Click the image for details Introduction: In today's world where the public's sense of humor has greatly improved, even on platforms like CCTV, it's no longer easy for sketch comedians to make a joke go viral overnight. Cai Ming, a regular on the Spring Festival Gala, managed to become a hot topic again at the 2017 CCTV Spring Festival Gala with the line, "The higher the beauty, the greater the responsibility." This shows that the punchline in this joke hints at some preference of the general public. Beauty and responsibility, two unrelated nouns, were linked by Cai Ming in a specific context, creating a seemingly logical bridge between them. The joke was born, the punchline landed, and this aligns with the basic principles of humor creation. So, it's perfectly fine to see it as just a joke. But is it really just a joke? Our ancestors had many traditional crafts, which were said to be passed down only to males, not females. As a result, many crafts accumulated over thousands of years have been lost or are on the verge of extinction, needing to be protected through "intangible cultural heritage" applications. Everyone knows the principle that "men and women working together makes the work lighter," but our ancestors never quite figured this out. Watching a bunch of old men and rough guys doing needlework is a sight that's hard to bear! It's said that refined activities like music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, which are relatively niche, have survived to this day thanks to the ladies of noble families who used them as tools for educating their husbands and children. This gave us the beautiful scenes and beauties in "Dream of the Red Chamber" like "writing with elegance in the frost, reciting poetry to the moon with fragrance in the mouth." As for wine, sex, wealth, and anger, their insight into human nature seems to have never failed, judging from the romantic literature left by thousands of years of civilization. Another example worth mentioning is the demise of certain traditional musical instruments. On one hand, they were too niche, with an inherently narrow audience; on the other hand, the disappearance of the group of people who carried them, such as courtesans, greatly reduced the appeal of these instruments' performances, leading to a lack of attention and topicality, and thus poor development. Eventually, no one inherited or promoted them, and they disappeared from the mainstream view. In other words, "having both beauty and talent" and what we advocate today as "having both virtue and art" are, to some extent, the same principle. Beauty and talent promote each other and complement each other. Talent without beauty is like embroidering on linen, lacking charm; beauty without talent is just a vase without spirit, lacking foundation. In the past, craftsmen chose apprentices based on appearance, which seems quite reasonable. According to the logic of traditional craftsmen, the marketing of niche markets seems to apply this principle even more: the smaller the market, the more it needs to be appealing. Unfortunately, domestic enterprises, from products to channels, seem to have a natural preference for large-scale production and manufacturing from the very beginning. Niche marketing has always been an outsider, whether in terms of enthusiasm for theoretical research on niche marketing or the courage to implement it in practice. In the early days of the internet, many people cheered for the arrival of the Long Tail era. This was an opportunity to use internet tools to aggregate niche markets at the lowest cost, and the spring of niche markets seemed just around the corner. However, the first twenty years of internet development have passed. The internet platforms, which should have had the most niche genes, have not cultivated many niche brands worth mentioning. Instead, they quickly facilitated the emergence of internet giants like BAT. The Matthew effect of "the rich get richer" in the offline market has not changed much due to the internet. On the contrary, the trend of monopoly on online platforms is intensifying, not weakening. This may not be good news for many entrepreneurs. As for the concept of "small and beautiful" truly gaining public attention, it was around 2014, at the critical moment when e-commerce dividends were almost exhausted. Using this as a coordinate, ten years earlier was when the concept of the "Long Tail effect" was formally proposed. In other words, the Long Tail effect, which has the "small and beautiful" gene, was delayed by at least ten years in China before it moved from lip service to actual action. How can niche markets truly achieve "small and beautiful"? In China, which lacks both theoretical guidance and practical support, niche marketing presents a bizarre picture: the consumer space and market levels in the domestic market are diverse and deep. Even without focusing on target customers, the crude method of "shoot first, ask questions later" can keep many companies alive for two or three years. In other words, in today's market, many companies haven't yet fallen to the point of having to sell their "looks" to please consumers. This is also why we tend to treat consumers as a collective rather than as individuals with unique personalities, which is the external environment that has kept niche markets underdeveloped. To study niche markets, starting from "appearance" is a relatively intuitive entry point, as the appearance of niche markets has a clear impact on the audience. Once the seed group of a niche market is gone, or no like-minded newcomers join, the market may decline rapidly, and the craft or product may disappear. Of course, the "appearance" we talk about doesn't necessarily refer to the craftsman's looks or gender, but also includes the production environment and experience environment. For example, the A Da Scallion Pancake, which became strangely popular in 2016, can be seen as a microcosm of our understanding of niche markets. The dim room, greasy table, the habit of flipping pancakes with bare hands, and even the mixed smell of tobacco, constitute the cooking environment of A Da Scallion Pancake. In contrast, there are eager foodies and a supply-demand imbalance where it's hard to get a pancake. This scene seems to be the best model of niche marketing in many people's minds. In this model, self-proclaimed "foodies" comfort themselves by suggesting that only in such an environment with bacterial fermentation can the authentic "A Da" flavor be produced. Just like the various "fly restaurants," without greasy floors and litter everywhere, they wouldn't be considered the standard for delicious food. It is precisely because of the perverse thinking of foodies that suppliers become lazy. They don't standardize, don't even care about basic hygiene, don't improve, don't innovate, don't keep up with the times, and don't actively enhance consumer demand. How many of our good crafts and products have been lost and are dying out under such traditional thinking, with no successors? Consumers' lack of discernment also cultivates a speculative mentality among practitioners, and a direct consequence is that the threshold for learning crafts and products is greatly lowered. This is like finding a successor without considering virtue and foundation, just requiring "two arms, two legs, a head, and a mouth." Those who look extraordinary, with unique bone structure, a once-in-a-millennium martial arts genius, don't take on the responsibility of nurturing niche markets. Instead, they dominate the mass marketing market. It's wonderful, but isn't it also a loss for the allocation of market resources? We know that in the flagship stores of Hermès and LV, there are requirements for the appearance of salespeople, and there are obvious training traces in sales skills and processes. In this way, both are doing niche marketing, but the difference is immediately apparent. Our "scallion pancake" model lets customers choose the product: I like that flavor, so I'll queue for it; the "Hermès" model lets the product choose the customer: you have that style, so you can enter my store. That's why many niche brand stores in Hong Kong implement a membership system: if you're not a member, even if you have money, we won't sell to you! As representatives of "small and beautiful," those doing WeChat business or selling on Taobao can start a business with just a phone. Overnight, everyone can sell. But if you're going to sell, you should at least look the part, right? You should dress up a bit and show basic respect to customers, right? Some people just don't. They like to bare their chests and roll up their sleeves. Some WeChat business people, as long as they can make money, will treat you like a monkey, and they don't even mind if you treat them like a monkey. Some Taobao sellers, who are at the level of street vendors or middlemen, just want to quickly buy low and sell high, and end up running around in a dead-end of price competition. It's not hard to understand. Sales, which should be a professional job, has turned into selling quack medicine at a street stall. Besides talking nonsense and rambling, no matter how many tricks and means they use, they only make more passersby want to avoid them. I want to say that the quick-profit method of selling goods is not suitable for niche markets; otherwise, it looks very ugly. Marketing, especially in niche markets, requires us to put in some effort and pay attention to "appearance," whether for the inheritance of the market or to live a more flavorful life at this stage. So, don't say that Beijing Film Academy and Shanghai Theatre Academy rejected Lin Miaoke. They are schools that care about looks because they carry the aesthetic standards of this era and even determine the capacity of the future box office market. -END-