****-01-****Industrial Civilization In 1776, after countless experiments, Watt finally produced the first practical steam engine. Through a series of major improvements, it became the "universal prime mover." This steam engine began to be widely applied in various industries, greatly increasing human production efficiency, thus triggering the First Industrial Revolution. Humanity formally bid farewell to the agrarian civilization dominated by handicrafts and entered the era of industrial civilization. After Europe entered the Industrial Revolution, per capita GDP continued to grow. Today, the UK's per capita GDP has reached $40,000, nearly 50 times higher than before the Industrial Revolution, whereas in 1800, it had only increased by one-third. Industrial civilization dismantled the labor methods and ethical relationships of thousands of years of agrarian civilization, while also solving the Malthusian trap, leading to an explosive growth in the global population. Our middle school textbooks evaluate the impact of the First Industrial Revolution on the world as follows: 1) The European and American bourgeoisie established their rule over the world. 2) The Industrial Revolution also objectively spread advanced ideas and production methods, changing the world's appearance. 3) The Industrial Revolution also caused changes in the social structure of capitalist countries, giving rise to two opposing classes: the industrial bourgeoisie and the proletariat. 4) The First Industrial Revolution promoted the initial formation of the world market. (Time: mid-to-late 19th century) 5) The First Industrial Revolution greatly increased productivity, enriched the goods in the market, and consolidated the ruling position of the bourgeoisie. 6) Britain was the first to complete the Industrial Revolution, becoming the world's first industrial nation. Machine production replaced manual labor, science and technology played an increasingly important role, factories replaced handicraft workshops, completely transforming traditional production methods, promoting revolutions and reforms in the US, Russia, Germany, and Italy, and opening the process of industrialization and modernization in Europe and America, leading to the initial formation of the capitalist world system. 7) In industrial society, it increasingly split into two opposing classes—the industrial bourgeoisie and the industrial proletariat. In the 1830s and 1840s, the labor movement arose. 8) The process of urbanization began; advanced production methods and technologies spread to various places, impacting old systems and ideas, and changing people's life concepts. 9) It accelerated the final formation of the integrated world, with the East subordinate to the West, and colonial aggression led to the rise of national liberation movements. ****-02-****Information Civilization In 1960, an American researcher named Licklider proposed a radical idea in his paper "Man-Computer Symbiosis": that all computers would be connected via communication lines in the future, just as insects pollinate fig trees, and the two should be symbiotic. On October 29, 1969, at 10:30 PM, UCLA was conducting a computer connection test with the Stanford Research Institute, 60 kilometers away. Operator Charles Kline attempted to input the "LOGIN" command, but the system crashed after he typed just "L" and "O." Hours later, after debugging, the two computers finally achieved remote connection, and "LO" became the first message transmitted over the internet. The world's first internet was thus born. In a sense, this connection, like Watt's steam engine, marked humanity's formal entry into the information civilization era. Needless to say, today the internet has profoundly changed our lives in every aspect. Some have summarized the four major impacts of the internet on humanity:
First, information interconnection: humanity's right to know has become equal for the first time;
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Second, consumption interconnection: humanity's material choices have greatly expanded;
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Third, production interconnection: industrial information efficiency has greatly improved;
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Fourth, artificial intelligence: humanity has the opportunity to touch the embryonic stage of a higher civilization, opening a window for intelligent civilization. People still underestimate the impact of information civilization on humanity, just as British farmers in the 18th century saw trains moving at a snail's pace. I think the most important point is that humanity has, for the first time, gained unlimited right to know and freedom of choice. ****-03-****How is Information Civilization Different from Industrial Civilization? Information civilization is nurtured on the foundation of industrial civilization, and its emergence does not mean the destruction of industrial civilization. In a sense, information civilization uses information technology to reconstruct industrial civilization. At its core, information civilization has two characteristics: 1. Nations, companies, and clans are no longer the organizational focus; tribes bound by values begin to emerge. Previously, due to physical barriers of geography, culture, and language, people's communication was limited to local regions or ethnic groups. After the internet connected the world into a whole, all boundaries disappeared. On new technological infrastructure platforms, people are no longer limited to organizations like nations and companies; instead, they exist more in the form of tribes centered on values. Everyone joins various tribes (communities) based on their values and preferences. Unlike the traditional binary opposition between companies and consumers, in tribes, organizers are also participants, and participants are also organizers. People co-create meanings and beliefs together. 