In today’s fast-paced and high-pressure life, young people are seeing consumption as a way to “replenish the soul”, and quickly regulate their emotions and obtain instant psychological satisfaction through “emotional fast charging consumption”. This emerging consumption model is quietly changing the relationship between brands and consumers. This article will delve into the characteristics of “emotional fast charging consumption” and the logic behind it, and provide strategic suggestions for brands on how to change from selling products to selling emotional antidotes.
In 2022, I did a big promotion on Douyin e-commerce, and I needed to determine the marketing strategy of the 818 promotion, and the strategy proposed by the supplier was low price.
Douyin e-commerce is an interest e-commerce, and its magic lies in the fact that when users immerse themselves in short videos, they can always be inadvertently attracted by something they have never seen before, but instantly hit their inner needs. When they swipe such a product, their emotions will be lifted: “Wow, there is this thing!” ”
Based on this insight, I abandoned the low-cost PK plan and proposed a creative idea that highlights the platform’s genes more – “Wow good things”. What we want to amplify is the emotional value that Douyin can provide with new and exotic products, the unique experience of discovering surprises in unexpected encounters. Fortunately, the idea was eventually adopted and took to the streets in various creative forms.
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After 3 years, I saw a similar trend in the latest “2025 Young People’s Emotional Consumption Trend Report” released by Douyin Mall and SocialBeta.
According to the report, nearly 90% of young people feel stressed in life, and more than 60% of consumers believe that consumption is an effective way to relieve stress. Young people are seeing consumption as a “spiritual supplement” and are willing to “recharge for happiness and pay for dopamine”.
In response to this trend, Douyin Mall has also launched a “Novelty and Good Things Charging Station” – further bringing the experience of discovering surprises and fast charging to users. I think this strategy is correct, it shows the characteristics of Douyin e-commerce that can bring emotional surprises to consumers.
Another interesting point in the report is the introduction of a new concept: emotional fast-charging consumption. So, what exactly is emotional fast charging consumption? In this article, let’s talk about this topic.
01 Emotional fast charging: a new way for young people to continue their spiritual life
Let’s first dismantle the term emotional fast-charging consumption.
Literally, it is very figurative. Imagine your phone running out of power, you expertly plug in a fast charger, watch the battery percentage quickly recover, and the anxiety dissipates. Emotional fast charging consumption perfectly projects this scene to our real world. It is a new type of consumption behavior model with the core purpose of quickly regulating emotions and obtaining instant psychological satisfaction.
When we are consumed by work pressure, trivial life or endless involution, a fast, low-threshold consumption is like a shot in the arm, which can quickly recharge our emotions and make us feel alive in a short period of time.
The reason why this consumption model can become the magic weapon for the spiritual survival of contemporary young people stems from its distinctive characteristics:
Fragmentation and Fast Cashing:This consumption model is a natural fit with the media form of short videos. We swipe the screen in fragmented time, and our brains passively receive waves of information.
When a novel and interesting product suddenly breaks into the field of vision, it instantly breaks the numbness of the information. The seamless purchase link provided by the short video platform makes it possible to quickly cash out this emotion, and the whole process is completed in one go without delay.
Impulsiveness vs. Timely Gratification:Emotional fast charging bypasses thoughtful slow thinking, which is a sensibility-driven conditioned reflex. When a product hits your emotional point with precision, the dopamine released by the brain will urge you to place an order immediately.
From seeing the product to completing the payment, it may be within a minute, and the pursuit is the instant gratification of “I want it, I want it right away”.
Low cost high emotional return:A key factor in the high frequency of emotional fast charging is its extremely low decision-making cost. Most of this kind of consumption is concentrated within 100 yuan, usually the price of a cup of milk tea, a mobile phone case or a decompression toy. We don’t need to do complex price comparison and research for this, and there is not much financial burden.
However, the emotional rewards it brings are huge – an ugly ornament can make you laugh all afternoon, and a blind box can bring excitement and surprise the moment you open the box. This is the ultimate embodiment of the love price ratio: spend a little money and buy a big happiness.
Emphasis on experience over rationality:In this consumption model, rational cost-effective considerations are temporarily put on hold and replaced by the pursuit of experience. From visual design, auditory experience, to tactile experience, every detail is building a sense of ritual of emotional fast charging.
