Is It Really The Future Of Advertising Industry?

What kind of advertising and marketing do we need?
About three or four years ago, when the problem appeared in advertisers and 4A agents, discussions often focused on big data, algorithms, procedural buying, digitalization, and so on. Now, to be precise, perhaps since last year, the focus of such topics may soon become: can we bring goods or how to bring goods?
In many cases, this trend has even affected other links in the marketing industry chain. Talking about the commercial value of a star, does he bring goods? Talking about the value of a social media platform, does it bring goods? About the value of a KOL, do you bring it?
Carrying goods is the phenomenon that the use or recommendation of a star or public figure on a commodity causes consumers to follow suit and form a trend. It has long been used as a Chinese term. It has been used mostly in the field of logistics. It is hard to prove that it is only a marketing term, but it seems to be the ultimate meaning of marketing.
Now, carrying goods has developed into an independent marketing tool. Many brands even have an equal trend in bringing goods and marketing. As advertisers attach importance to goods, advertising companies and media channels have to divert attention.
In 2015, Gu Ruyi, managing director of media content of the public lion, felt for the first time that the "bring goods" brought about changes in the advertising industry. Star Yang Mi was named Queen of goods because of the consumer imitation of street filming. At that time, Yang Mi was not the spokesman for the brand but played the role of spokesperson, although in the past a long time, product sales volume was not an important indicator for the spokesperson. Soon after the label was posted on a star like a brand friend, the brand new partnership between celebrities and brands was named.
After the normalization of the stars, the airport became the photo source: YiMagazine
In the same year, double 11, the first generation of net red Zhang Dayi's Taobao shop got the sales champion of women's clothing category, and its micro-blog fans exceeded one million. From star to net red, taking goods gradually changed the marketing way of the brand, the way of advertising companies and the way consumers buy.
Zhang Dayi brought goods to the listing company by bringing goods to the market: YiMagazine
Li Wei, 24 years old, lives in Shanghai. It is her custom to visit Taobao every night before going to bed. Many times, this behavior does not have a clear shopping objective. A live Taobao broadcast, the famous "bring goods" anchor Li Jiaqi is recommending a lipstick, "Oh my God", and Li Jiaqi exclaimed after the test. That color really looks good on his fair face, and the price is 20 yuan cheaper than the counter. Li Wei quickly clicks on the payment, though she didn't think she needed more lipstick 15 minutes ago. Her dressing table has been filled with lipsticks of various colors, chopped men's color, maple leaf red, bean paste and pumpkin color. Several of them had been used once and never opened.
Li Wei, who is currently a graduate student, has limited living expenses per month. In order to spend money on the knife edge, she will go online to see KOL recommendation before buying skin care products and cosmetics. "They have so many people concerned that they will not deceive people." Li Wei told the first financial magazine.
Is KOL really not cheating?
At the other end of the screen, Li Jiaqi sits in front of the camera while he tries to color and keeps talking to the camera. "Buy it!" Like a command, the purchase link appears on the lower left corner of the screen. It is not only consumers but also brands that have received orders.
The real-time sales figures affect the content of Li Jiaqi's next sentence, and also affect the brand's nerves. Li Wei will not know how this lipstick was picked from Li Jiaqi in hundreds of products and appeared before the camera. Although Li Jiaqi did not say anything in public, he was very incitement to say 1 to 10. Every live broadcast is a carefully prepared performance, with only one aim - to sell more products. He must ensure that he carries the goods.
In marketing revolution 4, Philip Kotler, a marketing scholar, wrote that when customers choose goods, they are mainly based on their personal preferences and social conformity psychology. The high connectivity of today's world makes the weight of herd mentality increase, and customers pay more and more attention to others' opinions, share and integrate their opinions. Users exchange brand and business experience with each other. They are no longer passive targets, but active media that disseminate product information. The Internet, especially social media, provides the tools and platforms for such transfer.
In China, relying on the WeChat public number and the birth of micro-blog network red, in the mobile Internet era, an unprecedented powerful appeal, small red book, jitter, Taobao live broadcast and other platforms to further expand its influence.
In the past two years, L'OREAL group has made the fastest selling top ten cosmetics brands. The main advertising budget is spent on the flow of social media. From WeChat, micro-blog to Xiaohong book, Taobao live broadcast, shaking voice, and then to the fast hand, the channel is sinking more and more. L'OREAL's KOL management tool manages more than 8000 KOL accounts in China to meet the needs of different brands and products. "Using big data to analyze who their fans are, whether they match the target population of the brand, analyze the conversion rate in the past, and ensure that the most suitable KOL is found." Wu Hanwen, chief digital marketing officer of L'OREAL, said (Hagen W W lferth) in a written reply to "first finance" magazine.
