Whether it's seeding, live streaming, private domain users, or fan economy, both new and traditional brands are rapidly adopting these tactics, making new methods standard. The dividends from omnichannel content marketing and live commerce are fading, entering a 'plateau phase,' and brands also need to shift from focusing on 'sales-driving' channels to brand value. The ultimate mission of a brand is to dominate a category and become the representative of that category in the minds of consumers and potential customers. Traffic itself cannot create a brand; building brand mindshare requires understanding the audience's life轨迹, mental structure, and mental patterns, then identifying the core paradigm of 'Weibo, WeChat, Douyin content marketing + Focus Media scenario marketing' to achieve saturation attacks and sustained positioning. In the short term, focus on scale—rapidly expanding scale advantages through nationwide seeding, live streaming dividends, and strong discounts. In the long term, focus on mindshare—after accumulating scale, brands need to return to brand mindshare, use Focus Media for concentrated ignition, quickly dominate the category, and achieve the leap from internet-famous brand to public brand. -01- The Rise and Differentiation of New Consumer Brands "In the long run, any market will eventually become a two-horse race." When discussing market competition, Trout and Ries said in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: "From an economic perspective, multi-player competition leads to huge resource waste, which is unfortunate." During the emergence of new categories, multiple brands run side by side, all wanting to quickly reach a scale during the window period of 'strong category awareness, weak brand awareness,' and then, when the category matures, occupy the remaining two positions, forming a 'duopoly' competitive landscape. In a mature product market, 'third place' is a very awkward position. In the past, the 'red can battle' in the herbal tea category squeezed Heqizheng off the track. Under the new consumption wave, new brands have entered the arena, some with 'external skills' of rapid expansion, others with 'internal skills' of focusing on niche markets. Along these two growth paths, different camps of new brands have emerged. 1. Rapid scaling to seize awareness Such new brands first seek large opportunity tracks, break through with super single products, differentiate from competitors through clear, primary product 'differentiators,' quickly distribute, continuously iterate, launch new products quickly, stack a large amount of channel resources to occupy the market, increase share, whether online or offline, seeding or live streaming, thereby maximizing coverage of the most users. When scale reaches a certain level, scale itself becomes a barrier and forces user awareness. For example, Perfect Diary excels at saturation-style investment in public domain traffic, and Genki Forest, after launching multiple star single products, is also actively deploying a 'freezer strategy' to boost offline channel influence. 2. Focusing on 'niche' to form premium pricing Compared to small-step fast runs, new brands focusing on 'niche' emphasize 'expert brands.' In the early stages of new product development, brands co-create deeply with users, and even the seed user group itself comes from the founding team's friends, colleagues, or family, so there is high loyalty. They form a small private circle for the brand, creating high premium, high stickiness, and high repurchase rates, with some products even requiring panic buying. For example, Guanxia, which became famous with 'crystal aromatherapy,' focuses more on the product itself and maintaining core customers than on marketing and channel investment, targeting the high-premium 'gift' scenario and conveying the positioning of a 'brand focused on aromatherapy healing and healthy living.' From 'scale forcing awareness' to 'strong experience and strong private domain,' the paths differ but will gradually converge. Strong scale-oriented brands will also start building brand awareness; strong awareness brands will also start expanding channels. Just as Perfect Diary has used spokespersons, Guanxia is also exploring offline channels. -02- The Second Half of New Consumption: Building 'Mindshare Barriers' The gene of enterprises is expansion. When IBM was 'ravaged' by Japanese microprocessor companies and its market share collapsed, the company internally considered splitting the team to follow the then-trendy 'small and beautiful' business philosophy, but Lou Gerstner believed: "The small companies I've seen all think about how to grow bigger, not the opposite." IBM performed the dance of an elephant, and the ants on the stage had to leave. Besides the external environment, enterprises also need expansion to boost morale, giving everyone something to look forward to. The underlying logic supporting expansion is brand mindshare. Just as the Taobao brands that rose with platform e-commerce, after the development window passed and platform resources tilted toward strong brand power, their previous channel advantages, traffic tactics, and pricing strategies became ineffective. It wasn't that the strategies were wrong, but the 'soil' they depended on—brand mindshare—was barren. As a CEO of a women's clothing Taobao brand publicly stated, Taobao brands are not real brands. If they can break through in the next 2-3 years, they can become a brand; if not, they'll remain sellers. After many 'brands' disappeared with the decline of platform traffic, brand building has become the core competitiveness in the 'plateau phase' after the wind. In the long-term competitive landscape, mindshare determines the market; a brand's mindshare position determines its market position, and mindshare is positively correlated with market share. How to measure mindshare position? Corresponding to consumer decisions, brand products are not born equal. When making purchase decisions, consumers rank different brands, forming a ladder with a purchase order. Each brand occupies a rung, and consumers always choose from top to bottom, prioritizing brands on upper rungs. Just as when talking about sugar-free sparkling water, Genki Forest comes to mind reflexively; when wanting cold brew coffee, Satirday's name becomes the first choice; when buying comfortable underwear, Ubras and Bananain come to mind... In consumers' minds, these brands occupy a position in a category or characteristic. Therefore, compared to sales volume, how to seize the high-level mindshare ladder and establish a 'reflexive' awareness barrier is the key to determining the next five years. -03- Value, Centralized Channels, Scenarios, and Lifestyles For brands, building user mindshare is long-termism, and its methodology is dynamic and changing. In the era of strong TV media, 'CCTV bid champions' created national brands, large category opportunities emerged, and with strong channel execution, brands completed the occupation of category mindshare. When platform e-commerce rose, compared to the offline channels dominated by traditional big brands, emerging brands and white-label products flocked to e-commerce platforms. 