Dialogue With Focus Media Jiang Nanchun: A Generation Has A Generation Of Opportunities

Twenty six years ago, when he was still studying in the Chinese Department of East China Normal University, he liked Kundera's book "unbearable lightness in life". In this philosophical novel, there are two kinds of fear in life. One is space. When a person is born, as an independent and tiny individual, he is full of fear in the face of huge space. The other is time. Human's time is a one-way flow. Once gone, it runs to the end, and the end point is death.

How to overcome these two fears? Becoming a part of the world and creating experience and value higher than death may be the ultimate answer and solution. With this kind of thinking, after nearly 10 years of hard work in the advertising industry, Jiang nanchun in 2003 aimed at elevator advertising and founded focus media. In July 2005, focus media, which was founded only two years ago, was listed on NASDAQ at a price of $17 per share. Overnight, Jiang nanchun's fortune soared to $270 million. In 2015, focus media was listed on the back door of a shares. As of June 18, its total market value reached 133.7 billion yuan.

"The most important thing is to understand the people's heart and human nature, which is the same as the commercial value." Recently, in the headquarters building of Changning District, Shanghai, Jiang nanchun, founder and chairman of focus media, once again talked to the 21st century economic reporter. He used subversive innovation to change the way advertisements reach the audience. He thought about how to make the passive advertising model grow more branches on the basis of the existing 310 million mainstream consumers in cities.

Facing the Z generation, which is threatened by the mobile Internet, Jiang nanchun believes that every era has its own dividend, and each generation of entrepreneurs has different opportunities“ The future direction of entrepreneurship is not necessarily focused on material and consumer demand, but more on spiritual breakthrough. "

"Reverse" innovation

Jiang nanchun was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. When he was the president of the student union, he began to work part-time in advertising sales, earning 300 yuan a month. In addition to helping customers to do advertising planning, writing copy, but also to the building inside the street publicity.

In 1993, the advertising agency where Jiang nanchun worked earned 4 million yuan a year, of which 1.5 million yuan was contributed by him. As a result, he decided to go it alone and set up an advertising company with his classmates. In 1998, the company's annual revenue exceeded 50 million yuan, occupying 95% of Shanghai's it advertising agency market.

Finally, he was only 30 years old when he aimed at the elevator advertising scene and set up focus media.

In 2012, Jiang decided to privatize the company. In May 2013, focus media officially completed its privatization. In the eyes of the outside world, it is just a retreat after the cold eye of beauty. But afterwards, the craziness of a shares proved that focus media stood on the air outlet. Building media advertising is full of every corner of the city life circle.

"At that time, it was the era of television, and the mainstream was the mass media. Later, we started the focus media. Our innovation path, in short, is to go against the mainstream, reverse innovation. Because we feel that the crowd is becoming more and more finely divided, you must use different and accurate media to cover different groups. At that time, the media focused on content, and later upgraded to channel Jiang nanchun explained that geography is important, but the places people often go to must be the way home and work. You don't have to go to the Bund or Xujiahui, but you do use the elevator.

This innovative thinking made him realize that the core of outdoor advertising is not necessarily the geographical location as the center, but the "people" life circle as the core. At the same time, Jiang nanchun also captured the great changes brought about by China's urbanization in the future. In the process of continuous building construction, the elevator must become the infrastructure of the city.

"No one will take the initiative to see advertising, advertising is an anti human thing, I have been studying a topic, when will consumers take the initiative to see advertising? Later, it was found that only when waiting for the elevator to take the elevator, consumers would take the initiative to read the advertisement. " Jiang nanchun jokingly said, for example, I sit in the elevator with you, can I stare at you? It seems very inappropriate. What's a good way to resolve the embarrassment? The appearance of advertisement at this time has actually solved the embarrassment and boredom of confined space.

save against a rainy day

It is with insight into a detail that focus media has gradually accumulated profound channel barriers after decades of cultivation in the offline advertising market. In 2018, after Alibaba's 10 billion investment in focus media became the second largest shareholder, focus media opened the road of digital transformation and refined operation.

At present, with the help of data and cloud computing capabilities, focus media can accurately distribute personalized advertisements to different buildings, effectively reach target groups, and improve the conversion rate of customer advertising. Through the analysis of business district, property price and building age, we can judge what kind of products residents are more interested in.

"We have occupied 80% of the office buildings and 70% of the apartment buildings with elevators in China, but the channel advantage is not enough. In terms of distribution mode, we are personalized and cloud push. For example, for a high-end milk powder brand, she can choose to put it into the elevators in the residential area where the house price is more than 80000. For example, Gome Suning can choose the residential area with occupancy rate lower than 30%. Through accurate label analysis, users can be reached most effectively. " Jiang nanchun, for example, concludes that the technical threshold does not occur in a day, but accumulates continuously.

