes, and edit documents. I won't carry an iPad to meetings." (Obviously, Gates' perception of tablet usage scenarios was meeting rooms, so Microsoft released Surface in June 2012.) Actually, what are these comments saying? They are saying that tablets cannot find a typical scenario that cannot be replaced by phones and laptops. This is also why Apple didn't launch the iPad until 2010. Even Jobs, the creator of the iPad, hadn't figured this out. In 2003, he publicly stated: "We have no plans to make a tablet. Consumers like physical keyboards; tablets won't succeed." And when the first-generation iPad was unveiled, Jobs designed a keyboard dock for it. In his view, with the dock, consumers could prop up the iPad in the living room, turning it into a digital photo frame. But in fact, not many consumers used it that way. Another usage scenario Apple didn't anticipate was taking photos. The first-generation iPad had no camera; it only appeared with the iPad 2, because Apple's design team didn't believe people would carry such a large screen out, let alone use it for photography. At the 2012 London Olympics, Apple's software engineering director Bethany Bongiorno was surprised to see many people holding up iPads to take photos. She recalled that people used iPads to take photos not because the camera was good, but simply because they wanted a larger viewfinder to satisfy visual needs. When Apple realized this, it decided to upgrade the iPad's camera specifications and made more optimizations for photo browsing and other applications. Now, years later, we clearly know that people like to lie on the sofa and browse iPads, watch videos, read news, and chat. The iPad has become closely connected with sofas and beds at home. From "digital photo frame" to "sofa companion," we can see that the real consumption scenario determines product value and competitiveness. Companies should think about the product's usage scenario at the beginning of product development, but the scenarios designed by companies often differ from the scenarios where consumers actually use the product, sometimes vastly different. This is the main reason for innovation product failure. There is a popular video of Jobs online. In 1997, Jobs had just returned to Apple. At a conference, he was publicly questioned by a programmer for not understanding technology, and Jobs responded: "You have to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and then try to figure out where to apply it. I think that's the right way to do things." "Where to apply this technology" is the application scenario. The relationship between scenarios and user experience is like skin and hair: if the skin is gone, where can the hair attach? For tablet products, the iPad focuses on general entertainment scenarios, Surface targets productivity scenarios, and Kindle focuses on reading scenarios. Scenarios determine the product's position in consumers' lives and the role it plays. Of course, in promotion, besides targeting entertainment scenarios, the iPad has extended to more scenarios. For example, education. In 2011, when the iPad 2 was released, it launched the ad "Learn," promoting reading documents, taking notes, doing experiments, and doing exercises with the iPad; in 2013, Cook announced that the iPad occupied 94% of the global education tablet market; in 2018, the iPad also launched the ad "Homework," promoting that it makes homework fun. To expand growth opportunities and compete with Surface for the market, in 2015, the iPad launched the iPad Pro with a keyboard and stylus, starting to attack office scenarios. For example, the 2017 iPad Pro ad "What is a computer?" and the 2020 iPad Pro ad was more direct: "Your next computer is not a computer." In early 2020, people were forced to stay at home, working, shopping, and taking classes online. At that time, iPad sales surged, out of stock across the internet. In February, 60% of Tmall buyers were for online class needs. In addition, the iPad has also promoted for some niche scenarios, such as travel. The evolution of scenarios like entertainment, education, office, travel, live streaming, and online classes has expanded the iPad's penetration in people's lives, increased purchase opportunities for different groups, and jointly shouldered the iPad's sales responsibility. The stories of Red Bull and iPad tell us that a major goal of brand marketing is to occupy more consumption scenarios in consumers' lives. The total amount of consumption scenarios reflects brand scale. I call this concept ACS (Aggregate of Consumer Settings). Since the goal of marketing is to occupy more scenarios and expand ACS, for enterprises, this involves a scenario portfolio strategy. Companies must decide which scenarios to focus on for promotion and product development, and how many resources to invest in different scenarios. How much market capacity a scenario can bring to a brand depends on two dimensions: First, rigid demand vs. non-rigid demand. It represents the intensity of consumer demand for the brand in that scenario, whether it's strong or weak demand. For example, in entertainment