From celebrity Yao Chen to ordinary consumers, Labubu’s popularity has continued to rise, and it has even sparked widespread discussion on social media. This article will delve into why consumers are keen on Labubu, revealing the social currency value and social value behind it for your reference.
The recent Labubu content in the circle of friends is a bit high, and friends who have bought it recently and have it at home are all posting it.
Even star Yao Chen posted the Labubu she bought last year yesterday, and jokingly said that it was the only profitable investment in her life. So, #姚晨晒去年买的限量版labubu#, #姚晨称labubu是人生中唯一盈利的投资#, #姚晨晒Labubu原价499元被炒至4999元#, #泡泡玛特回应姚晨晒限量版Labubu#连上好几个热搜.
As an advertiser with frequent occupational diseases, then I am thinking – why do consumers post a certain brand or product? What kind of brand has a higher chance of being sunburned?
For modern marketing, the value of consumers’ sharing, recommendation and other behaviors after purchase is unquestionable to the brand. I won’t go into this point.
According to my analysis, the reason why consumers are willing to post orders is because the behavior of posting orders provides consumers with two values:
The first is social currency
Recently, this product has been on the cusp, the topic is very hot, everyone is paying attention and talking about it, so if consumers buy or get close to the product, they are willing to share it, just like the recent labubu, the Xiaomi SU7 since last year, or the sauce-flavored latte launched by Moutai and Luckin in 2023.
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This means that the consumer is at the forefront of social trends, embracing new things and ideas in a timely manner, and is in line with social trends. And if the product has become outdated, everyone has stopped paying attention to and talking about it, and consumers will generally not be exposed when they buy the product, because it means that they are outdated.
The second is social value
The brand can highlight the identity and social status of consumers, or show consumers’ unique personality attitudes, tastes, aesthetics, and lifestyles. Consumers’ purchase and ordering of the product are no longer simply the physical attributes of the product, but a consumption of symbols and meanings.
Social value, also known as symbolic value, is one of the three core values of the brand. Of course, this value can also be said to be social currency, but the above behavior is more in line with the social currency attributes that bring topics and topics.
We can divide it into two types of “sun” around social value: one is a high-end brand, which is a symbol of wealth, power, and social status, representing successful people and social elites.
For example, consumers go to a three-star Michelin restaurant for a big meal and are willing to take photos and post them on Moments or other social media; I went to a five-star hotel for a few days and took a vacation, and I was willing to take photos and check in with my friends, and hang up the hotel address to locate it; For example, consumers buy a luxury car such as Porsche or Maserati and are willing to post car photos.
In January this year, Qingdao News Network posted a short video, saying that last year’s Porsche women’s sales champion sold 170 cars a year. When sharing her experience, she confidently said: “60%-70% of my customers are actually female customers, I can take good photos for customers, provide emotional value, no one doesn’t like my service, I am very confident.” ”
This is a great business case. Why do customers need good-looking photos? Because she wants to show it.
The second is a niche brand with aesthetic symbols. The concept and connotation of the brand are very in line with the personal aesthetics and tastes of consumers, reflect the consumer’s attitude and lifestyle, and establish a deep emotional connection between the brand and individual consumers.
For example, the bracelets and bone china from Halcyon Days reflect the aesthetic characteristics. Or a certain outdoor enthusiast who is willing to post his mountain bike, trail running shoes, jacket, such a brand mainly reflects the symbolic value is not expensive, but reflects the consumer’s attitude towards life and personality, is to show his lifestyle, show what kind of person he is.
And when consumers post such a brand, they will even deliberately pursue that others can’t understand, don’t know what brand it is, and only those who know how to do it can recognize it at a glance. The brand acted as a circle password and industry slang in the process. Just like the “old money style” that everyone admires today loves to wear Loro Piana, the public is not well-known, the product design is very low-key, and there is no obvious logo and logo, but the price is jaw-dropping.
(Just like many literary and artistic young people like niche bands, when the band begins to become popular and well-known to the public, it will be abandoned by them.) ）
To sum up, there are three categories of brands that consumers are willing to post: high-end brands, social popular brands, and niche aesthetic brands. I think this division is a very important guide for how we should build our brand today.
When I used to work in the provincial broadcasting industry, my boss – Mr. Ding Bangqing, the former president of the provincial broadcasting system and a well-known planning expert in China, proposed a very awesome brand model called “brand 6-degree space system”.
