---
title: "Top 10 Marketing Keywords of 2016: A Tribute to Marketers Striving in the 'New Normal' of Decline"
description: "This article reviews the top 10 marketing keywords of 2016, highlighting marketing highlights in the new normal of decline and helping readers seize market opportunities for 2017."
author: "苗庆显 丁律宇"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2016-12-14"
language: "en"
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# Top 10 Marketing Keywords of 2016: A Tribute to Marketers Striving in the 'New Normal' of Decline

> This article reviews the top 10 marketing keywords of 2016, highlighting marketing highlights in the new normal of decline and helping readers seize market opportunities for 2017.

Introduction
It is said that this year has been tough for businesses. Listen to Lao Miao's rundown of the top 10 marketing keywords of 2016, discover the marketing highlights in the new normal of decline, and get a head start on seizing market opportunities for 2017.

**Keyword 1: The New Normal of Decline**
Over the past two decades or more, domestic enterprises generally harbored an illusion: as long as strategy was sound, execution was strong, and market opportunities were seized, their companies could grow indefinitely—from tens of millions to hundreds of millions, from billions to tens of billions, even exceeding a hundred billion. If annual growth fell below 50%, you'd be embarrassed to even greet people.

But some sensitive companies began to feel the strain of slowing growth as early as 2013. In 2014, many companies reported declines; in 2015, declines became more widespread; and this year, it's been "panic-stricken," with decline, losses, closures, and winter being the most frequently mentioned words by companies.

People are beginning to realize: when the economy enters a new normal of low growth, it's unrealistic to expect companies to always "run like a bull at rocket speed."

Previously, we were accustomed to pursuing profits in market increments. But under the new circumstances, **how to achieve structural upgrades in the existing market, bring about profit improvements, shake off the dependence on sales growth, and shift from doing big and strong to doing refined and strong is a new topic facing many companies.**

Uni-President, with sales basically flat, saw profits surge by 192%, becoming a model for many companies to emulate in 2016.

Of course, there are still periodic market explosion opportunities in some industries and categories. For startups, the main focus should remain on finding high-growth paths.

**Marketing Keyword 2: Consumption Upgrade**
Although we hear a chorus of lament from companies, when we look at macroeconomic data, we find it's not so pessimistic—even improving:

> Our overall economy continues to grow at a relatively high level, and more importantly, the share of consumption in GDP has been rising year by year.

Where are these benefits landing?

Of course, e-commerce growth is obvious.

But the more critical factor is the consumption upgrade, and most traditional enterprises have missed the boat in this round of consumption upgrade.

In traditional understanding, consumption upgrade means buying better, more expensive, more personalized, more high-end, or even more cost-effective products.

But **this round of consumption upgrade is more focused on dimensional changes:** In today's world of material abundance, time is what people lack most. Products and services that save and change how people use time are emerging and will dominate in the future.

Additionally, domestic enterprises have long been trapped in inefficient competition, with issues like high prices, low quality, and even safety problems, which have been impacted by the rapid growth of overseas shopping in 2016. This is also a characteristic of this round of consumption upgrade.

**Marketing Keyword 3: New Retail**
When Jack Ma speaks, the whole of China listens, even if his words are nothing new: "The era of pure e-commerce is over; the next decade will be the era of new retail. Online and offline must be combined, and the essence of logistics is to eliminate inventory."

Literally, this doesn't seem fundamentally different from O2O, which has just died. Offline is struggling, online traffic is expensive—so just put them together?

It's foreseeable that in 2017, many will again use the banner of "new retail" to follow the old path of simply combining online and offline.

Retail should return to the essence of marketing: **The retail format is irrelevant; what matters is the function of the retail terminal.**

If it doesn't help marketing in terms of information transmission and consumer education, and merely adds a sales channel, then the cost of opening and operating that channel far exceeds the new profits it brings. Countless martyrs have proven this: SF Heike, Helijia, Nanguache, 58 Daojia, Baidu Nuomi...

> **The key to new retail is not online + offline, but a redefinition of the focus of terminal functions based on the new market environment.**

From logistics operations to the combined operation of information flow and logistics, and for a specific product, the most efficient combination of information flow and logistics is the true new retail thinking.

**Marketing Keyword 4: Internet Celebrities (Wanghong)**
At the beginning of the year, Papi酱 received 12 million yuan in financing, valued at 120 million, and was called the "No. 1 Internet Celebrity."

Later, Papi酱's popularity declined, and recently there was a split with the veteran internet celebrity Luoji Siwei. Currently, the hottest internet celebrity is Mi Meng, who reportedly charges 500,000 yuan for a soft article and earns 8 million a month.

