The birth of the brand is due to public relations, not advertising

u Yang Li

If you ask an international 4A president how to create a brand, he will tell You, first carry out large-scale advertising promotion. Maybe this brand concept is suitable for those multinational companies with strong talents, but it will make most Chinese local brands go to the point of no return...

FIYTA In the Shenzhou V marketing, we successfully established the status of China's number one watch brand through public relations. Chinese companies cannot compete with those talented and powerful multinational companies through advertising alone. Chinese companies should look for more effective ways to create brands. This is public relations.

If you ask an international 4A president how to create a brand, he will tell you that first of all, carry out large-scale advertising promotion, just like Huipu Global’s large-scale advertising promotion of US$400 million. After large-scale advertising promotion, after the brand has a certain degree of popularity, further deepening and promotion of the brand connotation will be carried out on this basis.

If you consult other advertising companies, they will tell you the same answer. Large-scale advertising first and then talk about it. This is the basis. Maybe you now know why so many companies go bankrupt?

In today's fiercely competitive environment, social public opinion and attention are becoming more and more important, and advertising plays a greater role in fueling the flames and reminding. Brands are created because of PR, not advertising.

The myth of “advertising is king”

Someone asked the global president of Coca-Cola what is Coca-Cola’s brand secret? The business magnate said: "The only secret is advertising, nothing else but advertising!"

Really? Is it really just an advertisement? If the rest of the beverage industry truly believes that the secret to building a great brand is just advertising, chances are this guy will lose his money.

This is a typical blind trick, just like those magic tricks. If you really believe that those magic masters can really close their eyes and use a knife without hurting anyone, as long as you practice diligently, your skills will be improved. It will definitely be possible to reach a similar point where Zheng Dao will not hurt anyone with his eyes closed. If this is the case, I don’t know how many people will die under your knife.

Indeed, after Qin Chi became famous by winning the CCTV bid, Chinese companies began to pay more and more attention to the role of advertising. And from an objective point of view, advertising does play an important role in promoting sales and building brands. But if you pay attention, you will see that the effectiveness of advertising will become less and less now. How many times has the cost of advertising increased from the early 1990s to now? Ten years ago, Qin Chi spent 30 million yuan in advertising to quickly launch the national market. Now this number has more than quintupled.

Indeed, we do not deny that advertising is an important part of marketing, and we do not deny that it plays its own unique role, but if you think that the brand was created because of advertising, then it may be a pity. Yes, your brand may be heading into a misunderstanding.

Think about it, in China’s short history of more than 20 years, what are the things that have left a deep impression on us?

We all know about Haier’s refrigerator smashing incident. What do you remember about Haier refrigerator advertisements?

We all know how Moutai became famous by drinking in Montparnasse. Have you noticed any advertisements made by Moutai?

Everyone knows about Galanz Microwave Bar. Let me tell you a surprising thing. Although Galanz Microwave has a high reputation, Galanz Microwave has never invested much money in hard advertising.

Judging from the recent Shenzhou V marketing, everyone knows that Fiyta manufactured China’s first aerospace watch. However, Fiyta has not spent much advertising money on this.

Looking at the relationship between advertising companies and public relations companies in the world's famous advertising groups, we can know people's current understanding of advertising and public relations. For a long time, everyone has formed the concept that the creation of a brand is because of advertising. It was created as a means to assist with public relations and news knowledge.

So you can see that in almost all advertising companies, public relations and news plans generally play a small role in the annual communication plan. The understanding of public relations and news by enterprises and advertising companies is limited to public relations as an auxiliary means. That’s all. But the truth is just the opposite. People's understanding of public relations and news is far from the real facts.