Evaluate brand assets from six aspects: brand height, symbolism, width, activity, depth, and time, and guide the direction of brand strategy and brand building. However, brands can choose different aspects to build based on their respective life cycles and market conditions, so as to win the greatest space for brand growth and expansion.
However, I personally think that there is a certain overlap and overlap of these six aspects, and it is too complicated to break down into specific indicators for quantitative measurement (after all, there are 6 aspects to evaluate, a lot), so we have not used this model on a large scale, but only used it as a guide for brand strategy on some specific customers, and it has not become a company-level methodology for collective use by various business departments.
In 2014, when I was in charge of a big competition, because there was a scoring item in the client’s bid that needed to provide the company’s brand methodology, I optimized this model, redefined the specific meaning of these six degrees, and the main measurement indicators, and then used it to plan the brand strategy.
After 2019, I was in charge of the company’s newly established enterprise development center, and I needed to redesign a brand growth and development methodology from a strategic level, so I personally took out this model, reorganized it, and changed it several times to make it more streamlined, more reasonable, and easier to use in actual work.
Specifically, I streamlined this model into 3 dimensions and 3 aspects according to 3D space. In this way, when building a brand and evaluating a brand, you only need to work on three dimensions, and then use the other three aspects to correct.
Specifically, the brand highly represents the authority and appeal of the brand.
But the brand cannot be empty, only have a high price and “high-end XX” positioning, the key is to have a certain emotional and cultural symbol that transcends the material layer in terms of symbolism, and show the spiritual outlook of the brand.
Brand width represents the brand’s mass market coverage and mental influence, the penetration rate of the brand in various channels and media communication, and the mentality and popularity at the mental level.
However, the brand cannot only have a reputation, consumers just know that you do not mean that he will buy you, the key is to link with social hotspots and trends in society, maintain the activity of brands and social hotspots, and be consistent with social trends.
Brand depth represents the depth of the relationship between the brand and users, and the trust and preference of the brand.
However, brands cannot only emphasize user connection and user operation, the key is to continue to innovate in terms of time, grasp the current mentality of consumers, provide emotional value for users, or strengthen the brand heritage, and become a classic that transcends the existence of time.
Of course, the brand model is an idealistic architecture that always covers all dimensions and aspects touched by different brands as much as possible. From a realistic point of view, there are very few brands that can excel in all three aspects. If a brand can stand out and differentiate in one aspect, it is actually enough to occupy a place in the market. What I am most afraid of is actually the kind of brand that does not stand out in every aspect and has no characteristics.
High-end brands, popular brands, small and beautiful brands, this actually represents three different brand strategies. This division is also similar to Mike Porter’s three basic competitive strategies: total cost leadership, differentiation and focus.
Popular brands adopt the strategy of leading the total cost and provide the most cost-effective products for the broad-spectrum market that meet the basic needs of most users. High-end brands take a differentiated route, provide differentiated value products, and obtain higher brand premiums. Small and beautiful brands take the focus route, focusing on a certain segment of people and market segments to provide products.
But
Popular brands cannot be big and not popular.
It seems to be a national brand and has a high reputation, but in fact, in this era of information explosion and rapid changes in consumer concepts, such brands are very easy to be forgotten by consumers. The reason why many brands are aging is not because the products are outdated, the design is outdated, and the technology cannot keep up with the times, but because consumers do not pay attention to and talk about it, and it naturally feels outdated and aged.
This is the case with former national brands such as Jianlibao and Wahaha, you say they are not well-known, but everyone knows it, but when consumers buy related products, they can’t think of it. If it weren’t for the series of online topics triggered by Wahaha and Nongfu Spring at the beginning of 2024, Wahaha would have returned to the public eye, then Wahaha would actually be very difficult today.
High-end brands cannot be high without symbols.
Many brands like to engage in a positioning “high-end XX”, and then shout slogans everywhere. But if you say you are high-end, will consumers think you are high-end? Will you pay for your high price? In fact, high-end is not a cognitive value, but a perceived value. The brand must become a symbol of some kind of spiritual and cultural level, and then carefully design the brand experience so that consumers feel the high-end of the brand.
Niche brands can’t just be small and not beautiful.
Advertising a niche and emphasizing extreme differentiation is destined to occupy an extremely vertical and narrow market segment and cannot become bigger and stronger. The key to niche brands lies in beauty, becoming a representative of the lifestyle and personality attitude of some core consumers, becoming an aesthetic symbol, and forming word of mouth and topic diffusion with the help of their demonstration effect and potential energy, so as to achieve brand breaking the circle.
