How to redefine brand value in the digital age? How to create an integrated online and offline experience? How to integrate the marketing value chain agency partners of the crowd effect? In response to these issues, which are of concern to both brand owners and agencies, at the 15th China Advertising and Branding Conference in 2016, Uniqlo Greater China said, "We've got a lot to learn from you, and we've got a lot to learn from you. At the 15th China Advertising & Branding Conference 2016, Pinhui Wu, Chief Marketing Officer of Uniqlo Greater China, and Meilan Jiang, CEO of Ferry Network Technology, had a wonderful conversation and shared their insights on brand value and fans in the digital era in a lively and interesting way. Brand Value and Fan Economy in the Digital Era?
Wu Pinhui, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of UNIQLO (Greater China), emphasized that the fan economy in the digital era is like falling in love, first of all, consumers should fall in love with the brand, and they are always very impressed. Ferry Network Technology CEO Jiang Meilan believes that the fan economy is actually to hide the function of the product in the back, so that the emotion rises to the first place, all do business, especially do brand marketing, must realize the true meaning of the fan economy.
Melan Jiang: digital marketing, it is very important to people, in the human point of view, the so-called fan economy and brand value economy in the end what kind of correlation?
Wu Pinhui: from three aspects: first, how the fan economy to help create value for the brand, is love, you buy the same thing does not necessarily love it, but you love the same thing, you will certainly buy it. The second is O2O, how to better connect online and offline services and experience integration and tandem. The third is the management and performance of agents, in the digital age, the need for each different industry talent, with teamwork and integration capabilities, but how to make such talent in the most effective, shortest time to make the most creative things, is the challenge of the core competencies of the team in the digital age.
Marketers are always talking about three things, what kind of brand you really are, why I want to date you, and why I will fall in love with you. How does Uniqlo do it online and offline, what's the secret? There are no shortcuts, it's all about doing the best you can every day! Doing digital in the digital age, do you have core competitiveness by doing content? Not really. Back to the essence of the business economy, why run a business? Why buy the clothes? Because you identify with this business and this brand value products and services.
How to land the brand? There are two pieces, one is the product, the other is the experience. In the digital age we should consider the most is the problem of product innovation, how to use technology, with creativity to do product innovation. Digital is only a means to enhance consumer and customer experience, digital is only a technique. Chinese people emphasize the art and the way in combat, the way is your essence, your strategy, and the art is your tactics. When you don't have the book or the Tao, it's just a messy fight. Like fighting in ancient times, if you don't have the Tao to fight, you can only attack with manpower, with artillery fire. The people who fought the best wars were the ones who gave up without fighting, which is the Tao and the Ben that Sun Tzu's Art of War talks about.
As an example, Uniqlo does not just sell fashion, but sells three things, one is the innovation of fabrics, the second is a very good price-performance ratio and simple classic design, and the third is the service experience, which is Uniqlo's Ben. We need fashion, we have fashionable products, but we don't just do fashion. Clothing can make you look good, it can keep you warm, it has a lot of utility, it's not just going to sell fashion and look good, that's the brand attitude of Uniqlo.
Successful brands can't just be bought without being loved
Melanie Chiang: Successful brands can't just be bought without being loved, and they can't just have customers without fans. How does Uniqlo manage to get people to buy your products and at the same time make them remember you and love you?
Wu Pinhui: What we do every day is to think about how to make consumers love you, love you more, love you all the time, and want to come to love you every day. 2015 UNIQLO and Disney have a cross-border cooperation of MAGICFORALL, Disney is a very creative company, UNIQLO is a clothing brand, our two brands work together in the hope of bringing this magic and fantasy to everyone. Disney is a very creative company, and Uniqlo is a clothing brand. In Uniqlo's flagship store on Huaihai Road in Shanghai, which is the largest in the world, we transformed one of the floors into a MAGICFORALL concept store, which is a perfect blend of Disney's magical elements and Uniqlo's LifeWear products. In terms of providing customer experience, this is a very new and good attempt.
In addition, it is how to bring customers creativity and a sense of beauty. A piece of clothing, worn on different people, out of the temperament is not the same, depending on whether you can handle this piece of clothing. The person who knows how to wear the clothes best is the one who wears the clothes on you, and it will help you to get more points, which is our creativity. In this campaign with Disney, we opened up a large space in our flagship store to do a MICKEY100 exhibition. MICKEY100 is designed by Disney with some independent designers, using 100 different shapes and raw materials to convey Mickey's creativity. We found a lot of young people, do very creative things, inspire their creativity, how to wear, how to match, a T-shirt you can wear very creative, express their own personality and style.
