Source丨Teacher Liu's Scenario Marketing The essence of business competition is cognitive competition. Cognitive accumulation is embodied in cognitive symbols, and each era has its representative cognitive symbol. With changes in social structure and media technology, cognitive symbols have evolved from the "local consensus" of agricultural society—word-of-mouth, to the "mass cognitive contract" of industrial society—brands, and then to the "value soul engine" of digital society—IPs. This evolution trajectory clearly outlines the progression of commercial civilization.

Word-of-Mouth: The "Local Consensus" of Agricultural Society In agricultural society, word-of-mouth was a highly consensual local consensus formed through long-term, multi-dimensional verification of the reliability and value of people and things, through high-frequency face-to-face interactions within a closed network of acquaintances. Word-of-mouth, as the name implies, is passed from mouth to mouth, using the mouth as the communication medium. The underlying logic of word-of-mouth is "experience first, then trust." Its content is entirely user-generated content (UGC). UGC can be discordant and out of sync. Therefore, the fermentation of word-of-mouth requires scenario interaction to achieve small-scale consensus. With consensus, communication is in sync, and only then can accumulation occur, leading to local consensus.

I. The Scenario Fermentation Pool of Word-of-Mouth

  1. Commercial Transaction Scenarios: Markets and Fairs These are the most important centers for generating and spreading word-of-mouth. People not only buy and sell goods here but also exchange information. Formation process: Zhang San bought a sickle from Li Si at the market and found it extremely sharp and durable. After using it, he praised it in front of his fellow villagers. When Wang Wu needed a sickle, Zhang San would recommend: "Go to the market and find that Li Si; his tools are good!" Thus, "Li Si's sickle" formed the initial word-of-mouth.
  2. Production Scenarios: Fields and Production Cooperation It is clear at a glance whose crops are planted well and whose livestock are raised robustly. Formation process: Zhao's rice yield is always 20% higher than others. Neighbors will proactively ask about his farming techniques and seed sources. The word-of-mouth about Zhao's "expertise in farming" and the "type of rice seeds" he uses is thus established.
  3. Public Discussion Scenarios: Ancestral Halls, Well Platforms, and Village Big Trees These are the village's "information ports." Men discuss village affairs and exchange news here. Formation process: Discussions about whether carpenter Sun's craftsmanship is fine, whether he is honest, and whether his fees are fair will be repeatedly discussed and verified in these settings, eventually forming a stable consensus that becomes the common knowledge of the entire village.
  4. Ritual and Social Scenarios: Weddings, Funerals, and Festivals These events gather a large population from the village and surrounding areas, serving as key nodes for "cross-village spread" of word-of-mouth. Formation process: The Zhou family held a wedding and invited Chef Qian from a neighboring village to prepare the banquet. The taste, scale, and professionalism of the chef will be experienced and evaluated by all guests, who will then bring the evaluation back to their own villages. The word-of-mouth that Chef Qian "prepares excellent banquets" thus radiates outward.

II. Content and Evaluation Criteria of Word-of-Mouth Word-of-mouth content is typical UGC. It revolves around "people" and "things," with pragmatic evaluation criteria.

  1. Word-of-Mouth about People
  • Craftsmanship/Skills: Whether one is a "good hand" (expert farmer), good carpenter, or good blacksmith.
  • Character and Creditworthiness: Whether one is "honest and kind," "keeps promises," and "can be trusted." This is the core basis for choosing partners (such as tenants, laborers, or business partners).
  • Family Reputation: Individual word-of-mouth accumulates into the reputation of the entire family and is passed down through generations.
  1. Word-of-Mouth about Things
  • Durability and Practicality: Whether tools are sturdy, livestock are strong, and seeds are high-yield.
  • Consistent Quality: If it is good this time, it must be good next time. Stability of quality is key to building long-term word-of-mouth.

