Author丨Nei SanjunEditor丨Tangerine"Excess" is a common problem faced by every industry in China in the past year. According to the mainstream authoritative views of academia and industry, in 2024, the mainstream consumer groups will still be saturated due to the general environment.
Compared with other industries, FMCG, an ancient and mature industry, due to its wide coverage of the population and low entry threshold, the moat between various categories and brands is not high, and the problem of "excess" is more serious and has appeared earlier. For example, in the dairy industry, due to the surplus of raw milk in the upstream and the lack of consumption in the downstream, the phenomenon of "pouring milk and killing cows" appeared in some regional markets as early as the end of 2022. By 2023, the surplus and the resulting chain reaction will begin to explode in various industries such as beverages, snack foods, condiments, etc. Among them, the condiment industry, like the condiment industry, will be in a state of destocking throughout 2023, and Haitian Flavor, the industry leader that has always been known as "sauce grass", has also ushered in the first decline in revenue.
In the face of surplus, what FMCG companies need to do is to give up illusions, abandon path dependence, and change their thinking. Toshifumi Suzuki, the founder of Japan's 7-Eleven, said in his book "The Philosophy of Retail" that "there is only one reason why products are unsalable and business is sluggish, and that is that the current way of working can no longer meet the changes of the times and consumer needs."
Marketing, as an important part of the FMCG market cycle, also needs to change its thinking. In the incremental era, advertising is effective when you close your eyes; The stock era is the real test of investment vision and strength. Compared with other industries with high barriers, FMCG products have a low threshold and rapid product iteration, which tests the differentiated creativity of marketing. In 2024, in the foreseeable red sea, what kind of marketing path should FMCG find to gain a little increment in the large stock market.
The more popular it is, the more concerned it is about individual emotions.
The more high-end, the more we must build a first-class value barrier.
At present, it is the New Year's Festival, and all major FMCG brands have invested manpower, material and financial resources in marketing and grabbing the market. How to attract the attention of consumers in the overwhelming advertising and then be selected by them is a test of the brand's creativity.
According to the data released by mainstream e-commerce platforms, from the perspective of the number of people and GMV, in the shopping tide of this year's New Year Festival, the number of transactions of young and middle-aged consumers aged 25-34 has reached 42%, which is becoming the core purchasing power of the New Year Festival. When the main consumer has changed, the marketing strategy of brands must also change accordingly. At present, consumers are in an abundant material environment, and for fast-moving consumer goods such as food and beverages, the consumption threshold is not high. In this case, it is necessary to see who can provide consumers with a higher dimension of emotional value and find the emotional resonance point of deep linking.
Combing through the successful cases of Spring Festival marketing over the years, Nei Sanjun found that the so-called personalization and attractiveness, in the final analysis, is to do a good job of universal insight, find answers in life, pay attention to the most genuine emotional demands of each individual, and dig out the needs of ordinary people from their daily lives. After all, whether it is food or FMCG, it has always been closely linked to the lives of ordinary people.
For example, during the Spring Festival of 2023, Ziyan Baiwei Chicken, a listed company of marinated products, and Tencent News jointly created "The Taste of the World", with the three film emperor Wang Jingchun as the link, aimed the camera at three ordinary people, who have their own predicaments, as well as their own perseverance and beliefs. In the short film, their attitude towards life is hard work, so that everyone who works the ordinary road is encouraged and emotionally resonated.
From the perspective of communication, this short film accurately captures the emotional touchpoints of the public, and the warmth and expectations for a better life conveyed are in line with the atmosphere of the Spring Festival, and well link the brand and the public's emotional points. Judging from the final effect, the overall volume of "The Taste of the World" reached 5.35 million+, and the overall coverage of the whole network was 3600 million+.
The long-term value lies in the fact that this short film effectively conveys the temperature of the brand, and it is also a deep exploration and pursuit of brand value: no matter when, Ziyan Baiwei Chicken is always guarding every family and individual as a companion. Just as its brand slogan says, "Take Ziyan and go home for dinner". This kind of companionship is not only a physical companionship of Ziyan Baiwei Chicken's 50,000+ stores across the country, but also a kind of companionship in the affectionate sense, "guarding the taste of home with deliciousness".
If it is said that daily foods that are so closely connected to consumers' lives require such attentive content to deeply link consumers, then the marketing of mid-to-high-end brands is more of a test of skill. After all, due to the impact of the environment, the trend of consumption downgrade and low price is becoming more and more obvious, and many FMCG categories and brands have started a battle in pursuit of short-term performance, which has caused a lot of damage to some mid-to-high-end brands.
For mid-to-high-end brands, in order to avoid struggling in the quagmire of differentiated competition, in addition to maintaining differentiated innovation in products, it is also necessary to establish emotional resonance with high-income and high-net-worth individuals through high-quality marketing content, build a brand positioning that is consistent with quality, and consolidate the "value moat" of the brand.
Taking La Mer as an example, as a high-end skin care brand, its focus group is often people with high income and high-quality pursuits, and the consumption decisions of such groups are often more rational. This determines that the marketing activities of brands such as La Mer must either not be done, or they must have a sense of value and influence.
It is based on the above considerations that La Mer, which originates from the deep sea, has joined forces with Tencent News, which is highly influential and credible, to land a lot of creative content on the World Ocean Sunset on World Oceans Day. During the event, not only used the influence of Tencent News to invite celebrities from all walks of life to participate in the live broadcast, share stories with the ocean, but also used the Tencent News Matrix to communicate collaboratively and bring the whole people to the coastline. During the live broadcast, the number of fans of the brand's ** account increased by more than 25%, and it received praise from many fans.