Take the recent Shenzhou 5 marketing as an example. In this Shenzhou 5 marketing, the five sponsoring companies Fiyta, Mengniu, Nongfu Spring, China Life, and Great Wall Lubricant respectively launched products based on their own corporate brands. The strategy worked, but what was the end result? Although Mengniu quickly gained popularity with its huge advertising investment (more than 10 million yuan in more than half a month), the biggest winner in the entire Shenzhou 5 marketing was Feiyada. In less than two weeks, Feiyada With its excellent public relations capabilities, Yada created the special term "Aerospace Watch" for Fiyta and became one of the companies with the highest exposure in the Shenzhou V report. Even the most authoritative official news agency Xinhua News Agency also published a report for Fiyta. A special press release was issued, which is rare in Xinhua News Agency’s national reports. Fiyta did not spend much this time but achieved publicity effects worth tens of millions.

Back to the essence of marketing

Why does marketing work?

The reason why marketing works is because of word of mouth, which creates brands.

Why does marketing work? In addition to the display of terminal channels, the decoration of channels and other hardware terminals that make people look and feel good, what really plays a role in sales?

Personal promotion or word-of-mouth from the consumer’s former friends!

Have you noticed that, in the final analysis, the influence of word-of-mouth is the key to the survival of an enterprise.

If you think about it carefully, you will find that in fact, all the marketing efforts of the company are for one purpose, to create a good reputation.

The style design of the product, the quality of the product, the brand image of the product, the technical research and development of the product, the terminal display of the product, advertising, public relations, marketing and promotion...all of it, the ultimate hope is just to It makes people feel that this brand is like a big brand and forms a good reputation among consumers. The ultimate marketing efforts are just to create a good reputation, because only with this can the entire brand have the basis for survival.

Did Sanzhu Oral Liquid really kill an old man to death?

Does Guanshengyuan really have product problems?

Does Fubai Ejiao really use horsehide instead of donkey skin?

……

Do these have large-scale advertising campaigns? No, but that hasn't stopped their spread. What plays a big role in this, and who is to blame? Word of mouth. This proves the importance of word-of-mouth communication.

So what is more likely to cause people to spread word of mouth? Is it an advertisement? It seems not. With the explosion of information, people are increasingly rejecting commercial information from advertisements.

Hanlin Fat Removal spent more than 10 million yuan on TV advertising in December 2002. How many of the target people know about Hanlin Fat Removal? Not many

Golden Partner was broadcast on CCTV for hundreds of millions in 2002. Have you heard how many consumers are talking about and reciting Golden Partner? Very few.

……

In the future era of information explosion, the role of advertising will become less and less, and people will ignore the existence of advertising intentionally or unintentionally. In the huge Hanlin fat-removing advertisement, how many people knew that it was an advertisement for a product that treats high oblique fat? People remember Simon Yam more. Because they don't care, which is why people often refer to company A's advertisements as company B, and company B's advertisements as company C...

So what is most likely to arouse word-of-mouth, public relations is undoubtedly what people always think of. It describes oneself as noble, so public relations can more easily attract people's attention and spread.

The role of public relations is that it is easier to cause word-of-mouth communication.

All the efforts of the enterprise are just to create an environment more conducive to the survival of the enterprise.

“The reason why advertising works is that it has value only when it has ‘topicity’!” said ALRIES, the famous marketing strategy master. The reason why FIYTA's "Special Wear Watch for Chinese Astronauts" works is because the FIYTA Space Watch is closely linked to the Shenzhou 5 (the FIYTA Space Watch is the only commercial factor on the Shenzhou 5).

Public opinion creates brands, not advertising

After joining the WTO, Chinese companies should know that advertising alone cannot compete with those talented and powerful multinational brands. Chinese companies should look for A more effective way to create a brand.

Especially in China, the role of public opinion is extremely huge. When Shi Yuzhu summarized the reasons for the collapse of companies, he specifically mentioned one point, which is public opinion. As a business giant with a technical background, he can realize this, which shows the huge power of public opinion.

The Chinese people are fully aware of the huge power of public opinion.

All the marketing efforts of the company are just to win a good reputation, thereby building a great brand, and thereby winning sales success.

In order to win good word-of-mouth publicity, is it easier for advertising to arouse widespread publicity, or is it more likely that public opinion and news will play a greater role? For a brand to be successful in the mass market, it must first be successful in the media and press.