In his opinion, in the future digital era, the advertising process will also form a more convenient and efficient process. The millions of small and micro enterprises that could not be served in the past can become the source of performance growth in the future.

According to the financial report, in the first quarter of 2021, focus media achieved revenue of 3.593 billion yuan, an increase of 85.35% over the same period of last year, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 1.368 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 3511.27%.

Economic recovery needs a process, and advertising demand is declining. What is supporting the growth of focus media? In the impact of the wave of mobile Internet, can focus media still remain invincible?

"The epidemic has accelerated the digitization of all walks of life. In the future, self-service advertising will enable more small and micro enterprises or life service enterprises to make limited investment in focus media. In the past, we could not serve small and micro enterprises purely by manpower. Therefore, we can see that every innovation of digitization has brought new growth space. " Jiang nanchun disclosed that 2019 is an important transformation of customer structure diversification. In the past, they all prefer to the new economic model, and the proportion of Internet companies is relatively high. In the past two years, they have consciously transformed into new consumer brands.

By the fourth quarter of 2019, among the focus media building media products, the revenue of advertisers from the consumer goods industry will increase by 26.5%, accounting for 35.45% of the total revenue; The revenue of advertisers in the Internet industry increased by 45.92%, accounting for 27.13% of the total revenue. To a certain extent, it also avoids many risks.

Where is the new bonus?

Jiang nanchun has always agreed with Amazon founder Bezos's judgment that "it is better to think about the changes in the retail industry than to study what changes the retail industry will encounter". Back to the essence of communication, we still need to find the constant contact point of consumers. Embracing change sounds right, but the question is, is it easy to embrace change?

The advertising industry is facing a deeper change. The overall advertising market has entered a stable development period. The early mobile Internet has brought about the online transfer of advertising, the fire of live delivery with goods and short video marketing, showing the power of transformation type advertising and effect advertising to the market.

At present, as the online traffic dividend fades, offline value is reassessed, and resource flows are redistributed, and the advertising industry has also ushered in a structural reshuffle.

How to deal with the era of traffic fragmentation? In Jiang nanchun's view, online and offline are not antagonistic, this is one of the two sides of the advertising industry. Online traffic relies on discount promotion to promote direct purchase behavior; Offline traffic helps the brand detonate and complements each other“ When a large amount of marketing budget flows back to brand advertising, offline media constantly meet consumers in life scenes through building screens and cinema screens. This is a space where consumers will actively receive information. "

He even believes that the mobile Internet not only does not have an impact on focus media, but also highlights the value of focus focused passive advertising. It used to be microblog, now it's wechat. These media have been changing, but things like going home, going to work and watching movies will not change. The forced high-frequency display formed in the closed passive living space can greatly enhance the brand's ability to detonate.

In the first quarter of 2021, the advertising market as a whole will recover, and the elevator media will pick up the fastest. According to CTR data, the number of elevator posters increased by 89.6% year-on-year in the first quarter, far higher than the recovery level of television, newspapers, magazines and other media channels.

What is the direction of innovation and growth in the future? Jiang nanchun aims at new consumption and domestic market“ Maybe 80% of our services are domestic brands. With the rise of China's manufacturing industry, the quality of our products has been excellent, and we understand the needs of Chinese people better. The recognition degree of the new generation of users for the whole domestic brand is increasing significantly. This is a good opportunity for the rise of domestic brand, but it needs to transform from product advantage to cognitive advantage. "

Over the past year, new brands such as Yuanqi forest, SKG, huaxizi, Winona and zihi pot have gone from flow to brand through new media marketing mode. At the same time, focus media has also built a focus platform in South Korea, Singapore and other places, and set up basic facilities to help the rise of domestic products in China and the world.

In this process, microblog, twitter, wechat and so on have become important channels. However, it is an indisputable fact that the traffic cost is gradually increasing“ Online traffic becomes more expensive. On the one hand, the traffic dividend ends, and the more important problem is that the traffic is too large. It's like you make a sound in space, it's hard to be heard. " Jiang nanchun pointed out that if the mobile Internet is compared to the sky, if the brand wants to be heard and seen, unless you are a lightning bolt, you are some small stars in space, which is insignificant.

For entrepreneurs, the competitive environment is very different from what it was 20 years ago. Is it harder? Jiang nanchun, who is still active in the front line of advertising sales, finds that this young man may find that his demand for material is not so strong, and his demand for spiritual entertainment is becoming stronger and stronger. Therefore, every generation has every generation's opportunity and every generation has its own bonus.

Judging from his own experience, entrepreneurship is still full of great potential and opportunities.

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