Let Gu Ruyi feel the magic of another marketing event occurred in 2017. The fashion blogger Rebecca and MINI jointly launched the MINI YOURS Caribbean Blue Limited Edition, claiming that 100 custom cars were sold out in 4 minutes. No one can give accurate figures if we want to trace the number of real sales that ribecca has brought to MINI. But this does not affect it as a successful marketing plan, but the whole plan seems to highlight the appeal of ribeca, and for MINI's appeal to enhance the brand's voice, after all, the public's concerns are all in the seemingly unbelievable numbers of "100 cars, 4 minutes".
This incident left a deep impression on Gu Ruyi. Since then, advertisers have been trying to replicate MINI to achieve similar sales data. Regardless of whether the sales volume is true, Gu Ruyi thought it was unreasonable. "When we communicate with customers, we will give a most basic goal to achieve, sales volume can be a reference, but we will not turn it into a hard indicator of final assessment. Advertisers want to end up selling, because this is the most direct thing they can see, but all sales are KPI, unfair and inappropriate. Gu Ruyi said.
But advertisers over sell sales, so that advertising departments have to bear the pressure of sales. Wang Yijun, CEO, feels that customers are increasingly demanding data. Online dissemination makes data traceable, clicks and sales volume become important indicators, but the digital platform is "fragmented", it is difficult to use the same dimension to judge multidimensional data. "This is a strange circle." She said to the first financial magazine.
In September 2018, Li Jiaqi, a live anchor of Taobao, sold 380 yuan lipsticks for a live test, and realized sales of 3 million 530 thousand yuan in 5.5 hours.
Li Jiaqi can be regarded as this year's phenomenal red net. Source: YiMagazine
"The biggest difference between Li Jiaqi and his net red is that he is out of the loop." Wang Yijun said. The so-called "circle" refers to Li Jiaqi's continuous ability to carry goods outside his fans. It relies on him to find a way to communicate with consumers.
"You can feel his truth." Li Wei recalled the first time to see Li Jiaqi's live broadcast. That live broadcast Li Jiaqi directly said the shortcomings of a product, so that we do not buy it, this behavior impressed Li Wei, she found Li Jiaqi in a "friend with Tucao" like a sense of intimacy. The reality and personalization brought by live broadcast just make up for the weak trust connection between the electronic business platform and consumers.
Over the past year, Wang Yijun has been involved in many brands' cooperation with KOL, such as Li Jiaqi. With the improvement of KOL popularity, cooperation requirements are becoming more stringent. The customer's request is clear, that is, sell as much as possible during the live time. At the same time, the requirement of head KOL is also very clear -- low price and absolute low price. "They are extremely sensitive to price, and they will ask you not to have any lower price activity within 3 months," Wang told the first financial magazine. "Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya will even compete for this product for 57 yuan or 59 yuan."
Low prices will attract a large number of consumers in a short time, but when prices become the biggest attraction of a commodity, it may not be a good thing for advertisers. At this time, live broadcast is like a coupon that is valid for only two hours, and it will expire once it expires. Wang Yijun tried to make two touches of the traffic obtained in the live broadcast, and the conversion rate was almost zero. When the live broadcast ends and prices rise, consumers lose interest in commodities. In the long run, long-term discount sales must be a consumption of brands.
Carrying goods thus becomes a subtle game and balance between brand sales and image. Every advertiser is looking forward to every sales budget that can bring both sales volume and brand voice. Unfortunately, most of these two things are like fish and bear paws. Under the pressure of performance, the balance tends to be easier. Sales volume is the most direct and easiest to monitor for all indicators of marketing effectiveness.
Over time, people seem to have forgotten one thing. Sales volume is not the sole purpose of marketing.
Philip Kotler divides marketing into 4 stages: Marketing 1, how to better realize the "transaction" problem, namely, from products to profits; marketing 2 is oriented by consumers, not only requires products to have functional differences, but also requires enterprises to convey feelings and images to consumers; marketing 3 is driven by values; and to marketing 4, enterprises shift the focus of marketing to interaction with consumers, so that consumers can more participate in the creation of marketing value. In other words, marketing is born to create value for enterprises. It creates profits while creating deep connections between enterprises and consumers through the transmission of emotions and values.
From the perspective of advertising theory, the one-sided pursuit of sales results often lead consumers to turn a blind eye to other elements such as popularity, reputation, loyalty, brand association and so on, and eventually lead to the collapse of brands. "A large part of advertising is to create brand image. If sales volume becomes the only KPI, it is hard to arouse the spiritual resonance." Gu Ruyi said.