Uniqlo wants to do is through a LifeWear brand, with creative experience and clothing combination, to stimulate people's creativity of life, lifestyle, quality of life enjoyment. We want our customers to understand that clothing brings meaning to your life, not just warmth and good looks, but also a higher level of meaning is how to create a new creative, personalized lifestyle and life experience.
Celebrities or Netflix?
Melissa Jiang: Regarding celebrities and online celebrities, consumers may feel that celebrities are just a high-flying representative, while online celebrities are more grounded, and more people want him to know things that are close to their lives, and related to their own lives, before they want to try to do that. What do you think about the impact of celebrities and Netflix on sales?
Wu Pinhui: My view is that both celebrities and Netflix are important, but it depends on how you use them. A star has a high face value, while a web celebrity is more about his/her story, which may be funny or talented. We hope to find a point where not only the face value but also the story can be well combined. We are selling LifeWear clothing, which still needs to have a face value and be pleasing to the eye. But it's not enough to just have a face, other brands can do that too.
We think there are two kinds of fans, one is to say I love you every day, I am your fan, this is a typical. The other kind of fan is hidden, he usually does not loudly proclaim that he loves you, but is silently observing what you do for him. We call him? Opinion Leader's Suitable Life? story.
People often say that the Post-80s and Post-90s are different from the Post-60s and Post-70s, but are they really that different? We believe that human nature has a lot of requirements and pursuits are the same. For example, we all like good quality things, we all like to be able to express their own personality or attitude, we all want to spend 100 yuan to buy 10,000 yuan of value of the product or service, rather than spend 10,000 yuan to buy to wear the value of the money may be only 1,000 yuan. Consumers sometimes understand our products and services far better than we realize. For example, a customer talking about Uniqlo's Oxford spinning shirt collar design details compared to the standards of high-end luxury brands, I myself listened to the surprise is very surprised surprise, this customer is so understanding of our products, I am a great inspiration.
In fact, a lot of fans are hidden, the love for you is little by little in the accumulation. I don't know if they're opinion leaders, but I think they're also internet celebrities because they have a lot of followers in all fields, whether it's the financial media, or a gifted girl writer. Their stories, in different fields, are great, and to me they're just a more storytelling, more content-based Netflix. What we want to do is to share their LifeWear stories with a lot of people, and through their life values to tell people that clothing brings more to your life than just the good looks and function of the clothing itself, but also more stories and content that fit your life and make your life more exciting.
Thinking of you in the last mile? It's too late!
Melissa Chiang: I have always felt that SocialMedia should not be treated as a supplement to mass media, and that doing SocialMedia in this way is bound to be a failure. Do SocialMedia, in fact, is to find their own brand missionary, that is to say, consumers really like your brand, in daily life is the use of your brand, is really love you, he is your real KOL, rather than those big stars, these two are different. If it comes to the last mile before he thinks of you, it's actually too late, but if he doesn't even think of you in the last mile, it's hopeless. So in this perspective above, especially for the retail industry, the whole online and offline tandem is very important key, so how does Uniqlo do?
Wu Pinhui: first of all, the previous marketing to have a fixed consumerjourney consumer experience process steps, etc., in the fast-changing digital era, these have to be adjusted. firstmile can be your Lastmile, Lastmile can also be your Firstmile. for example, I see you wearing this today. I saw you wearing this nice dress today, and I heard it's by a certain designer, and I don't have time to go buy it, but I can pick up my phone and I can order it. So what exactly is your Firstmile first experience? Where exactly is it? One of the things we want to do is, in the fast-changing times, how to impress consumers with the most appropriate content at the most effective point. Of course, for doing business, we certainly hope that he can finally buy, because he can only become your fans after using your products. In the past, people talk about O2O, I think we should change the 2, it should be ? , nor is it +, it should be OxO (O times O), there is a heavy effect of multiplication effect.
Secondly, brands have to think about what kind of behavior you want your customers to have, at what point. Doing marketing, including agents also have to think, give your brand owners a good advice, you think the brand owners in doing this thing, in order to achieve the influence, change the customer's behavior, how should be effective? I think a lot of agents are not thinking, the brand told you to do what you do, but according to your expertise, you should give the brand owner better and more effective advice.
Saw a lot of articles about the fan economy, I think the fans and the fan economy ecosystem is not the same concept. Fans just let him know about you and may go to buy you. Fan economy is how to go inside this system to create constant purchase and buying behavior.