III. Characteristics of Word-of-Mouth

  1. Slow to form but extremely stable. Word-of-mouth requires long-term, multi-scenario repeated verification to form. However, once formed, it becomes a "social consensus" that is difficult to change easily. But there are exceptions. Bad news travels fast.
  2. Deeply tied to personal identity: Word-of-mouth is an individual's "social passport." A bad reputation can make it difficult to move within the community, with no one willing to interact or cooperate. Therefore, people highly value their reputation.
  3. Limited spread: Usually confined to an area of a dozen to dozens of miles around the market, forming a "local knowledge circle." Good wine needs no bush, but in fact, the alley itself is not deep.
  4. High trust and high constraint: Because it spreads within acquaintance networks and undergoes multiple verifications, the credibility of word-of-mouth information is extremely high. At the same time, it also imposes strong moral constraints on the behavior of social members.

Brand: The "Mass Cognitive Contract" of Industrial Society The Industrial Revolution and railways pushed goods from local to national markets. The rise of mass media (newspapers, magazines, radio) completely changed the way cognition was constructed. The meaning of brands underwent four key "cognitive upgrades" in this process.

I. Agricultural Civilization Era: Ownership Marks Farmers used hot irons to leave unique marks on livestock to declare ownership and prevent confusion or theft. This can be considered the most primitive form of branding. Artisans (such as potters and stonemasons) also carved marks on their works, serving both as signatures and quality guarantees.

II. Early Industrial Society: Identifiers to Distinguish Sellers With the development of industrial production and railway transportation, goods could be sold nationwide. To differentiate from competitors, manufacturers began to name their products, design logos, and packaging. For example, workers at Procter & Gamble (P&G) painted stars and moons on crates, which eventually evolved into the famous "Moon and Stars" trademark. The primary function of brands during this period was to identify the source. Modern branding began here. The American Marketing Association defines a brand as follows: A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors. At this time, the keywords for brands were: identification, differentiation.

III. First Half of the 20th Century: Value Symbols The rise of mass media (newspapers, magazines, radio) provided platforms for advertising. Brands began to transcend "names" and became promises of quality, consistency, and reliability. Consumers repeatedly purchased because they trusted a brand. For example, Ford's Model T promised "a car for the masses," and Coca-Cola used advertising to associate itself with the happy image of "refreshment." This marked the beginning of the difference between brands and word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is experience first, then spread; facts precede cognition, and content is UGC. With the intervention of mass media, especially when radio became the "stranger in the living room" in 1920, the communication logic changed. After a product was produced, without user experience or consumption (or only trial or market testing), manufacturers could begin using mass media to spread the word. Thus, the famous diagnosis "cognition is greater than fact" emerged. The spread of mass media formed an image of quality and trust assurance, which was reinforced when it matched facts. At this point, branding became a profession, combined with communication studies, playing an important role in driving mass consumers. Overall, the content spread at this stage emphasized quality and trust.

IV. Second Half of the 20th Century: The Brand Image Era—Carriers of Image and Emotion Post-war economic prosperity led to increased product homogenization. It was no longer enough for brands to say "my quality is good." Advertising masters like David Ogilvy proposed that brands need to create unique personalities, images, and emotional values. Marlboro, through its "Marlboro Man" advertising, successfully transformed from a women's cigarette into a symbol of masculine freedom and adventure. Brands began to sell a lifestyle and dreams. The shift of cognitive symbols from word-of-mouth to brands, the emergence of mass media, and the appearance of national brands were important milestones. Word-of-mouth had advantages in regional markets, while brands had advantages in national communication. This is why I have always regarded the commercial application of radio as the starting point of a century of modern marketing. When brands became symbols of image and culture, they were alienated, detached from their original meaning of "identification" and "differentiation," and became ethereal. It was like crowning successful brands endlessly, making it hard for them to bear the weight. The core of the brand era is "trust first, then verify." It relies on one-way broadcasting by mass media, with professionally generated content (PGC), and its power lies in building a unified national cognition. Therefore, the endorsement of mass media, the amount of resource investment, and PGC creative skills are crucial.

