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Recently, some internet professionals and traditional marketers have been attacking positioning theory. I roughly reviewed their debates and found that most are just verbal battles. Those who truly understand and practice positioning theory, when facing the attacks from the above-mentioned people, are basically like scholars meeting soldiers. And now, Mr. Jin Cuodao is giving another lecture tonight, still on his explosive product strategy, which should be called explosive product tactics. He is also one of the most frequent attackers of positioning for self-promotion. Roughly browsing his evening promotional course, it mainly talks about value anchors, what strong value anchors are; he summarized three sins of traditional marketing: rashly creating new categories, fake pain points, and insufficient repurchase rates. What new thinking is this? For strong value anchors, he gave a few examples. Let me briefly share my views; the bottle designed for Luzhou Laojiao at a cost of 2 million is actually not important; 4 jin packaging, 169 yuan, plus the Luzhou Laojiao brand is the fundamental. Otherwise, try a high-priced product from an unknown brand? Making a copper pot for 19.9 yuan, with free shipping, the product is extreme, why not just give it away for free! Every manufacturer does this: high cost-performance, great value, single SKU. Look at Vancl now, making an extreme shirt, fooled by you guys! Haha, making extreme explosive products in shirts, you'll be crying soon. I won't analyze each one here. Internet thinking is not about low prices, explosive products, or value anchors. These are all tactical level things. I don't think positioning theory is magical, but compared to explosive products, it is still 10,000 value anchors stronger! There are views like: brand doesn't need discussion, just do it, accumulate, and promote; some think that when a product reaches maximum sales volume, it becomes a brand, and brand is just a result of sales; I don't do brand, only sales, selling goods; don't talk about brand theory, just practice... Everyone has their own understanding, some profound, some superficial; some high-level, some low-level. I don't want to discuss who is right or wrong here; it's meaningless. I think people criticize positioning for deep reasons, but they haven't clearly explained them, or don't want to, or can't. I believe there are the following misunderstandings and factors causing the attacks and discussions on positioning theory. 1Is positioning theory only useful for large enterprises?** Some think positioning theory can only be used by large enterprises; small enterprises don't need positioning. Small enterprises just need to seize an opportunity and find a good product to succeed. They might say, if a small enterprise focuses on one product, will there be a market, can it survive? This view is quite popular now because there are many small and startup enterprises. In their view, just go as far as you can, no need for strategic positioning. Is this view correct? Of course not! There are too many good products and opportunities; can you handle them all, and do your capabilities and resources match? That's the key. Small enterprises need focus and concentration, otherwise they can't do anything well. There are too many good products and opportunities, but they won't be yours. Some say, positioning means doing this and not that, doesn't that lose many opportunities? On the surface, yes, but in reality, it's the opposite. First do what you're good at, precisely, become a leading brand, and when appropriate, launch new brands to enter new fields. For example, Gree first does air conditioners well, focuses on R&D, production, and sales, becomes an expert brand, and when annual sales of the air conditioner single category reach 140 billion, then launches new brands to enter other related fields, like Kinghome and Dasong brands. Of course, there are many brand models, not necessarily using a single brand or unrelated brands, but each model's formation has historical and practical reasons, with its advantages and disadvantages, and cannot be generalized. Many people view positioning theory rigidly, thinking it means doing one brand and losing opportunities to cover other categories and markets. In fact, brand development theory doesn't mean an enterprise only does one product, category, or brand, but first becomes an expert brand, making one brand the representative of a category, and when appropriate, launches second and third brands. You ask me how many brands an enterprise should have. I say if you can do well, the more the better, but the question is: can you? Many say Wahaha doesn't have positioning either. Wrong! Wahaha's most successful product in history, Nutrition Express, had very precise positioning: milk drink nutritional breakfast. It was precisely because of Wahaha's continuous diversification leading to many failures that this is one of the strategic factors for its declining performance in recent years. 2**Is positioning about competition, and now it's about users? Especially some internet people and pseudo-internet people, like that micro-innovation and explosive product expert, advocate that positioning is poison, but in reality, this person uses positioning theory ideas; the so-called explosive products are simply weak. Mr. Jin Cuodao is very good at changing concepts. He says brand positioning to "become first" doesn't conflict with making products "explosive." For example, in traditional marketing, there are core products, big single products, and "explosive products" is far less valuable than big single products. His "creating explosive products" is just finding demand points, pain points, igniting communication... The most critical thing is: the Xiaomi model is not "decentralized," but uses early dividends from Weibo and forums, which is also a "centralized" effect. I strongly oppose deifying and absolutizing "positioning," like saying one "positioning" created JDB's annual sales of tens of billions, etc. I think that's too arbitrary and absolute. But since positioning theory is a theory, it must be able to explain phenomena. Some think "positioning" is "competitive thinking," and oppose it to "user thinking" for criticism, which is wrong. Doesn't "positioning" theory need to study users? Doesn't it need to understand consumers? Of course it does. Saying "positioning" is only "competitive thinking" is biased; I think they don't understand the essence of "positioning." If a theory starts from users and also considers competitive strategy, isn't that better? According to their view, "positioning" is "competitive thinking," so wouldn't "user thinking" in internet thinking ignore competition? What's the outcome of "user thinking" that ignores competition? Strategic confusion! I suggest reading Kenichi Ohmae's "The Mind of the Strategist." Competitive thinking or user thinking, neither can be ignored, and must not be separated or absolutized. In fact, marketing's 4Ps are not only explained from the enterprise perspective but also based on strategy and user perspective. It's just that many people don't understand marketing and only seek to show off and use unorthodox methods. 