scenarios, consumers' demand for iPad is stronger than in office scenarios; for office scenarios, PCs are better; in mobile office scenarios, iPad can partially replace PCs. Second, high frequency vs. low frequency. It represents the frequency and opportunity of the scenario appearing in consumers' lives. For example, reading is a low-frequency scenario for many people today, so Jobs was unwilling to launch a dedicated device for reading. Because of this, many bookstores today design their storefronts and displays to match the browsing scenario, to get consumers to browse, and then make money from cultural and creative products and coffee, not just selling books. Shopping is a high-frequency scenario, while buying books is low-frequency. These are the two criteria for judging scenario value. Based on these two criteria, we can divide scenarios into three types: First, mainline scenarios: Finding scenarios that are both rigid and high-frequency is the main task of brand marketing. A brand must occupy at least one mainline scenario; without it, there is no sales or basic market. Second, lead-in scenarios: Scenarios that are extremely rigid but not high-frequency are suitable as the lead-in for a brand to enter the market. The population covered by this scenario, although niche, has strong pain points, making them suitable as the brand's angel population. For example, long-distance driving is a lead-in scenario for Red Bull. Third, branch scenarios: In addition, those scenarios that are either rigid but low-frequency or high-frequency but non-rigid are all branch tasks for brand marketing. For a new category/new brand, the first step is to find a lead-in scenario, capture the angel population, so the brand has a foothold and can successfully start the market. For a growing brand and category, it must occupy a core, sufficiently large mainline scenario to achieve growth and expansion. For a mature large brand/large category, it needs to expand more branch scenarios; the more branch scenarios, the greater the growth achieved. Mainline scenarios define strategy; branch scenarios drive growth. I have already explained the logic of scenario-driven growth; here I will briefly expand on how scenarios define strategy. Before discussing this topic, let's define scenario. The word "scenario" has been severely abused in the internet field in recent years; it seems everything is a scenario, but if the concept is not clearly defined, cognition becomes chaotic, and actions become helpless. What is a scenario? It refers to a specific life situation where consumers need to rely on a brand to complete a certain life task (equivalent to hiring the brand to help them do something). In this process, consumers generate certain needs and consumption behaviors. The inspiration for this definition comes from Harvard professor Clayton Christensen's JTBD theory, which is Jobs To Be Done, i.e., the work to be done. People buy brands to complete certain work in life and help themselves solve problems. JTBD theory actually returns to the classic interpretation of marketing by Theodore Levitt, one of the founders of modern marketing: people don't want to buy a 1/4-inch drill bit, they want a 1/4-inch hole. When consumers want to solve problems and complete tasks, needs naturally arise. This concept is called "scenario creates demand." Human needs do not arise out of thin air but always appear in specific scenarios. Consumers have completely different pain points and needs in different scenarios. Therefore, brands must grasp their mainline scenarios, develop products for those scenarios, design product experiences, build brand landscapes, and pair them with a series of corresponding marketing mix tactics, forming a strategy. For example, Li Auto. Data analysis found that among buyers of cars over 200,000 yuan, family users account for up to 89%. Li Auto accordingly determined its brand strategy for family cars and defined its brand mission as: create a mobile home, create a happy home. Its strategy is not decided by intuition but based on data, focusing on family travel scenarios and family users, creating the most suitable products and user experiences for them. In 2021, when Li Auto continuously collected user data and feedback, it found that Li ONE owners spent an average of 4.4 hours per week "staying in the car but not driving." Many owners would stay in the car to nap, charge, wait for people, and before going home at night, they would sit for a while. Insight into this usage scenario, the subsequently released Li L9 added a lot of audio-visual entertainment configurations, moving "refrigerator, TV, and large sofa" into the car. Li Auto thus stood out among many new car-making forces, with products selling well and achieving profitability. This is the support of focusing on scenarios for strategy and growth. Scenarios are task solutions, and at the bottom of tasks, there is the drive of social relationships. Just like eating: eating is actually a basic life need, but who you eat with is the scenario. Different scenarios mean different tasks for consumers, and different criteria for choosing cuisine and