2. Turning many tangible things into intangible ones. For example, in the past, information was stored on physical media like books, newspapers, and magazines, which had mass and could be seen and touched. But today, this information is transformed and stored in the cloud, becoming strings of code recorded and stored on hard drives. Intangibility means that the efficiency of exchanging information for energy greatly improves, and efficiency changes increase exponentially. 3. Infinite supply brought by infinite shelves. The Long Tail theory mentions a very important concept called infinite shelves, which refers to platforms like Tmall and Taobao where listing product information no longer requires physical space, so in a sense, the marginal cost is almost zero. This leads to an infinite supply of product information, and at the same time, products are also in infinite supply. The carrier of information has not only changed from containers to pipelines; containers store information, while pipelines flow information. Containers are limited, but pipelines are infinite. Just as in the past, without running water, we needed large vats to store water—these vats could be books, magazines, or our brains—we needed to store information. But today, information is like running water: turn on the tap, and it flows infinitely. To sum up in one sentence: compared to previous eras, information civilization has given humanity, for the first time, unlimited right to know information and arbitrary choice of goods. 4. From a marketing perspective, how have consumers changed in the information civilization era? When people have unlimited right to know and arbitrary choice, compared to consumers in the industrial era, consumers born under information civilization show significant differences: 1. Because information is too easy to obtain, people no longer deliberately remember information unrelated to themselves;
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2. When material goods can be chosen arbitrarily, the satisfaction they bring diminishes, and people increasingly value the meaning attached to products;
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3. Consumers lack the ability to discern the truth of information attached to products, so they delegate choice to more professional platforms, algorithms, KOLs, and friends with relevant consumption experience. Marty Neumeier, in his book "The Brand Flip," points out the implications behind these consumer changes: 1. Power has shifted from companies to consumers;
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2. People no longer focus on products but on meaning;
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3. Users build identity through purchases;
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4. Users hate being sold to but love to buy;
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5. People consume within communities, which makes them feel safe. What does this teach us? ****-04-****Some Past Marketing Theories Are Partially Invalid Under New Technological Infrastructure The differences between information civilization and industrial civilization, though not as perceptible as the gap between agricultural and industrial civilizations, are very thorough in their impact on humanity. Most of the management and marketing theories we are familiar with today were born between the 1950s and 1980s. For example, Drucker's famous work "The Practice of Management" was published in 1954; another, "The Effective Executive," in 1966; McCarthy proposed the famous 4P marketing theory in 1960; Trout's "Positioning" was born in the early 1970s; Kotler's "Marketing Management" first edition was published in 1967... Undoubtedly, marketing is a practical discipline, and all theories within it were born under specific historical and technological backgrounds. In recent years, many people talk about marketing, but in essence, most have not deviated from the past marketing framework. However, the era when those theories were born had no internet, smartphones, social networks, e-commerce platforms, autonomous driving technology, or AI algorithms. These new technological applications have profoundly changed the efficiency and methods of connection: person-to-person, person-to-information, person-to-material, and material-to-material connections. This leads to the conclusion that marketing theories from the industrial era market environment can no longer effectively guide marketing