Chinese brands are often the opposite. This is the fundamental reason why so many brands are short-lived. When you do not have a deep communication foundation, it is difficult for a brand to last long.

Exploring the essence of a successful brand

Let’s take a look at whether it is PR that creates the brand, or advertising. We can see that behind every great brand there is a well-known brand story. This brand story is told through advertising or achieved through public opinion.

Let’s look at several famous brands in China and see whether it is public opinion that creates the brand, or advertising?

Haier:

In the process of building the Haier brand, does advertising or news and public opinion play a role? You might say it’s an advertisement, but if you were asked to name which Haier advertisement left a deep impression on you, you might not be able to think of it. Your first reaction might be the Haier smashed refrigerator incident. Haier used this method to announce to consumers Haier products are of excellent quality. What will come to your mind next? You may think of "sweet potato washing machine". Is Haier's sweet potato washing machine really effective? If you go to the market, you will find that Haier's sweet potato washing machine only produces a very small number of units, but this is not important. The sweet potato washing machine announces Haier's caring and personalized services to people.

Are Haier's advertisements more unique than those of other home appliance brands? No, but the secret to its success is the establishment of a unique news planning department that specializes in planning news about Haier, with tens of thousands of articles published every year. This is beyond the reach of other brands!

Companies that are good at building momentum are always more likely to succeed. First of all, you have to succeed in public opinion and public opinion, and then you will succeed in sales.

Ganz:

Everyone knows about Galanz microwave ovens. According to conventional practices, if Galanz wants to achieve such a high reputation, it must have invested hundreds of millions in advertising expenses. But the truth of the matter is that during the establishment of the brand, Galanz microwave ovens did not spend a single penny on hard advertising. So how did Galanz Microwave make microwave ovens become such a household name? The secret is advertising. If you make statistics, you can see that almost all the news in the microwave oven industry is made by Galanz. Even now, you can still see news about Galanz's microwave oven planning from time to time.

Melatonin:

Many advertising creatives are deeply misunderstood by Melatonin’s advertisement that “No gifts will be accepted during the holidays this year, only melatonin will be accepted as gifts.” However, this is not the case. Affect the sales of melatonin. Is the success of Melatonin caused by large-scale advertising bombing? It seems not. Golden partner...

Oakes:

In the early stages of growth, the first problem to be solved is visibility. First of all, you must be a well-known brand before you can be a strong brand.

So Oaks Air Conditioning attaches great importance to news and public relations hype, such as the release of the "Air Conditioning White Paper", which stirs up industry disputes;

There is a lot of hype about Wu Shihong's joining (in fact, there is no such thing), Continue to attract attention and increase visibility;

Then came the sponsorship of the China-Pakistan match, a round of advertising and publicity bombardment.

If you pay attention, you will see that Oaks’s previous rounds of publicity were all low-cost and mostly news hype. Now there is no problem with the popularity of Oaks. The urgent problem that needs to be solved now is the strength of Oaks and the problem of consumer trust: you have to make people think that Oaks is like a big brand and trustworthy.

To make people think that you are a big brand and very powerful, large-scale advertising is a good shortcut, so Oaks is now advertising on a large scale to make consumers believe that we Oaks It is a big brand, and our Oaks is a very powerful brand, so it is enough to achieve this goal. As long as a certain scale of advertising is maintained, Oaks' strategic purpose will be achieved.

In fact, the creation of many famous brands does not rely on advertising, but relies more on news and public opinion. Brands like Starbucks and Wal-Mart have very small advertising budgets both in the past and now. , so how did they achieve success? Public opinion and news. In essence, advertising, news, and public opinion are all intended to create communication. It is obvious that news and public opinion have more advantages, and news and public opinion are more likely to cause word-of-mouth communication.