'New channels' gave these brands a voice, and 'low pricing multiples' also formed price differentiation. In the mobile internet era, the consensus among brand people is that 'this is an era of scarce consensus.' User time and attention are scattered across different platforms. New channel advantages such as content marketing in 2017, social e-commerce in 2018, live commerce in 2019, and private domain e-commerce in 2020 each drove a new round of brand growth. For example, Baitiao T deeply cultivated Douyin, Huaxizi seized the Taobao live streaming dividend, and Meikang Fendai is a 'Xiaohongshu concept' brand. For a fully competitive category, so-called advantages are relative. Just as Perfect Diary popularized the 'seeding economy,' it also pushed up the cooperation prices of Xiaohongshu KOLs. With various brands entering, the 'seeding economy' is no longer economical—it has become 'involution.' From traffic costs to user retention, behind the explosion of new consumption and new brands, there are also cold thoughts. 1. Traffic costs: Standard seeding, the return of centralization Whether it's seeding, live streaming, private domain users, or fan economy, both new and traditional brands are rapidly adopting these tactics, making new methods standard. The dividends from omnichannel content marketing and live commerce are fading, entering a 'plateau phase,' and brands also need to shift from focusing on 'sales-driving' channels to brand value. After forming omnichannel influence through hit product strategies, new consumer brands are also actively exploring brand value, shooting brand films, and adopting celebrity endorsement strategies. For example, Bananain, which prints labels on the outside of underwear and uses non-chemical irritating materials, finds consumer pain points and itch points in the red ocean of material supply in this category, then uses a clearly differentiated new product concept that solves problems as a lever to pry open the first round of core user pool, and combines new channels and new propositions to achieve rounds of rapid growth and accumulation. For example, Huaxizi, through the Miao Impression and celebrity endorsement strategies, conveys the brand positioning of 'Oriental makeup, nourishing with flowers,' moving its 'Oriental aesthetics' value toward cultural brands; Lamian Noodles, which tore a gap in the traditional instant noodle category, faces the core conflict of 'instant noodles are unhealthy' and chose the brand positioning of 'high-end healthy instant noodles,' conveying the brand value of 'Be good to yourself, even when dining alone' in the 'single meal' scenario. Good content with insightful value also needs channels. The previous all-encompassing communication strategies left brands lost in discrete, overwhelming raw data, and communication paths became uncontrollable. The more decentralized the media environment, the more it needs to return to centralized capabilities. Because traffic itself cannot create a brand; building brand mindshare requires understanding the audience's life轨迹, mental structure, and mental patterns, then identifying the core channels of 'content marketing + life scenarios' to achieve saturation attacks and sustained positioning. At the content marketing level, 'Weibo, WeChat, Douyin' have high-quality KOLs and big Vs in various vertical fields, who themselves represent circle recognition, solving the 'precise stratification' and 'trust currency' of content marketing; compared to the fragmented exposure of traffic ads, life scenario marketing represented by Focus Media occupies core consumer life scenarios such as communities and office buildings, with advantages like high frequency, strong reach, low environmental distraction, and focusing on 300 million urban mainstream people, maximizing the attraction of users' core vision, and then opening the mind through repeated impact. According to Nielsen research, Focus Media's audience aged 25-40 accounts for about 78%. Among them, those with income above 10,000 yuan account for up to 71%. This group is undoubtedly the core user group for new consumer brands, laying the foundation for the ignition of super single products. At the same time, Kantar China's advertising attention research shows that Focus Media's elevator media ranks first among all media in ad memory and driving consumption willingness. 'Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, and Focus Media' has the advantages of concentrated ignition and mindshare positioning, which may be the optimal paradigm for building brand mindshare. It represents the shift from fragmented coverage to centralized ignition, and from traffic value to brand value. 