The top e-commerce internet celebrity, Zhang Dayi, with 4 million fans, entered the top tier of the entire platform (including Tmall and Taobao) in less than 4 minutes after the start of Double 11, finally ranking second in Taobao's women's clothing category and joining the billion-yuan club.

The most explosive and messy aspect of the "internet celebrity economy" is the live streaming industry, with Yingke, Huajiao, Douyu, Longzhu, Huya—each backed by substantial capital. To poach internet celebrities with their own fan bases, live streaming platforms are offering annual salaries of over 10 million, and many经纪 companies specializing in producing internet celebrities have sprung up like mushrooms. The combination of product promotion and the internet celebrity economy is intensifying: it's said that Angelababy sold 10,000 lipsticks in a 2-hour live stream; Fu Yuanhui received virtual gifts worth over 3 million yuan in one live stream.

However, these live streaming models, which rely on burning cash and have yet to find a profitable path, also face stricter regulatory issues. From the day they started, these live streaming celebrities have been associated with vulgarity, pornography, violence, and不良教唆, and the Ministry of Public Security, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and the Ministry of Culture have never stopped regulating them. The new regulations effective December 1 are the most severe blow to live streaming celebrities.

The so-called internet celebrities are not fundamentally different from the previous "TV celebrities" or "print celebrities," except that the threshold seems lower. In the internet environment, more people have the potential to become internet celebrities (though the odds may be slim), and it allows more angles and levels of "fame." But the key is still better content. Veteran internet celebrities like Luoji Siwei, Gao Xiaosong, and Wang Nima from Baozou, as well as new stars like Mi Meng and Papi酱, all win through content, even if their content isn't accepted by everyone.

If you only exploit people's base desires, ugliness, stimulation, voyeurism, etc., to gain attention, and skate on thin ice where regulation is lax, even if you attract some traffic, it's like flowers in a mirror or the moon in water—illusory.

**Marketing Keyword 5: Content IP**
At midnight on June 8, 2016, the super IP with the largest fan base globally, "Warcraft," was released in Chinese cinemas, with a first-day box office of an astonishing 290 million yuan. Ultimately, "Warcraft" grossed 1.47 billion yuan in mainland China, fully demonstrating the super influence of game IPs.

Besides Warcraft, content IPs like "Boruto: Naruto the Movie" and "Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary" also entered the Chinese mainland film market. In addition to anime and game IPs, films and TV series based on well-known novels have also been popping up: films like Guo Jingming's "L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties" and Zhang Jiajia's "I Belonged to You," and TV series like "Sparrow" and "Noble Aspirations." Then IPs are transformed from film and TV works into mobile games, continuously tapping into the large user base behind the IP.

Additionally, this year saw an innovation in video advertising, starting with "The Mystic Nine," which changed the dry pre-roll ads to have celebrity actors perform content to help brands advertise, making the ad placements more watchable and leaving a deeper impression on consumers.

If we peel back the hot concept of IP and look at its true essence, as Brother Hu Zi said: IP is a charismatic personality with content power and self-traffic. In the end, it's still content—high-quality, personified content.

The IP craze certainly has bubble elements, but it's an important sign of the era of content being king. **That is, extending industries with high-quality content, rather than extending through channels.**

**Keyword 6: Removing Intermediaries**
Intermediaries have always played an "inglorious" role for over a hundred years. Many new business models like to tout "removing intermediate links": the legendary Industry 4.0 is supposedly an era without middlemen, where manufacturers and consumers live happily together—ha!

This year, Lao Miao wrote a scathing article titled "No Middleman to Earn the Difference Is the Biggest Marketing Lie," which resonated with many distributor friends. Now, a Baidu search yields over 300,000 results.

2016 was an especially tough year for distributors, with their living space further squeezed. Many influential distributors "quit without hesitation," feeling the business was utterly hopeless.

In reality, relying on intuition to judge that eliminating distributors would benefit all parties is unreliable. The value of distributors in the market environment is far from fully developed and will only grow in the future.

From a macro perspective, economist Thomas Sowell wrote in "Basic Economics":

> The long-standing desire to eliminate 'middlemen' has been forever obliterated by economic facts. Human knowledge and expertise are limited for any individual or institution set up by managers. In the many links of the production and sales chain, only certain parts can be effectively managed and operated by the same group of people. Beyond a certain point, it may be more cost-effective for others downstream in the process to complete the work more efficiently.

From a micro perspective, Master Kotler used the distribution economic effect diagram to illustrate the social value of intermediaries, and detailed eight functions including information sorting, negotiation, promotion, and inventory transfer.

