---
title: "Using the Experience of Wooing Women to Do Marketing"
description: "A founder who follows the 'Three Refusals' principle—refusing interviews, research, and visits—has captured about 60% of a niche female consumer market in four years. His marketing insights come from wooing women, and his team management from gaming, emphasizing deep human insight and gamified incentives."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2014-06-16"
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# Using the Experience of Wooing Women to Do Marketing

> A founder who follows the 'Three Refusals' principle—refusing interviews, research, and visits—has captured about 60% of a niche female consumer market in four years. His marketing insights come from wooing women, and his team management from gaming, emphasizing deep human insight and gamified incentives.

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A few days ago, I had coffee with an entrepreneur who adheres to the "Three Refusals" doctrine. The so-called "Three Refusals" means refusing interviews, refusing research, and refusing visits, mainly as a counter to the prevailing "Three Prominences" in the startup world—promoting oneself, promoting oneself, and promoting oneself.

If he were just a hopeful entrepreneur, his experiences and insights might be seen as a beautiful vision, admirable but not necessarily solid. However, this "Three Refusals" guy has, in just four years, captured about 60% market share in a relatively niche female consumer goods market, essentially achieving a "brand equals category" strategy, with online and offline sales contributing 60% and 40% respectively, and both channels consistently profitable. Yes, this company is only four years old and has a few hundred million in revenue, so compared to "Old Money," it can't be said to have crossed the sea of suffering to reach the other shore. But when you consider how many startups die in their first three years, we immediately perk up and wonder what practices this company has proven to work in China's unique entrepreneurial environment.

First, it's reassuring that although the "Three Refusals" guy has "shamefully" attended Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, it's clear that the business school system has had minimal "poisoning" effect on his entrepreneurial journey. As a seasoned management consultant, after hearing his full startup story, I had to take off my hat in deep admiration: "Congratulations, this is a company that hasn't had its worldview destroyed by traditional management consulting!" When I asked him where his main inspiration for running the business came from, he grinned mischievously and confessed: his marketing experience comes from wooing women, and his team management from playing games. Wow!

His proudest topic is "how to move a girl 10 times with 150 yuan." After hearing this super-positive secret, as a loyal customer of the company before I even met the boss, I could truly appreciate the marketing tactic he distilled from wooing women: deep insight into and grasp of human nature of target consumers.

For example: Two years ago, I ordered about 200 yuan worth of products on the company's website. To my surprise, I received a huge package with seven free gifts stuffed inside! There was also a pink letter with a handwritten note in a coy style: "Dear, these beautiful towels, bath balls, shampoo, mouse pads, etc., are all gifts for you!" followed by the customer service representative's signature. As for why they included a mouse pad, the "Three Refusals" guy explained: a mouse pad costs 1.6 yuan, but if well-designed and made, it can occupy a permanent spot on the customer's desk, so it should be seen as an advertising space. Similarly, the better the quality of the towel gift, the better, because a towel with the brand's big logo can occupy the customer's bathroom.

So, while others serve customers, this company "woos" customers: by encouraging customer service reps to interact deeply with customers with enthusiasm, supplemented by a long-term strategy of giving lots of gifts and handwritten letters, they satisfy two psychological needs of female consumers: the desire for small bargains and the need for small care. Over time, they turn customers into lovers. It's said that some customers even sent wedding candy and gifts to their Taobao customer service reps when they got married.

Of course, without satisfied employees, there are no satisfied customers. "Encouraging employees to interact deeply with customers" is easy to say but hard to do, because employees' enthusiasm is often not at the same temperature as the boss's. This brings us to the team management logic that the "Three Refusals" guy summarized from his long gaming career. A notable difference in this company's HR policy is the "monthly salary increase" strategy: everyone knows that as long as the company's overall performance grows, employees will get a raise every month, and the newer the employee, the bigger the raise.

This is typical gaming logic: in the early stages of a game, you must be able to level up quickly to cultivate addiction! Traditional salary systems are built on a top-down control logic, where lower-level salaries are relatively fixed and higher-level salaries have larger floating ranges, naturally putting pressure on managers while frontline employees passively watch. Through this "gamified" approach, the company keeps the frontline team active, giving them strong ambition and desire for growth, with the back waves pushing the front waves, driving the whole team forward from the bottom up. For the company, "carrying on the back is the same weight as carrying in the arms"—as long as the overall performance grows rapidly, raising salaries is purely a technical issue, not a matter of principle.

Never underestimate the motivational and stimulating effect of "cash" on people. Regarding this gamified HR theory, there's a more direct experiment that might illustrate the point. The "Three Refusals" guy is preparing to open a restaurant. Like all Chinese restaurants, high-level service is a super challenge, and experienced, positive, and stable service staff have become a scarce resource in the job market. What to do? When I shared his solution with another restaurant tycoon who has a net worth of over a billion and has been in Chinese cuisine for over a decade, he slapped his thigh in admiration: "I don't know how the food will be, but as soon as I heard it, I knew this method will definitely solve the service problem!"

The method is actually simple and direct: provide high-level service but charge customers a service fee, and at the end of each day, settle the day's service fees and distribute cash to service staff on the spot based on service quality. This way, everyone can feel the benefits of quality service and customer satisfaction, and this feeling comes with high intensity and frequency. Of course, there are some related supporting measures, but I won't reveal their trade secrets. I've already tried this myself: in a temporary project team of master's and doctoral degree holders, with heavy tasks and tight deadlines, we took the predetermined bonus that would normally be paid at the end of the project and paid it out in cash every evening based on workload. The result? I can only say: miraculous.

In addition, building a super fun office comparable to Google, providing employees with chefs, nannies, masseuses, hairdressers, and other "extreme pampering," and giving every job applicant a thank-you gift package—these are just handy tricks for the "Three Refusals" guy.

Business is nothing but human nature. The "Three Refusals" guy's brilliance lies in his instinctive grasp of this essence, then without wasting any time on dragging or hypocrisy, he goes straight to the point. As I pressed him, "How come you run a company like it's a game?" this gaming enthusiast widened his eyes and asked me incredulously:

Tell me, when are people most serious?

— When they're playing.

Source: Entrepreneur
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