IP: The "Value Soul Engine" of Digital Society The emergence of the internet and self-media brought about a spiral rise of "negation of negation": brand PGC content is the negation of word-of-mouth UGC, and IP UGC content is the return to word-of-mouth UGC. But it also surpasses in scale and dimension.

I. The Alternative Survival Soil for IPs in the Brand Era In East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea), during brand development, the umbrella brand strategy emerged, where one brand covers one category or even multiple categories. Regardless of how many products or categories a company has, it uses one brand, such as Xiaomi's many products, at most using a mother-child brand strategy to differentiate. In Europe and America, typical product brands are the norm. Coca-Cola, Sprite, and Fanta are product brands, serving as both product names and brands, with high differentiation between brands and limited extensibility. However, Europe and America developed an extensible brand—the IP. The IP concept originated from and was widely applied in entertainment industries such as film, animation, and gaming, and after success, it was licensed across entertainment industries. Therefore, the original meaning of IP is intellectual property. In the industrial era, film and animation were virtual industries, so IPs were also spiritual symbols. During cross-industry licensing, character images were found in almost all consumer goods fields, including clothing, toys, food, household items, video games, and theme parks. The core of IP is to inject a "value soul" into products.

II. The Widespread Penetration of IP: Brand IP-ization Many brands in traditional industries are using IP thinking to reshape their businesses and inject value souls into products. They are themselves becoming "IPs" in a sense.

  1. Fashion and Luxury Industry Chanel: The story of founder Coco Chanel—how she liberated women, designed the little black dress and Chanel suit—is itself a powerful IP. The brand's core value of "elegance, independence, rebellion" constitutes the soul of this IP. Louis Vuitton: Through collaborations with artists and designers, and by crafting a travel philosophy, LV is transforming from a luxury brand into a lifestyle IP about "the art of travel and fashion."
  2. Food and Beverage and Retail Starbucks: It not only sells coffee but also sells a "third place" lifestyle and work philosophy. Its seasonal limited editions (like the Pumpkin Spice Latte) have become cultural phenomena with strong IP effects. Whole Foods Market: It has IP-ized itself as an advocate and standard-setter for a "healthy, organic, eco-friendly" lifestyle.
  3. Technology Industry Apple: This is the most typical case. Apple's IP core is "innovation, simplicity, Think Different." Through extreme product design, retail store experiences, and marketing campaigns, it has built a strong community of "Apple fans." Their loyalty to the brand is comparable to movie fans' loyalty to Marvel. Tesla: Tesla's IP is deeply tied to the personal IP of founder Elon Musk, with its core being "disruption, future, sustainable energy." People buy a Tesla not just to buy an electric car but to join a technological movement about the future.
  4. Consumer Goods Industry Nike: Nike is already more than just a sports brand; its "Air Jordan" line is a super sub-IP. By telling stories of athletes' personal struggles and victory spirits (Just Do It), it has IP-ized itself into a cultural symbol of "striving and victory." People buy Nike not just for shoes but to pay for this spiritual belief. Coca-Cola: Its classic bottle shape, the Santa Claus image (whose modern image was established by Coca-Cola advertising), and the concept of "share happiness" have made it a holiday cultural IP of "happiness and sharing."

III. Comprehensive IP-ization of Commercial Communication Mobile phones have become people's "sixth organ," and self-media has become the "market and ancestral hall" of the new century, perfectly matching the generation of IPs. In the internet age, the comprehensive IP-ization of commercial communication is not driven by traditional advertising budgets but by two deeper forces: one is technological, where UGC content achieves viral fission through self-media networks, providing "explosive power" for the birth of IPs; the other is social, where in an era of abundance, people's inner demand for "value souls" resonates with IPs, providing "cohesion" for the sustained existence of IPs.