3Be fast: performance first, effectiveness is king! In the internet age, you need speed and performance; that's the foundation of everything. From this perspective, indeed, focusing on planning, positioning reports, is not as fast as the internet. In terms of effectiveness, the planning and positioning school must move towards being responsible for performance and results. Doing planning also requires implementation and execution, which may be a weakness for some brand positioning planners. The era of mass communication and educating the market is over. In the future, brands will no longer bear the function of consumer education; they can only represent the trends and values of circles and precise groups, which is also the trend and direction of the internet. The economic situation is poor, business owners don't have more funds to invest, and are unwilling to spend large amounts on advertising. This requires planning to be short, flat, and fast, which is also the future direction of planning transformation. Of course, we're not saying traditional planning is useless, but it needs to keep up with customer needs and market changes, truly creating value for customers. Finally, brand strategy and positioning are still very necessary. If the direction is wrong, no matter how explosive the product, it will only be further from the goal. Attachment: "An Open Letter to Jin Cuodao: Positioning is Poison, Explosive Products Die!" (Excerpt)
1Products and minds; cognition and facts
The former is the issue of products and brands. It's not that products are unimportant, but based on the product, after finding the pain point, you also need to find the itch point. This is brand building, not separating from the product, but giving the product a soul. As for cognition and facts, it's not about ignoring facts, but adapting to and understanding facts. Educating consumers and changing customer cognition is very difficult. Changing customer cognition through advertising is precisely not what "positioning" advocates. This is another thing Mr. Jin attributes to positioning! Mr. Jin thinks the core of positioning is changing cognition, which is completely wrong; the core of explosive products is experience, but how is Xiaomi phone doing now? Products are low-end, and explosive product strategy can't change the decline because the brand has problems. Xiaomi is synonymous with low-end phones; no explosive product can help. That's the cruel reality.
2Trust credentials and value anchors
Mr. Jin Cuodao also says the essence of positioning is trust credentials. Too many essences, I don't know what the essence is anymore, hehe. He thinks positioning is created by marketing and advertising. Then I ask: What made Xiaomi successful? On the surface, it's word-of-mouth and experience, but in reality, it's built through marketing, just using internet methods. So from this perspective, Deng Delong is right. It's not a pledge, not a trust credential, but providing differentiated value to customers. The so-called value anchor is a variant of positioning thinking, just narrowed down to the low-dimensional level of user pain points, product selling points, and market ignition. The more you do it, the more you go back, back to the primitive forest.
3The drawbacks of explosive product thinking
Explosive product thinking is equivalent to making a product plan and launch plan. Actually, I don't want to criticize this "product plan and launch plan." But as a group friend said, it's a one-shot deal, sell and done. As for what happens to this product later, they don't care; just launch another product. In the future, the enterprise's annual task is to find pain points and launch new products, and that's enough. Forget about strategy and brand. This is the real drawback of explosive product thinking. Explosive products are not strategy, but enterprise tactics. Positioning is not the only winning factor, but it does become a part of brand strategy. Explosive products cannot bear the heavy responsibility of supporting the overall development of the enterprise. Mr. Jin Cuodao's explosive products, simply put, are selling points and gimmicks, like "Charge for 5 minutes, talk for 2 hours," which can only fool novices. New Food Era · New Distribution —— 2016 China "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum —— This is a grand event focused on how the FMCG industry's channels will change under the trend of internet+ transformation Conference Agenda 09:00-09:30 Registration 09:30-09:35 Host opening 09:35-10:05 2016 China FMCG Industry Trend Analysis Report - Zhao Bo 10:05-10:25 FMCG Enterprise Transformation Strategy and Path - Liu Chunxiong 10:25-10:45 Opportunities and Challenges Brought by FMCG Channel Transformation - Field 365 CEO Liu Zhao 10:45-11:25 Alibaba Retail Link All-round Empowerment - Alibaba Retail Link Guo Kunkun 11:25-12:00 Roundtable Forum - Brand Transformation: Improvement vs. Reconstruction? (Guests TBD) 12:00-13:30 Lunch 13:30-14:00 Distributor Transformation: City Distribution Trend Development - Weijie City Distribution CEO Wang Qi 14:00-14:30 Roundtable Forum - Why Should Distributors Transform into Logistics? 14:30-15:00 Detailed Explanation of Zhongshang Huimin's One Machine, Two Wings Strategy - Zhongshang Huimin Vice President Su Xiaoxin 15:00-15:30 Detailed Explanation of Zhanghe Cloud Factory Strategy - Zhanghe Tianxia Yang Lixiang (Content TBD) 15:30-16:00 Supply Chain Finance as a Lubricant for B2B Driving Traditional Business - 51 Order CEO Chen Xian 16:00-16:30 2B Investment Principles and Ideas - ZhenFund Founder Xu Xiaoping (Guest TBD) 16:30-17:00 Small Retail, Big Opportunity: China's Retail Transformation and Upgrade - Yurun Group E-commerce Division General Manager Wang Jianfeng 17:00-17:30 Roundtable Forum - Who is the King of FMCG B2B Models (Guests TBD) 18:00-20:00 Dinner For manufacturer and distributor friends who want to transform, this grand event is not to be missed. Interested friends can long press the QR code below or click "Read Original" to register. Registration: Long press the QR code below or click "Read Original" ↓↓↓ Click "Read Original" [Register]