Everyone remembers the advertisement of Southern black sesame paste with "a strong fragrance and a ray of warmth". At that time, this advertisement won almost all advertising awards, but where is the Southern black sesame paste now? Due to the lack of follow-up news and public opinion guidance, when the classic advertisement was stopped, it was difficult for people to remember that there was a southern black sesame paste. Today, with the rapid growth of the health food industry, China's traditional sesame paste has not seen much growth.

In the recent Shenzhou 5 marketing, people have noticed that Fiyta, which was famous for its "Once you have it, you can ask for nothing else" advertising, has begun to change its marketing strategy of just investing heavily in advertising and began to focus on public relations strategies. ——Sponsored the launch of Shenzhou-5, and paid more attention to public relations and public opinion reports while maintaining an appropriate amount of advertising during the promotion, which greatly enhanced the brand image of Fiyta. The mystery, nobility and high technology of space give Fiyta a mysterious space color. Feiyada has also soared into the sky with the help of Shenzhou 5.

Focusing on public relations and in-depth communication may be the marketing strategy for those southern black sesame paste brands to get out of trouble.

Advertising is the wind, public relations is the sun

There is such a story in Aesop’s fables:

One day Father Sun and Uncle Feng met on the road. The debate is whether the wind is more powerful or the sun is more powerful?

They finally decided to see who could make passers-by take off their clothes, who would be the strongest.

Uncle Feng came on first, but the stronger the wind blew, the tighter the passers-by wore their clothes. In the end, Uncle Feng didn’t let the passers-by take off any of their clothes. Uncle Feng looked frustrated. Why was my wind so strong that I couldn't even take off a passerby's clothes?

Later, Father Sun came on the scene. He didn’t want to forcefully take off the clothes of passers-by. He wanted them to take off their clothes on their own initiative. He was exposed to the sun all the way. After a while, the passers-by felt very hot and took off their clothes.

Father-in-law Sun finally won.

In marketing, the role of advertising and public relations is very similar to the relationship between the wind and the sun in this fable.

Advertising is the wind and public relations is the sun.

Advertising is a hard-hitting sales method, with the naked hope of selling goods, but it is difficult to penetrate people's hearts because of the lack of sufficient credibility. The stronger the wind blows, the tighter the clothes of passers-by wear; The more intense the advertising, the stronger people's resistance.

Public relations are like the sun, disarming people without even realizing it.

Because public opinion and the media are independent third parties, they do not belong to you. You cannot completely control them. You cannot force the media to accept the information you want to spread. They have their own operating rules and criteria for judgment. You can The only thing we can do is to interest them as much as possible, make them feel that this matter is helpful to them and consumers, and let them choose whether to report it or not.

The stance of the media station will make consumers believe that they expect better services from us. In this process, the good image and brand image of the company will be unknowingly accepted by consumers.

In the recent Shenzhou-5 marketing, people may have some memories of Mengniu’s advertising campaign, but the more impression they get may be that Mengniu is once again using the launch of Shenzhou-5 to Self-hype has greatly reduced the effectiveness of Mengniu’s publicity. Frequent advertising may be like how people treat melatonin advertisements, although they are aware of it but are bored.

On the other hand, Fiyta Enterprises, on the other hand, left a deep impression on us because of its excellent public relations strategy:

“China’s first aerospace watch unveiled its mystery "Yang Liwei once wore it", "The battle for China's first aerospace watch - the three-year competition between FIYTA and OMEGA", "China's first aerospace watch exposed"...the news dissemination with great news value enters the people silently. In my heart, the angle of entry is so natural and ingenious that it makes people not feel a commercial message at all: "The astronaut who appears in all TV newsreels and website pictures wears a black watch on his left arm. The watch he is wearing is the first exposure of China’s first aerospace watch - Fiyta aerospace watch..." So we are not surprised by Fiyta’s unique publicity effect:

According to our news search before the launch of Shenzhou 5 and after the launch of Shenzhou 5, no more than 5 pieces of information on the space table can be found by typing "space watch" on GOOGLE before the launch of Shenzhou 5; after the launch of Shenzhou 5, If you type "aerospace watch" on GOOGLE, you can search for more than a thousand pieces of information about aerospace watches. Fiyta has almost created a new term "aerospace watch" in just two weeks, which is unimaginable by pure advertising. The news effect it triggered is also so eye-catching: more than 20 news articles about Fiyta were searched on China's four major portals (Sina, Sohu, NetEase, TOM), and other small and medium-sized articles were automatically published and reprinted. There are countless websites to visit...