For example, when we buy Bawang Chaji, we are not only buying milk tea itself, but also a complete set of pleasant experiences brought by the national style design of the brand store to the exquisite cup packaging. In this process, we prefer to trust intuition and feelings rather than cold parameter comparisons.
Social currency attributes:The joy of buying a novelty and goodness is never limited to the moment you have it. Share it in the circle of friends, Xiaohongshu, or bring it to the office to become a topic of conversation among colleagues, and this happiness is amplified twice. According to the report, as many as 62% of young people believe that “unique goods” are an important part of social sharing.
A merchandise that is special enough is like a pass that proves your fun, your taste, and your ability to discover new things. It allows you to stand out in the social circle and become a new type of social currency, satisfying our desire for expression and identity in the group.
02 How can brands seize the trend of emotional fast charging?
After gaining insight into the underlying logic of emotional fast charging consumption, a more practical question is in front of all brands: how to seize this trend and make themselves the “emotional charging pile” that young people are willing to go to?
Thinking change 1: From selling products to selling emotional antidotes
In the new consumer context, brands must redefine their product value. Your product is no longer just an object that meets functional needs, but should be a precisely fed emotional antidote, a solution to specific emotions (such as stress, anxiety, boredom, exhaustion).
First of allEmotional triggers often stem from direct sensory stimuli.
visually, such as using high-saturation dopamine color schemes to ignite happiness, or using healing macaron colors to bring gentle comfort; Tactilely, like the Jellycat doll, it provides a hugging-like sense of security with an extremely soft touch, or like a decompression pinch, releasing the pressure of your fingertips with a Q-elastic feel; On the sense of smell, it directly acts on the emotional center of the brain through aromatherapy that can instantly relax people, or hand cream with a specific memory scent.
secondlyIt is necessary to inject fun and soul into the product.
For example, embracing ugliness and grotesqueness, from “ugly fish pajamas” to “horse stepping on flying swallow” dolls, these unconventional aesthetic designs, with their own sense of humor and topicality, can make people laugh at the first glance.
For example, create a contrasting surprise by combining seemingly unrelated elements, such as yogurt or spittoon glasses. This strong impact on cognition itself creates a novel happiness.
Sometimes, the product can be completely detached from the physical and provide a purely entertaining psychological cue.
Buyers know that this is just a joke, but they are still willing to pay for the moment of comfort of “lucky” and “some good luck”.
Similarly, the essence of paid services such as “tree hole chat” and “waking up the love brain” is also to make up for the lack of social and emotional support in reality in a low-cost way.
Thinking change 2: from cost-effective to affordable
At a time when consumption tends to be rational, cost performance is important, but a new value yardstick is rising, that is, the price-performance ratio.
The so-called emotion-price ratio can be understood as the emotional value / price provided by the product. If the brand can maximize the emotional value of the product, consumers are still willing to pay even if the price is slightly higher.
Brands can improve the price-to-price ratio through clever pricing strategies. For example, set the price of many small items or surprise gifts within the range of a cup of milk tea or a lunch. This thoughtless price greatly reduces the cost of decision-making for consumers, allowing them to impulsively place orders for emotional value.
Brands should also focus on creating a peak experience of goods. For example, the price of a blind box itself may not be cheap, but the moment you open it, the complex emotions mixed with anticipation, uncertainty and surprise will make consumers’ happiness reach its peak, and the dopamine secretion in the brain is also the most vigorous.
This complete experience process from anticipation to purchase to opening can last days or even weeks, and the emotional value it provides far exceeds the price of the blind box itself.
Thinking change 3: from crowd attribute segmentation to emotional segmentation
Traditional marketing mostly divides people according to static labels such as age, region, gender, income, etc., and emotional fast-charging consumption requires us to reconstruct user stratification with “emotional portraits”. Douyin Mall divides young people into five major emotional subgroups, each with different concerns, and brands need to customize differentiated reach strategies for each type of group.
In the face of the master of madness, your communication language must be “crazy” enough. Emphasize the absurd, funny, and rebellious attributes of the product, making them feel that “this thing is crazy, it’s just what I want”.
In the face of rewarding personalities, communication focuses on ritual, sophistication, and the value proposition you deserve. Tell them that this is the best reward for their efforts.