restaurants. In family dinner scenarios, what is the consumer's task? The core is that the whole family can eat, especially letting the elderly and children eat well, paying more attention to the health and nutrition of the food. So in this scenario, consumers won't eat hot pot or barbecue; non-spicy, non-oily, and not heavy flavors are the first choice, like Northwestern cuisine or Jiu Mao Jiu. In friend gathering scenarios, the consumer's task is to eat happily and satisfyingly, release emotions, and enhance feelings, so consumers will choose hot pot, barbecue, grilled fish, and other dishes that make people happy. In business banquet scenarios, the consumer's task is to make guests feel classy and honored, with good privacy and private rooms for business talks. At this time, consumers will choose high-end restaurants like Michelin or Black Pearl. In couple dating scenarios, the consumer's task is to enjoy a romantic and elegant atmosphere, with the two-person world undisturbed, so they care more about exquisite dishes and elegant environments, such as creative cuisine or Western restaurants. The advertising industry likes to talk about insight, viewing consumer insight as the premise of marketing and brand building, but the definitions of "what is insight" are varied, and the specific operation of "how to do insight" has become very mysterious, actually relying on personal understanding to guess what consumers think. In fact, real insight is understanding the social relationships in specific scenarios. Different object relationships determine consumers' life tasks. If we don't pay attention to scenarios and social relationships, and only talk about the need of "eating" itself, then we would think that consumers want everything: taste, health, safety, nutrition, and ingredient quality, but this is far from real consumer psychology and behavior. Talking about needs without scenarios is dangerous for enterprises. Humans are social animals, living in the public space of groups. Many scenarios in our lives have social attributes, and groups and public spaces have normative effects on individual behavior, with clear social etiquette requirements. Scenarios are slices of social relationships, meaning that scenarios represent certain social norms and consensus. In August 2023, a social news story circulated online: "Post-00s arrange business banquet, chairman petrified on the spot." A post-00s corporate secretary took a group of leaders and guests to eat at Shu Daxia. Facing the red soup base and a table of dishes, the leaders in hot pot aprons were at a loss and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Actually, don't leaders eat hot pot? Of course they do; they can eat it with friends and family, but it's not appropriate for business dinners. Scenarios as social norms are greater than individual preferences. Another example is clothing. Everyone has their own dressing style and aesthetic taste, but during work hours or on the day of a company-wide meeting, everyone wears suits. A 27-year-old county civil servant and a 31-year-old big tech programmer may have no commonality in demographic factors, interests, and lifestyles, but on their wedding day, they will both choose to buy or tailor suits. This is consensus; scenario commonality is greater than population commonality. This involves a new concept: "people are divided by scenarios." It's not that different segmented populations have different needs, but that a person has different needs in different scenarios, and different people have common needs in the same scenario. Different scenarios divide people into different circles and classes, and the same scenario can also capture different segmented populations to the maximum extent. Scenarios both aggregate and divide people. As mentioned above with suits, for a suit brand, according to past views, it should capture the business people segment. But today, many business people's wardrobes are full of Arc'teryx and lululemon; they don't wear suits every day. So what suit brands really need to capture are consumption scenarios like formal meetings, business entertainment, and weddings. As long as these scenarios exist in life, whether or not they are business people, there is a high probability they will buy suits. In the past, we said "birds of a feather flock together," and we based business on the commonality of a certain segmented population. But with the development of the times, as the economy and culture mature, populations actually have less and less commonality. Decades ago, hundreds of millions of people had basically the same lifestyle, but the post-70s and post-80s began to differentiate, and it goes without saying for post-95s and post-00s. In this era that champions individuality and self, two post-00s individuals may have no commonality at all. So how can a brand focus on the post-00s segment to do business? The foundation of population segmentation no longer exists. Capturing scenarios is equivalent to capturing a certain social consensus and obtaining the greatest common divisor of different segmented populations. When a scenario appears in more and