On the fan economy, there are four points that have been repeated and discussed with you: the first is how to communicate effectively with your fans, that is, we all talk about content. content is one of the key points, but it is not necessarily content that can communicate effectively. For example, for a retail industry, your store is your content, which depends on your enterprise value service chain to define effective content. Secondly, we are talking about brand& product& experience (brand, product, experience), this is our core. If our brand and product design is not good enough, and then what content is useless, consumers will still leave you. Third, like Uniqlo, we do both branding and retailing, how to create an ecosystem that interacts with the experience of the brand, product and experience is very important. Fourth, nowadays people don't carry a lot of cash on them, and a lot of things are done by cell phones. So how to assist consumers in the fastest time to complete his transaction experience, this whole link, is a more effective to establish a fan economic circle of the platform, after the establishment of this platform, you can only think about how to create content, products, or the experience of mutual communication.
But at present all the agents are very difficult to have the ability to do a complete service this ecosystem, now facing the biggest challenge, is how to use the most effective resources, the shortest possible time, to help your customers to go to the integration of these elements and fast and effective implementation out. Only one, it is difficult to constitute the concept of ecological economic circle.
The so-called scene is the moment when the heart is struck
Melissa Jiang: Many people ask me how to do scene marketing. I often tell them that the most important true meaning of scene marketing is to use all means to let the consumer in contact with you, shorten the time you interact with him. Scene, strictly speaking, as a user, what I want is every moment, in that moment, my heart was hit by you, in this point in time, I need this kind of thing, I will feel that you have communication with me. How does Uniqlo's scenario marketing work?
Wu Pinhui: Scene is also a word that people often talk about, the most direct way is to say that you need to make the customer feel that he needs you at certain moments and in certain places. For example, when it is cold you need to wear clothes, when you go to sports you need to wear sportswear and so on. In the Uniqlo LifeWear experience, there are two important processes within the scene, one is the content, with what kind of content to stimulate demand. Sometimes a customer may just want to buy a piece of thermal underwear or a pair of sweatpants, but because the Uniqlo store lets him see that the clothes can be worn in different styles, he may feel that the clothes can be worn in this way. Especially in China, especially in the second and third tier cities, customers, the pursuit of how to wear clothes and a sense of aesthetic life and education is needed, but how to subconsciously go to the service, to meet him?
The best education is to let consumers feel the experience themselves. Content and experience are very important, experience will become is online and offline in this closed loop inside how you go to realize. Consumer demand is often hidden, you have to be in the right time, through the right scene to stimulate them, to let him always remember your brand and products.
Social behavior influence is as important as consumer power
Melissa Jiang: Very often, we do not just have to study what consumers buy when they come into the store, but more importantly, the influence on social behavior, which is actually as important as consumer power, and these two things must complement each other. Those who come to the physical store, in terms of social behavior, how to catch his influence, and then go to do a series with him, what do you think about this?
Wu Pinhui: In fact, people talk about the fan economy, not just fans. For us, the fan economy has different KPIs, we have KPIs for fans, KPIs for sales, KPIs for store traffic, and KPIs for the unit price of each fan's purchase, which requires a lot of quantification. A company wants to completely realize this thing, the first thing to think about is the core economy, you need to set your specific KPIs to your team and agents to see how many fans can be increased and how many goods can be sold after this marketing campaign is done. This will allow agents and brands to think together, how to use the most effective content to create the greatest value, not just by throwing money.
Melanie Chiang: I think the relationship between a good leader and an agent is the essence of the core of the brand, and the customer end of the equation has to be communicated very clearly. The other thing is that it's only through the tandem and cooperation of different agents that you can take this to the limit, not that one agent can do it all.
Wu Pinhui: This is the biggest challenge facing all brands, advertisers and agencies. In this day and age, so far I haven't seen any one agency that can solve everything. I think the biggest challenge in this industry is that you need to find a good agency in that field, you need to give it a very precise direction, you need to lead, you need to educate or develop and work with the industry's leading agencies. If you don't, you'll run into agents that either tell you to invest money, or tell you to do branding, or tell you to do some kind of landing activity. In China, we haven't seen an agency that can effectively do all three, and there may be one that can do it, but it's not the one with the highest ROI. So the biggest challenge for the brand team is to find the right agency to string them together and create an integrated value chain. It's the biggest challenge for the agency, or for the brand, but until we find the next genius agency, it's an opportunity for future innovation in the industry, and it's worth thinking about for all advertisers and agencies.
Melanie Chiang: Monochrome is bright, multicolor is colorful. A spindle can do a good job, but united, must make it produce colorful colors, the lone army does not necessarily produce the greatest impact.
Wu Pinhui: Finally, I would like to quote Uniqlo's brand concept "LifeWear" and share my experience with you: creativity is the key to success. And everyone to share the experience: creativity is never-ending, just like life is full of infinite excitement and opportunities.