Source丨Teacher Liu's Scene Marketing ID丨liuchunxiong1964 Where are users? Users are in the scene. Once, while chatting with Teacher Fang Gang, this phrase slipped out. After saying it, we looked at each other. Both of us understood the meaning of this plain statement. Should we study users against the backdrop of scenes, or should we treat users as people detached from scenes, label them, and study their needs? Users in Scenes Are Vivid What is a user? The word "user" is on our lips every day, but we may not have examined it closely. Pedestrians on the road are not users. They are passersby. Those who enter someone else's store are someone else's users, not yours. When they enter a store to buy something, or a restaurant to eat, they become users. Sometimes, "user" seems like just another name for a person. Biologically, we call them humans; sociologically, people; commercially, users. This generic term has no meaning in business. A person becomes a user because they enter a specific scene. User needs without a scene are merely hypothetical consumer tendencies in business. This scene can be a consumption scene, such as a restaurant. This scene can be a sales scene, such as a store. This scene can also be an internet scene, such as Taobao, Douyin, WeChat, or various apps and mini-programs. The word "scene" is now overused. From the perspective of scene marketing, it primarily refers to consumption scenes, and secondarily to sales scenes. Users are in the scene; only those in the scene are true users, and they are vivid users. A scene is a mirror that shows vivid users clearly, no longer just a group labeled with certain tags. Users are vivid, not because people are alive, but because they become concrete in business. Vague needs become "jobs to be done" in the scene. Business gains certainty. It can be said that jobs to be done are needs about to be monetized, and they provide a handle in business. This is the marketing significance of the phrase "users are in the scene." Scenes Have Clear Jobs to Be Done Understanding user needs is difficult, like Sherlock Holmes solving a case. This is normal when viewing users in isolation. Viewing users in isolation means stripping users from specific scenes, making them abstract users. Now HR uses scenario-based recruitment. All candidates are placed in the same scene, and then observed. This is far more effective than office interviews. As long as a group of people is in the same scene, roles naturally emerge. People's tendencies in needs become jobs to be done when encountering specific scenes. Compared to vague needs, the jobs to be done in a scene are clear and specific. Time/place are the "explicit" aspects of jobs to be done. The same meal differs by morning, noon, and evening because time differs. Ordering a big meal at a restaurant in the morning, or soy milk and fried dough sticks in the evening, is abnormal. Similarly, when users walk into different restaurants, the jobs to be done differ. Ordering McDonald's at KFC, or saying you don't eat spicy food in a Sichuan restaurant, is just a joke. Secondly, roles/processes provide "hints" of user needs. For friends gathering, business banquets, or family dinners, you can roughly guess the jobs to be done from the composition and roles, just needing confirmation. If a dining user carries a cake, then preparing a birthday ceremony in time is mostly right. When jobs to be done are clear, solutions are relatively clear. Beyond standardized solutions, it's not hard to add value-added services. Unlike user needs logic, jobs to be done in a scene tend to converge among different users. As Cai Yu said when defining emotional value, different people need to "reduce" personal emotions and then empathize with public emotions. Similarly, in a scene, different users need to "reduce" personal differences, and different users in the scene have similar jobs to be done. For example, when eating, someone is "delegated" to order dishes, and rarely does anyone object. The differences in user needs are covered by the convergence of scene jobs to be done. Without understanding this, it's hard to understand jobs to be done. I once worked at a star-rated hotel. I positioned the hotel as a business culture hotel, providing integrated services for business people: marketing meetings, dining, and accommodation. The jobs to be done for marketing meetings were relatively clear, so the venue, dining, and accommodation were all labeled with marketing. For example, when guests walked into the meeting room and saw marketing mottos, they felt it was the most suitable marketing venue. For example, naming rooms as brand rooms, price rooms, channel rooms, or Haier rooms, Midea rooms, and placing marketing materials corresponding to the room names, made users feel their identity matched the room and meeting room. In terms of user differences, there are all kinds of people. But once a scene is established, jobs to be done have great similarity. Scenes Evoke User Emotions What distinguishes humans from other animals is their sociality. Even personal consumption, like a meal for one, has sociality. Not to mention the internet era, where having a phone in hand establishes a connection with society. Emotional value is particularly valued because individuals have the ability to interact with others at any time, making empathy easy. Satisfaction depends on function; liking depends on emotion. In an era of functional homogeneity, emotion plays an important role. The role of emotional value in marketing has surpassed functional value. Where do emotions come from? Emotions come from interaction and participation in scenes, and from the sense of ritual in scenes. People interact in scenes; this is life participation, generating and nurturing emotions. The value of interaction for business cognition cannot be overemphasized. One interaction is better than seeing ten ads, or watching live streams. Any activity with a sense of ritual attracts attention. Rituals with a "photo-worthy" feel are material for dissemination. Designing rituals in scenes is a clever business design. What is emotion? Emotion is attention; emotion is brain excitement. When users are excited, marketing is more efficient. Intentional attention is more effective than unintentional attention. Emotion is the climax of a scene; ritual is the memory of the scene's peak. Haidilao leaves a memory