more people's lives, that is, it condenses more and more social consensus, it will become a mainstream social lifestyle, involving more different consumer groups. For example, the explosion of the outdoor jacket category in 2023 was actually due to the popularity of camping scenarios. The so-called lifestyle is actually composed of a series of scenarios; scenarios are the embodiment of lifestyle, and lifestyle is the upper layer of scenarios. The Incremental Growth Model of Scenario + Tag Scenarios represent user tasks in specific life situations. Different scenarios represent different tasks, and the same scenario can generate multiple tasks (like camping mentioned earlier). Moreover, the same task can be solved by multiple categories, brands, and products. So in a certain scenario, how does a brand stand out? This requires tags. Brands need to pair scenario capture with tags because scenario + tag represents the consumer's decision-making model. We can analyze from the most common purchase behavior of buying a drink: how does a consumer choose a bottle of beverage? In the past, we always believed that the consumer's decision-making model was "category thinking, brand expression." Specifically for buying drinks, it's first deciding which subcategory to drink, then considering which brand to buy. For example, first decide to drink cola, then consider Coca-Cola or Pepsi; first decide to buy tea drinks, then consider Master Kong Jasmine Green Tea or Uni-President Iced Black Tea; First decide to drink sparkling water, then choose Genki Forest; first decide to buy water, and of course, it can be further segmented: natural water is Nongfu Spring, purified water is C'estbon, mineral water is Ganten. Because we think consumers have this decision-making model, many companies attach great importance to positioning and occupying categories in marketing. But this model seems flawless, yet it cannot answer three questions: First, how do consumers decide which category to buy? Why do consumers choose cola over herbal tea, juice, or other carbonated drinks? Second, why do more people drink cola and juice, but fewer drink coconut juice and plant milk? That is, what are the causes of large and small categories in the beverage industry? How can brands in small categories grow? Third, do consumers drink Coca-Cola only because it's the first choice in the cola category? I have seen many consumers who go straight to grab Coca-Cola in convenience stores without considering other categories or brands. In fact, the real decision-making model of consumers is called "scenario thinking, tag cognition, brand expression." Let's still look at buying drinks. First, we need to consider the consumption scenario. For example, in the morning meal scenario, consumers will buy "nutritional drinks," like Telunsu milk, OATLY oat milk, and Weiquan Daily C juice are perfect choices. Even if a consumer loves cola, the probability of drinking it early in the morning with baozi and youtiao is relatively low. Another example is the afternoon tea or dinner gathering scenario, where consumers will choose "hedonic drinks," and Heytea, Chagee, and Coca-Cola or Sprite are good choices. Also, in office meeting scenarios, to avoid drowsiness at work, consumers will buy "refreshing drinks," and Starbucks, Luckin, Nestlé, and Red Bull all belong to this category. A brand can only become a consumer's choice in a specific scenario if it has the corresponding tag. Therefore, when designing brand strategy, companies should coordinate scenario + tag. In 2023, a thermos cup brand Stanley became popular from the US to China. Ouyang Nana, Wan Qian, and Ci Sha loved it and carried it everywhere. Countless middle-class mothers and refined women have one, and Stanley has almost become a pop culture phenomenon in North America. There are thousands of thermos cup brands; how did Stanley become popular? Founded in 1913, Stanley's initial mainline scenario was outdoor off-road. In this scenario, the target population was tough guys who love going deep into mountains and forests. The product positioning was outdoor equipment, inventor of all-steel vacuum thermos cups. The brand tag was WWII military supplies, exclusive to the US Air Force, representing hardcore, durable, tech, passion, and adventure spirit. Occasionally, some promotions were product placements in sci-fi and adventure movies. Of course, this was destined to be a very niche market. In May 2020, Terence Reilly came to Stanley as the new president. He was CEO of Crocs from 2015 to 2020, turning the ugly clog shoes into a trendy hit through co-branded and limited editions. After that, he began to boldly adjust the brand strategy according to his own ideas. Stanley's scenarios changed to going out and carrying along, specifically including sports and fitness, classes and study, office work, refined camping, morning routines (washing/skincare/breakfast), early C late A (coffee and alcohol), and professional outdoor. In these scenarios, the target population became refined women. According to Stanley's senior vice president of marketing, Jenn Reeves, they are "women on the