2. Traffic and retention: Homogenization and awareness consumption The growth path of new brands is to focus on core audiences, polish a super single product based on 'core pain points,' then occupy a new category with core selling points, and then enrich product types to build a product matrix. The path is clear, and the challenges are predictable. First, how do new consumer brands quickly break out of the circle with a single hit product; second, after breaking out, how to deal with competitor follow-up, resulting in old user loss and new user growth fatigue, as well as awareness consumption caused by homogenized competition of single products. First, any idea of seizing the user mindshare ladder without accumulating scale is futile. Without accumulating a certain scale of single-product explosions, it cannot achieve results in the user mindshare ladder. For example, in the smart health device field, although it has been hotly discussed for years, few representative brands have entered the public eye, also falling into the situation of 'strong category, weak brand.' SKG entered with cervical massagers and used a celebrity seeding strategy, recruiting Zhang Yixing, Fan Chengcheng, Wang Ou, Zhu Zhengting, Yuan Shanshan, Wang Zulan, and other celebrities for recommendations, then successively invited Yang Yang, Wang Yibo, and Gulnazar to be brand spokespersons, and specially launched a Wang Yibo voice-customized version, achieving 'product as content,' thereby stimulating sales, continuously trending on 'Weibo, WeChat, Douyin,' and cooperating with Zhihu answerers to complete category education. After continuously accumulating brand influence online, SKG took the opportunity to target offline mainstream life scenarios, launching a strategic cooperation with Focus Media elevator media. During the March 8 Goddess Festival, with hundreds of thousands of elevator TV terminals' overwhelming presence, it took the lead in starting the mindshare battle for mainstream people. From 'stacking celebrities' in online content marketing to create communication momentum, to igniting offline mainstream people, it dominates the 'cervical massager' category and continues to occupy the high-level awareness ladder. At the same time, in large opportunity categories, brands are also anchoring competition against the 'category leader.' Just as under the '0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calorie' soda trend, Genki Forest is at the top, while Nongfu Spring's soda sparkling water is challenging the first position, launching three unique flavors of sugar-free sparkling water: Dawn White Peach, Hinata Summer Orange, and Mojito, as well as mineral nutrition based on Qiandao Lake deep water, finding the unique value of 'health + taste,' leveraging Nongfu Spring's mature distribution channel advantages and Focus Media elevator media to quickly reach mainstream consumers, challenging the mindshare position of the head brand. Therefore, after a single product is fully penetrated, other competitors will follow. New consumer brands not only need to defend their 'mindshare ladder,' but also need to enrich their product matrix, from making single products to making scenarios, from making categories to making lifestyles, and then sprint to become 'unicorns.' For example, Allbirds, which captured a group of Silicon Valley elites with its 'wool shoe' single product, occupies the brand mindshare of 'most comfortable shoes,' and then continuously enriches its product matrix, including socks, pants, and tops, blurring the boundary between life and work, forming a 'third scenario' for daily clothing, continuously outputting environmental protection stories in materials, and extending to the lifestyle of 'materialists'—pursuing harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. For example, after establishing brand influence through new categories and new channel advantages, Bananain, which broke out with label-free underwear, is extending 'transforming basic items' to basic needs in life, around the new consumption wave of body sensation, conveying a more scientific and aesthetic lifestyle. In our daily lives, there are many needs to be satisfied, and each need has many company products or services to choose from. Each choice is a 'proposal.' As more and more high-quality 'proposals' appear and are adopted by consumers, enterprises gain growth, and consumers' option combinations also become a lifestyle. After perfecting the product matrix, new consumer brands also begin omnichannel penetration to drive sales, starting with platform e-commerce, cooperating with live streaming to pull up sales, and later tilting resources to offline channels, opening brand self-operated stores or entering high-frequency channels like convenience stores, entering the era of integrated retail, and strengthening brand mindshare. Therefore, in the short term, focus on scale—rapidly expanding scale advantages through nationwide seeding, live streaming dividends, and strong discounts. In the long term, focus on mindshare—after accumulating scale, brands need to return to brand mindshare, use Focus Media for concentrated ignition, comprehensive saturation attacks, quickly dominate the category, and achieve the leap from internet-famous brand to public brand. Under the new consumption wave, the emotional value and use value of brands are equally attractive. -04- Brand Mindshare is the Protective Color After the Tide Recedes At present, the new consumption boom has not receded. A large number of new brands want to seize the opportunity period, through scale-level saturation attacks, to become internet-famous brands. And for internet-famous brands that have already formed omnichannel influence, they are actively shedding the internet-famous label and moving toward long-lasting brands. Whether internet-famous or long-lasting, after the tide recedes, 'brand mindshare' is the last protective color. It is the 'integrated effect' of brand advertising, content marketing, and channel strategy. That is, brand advertising conveys three core information points: Who are you? What makes you different? How is it reflected; content marketing conveys brand value and advantages, telling the brand's story and philosophy; channel strategy covers as many users as possible, completing traffic diversion and conversion, achieving 'brand mindshare' and 'sales results.' To some extent, the mission of a brand is to dominate a category and become the representative of that category in the minds of consumers and potential customers. The starting point of brand strategy is to firmly implant in users' minds that the brand is synonymous with the category, and based on the brand positioning expected in users' minds, expand the category to form a 'life philosophy.' In the long run, a brand's mindshare will eventually translate into market share. From positioning to operation, the process of creating a brand is still hard, but hard things and right things are often two sides of the same basic fact, inseparable. Source: Jinjibo Finance (ID: jinbubo) Author: Jinjibo Big Business Group Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once the tip is adopted.