activities built on new technological infrastructure. We cannot deny the classics of these management and marketing works, nor can we say these theories have all failed. We must objectively view the limitations of these marketing theories in today's new technological environment. ****-05-****When Consumers Have Sovereignty, What Value Should We Provide to Users? Infinite shelves bring infinite supply and also give consumers infinite choice. Consumers have truly begun to hold the discourse power in consumption. Consumers freely choose consumption across all times, channels, and categories; this is the basic background of the era of consumer sovereignty. After meeting basic, quantitative consumption needs, consumers' personalized consumption demands begin to emerge. When users can easily obtain the goods they want, it becomes difficult for them to gain satisfaction, happiness, and consumption identity from the physical attributes of the product itself. All of this is essentially caused by oversupply. Oversupply also brings another byproduct: consumption confidence, which from another angle is a significant increase in narcissism. What value should we provide to our customers today? When material goods are abundant, people begin to pursue higher-level needs in Maslow's hierarchy. This intangible thing is more about the feeling towards a product or service, even self-actualization. What is this intangible feeling? I think Marty Neumeier's "The Brand Flip" mentions 25 qualities that add value to products invisibly, which are summarized very well: 1. Authenticity – providing real products. 2. Accessibility – available anytime, anywhere, easily. 3. Belonging – providing a sense of team. 4. Clarity – easy to understand and recognize. 5. Certainty – clearly knowing the benefits. 6. Control – letting customers make their own decisions. 7. Sharing – leading fashion trends for customers. 8. Delight – not just conveying reliability. 9. Findability – easy to identify, choose, and express. 10. Flexibility – actively responding to needs. 11. Guidance – providing support, knowledge, or explanation. 12. Hope – providing opportunities for future success. 13. Immediacy – when material goods are abundant, people begin to pursue higher-level needs in Maslow's hierarchy. 14. Inclusivity – giving users the right to participate. 15. Lightness – light and portable. 16. Optimism – bringing positive feelings to users. 17. Sponsorship – helping users achieve goals. 18. Personalization – providing customized services. 19. Protection – ensuring user safety and avoiding extra expenses. 20. Security – keeping users safe from physical harm. 21. Simplicity – ensuring smooth product and purchase processes. 22. Speed – helping users save time. 23. Style – reflecting aesthetics and style. 24. Surprise – exceeding user expectations. 25. Symbolism – helping users build identity. As mentioned in previous articles, if your marketing methods cannot make users think you are great, or make them feel great, then you can hardly gain consumer recognition and loyalty. Therefore, on one hand, enterprises need to create relative scarcity; on the other hand, we must empower users. ****-06-****Three Key Work Priorities for Brand Owners Today: 1. Digitalization: In the industrial civilization era, the most valuable assets were tangible means of production like land, labor, and technology. But in the information civilization era, the most valuable asset is data. As a brand owner, you must digitize all digitizable processes, connect them, and apply them to achieve true insight and co-creation. 2. Managing user relationships: Product functions and value can no longer satisfy users; we must co-create relationships with users to achieve deep connections and long-term value realization. 3. Meeting user needs around the clock: Based on user behavior trajectories, make it convenient for users to connect and interact with us everywhere. Human evolution initially unfolded on a scale of hundreds of thousands of years, then centered on the highest achievements of millennia, then centuries, and after entering the 20th century, it became decades. Technology advances at an accelerating pace. We must view today's market with an evolutionary and iterative mindset. Because the market changes so fast, practice will precede theory. For marketers of our time, we must learn to abstract phenomena into theories to guide our work. Although humanity has entered the information civilization, most people's thoughts and states remain in the industrial civilization stage, which requires a process of understanding and acceptance. Many believe past theories are still valid. Undeniably, just as the moon revolves around the Earth, we cannot say Newton's gravity or Einstein's spacetime curvature is right or wrong; rather, it's about who can abstractly explain more unknown phenomena on a larger scale and space. That is the key to viewing marketing under today's new technology from a broader perspective. | Founder of New Distribution, FMCG industry channel expert, with over 400,000 words of original FMCG industry research articles. For communication, add WeChat by long-pressing. 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