  1. UGC Viral Fission: The "Detonator" of IPs In the traditional brand era, the construction of cognition relied on sustained, expensive "saturation attacks" by centralized media. The birth of an IP, however, is more like a "viral carnival" ignited on self-media with the participation of the entire population. Its fission process follows a completely new logic:
  • From "Watching" to "Participating": The Magic of Co-creation Mass media is one-way "broadcasting," while self-media is two-way "dialogue." Users are no longer passive information receivers but active co-creators of IPs. An IP character, a classic line, or a plot meme will be actively recreated by users (secondary creation)—edited into short videos, made into emojis, or turned into jokes. This sense of participation not only greatly enriches the connotation of the IP but also makes users regard the IP as "our own thing," thus giving them a stronger motivation to share.
  • "Memes" as the Smallest Fission Unit In today's information overload, complex stories are hard to spread, while highly condensed, easy-to-imitate, and re-creatable "memes" have become the most efficient carriers for IP fission. A "meme" is a cultural gene that carries its own fun and social currency attributes, allowing it to spread across different circles. When UGC content forms a series of vibrant "memes" around an IP, it means the IP has penetrated the capillaries of social culture and completed the key step of viral fission.
  • Algorithm Empowerment and Circle Penetration Intelligent recommendation algorithms act as a "super accelerator." They can precisely distribute IP content to "potential believers" with similar interests, quickly forming an initial fan circle. Then, through continuous creation and sharing by core fans, the IP breaks through the initial circle, spreads across circles, and eventually explodes into a mass phenomenon. In summary, UGC fission solves the "awareness" problem of IPs. It uses a decentralized, bottom-up approach to push a niche symbol into the vast public eye at extremely low cost and in a very short time.
  1. Resonance of Value Souls: The "Cohesion Core" of IPs However, viral spread alone can only create a short-lived "internet celebrity." What can settle into a long-lasting "IP" must be a symbol that touches the itch of the era's spirit and meets deep psychological needs. This is a fundamental shift from "functional consumption" to "meaning consumption."
  • The Value Craving in an Era of Abundance When social productivity surpasses survival needs, consumers' decision-making logic shifts from "I need" to "I like." The functional value of the product becomes the foundation, while the values, lifestyle, and emotional belonging it carries become the key to decision-making. IP is precisely the perfect container for this "value soul." People consume an IP essentially to "vote" for their identity, aesthetics, and beliefs.
  • "Resonance" Replaces "One-way Indoctrination" The brand era was "indoctrinating," where companies told consumers "what I should be" through advertising. The IP era is "resonant," where it precisely expresses the emotions and propositions that already exist but are unspoken in the hearts of a certain group through its worldview, characters, and stories. Whether it's the fighting spirit of "Just Do It" or the "fragility and resilience coexisting" represented by a virtual idol, when users exclaim "Isn't this exactly me?", a powerful spiritual alliance is established.
  • Consensus Cohesion and Community Belonging This "resonance" effect quickly gathers scattered individuals into a community with a high degree of identification. The IP becomes the community's "spiritual totem" and "ID card." In this community, members not only consume IP content but also confirm and reinforce each other's shared values. This deep emotional connection gives the IP strong loyalty that transcends product life cycles and can withstand market competition shocks. Therefore, resonance with the value soul solves the "loyalty" problem of IPs. It ensures that after the viral heat fades, the IP still has a firm "base" of supporters, and based on this, it can achieve long-term and sustainable commercial value. UGC fission and value resonance, one external and one internal, together form a complete closed loop for cognitive construction in the IP era. UGC fission is the "technique," providing explosive communication paths; value resonance is the "way," providing fundamental cohesion. Combining "technique" and "way," a short-lived internet hotspot can ultimately transform into a true IP with lasting vitality.

Scenario: The Fermentation Pool and Consensus Foundation of UGC Word-of-mouth is the IP of agricultural society, and IP is the word-of-mouth of the digital age. Their greatest commonality is their reliance on UGC content for dissemination. This is what distinguishes them from brand PGC content. However, UGC content is inherently "a thousand people, a thousand faces." Scattered, disordered individual expressions are difficult to accumulate and cannot form effective communication density. So, how do word-of-mouth and IP break through this bottleneck, achieve cognitive accumulation, and finally reach the communication threshold? The answer lies in the key role of "scenarios." Scenarios are the "social containers" and "cultural fermentation pools" that transform disordered UGC into orderly consensus.