for many people because it is good at creating emotions and leaving memories. People, Goods, and Place Together In a consumption scene, there are people and goods. A consumption scene is a unity of people, goods, and place; actually, it's people, goods, and place. What does this mean? It means the scene is the best place for Marketing. Scene marketing has high costs because reaching the scene itself is very difficult. Therefore, I only recommend using scene marketing when promoting "three new and one high" (new brands, new products, new markets, high-end products). Let's briefly review the history of Marketing. Here, Marketing specifically refers to marketing cognition, not including Sales. Word-of-mouth Marketing is just person-to-person communication, without goods or scenes. Because of relationship endorsement, it's effective but inefficient and slow. Good wine doesn't fear a deep alley, but the alley itself isn't that deep. In the industrial era, Marketing relied mainly on mass media. Goods were in sales channels, and people, goods, and place were separated, hence the 4P analysis framework. The most efficient marketing was mass production, mass communication, and mass distribution. Mass production solved cost issues, mass communication solved cognition issues, and mass distribution solved Sales convenience. In the internet era, mass communication has disappeared, but mass production and mass distribution remain. The disappearance of mass communication means that the cognitive function in Marketing lacks effective tools, except for UGC dissemination and fission. After the new retail concept was proposed, some said the "goods find people" model of new retail is more efficient than the "people find goods" model of traditional business. But it still doesn't solve the separation of people, goods, and place. I think the most efficient model is precisely the trinity of people, goods, and place. Why do I say this? Scene marketing is not about selling a specific product, but providing a solution. A solution is not a single product, but a set of product ecosystems and scene processes. For example, Lidu's banquet plan: the proposal is the solution, and products are included in the proposal. A solution is a systematic plan, and the requirement of a systematic plan is that it must be well-matched. Scene, reality, and actual objects: people, goods, and place together, simultaneously solving six pairs of relationships: user-user, user-goods, user-place, goods-place, goods-goods. When all six pairs are solved, it's well-matched. First, the structural relationship between users. There are roles in a scene, including KOL, KOC, big C, and ordinary C. The structure of roles in a scene is very useful. Marketing cognition requires not only "I know"—personal cognition—but also "I know that you know"—group cognition, social cognition. Simply put, marketing must at least establish local cognitive density. The smallest local density is in a certain scene. In traditional cognitive systems, "I know that you know" could only be achieved through mass communication. When I watch an ad, I know you are also watching it. When I buy a brand, I know you will appreciate it. This is the social value of business. In the internet era, the biggest confusion for industry giants is that even with money, it's hard to achieve group cognition effects—UGC doesn't necessarily cost money. Therefore, some say the internet era has no more famous slogans. In scene marketing, we propose "small pot," "medium pot," and "large pot" cooking methods, meaning even "small pot" cooking in small circles can produce high-density group cognition. Roles/processes in a scene easily reinforce cognition mutually. Cognition in a scene is definitely "I know that you know." User interaction in a scene is the most effective cognitive tool. Interaction has high cognitive intensity, and local cognitive density is also high, making it easy to reach the threshold for monetizing "I know that you know" cognition. Second, the matching relationship between users and goods. Whether users and goods match should be viewed in a specific scene. Once the scene is determined, it's easy to determine whether the user-goods relationship matches. Scene solutions are like this. Third, the matching relationship between users and place. Whether users and the scene match can be felt as soon as they enter the scene. We often say "look at the scene," which is the concrete sense of the place. Fourth, the matching relationship between goods and place. The matching of goods and scene is the same as people and scene. Which are suitable and which are not is clear at a glance. Fifth, the ecological relationship between goods. Goods in a scene are not a single product, but a product ecosystem formed by a group of products, organically integrated. As long as a product matches the ecosystem, it easily integrates into the scene, creating a strong association between product and scene, and even issuing scene consumption commands when encountering the same scene in the future. For example, in the "before and after drinking" scene for Mingren, we only need to put Mingren on the table, and consumption naturally occurs. This is product ecosystem matching. Even new products easily integrate into the scene. Does the above five pairs of relationships between people, goods, and place seem to complicate marketing? Actually, this is the normal consumption logic. Consumption is certainly influenced by personal factors, but the environment of the scene is decisive. At the same time, clarifying each pair of relationships is beneficial to marketing cognition and strengthens cognition. Of course, the premise is to do it right. Doing cognition in scenes: complexity is efficiency. To promote "three new and one high," as long as you have confidence in the product, you are not afraid to put the product in the scene. I once said when evaluating the effect of Lidu's immersive experience: one experience, lifelong cognition. The bC integrated user operation based on scene experience should have such an effect. People, goods, and place together, cognition and consumption occur simultaneously, seamlessly connected. This is the trinity of cognition, transaction, and relationship proposed by management expert Teacher Shi Wei. Because people, goods, and place are trinity, cognition, transaction, and relationship are also trinity.