In the past two years, Gu Ruyi felt that the way of advertising companies worked from functional subdivision to re integration. The difference was that the advertising companies in the past were guided by creativity, and the integration at this stage was more KPI. On the other hand, inside the advertisers, the functions of marketing departments and sales departments of many companies are becoming more and more convergent. The marketing department directly backs KPI, and the most fashionable management theory is to replace CMO with CGO (chief growth officer).
The problem is, all departments are pursuing sales volume, who will be the brand? "Only selling sales will only make the brand more and more narrow. Only a good brand will take care of both sides," Gu Ruyi said. "Advertisers also know that the tasks of the content department, the media department, the marketing department and the public relations department are different, but everyone is looking at the most direct marketing transformation."
Gu Ruyi's worries reflect the fact that taking goods is the result of conspiracy between advertisers and advertising agencies, but people who are contributing to it are also tired of it. Advertisers and advertising companies are being pushed to a certain extent.
One of the negative results is that advertisers lose certain dominance in marketing. For example, live broadcast is often uncontrollable. Wang Yijun found that many anchors do not speak in advance. She even encountered a situation where the anchor temporarily changed the main product, resulting in an instant sale of another product that was less stocked.
But on the other hand, it is more and more difficult to find the right KOL. Sales volume is the demand of advertisers, but KOL is actually a personal brand. When more and more brands are following suit, KOL is also becoming more and more critical about cooperation. "The location is slightly different or he thinks there is a risk that he will not answer." Zhou Tong, head of public relations new media, told the first financial magazine. Zhou fan has worked in the new media department of KOL for more than 5 years, and has docked hundreds of KOL. She found that many well-known KOL brands do not take up new domestic brands, but only big brands.
Gu Ruyi also met with advertisers who wanted to talk directly to KOL about sales but rejected. "Unless the KOL itself is positioned as a sale, many people will not accept direct sales." Gu Ruyi said. In particular, KOL, which is based on the WeChat public number, demands higher control over content and tends to cooperate in a fixed remuneration way.
Zhou fan has worked with ribecca for many times. She revealed that the current advertising quotes of ribeca are close to second tier stars. That means finding KOL on the head can not save too much budget for the brand. If KOL is just taking the goods, it will be too low for the brand.
Of course, as competition becomes more and more intense, Internet Hong and associated MCN institutions are also evolving.
On the one hand, the overall quality of KOL is improving. Zhou fan found that over the past two years more and more overseas students have joined the camp of KOL. These people generally have good content making ability, and their taste and personality are outstanding. MCN BeautyQ KOL is one of them. Yi was originally an international student from University of Cambridge. He shared beauty techniques with B station and accumulated a large number of fans.
On the other hand, MCN agencies are also trying to provide creative services. "If MCN institutions can only help KOL to talk about contracts, the value created is limited. It is more important to provide support from all sides in the process of KOL advertising creativity. " Lu Hao, CEO of fast BeautyQ, told the first financial magazine.
Moreover, building brand in social media channels is also a challenge for advertisers themselves. In traditional channels, advertisers only need to create a content and have strong control over the content, but in the extremely fragmented social media channel, brand values will be re interpreted and packaged by 100 KOL and then transmitted to consumers.
And some brands that suddenly explode with goods may not have enough time to consider the long-term brand building problem. This also shows that carrying goods can make a product become explosive, but can not give it long life.
At the same time, the consumers in the goods chain are not static. In the first two years, Xiao Hong's book almost covered Li Wei's life, from eating, make-up and travel to KOL's recommendation. But since she knows a lot of content is advertising, she has become cautious. Now she will learn about make-up and skin care, and know what products are suitable for her.
Wang Yijun and Gu Ruyi, who work in advertising agencies, are looking forward to the day when the market is back on track. "The development of new brands is not a matter of overnight. It is unfair for a backend product development and marketing ideas to be pushed down once it can not be burst." Wang Yijun said. Gu Ruyi believes that perhaps two years later, advertisers will re-examine the relationship between sales and marketing, when the end of the balance touches bottom, that is, when it rebounds.
Back to the Ogilvy rule mentioned in this article, although helping customers achieve sales and create value is indeed the purpose of the advertising industry, Ogilvy himself will not want to see that the whole industry has become the theory of sales only. Even if he left behind the historical background of his saying, then the advertising industry in the United States had gone too far in pursuit of artistic beauty or creativity and deviated from products and brands. Ogilvy does not necessarily mean the former.