Problems faced by well-known brands

Advertising is a very limited means of communication and a shallow means of communication.

When the corporate brand has a high reputation, when there is no problem with the brand's popularity, pure advertising has no effect, then at this time, your focus is no longer on the pure visibility issue. When everyone knows you, you should know that, and in the next work, you should let people know how good you are. And how to make people know who you are, simply telling people your name is not enough. At this time, the weapon you need to use may no longer be pure advertising. The weapon you pick up at this time should be public relations. . Use all-round attention and in-depth reporting to let people fully understand what kind of person you are, let people know how rich your connotation is, and let people know how kind-hearted you are.

Obviously, these are goals that advertising can no longer achieve.

The credibility of public opinion and news will make consumers believe it.

Generally speaking, the cost of advertising is a huge budget, and public relations is a "big deal" job. Guess what, Fiyta created a "space watch" from scratch How much did the noun cost? Not a lot, think about it, similar funds are not enough to make a full-page advertisement in Guangzhou Daily (350,000/page). Fiyta only spent a small amount of public relations expenses to get the public opinion circle to hype the concept of "Fiyta Space Watch", and the entire publicity effect may not be worth tens of millions.

Advertising is insurance premium

Since the establishment of a brand should focus on public relations rather than advertising, does that mean that advertising is insignificant? Obviously not, a brand cannot always maintain a good news effect, so at this time, companies should consider using advertising to maintain consumer awareness. When public opinion and news nail the brand into the minds of consumers, at this time, you Just need advertising. Let the hammer of advertising set the brand deeper.

Not only that, after the brand is established, advertising serves more of an insurance premium. Those successful big brands use astronomical advertising costs to tell other brands that if you don't have enough financial resources, please don't join the competition easily. Advertising is a very important means to raise the threshold of the entire industry. It is like an insurance premium paid by a company for its current brand status. If you want to compete with giants like Procter & Gamble, think about the huge amount of advertising. What a headache.

Wrigley chewing gum spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising every year. This is undoubtedly telling competitors that if you want to obtain a brand status like mine, you will spend more than hundreds of millions of dollars every year. circle, and there is no guarantee that you will get adequate returns. This will make those competitors who are ready to move unwilling to act rashly, because hundreds of millions of dollars is not a small amount, it is a huge investment risk and financial pressure! Many competitors would be unwilling to rush into the chewing gum market because of the huge risks, leaving Wrigley to enjoy the hugely profitable chewing gum market exclusively for many years.

OMEGA and FIYTA maintain huge advertising budgets every year, which is undoubtedly a huge threshold that hinders other watch brands: If you want to obtain a brand status like mine, the advertising costs you spend every year It is also a huge burden. On the premise of maintaining such a huge advertising expense, please consider whether you can receive sufficient returns?

The advertising of many leading brands is an insurance premium. Is the secret of Coca-Cola’s success really advertising? Let’s think about it, although you drink Coca-Cola every day, how many times have you seen Coca-Cola advertisements in the past year? Not many, not even once. The effect of Coca-Cola's terminal display and terminal communication is far greater than the advertising itself. Coca-Cola's huge advertising expenses are also paying insurance premiums to a large extent.

We cannot do Mercedes ourselves just because we see rich people now making Mercedes-Benz. Being a Mercedes-Benz will not make you a rich man. If you want to succeed, you should learn what the rich did before they became rich.

The same is true for creating a brand. If you think that the strong brands in the market have huge advertising expenses and you also have huge advertising expenses, you will lose everything in all likelihood. We should learn how these powerful brands succeeded before they became leading brands.

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