go," who pursue health and beauty, usually like wearing Lululemon, exercise regularly, eat a balanced diet, and want to carry a water cup everywhere to hydrate at any time. The user identity tags are Stanley thermos cup sisterhood, "White Girls." White Girls not only refers to white girls but also to beautiful, affluent, energetic women who carry water cups everywhere, are positive and sunny in work and life, confident in life, and pursue effortless chic middle-class women. The product positioning also changed to a carry-on accessory. Today's Stanley cup design focuses on bright and colorful colors, especially Morandi color schemes. The product shape can easily fit into dishwashers and Tesla cup holders, suitable for middle-class families. Now Stanley's brand tags are fashion item, OOTD (outfit of the day), celebrity same style, and also high appearance, relaxed feeling, dopamine, etc. Marketing activities include co-branded products with Olay and Starbucks, more personality-driven topic marketing like #拒绝常温# (Refuse Room Temperature), and promoting the consumption concept of one cup for one drink and street snap styling, that is, drinking different drinks with different cups, and matching different styles of clothing with different colors and styles of cups. This approach helped Stanley achieve explosive growth, and the market expanded rapidly. From this case, we can see that scenarios determined Stanley's target population, product positioning, brand building, and marketing promotion implementation, and ultimately determined market size and growth. And the coordination of tags helped Stanley successfully occupy the scenario. Scenarios and tags together constitute the basis of consumer decisions, establishing the association between brand and consumer. Scenarios relate to specific tasks in consumers' life scenarios, representing what problems consumers need to solve; tags relate to consumer cognition and identity, representing which solution that fits self-cognition consumers will use to solve their problems. When scenarios change, brand tags should also change. For example, the scenario shift of instant noodles. In the past, instant noodles focused on main meal scenarios, with major brands emphasizing large noodle cakes, sufficient portions, nutrition and health (like non-fried instant noodles, mushroom and chicken noodles, etc.), and promotions often gave away braised eggs and sausages. Now, the scenario of instant noodles is gradually shifting to leisure scenarios. Above are the scenarios on the packaging of Master Kong's Soup Master product I photographed at a convenience store. There are five in total: overtime seeking inspiration, travel relaxing and resting, dormitory chatting, staying home watching dramas, and camping immersed in nature. When late-night snack and craving satisfaction become the mainline scenario for instant noodles, the product specifications gradually become smaller, turning into cup products, and various novel flavors are developed, like Korean spicy ramen, Thai Tom Yum noodles, etc. Brands have successively tagged themselves with delicious, exciting, novel, relaxing, energetic, and inspirational. For a brand to achieve growth, it must occupy as many consumption scenarios as possible in consumers' lives, involving more consumer groups; and create corresponding tags to match these scenarios, naturally stimulating consumer demand and brand choice, ultimately driving growth. This chain of capturing scenarios - tagging - creating increment, I call it the Incremental Growth Model. Expressed in a formula: Setting scenario + Tag = Added Growth, so I also call this model the STAG Model. Scenarios can be based on Big Data analysis, clustering consumer behavior to discover what scenarios exist in consumers' lives, insight into consumption needs and social relationships in different scenarios, and what mainline and branch scenarios are suitable for the brand to occupy. Tags can be based on various content published by consumers online, including original content and brand area comments, using NLP natural language processing to analyze consumers' focus points and key association words for the brand in different scenarios, and analyze consumer psychological states and emotions, etc. Of course, scenarios can also be clustered through text mining technology by analyzing user content; tags can also be based on big data to find user tags, and then convert user tags into brand tags. Marx once said, any discipline in the world, if it has not developed to the point of being closely connected with numbers, indicates that the discipline has not yet matured. The value of the Incremental Growth Model is that every link can be quantitatively analyzed through data, making strategy verifiable and growth rule-based. In the new tea drink industry, Chagee has been extremely popular in the past two years. In 2023, it opened nearly 2,000 new stores nationwide, with global store count exceeding 3,000, becoming the store king in the tea drink industry. On the marketing side, Chagee has also been very successful, frequently breaking out of the circle, providing excellent