**The distributor group and class need to regain their core functions to embody the value of being the "main source of economic benefits" (Kotler's words) in business.**

**Marketing Keyword 7: Trump**
Choosing Trump as a marketing keyword for 2016 is based on two reasons: **one is Trump's campaign marketing tactics, and the other is the significant changes Trump's election may bring to the domestic market environment.**

With a smaller budget, fewer promotional platforms, almost no media support, and almost no celebrity support, Trump won the U.S. presidency with just a big mouth. Trump's election is a marketing miracle, and many people are still in shock.

Besides the help of the email scandal, the internet environment greatly aided Trump, once again verifying the iron law of marketing success in the era of content being king.

As an unconventional old "madman" and new politician, Trump's election brings us greater uncertainty. The common analysis is:

> On one hand, due to his business background and isolationist stance, he may put less ideological pressure on us, but he will treat us as the primary competitor, so economic and trade pressure will be greater. On the other hand, tax cuts and encouragement of U.S. manufacturing return may create new shocks to our exports, but also leave us some new space in the international market.

Lao Miao is not afraid to make a bold prediction: **2017 will be a year of intense game-playing between China and the U.S., possibly even with sparks flying (in trade and geopolitics). Once a stable game pattern forms, there should be greater room for cooperation than before. When businessman thinking meets "development is the absolute principle," they should live happily ever after.**

**Keyword 8: Olympic Marketing**
2016 is an Olympic year, and major brands' Olympic-themed marketing was, unsurprisingly, lackluster.

As one of the best communication channels, the Olympics' way of playing is changing.

In the era of channel being king, doing Olympics was about leveraging the trend; the Olympics were a big wind, and as long as you caught it, you could fly. **But in the era of content being king, the Olympics are a big platform. Olympic marketing requires you to create exciting content to perform on it. If you perform well, even in a corner, the spotlight will find you; if you perform poorly, even at center stage, you'll be ignored.**

So traditional sponsorship, title sponsorship, and following Olympic slogans are no longer effective. Today's Olympic marketing needs better content and better creativity.

**Keyword 9: B2B E-commerce**
Many in the industry believe that C2C e-commerce is nearing its bottleneck, and the future of e-commerce lies in B2B. This will be a market of trillions of yuan.

The giants have already made their moves: Alibaba launched 1688 Retail Link, and JD.com launched New Channel. Some speculated that Jack Ma's talk of "new retail" was actually to pave the way for his "Alibaba Retail Link" (though Alibaba also holds stakes in other larger B2B e-commerce companies).

Similar to the approach of Taobao, Alibaba Retail Link and JD New Channel are both large platform models, leveraging inherent platform advantages to unify procurement and distribution. To avoid the lack of promotion functions, Alibaba Retail Link has a "city partner" module in its model design to compensate for this function.

The B2B e-commerce of the two giants has attracted much attention but hasn't made substantial progress yet. JD's New Channel has encountered setbacks, while 1688 Retail Link is still only in the stage of testing with imported products.

While many hyped O2O companies are lying dead, another form of O2O—B2B e-commerce—is flourishing, relying on the operations of distributors or brands. There are now nearly 2,000 such B2B e-commerce platforms nationwide, with Zhongshang Huimin, 51 Ordering, and Zhanghe Tianxia being the more active ones. The models are diverse, but regardless of the model, their target customers are community supermarkets, convenience stores, and mom-and-pop shops—the traditional C and D class small stores.

**The needs of small stores, product mix, technology development and use, improvement of distribution efficiency, responsibilities and rights of franchisees, how to execute promotions, and manufacturer support are all important topics facing developing B2B e-commerce.** It doesn't look easy, but there are still many diligent marketers working hard to practice it.

**Marketing Keyword 10: Content**
To be precise, "**content**" is not a marketing keyword for 2016, but the main theme of marketing in recent years. **Consumption upgrade, IP, internet celebrities, new retail—almost all meaningful marketing explorations and practices are related to excellent content.**

**The era of content being king is an era of independent thinking, an era of ideological liberation, and an era of imagination and creativity.** This year's environment is bad, and with a new round of raw material price increases, next year may be worse. But this is precisely a great period for eliminating surplus "channel" resources and low-level redundant construction. If you have an innovative mind and full enthusiasm, why miss this unprecedented great transformation?

Miao Qingxian: Chief Consultant of Yihe Marketing Planning Agency.
Ding Lüyu: General Manager of Yihe Marketing Entrepreneurship Incubation Department.

-END-

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