In the face of crispy and power-saving people, the key words are healing, decompressing and lying down. Let the product be their spiritual oxygen for a short period of time from a high-pressure life.
In the face of metaphysics lovers, it is necessary to convey good luck, transit and positive psychological cues. Let the product be a comfort they can hold in the palm of their hand when fighting uncertainty.
For those who try new things, the core selling points are novelty, debuts and exclusive experiences. Let them feel like they are explorers at the forefront of trends.
Here are my summaries of brand coping strategies for 5 emotional groups:
Thinking shift 4: Tell stories in the “place where emotions happen”
Once you find the right person, you have to tell the right story in the right scene. The place where emotional fast charging occurs is not on the shelves of shopping malls, but in the real life scenes of users.
First of all, it is necessary to accurately locate the emotional scene. Where should your product appear? Is it at a workstation where you don’t want to go to work on Monday morning? Is it late at night in emo’s bedroom? Or is it an icebreaker at a friend’s gathering? Brands must clearly define the emotional pain points and applicable scenarios that their products can solve.
Secondly, it is necessary to “reproduce” these scenes with content. The best marketing is not selling, but deduction, directly integrating products into these emotional scenes in short videos or graphics. For example, a blogger collapsed on the sofa tired after get off work and casually lit an atmospheric night light with the text: “All the fatigue today, let this light heal.” This immersive scene interpretation can resonate with the audience and give them the sense of substitution I also need.
At the same time, we must embrace the “sense of the net” and speak the words of young people. Skillfully using Internet hot words such as “crazy”, “crispy”, and “conspicuous bag” can quickly shorten the distance with users and make the brand appear approachable and like their own people.
Brands also need to put down their bodies and complain about common pain points in life in a self-deprecating way (such as fishing at work and being tortured by Party A), and this kind of “the enemy’s enemy is a friend” empathy can quickly build trust and goodwill.
Finally, inspire UGC and let users become your “wild spokespersons”. Brands can launch topical challenges such as #我的发疯好物, #办公室续命神器#, and encourage users to share scenarios where they use their products.
But more importantly, the product itself must be designed to “dry the point”. A strange enough mobile phone case, a cleverly designed cultural and creative product, itself has strong social sharing attributes, which can allow users to spontaneously complete the secondary communication of the brand in the process of “drying”.
Conclusion: From emotional recharge to emotional slowness
When young people put Buddha dolls at their workstations, break the silence of the party with English mahjong, and activate their numb taste buds with meat yogurt – what they really crave is the fleeting sense of presence behind consumption: at this moment, I am not a slave to KPIs, not a carrier of data, but a living person who can laugh wildly and be calm and vulnerable.
However, as brand marketers, while accurately capturing and meeting these fast charging needs, we should also think about a deeper question: When emotional fast charging becomes the norm, where does we end up?
Fast charging is fast charging after all, it can solve the urgent need, but it cannot fundamentally solve the problem of “fast emotional power consumption”. If the brand is only satisfied with providing instant comfort in the form of “painkillers”, it may fall into a never-ending “emotional involution” – if you use ugly today, it will be even uglier tomorrow; If you use curiosity today, you will be even more curious tomorrow. This can certainly bring short-term traffic and sales, but in the long run, it will trap brands and consumers in a cycle of exhaustion with increasing “emotional thresholds”.
Therefore, I think that the higher-level gameplay to seize the trend of emotional consumption lies in moving from emotional fast charging to emotional slow nourishment.
A true long-term brand should not only be a “power bank” that delivers charcoal in the snow, but also become an “emotional generator” that accompanies the growth of users. This means that in addition to providing immediate emotional stimulation, brands need to think about how to build deeper, more sustainable emotional connections.
Perhaps through the transmission of values, the attitude and proposition of the brand are used to guide users to establish a more resilient and self-consistent inner world; Perhaps by creating an experience that goes beyond the product itself, such as opening a theme space to provide users with a place where they can truly relax, precipitate and “slow charge”; Perhaps it is through the establishment of a community that allows users with common emotional needs to find a sense of belonging and heal each other……
The essence of business is to serve people, and what brands can do is to think about how to become the trustworthy ark that can carry them through emotional storms and sail to a more open and calm sea.