I. Agricultural Society: Scenarios as the "Consensus Furnace" of Word-of-Mouth In an acquaintance society, the formation of word-of-mouth is not simply information transmission but a local consensus "refined" through repeated verification and debate in specific, high-concentration social scenarios.

  • Specific scenarios provide verification environments: In markets and fairs, the transaction itself is an immediate verification of the information that "Li Si's sickle is good"; in the fields, the bountiful harvest is the most irrefutable evidence that "Zhao's family is good at farming." Scenarios provide credible endorsement for UGC.
  • Public scenarios facilitate convergence of opinions: In public discussion spaces like ancestral halls, well platforms, and village big trees, diverse individual opinions about "Carpenter Sun's craftsmanship and character" will undergo public discussion and eventually form a single, stable conclusion recognized by the community. Scenarios act as a "consensus algorithm" here, converging "a thousand people, a thousand faces" UGC into "unanimous" social facts.
  • Ritual scenarios achieve cross-domain diffusion: Ritual occasions like weddings and funerals gather individuals from different villages, serving as springboards for consensus to "overflow" the original community. Word-of-mouth formed here can break through geographical limits in its spread. Thus, in agricultural society, scenarios successfully solved the accumulation and unification problems of UGC by providing verification environments, consensus mechanisms, and diffusion nodes, condensing it into a powerful local cognitive symbol—word-of-mouth.

II. Digital Society: Scenarios as the "Emotional Engine" and "Meme Incubator" of IPs In the internet age, the scale and speed of UGC have grown exponentially, but the underlying logic remains unchanged. Various "scenarios" on social media platforms inherit and amplify the social functions of traditional scenarios.

  • Scenarios give content "reasons to click" and "resonance context": A video complaining about a popular TV series, or a funny skit about a specific life predicament (like "slacking off at work"), is itself a scenario construction. Users click and share not just the content but also their identification with that "scenario." Content with scenarios naturally has higher communication potential.
  • Scenarios condense "emotions" and incubate "meme culture": In a specific discussion atmosphere (like under a trending topic), scattered emotions (such as common dissatisfaction with a social phenomenon) are quickly refined, amplified, and condensed into a highly concentrated "meme" or "emoji pack." This "meme" is the "consensus unit" of the digital age. Like a seed, it carries common emotions and cognitions, easily replicating and fissioning in the soil of UGC, thus maintaining the unity of core cognition amidst "a thousand people, a thousand faces" creations.
  • From "Scenario Consensus" to "Circle Identity": When a "meme" is widely used in a specific scenario, understanding and using it becomes a "passport" to enter a certain circle. It is in this process that an IP transforms from a broad symbol into a "spiritual totem" within the circle. Scenario is the lifeline running through word-of-mouth and IP. By providing a common experience foundation, promoting social convergence of opinions, and incubating efficient emotional symbols (memes), it successfully organizes chaotic UGC into a cognitive torrent with consistent direction and communication synergy. Whether in the past villages or today's networks, it is the key of "scenario" that unlocks the code for UGC to move from disorder to order, from faint whispers to the powerful voice of the times.

The Evolution Trajectory of Cognitive Symbols Looking at the history of marketing, we can clearly see an evolution trajectory of cognitive symbols: Word-of-mouth → Brand → IP. The core factor determining the evolution trajectory is media. Media evolution: Mouth → Mass media → Self-media. At the same time, media determines the content of communication. Content evolution: UGC (word-of-mouth) → PGC (brand) → UGC (IP) The content of communication determines the core of cognitive symbols. The core of cognitive symbols: Local consensus (word-of-mouth) → Mass cognition (brand) → Value soul (IP). In the above evolution process of marketing, media is the decisive force, determining the scope of cognitive communication, the form of content generation, and the core of cognitive symbols. This is why I regard the commercial application of radio in 1920 as the starting point of a century of modern marketing, and the large-scale application of internet self-media in 2010 as the starting point of the next century of marketing.