support for growth. Especially on the Weibo platform, Chagee has built a very good marketing system. Let's see how Chagee does it. First, the Weibo team analyzed 19,000 original posts discussing new tea drinks daily, identifying 9 major tea consumption scenarios, including work, leisure, seasons, meal accompaniment, parties and entertainment, campus, dating, self-discipline, and concerts. Moreover, these different scenarios can be further quantified according to user interaction frequency and content volume differences, to calculate the proportion of each scenario in consumers' lives. Examining these scenarios, there are time-divided scenarios like autumn, autumn rain, evening breeze and sunset, cherry blossom season, and various solar terms and seasons; There are occasion-divided scenarios like work, meal accompaniment, campus, and leisure scenarios like shopping, camping, and art museums; There are high-concentration emotional expression scenarios like parties, dating, and concerts, and also daily self-pleasure and self-discipline scenarios; There are high-frequency general life scenarios like meal accompaniment and work, and low-frequency specific activity scenarios like concerts and seasonal hotspots. In fact, these timings, occasions, object relationships, emotions, and behavior frequencies are the 5 major variables of scenario design, which are the parameter settings of scenarios. Earlier when mentioning the ACS concept, I translated scenario as "Setting," which means set, setting. Among the translations of "scenario" I have seen, one is "Context." It mainly refers to the context in writing, connecting with the surrounding text, and has the meaning of social environment and background. It does not refer to a specific time and place, but an entire time-space, too abstract and grand. Another is translated as "Scene" and "Scenario." These two words are commonly used in drama and film art. "Scenario" refers to plot, script; "Scene" refers to a scene in a play, a view, scenery, or the site of an event. So overall, I think "Setting" is the most appropriate, fitting the original meaning of scenario in the marketing context. Grasping these parameter settings of scenarios is the opportunity point for brands to enter and implement marketing. After identifying tea consumption scenarios, Weibo also sampled 200 original posts from Chagee's order-showing group, analyzed user emotional drivers in different scenarios, helped Chagee design brand tags, and matched them with consumption scenarios. The analysis found that consumers' common emotions are "happy," "like," and "healing," which are catalysts in multiple scenarios. Specific to different scenarios, there are differences. For example, in high-frequency daily scenarios like meal accompaniment and shopping, the brand is a "little happiness" in life; in celebration scenarios like birthday parties and concerts, the brand is a "stimulant" for users; and in scenarios like studying, working, and self-discipline, milk tea is "ibuprofen" to relieve fatigue and anxiety. These tags define Chagee's brand image and personality, give the brand differentiated value, help the brand find its role in different scenarios, and thus create resonant content more targeted. This is the space for brand efforts. At the same time, for the 9 major scenarios, the Weibo team also designed a systematic hot topic matrix for Chagee, capturing traditional solar term hotspots like Start of Spring, Start of Autumn, Autumn Equinox, Minor Snow, Winter Solstice, etc., and festival hotspots like Christmas, New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, Women's Day, etc., from the Weibo platform's annual hot topic fields, to occupy seasonal scenarios. For leisure and travel scenarios, choose hotspots like Dragon Boat Festival, May Day, National Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, etc.; for entertainment and concert scenarios, choose hotspots from major variety shows, dramas, and concerts, especially leveraging ancient costume drama hotspots for promotion, which not only strengthens the brand's ancient style image but also achieves brand accompaniment and positioning in corresponding consumption scenarios. For specific scenario tactics, let's break down two cases. First, the self-discipline scenario. Through data analysis, Weibo found that consumers in self-discipline scenarios are most concerned about "milk tea calories." So, leveraging authoritative media, it created the hot topic #你喝的奶茶有身份证吗 (Does your milk tea have an ID card?) for Chagee, triggering user attention and discussion, strengthening the association between milk tea and "calorie ID card." Then, Chagee launched a calorie calculator mini-program that can calculate the calorie values of different milk tea products, funnily displaying product selling points and stimulating consumers to explore products. Finally, KOLs/KOCs were invited to participate in topic interaction, setting off a healthy drink check-in trend. This series of operations gave the brand the tag of "healthy, low-calorie," helping Chagee become the first choice in self-discipline scenarios. Second, the Start