At the same time, users can also donate steps online through the WeChat mini-program to redeem kilometers for protecting the coastline. In short, it is to use in-depth content and multi-** forms to stimulate users' emotional identity and active participation.
Looking back at the entire marketing campaign of La Mer, it is not difficult to find the importance of the communication platform, which is not only reflected in the integration of content and resources, but also in the fit between the positioning of the platform and the brand tonality. With years of in-depth cultivation of high-quality content, Tencent News has gathered a large number of high-quality and high-value people, and this advantage has finally helped the influence of La Mer's event to accurately expand to the high-end consumer circle.
The more "short frequency and fast", the more "precise and thick" marketing must be.
Of course, FMCG categories, especially food FMCG, naturally have the immediacy and randomness of consumption, such as beverages and leisure snacks, and the characteristics of consumers' impulse purchases are very obvious. This determines that even mid-to-high-end brands have to consider the frequency of brand exposure and maintain long-lasting and effective communication with target consumer groups.
How? Continuing from the above, we should pay attention to individual emotions, that is, link product consumption with people's emotional consumption, so that brands and products have longer and deeper consumption significance. This is also the core idea of emotional marketing. In the dazzling array of shelves, users prefer brands that are closer to their "emotional distance", that is, the ones that know TA better.
Dove, as one of the first overseas chocolate brands to enter the Chinese market, has always maintained a high degree of favorability among consumer groups. On the one hand, thanks to its high product barriers and industry status, it is naturally indispensable to brand marketing. In the more than 30 years since entering the Chinese market, Dove has not aged like some brands, but has always been active, deeply aware of user demands, and maintained in-depth communication and emotional resonance with them. An important embodiment of this at the marketing level is that Dove is particularly good at "playing" with users, linking products with self, love, family, friendship, etc., so that "every year is blessed" and "indulgence in silkiness" are given different meanings.
Dove, which has been in the Chinese market for 30 years, has always maintained the thinking and pursuit of "pleasure", resonating with the mood of the times. In September 23, Dove and Tencent News released the "2023 "Endorphins" Youth Insight based on the theme of "Doing the Most of Pleasure" and based on the creativity of data fermentation, which opened up the inner world and emotional status of contemporary young people, and analyzed the needs of the spirit of the times. Related content: The whole network total**3900 million+, *interpretation*** volume 6.5 million+.
In addition, Dove also used the influence of Tencent News to invite academic experts, KOLs, and authorities to interpret the content of the report, answer questions for young people from the psychological level, and help them build a more positive sense of pleasure. In this process, the emotional value of young consumer groups has been paid attention to, and has been widely disseminated through Tencent News's strong channel ecological resources, and finally caused a wide range of emotional resonance on social platforms, and Dove's business and social image have also been further recognized by young consumer groups.
In fact, marketing by publishing reports, ** and other means has become very common in recent years. First, such marketing tactics can be more customized; Second, it can better reflect the brand's "understanding" of users and the industry. In this case, it is particularly important to choose the right platform with social credibility, and only such a platform can be qualified to endorse in-depth content and be more convincing to the public.
Nei Sanjun noticed that in addition to Dove, another well-known snack brand Oreo has cooperated with Tencent News with similar in-depth boutique content.
On Children's Day in 2021, Oreo and Tencent News Gu Yu conducted a survey on nearly 3,000 groups of families, focusing on urban children whose parents were caught in the 996 wave and lacked parent-child companionship, and had in-depth insight into their living and learning status, and finally released the "Urban 996 Children's Growth Status Report", which is of great sociological reference significance.
The content related to the theme of the report is not only presented in a special area and in-depth angle on Tencent News, but Oreo also shoots relevant public welfare short films, which are disseminated and spread through Tencent's Moments, ** accounts and other ** resources, which has aroused strong resonance among the majority of "996" migrant workers and also made the group of "urban 996 children" get social attention. In this process, the brand also cooperated with Tencent Charity, China Children and Teenagers' Association and other public welfare organizations to launch a number of offline public welfare activities, so that brand marketing can be implemented and more warm.
In the above case, Tencent News, as an authoritative information platform, has exerted its content co-creation and resource integration capabilities, and has worked with brands to play a 1+1>2 effect. Of course, this is related to Tencent News's strong content genes and resource ecology.
First, as a professional information content platform, Tencent News has a mature production and publicity system in the past 20 years of development, whether it is the concern for the underlying issues of the society or the control of professional content in different fields.
Second, Tencent News has always provided the public with a sense of information security with its professional, reliable and timely reporting capabilities on hot information. The credibility of this platform will also give brand marketing bonuses in the process of cooperation with brands, transition to brand value, and help brands achieve value breakthroughs in the industry. This is also the unique value of authoritative news platforms compared with ordinary communication platforms when doing marketing. According to the State Information Center's "2021 China's Internet Social Value", Tencent News' network development index ranks first in business.
Third, Tencent News can rely on the power of the platform to involve more external resources such as public welfare organizations and social organizations, and rely on Tencent's ecological matrix to carry out multi-party communication and expansion, so as to expand the brand's influence in more consumer circles.
In Nei Sanjun's view, it is often more reliable for large companies to do marketing and choose a platform that has credibility and can co-create content with them and has the ability to smoothly implement content ideas than to choose a platform that can only do communication. After all, in this era of vigorous development of information and self-development, we do not lack communication channels, and high-quality content is not often available. In an industry with a rapid iteration speed, FMCG companies should consider the output capacity of high-quality content when conducting brand marketing, and establish deep resonance with consumers through high-quality content and authoritative platforms.