of Autumn seasonal scenario. Now, "the first cup of milk tea in autumn" has become the biggest festival in the tea drink industry. The timing variable in the scenario is a powerful driver for consumer purchases. In the Start of Autumn scenario, Weibo analyzed that consumers' focus points include the following directions. One is traditional culture direction, like appreciating autumn and drinking tea, making friends with tea, fine traditions, tea tasting culture, etc.; second is emotional resonance direction, like crisp autumn air, enjoyment, reconciliation, warmth, beauty, etc.; third is autumn atmosphere direction, like breeze, fallen leaves, golden color, romance, healing, breeze, withering, roasted sweet potatoes, etc.; fourth is social meme direction, youthful hobby tags, like ritual sense, show-off bag, milk tea partner, milk tea freedom, indulgence, etc. In fact, these are all tags. They are keywords found after data analysis of consumer behavior and content in the Start of Autumn scenario. These words represent consumers' focus on product value, user identity, emotions, and values, and represent the criteria and decision factors for consumers to buy products in that scenario. From these tags, Chagee extracted the communication mainline of atmosphere ritual + trendy memes + cultural heritage, and derived high-quality content and social gameplay, thus standing out in the environment where major milk tea brands were all carrying out Start of Autumn marketing. Of course, Chagee has many more plays and forms on Weibo. What I share here is just the "scenario + tag" marketing system. Both can be analyzed by data and can also guide large Mindshare Track There are two paths for brand growth. One is called stock growth. Its approach is to occupy a category, capture the existing user base and needs of the category; then, by increasing brand penetration, become the first choice for consumers in that category, improving brand priority. The other is called incremental growth. Its approach is to create more consumption scenarios, activate and create new user needs; then, by tagging the brand, establish the association between brand and scenario, influencing user decisions. Stock growth is a cake-dividing model, achieving category share growth, taking a larger market share from the category track. Incremental growth is a cake-making model, achieving mindshare track growth, obtaining new business opportunities in consumers' lives and inner space. A brand's industry, product attributes, and development stage differ, so it should choose different growth models. If the category market is large enough and the overall growth rate is fast, then the brand can choose stock growth and just carve out a larger market share. But if the category scale is not large enough, or the market is saturated and no longer growing, the brand must find ways to seek increment. Marketers like to talk about "mindshare," but turning a brand into the first choice in a category and creating a positioning slogan is obviously not occupying mindshare; at best, it's occupying the category. To occupy mindshare, first, through scenarios, turn the brand into a part of consumers' lives and a lifestyle; second, through tags, turn the brand into a part of social culture, becoming consumers' identity and decision criteria. Scenarios stimulate demand, tags influence decisions; this is a complete brand marketing model. The real track is not in categories but in consumers' lives. The frequency and demand intensity of the brand appearing in consumers' lives truly determine market capacity. This is called the mindshare track. In 1998, when Buffett talked about See's Candies, one of his classic investment cases, he mentioned a viewpoint: "mindshare" is greater than "market share." We usually understand the market as categories, but capturing scenarios and tags can open new tracks in consumers' minds, truly expanding mindshare. Mindshare is not category share, but life share and cultural share. "Scenario + tag" is a broader growth path and a more imaginative source of increment. PS: From March 14-16, 2024, the 9th China FMCG Innovation Conference, the 2nd China FMCG Hard Discount Conference, and the 2nd China FMCG Distributor Conference will be grandly held in Chengdu! This conference will focus on the theme of 「Supply Chain Revolution」. Over 3 days, there will be one main forum, one China FMCG Hard Discount Conference, one China FMCG Distributor Conference, more than ten sub-forums and closed-door exchange meetings, and the first major debut of the [Ultimate Supply Chain] Brand Factory Direct Sourcing Fair. It will meet with thousands of FMCG brand owners, distributors, retail transformers, and industry service providers from across the country in Chengdu, continuously brainstorming, discussing the challenges and opportunities, changes and ways out in the era of supply chain revolution. In this era of supply chain revolution, a new business era will be born. I hope every participant will still have a place in this wave. I believe this will be a conference worth attending! For conference business cooperation, please contact: