On the road of brand building, many companies have fallen into the dilemma of ambiguous brand recognition after short-term sales growth. This article explores the importance of brand tone and its strategies and methods at different stages from the perspective of brand content.
Many people do brands, whether it is in Tao, including Douyin now, short-term GMV is easy to do, so many people don’t know what to do next after doing it. One of the biggest problems with these brands is,A brand consensus is missing from the top floor.
So in the whole process, many of us Chinese entrepreneurs solve only selling goods, selling goods, or selling goods; Looking for a hit, looking for a hit, or looking for a hit. This leads to consumers’ ambiguous perception of the brand on the brand side.
Under the long-term market game, consumers will form a certain brand order.
For example, LV and Gucci are luxury goods, Li Ning is a national tide, Huawei is a national brand, MINISO is a lifestyle brand, Heytea and Bawang Chaji are new tea drinks, and Hua Xizi is an oriental aesthetic makeup brand.
In the larger brand order, the uniqueness of the brand conveyed by different brands forms a consensus on the consumer side, and this sense of order guides the public to make different consumption decisions and also brings differentiated identity.The unique tonality determines what unique impression a brand leaves on consumers (especially the first impression), which I call “brand tone”.
Brand tone is a comprehensive concept that creates a unique image for the brand and helps everyone know who you are. Therefore, the brand tone solves the problem of “what kind of brand image to face the public”:
- Convey the mood and feelings of the brand
- Brand personality
- User and brand relationships
For brands, successfully setting the tone on the mass consumption side means occupying a place in the brand ecosystem.
The core is market value, and the extension includes corporate values, brand stories, product stories, corporate culture, communication symbols, founder images, brand public speeches, etc., which is a set of sustainable brand narrative system, which is the collection and integration of brand experience, personality and relationship:To ensure that communication conveys a strong and consistent voice and feeling.
After 10 years of interaction design, why did I transfer to product manager?
After the real job transfer, I found that many jobs were still beyond my imagination. The work of a product manager is indeed more complicated. Theoretically, the work of a product manager includes all aspects of the product, from market research, user research, data analysis…
View details >
This sustainable narrative system needs to be considered from the moment the brand is born, and it is necessary to understand the strategy, users, products and markets, and build a set of long-term narrative systems for business development and user trust for enterprises.
This narrative system:
- To C, you can define consumer culture, lead users’ purchasing behavior, and gain user loyalty;
- To B, you can lead business model changes, activate demand, and shape the business ecology.
Next, let’s talk about the strategies and methods of setting the tone of the brand from the perspective of content marketing.
Tap into the brand’s cultural code
Harvard Business School professor Douglas Holt said in his book “Cultural Strategy”: Consumers are flocking to brands that embody their ideals because they help them express their personal desires. The most successful of these consumer goods brands will become idol brands, among the ranks of cultural idols, and become the consistent expression of some consumers who advocate unique values in society.
Douglas Holt further explained that culture is about innovation, and every time a culture innovates, new brands can seize opportunities from old brands.
He called this process a cultural innovation strategy and gave three elements:
Brand culture innovation model
Cultural Code:The outermost cultural code is the content and expression that is most suitable for cultural commitment.Brand Commitment:It can be understood as an educational story that reveals the ideology of the brand.
New Concept:It refers to the (new) attitudes towards these important cultural concepts that have been widely recognized and taken for granted, and which are naturally taken as “truth” by a part of society.
Returning to the status quo of the Chinese market, focusing on cultural innovation, it can be seen from the rise of “national tide” and “national style” in recent years that it is crucial to win Chinese consumers and tell a “Chinese brand story”.
Taking Hua Xizi as an example, if you were asked to describe Hua Xizi, what would you think of?
Oriental makeup, flower makeup, national style, carving……
In the public introduction of Hua Xizi, we can see that Hua Xizi has positioned itself as an oriental makeup, and has adhered to the oriental aesthetic system from the beginning of the brand’s establishment to create products and content with the characteristics of “Hua Xizi”.
For example:
Hua Xizi’s packaging design, product technology, etc., inherits oriental culture;
- Brand Name:related to flowers, West Lake and Xi Shi;Brand LOGO:The small window in the shape of the Jiangnan garden;
- Brand main color:Inspired by a little powder + pink wall tiles;
- Product process:reproduce the integration of traditional Chinese craftsmanship and makeup brands;
- Brand fonts:designed the brand’s exclusive font – “Huaxizi Font”;
- Cross-border linkage:Together with Li Jiaqi, he went deep into Miao Village in Guizhou to explore the intangible cultural heritage of the Miao people, and jointly developed the Miao impression haute couture series of makeup, and worked together to bring the beauty of the nation to the world.
- Brand Spokesperson:Hand in hand with oriental beauties such as cuckoo and Liu Shishi, explore the beauty of the Orient of peerless and independent women.
If we apply this model to an analysis, we can see the following figure: Hua Xizi completed a brand building beautifully from the new concept to the brand commitment to the cultural code in one go.
Huaxizi brand culture innovation model
Hua Xizi, who focuses on “oriental makeup”, is not only staying in “art companies and design companies” through oral expression and thinking surface. It awakens everyone’s sensitivity by exploring oriental aesthetics with creators from different fields, paying tribute to oriental learning.
From the conscious subconscious to the collective unconscious, it is actually through the in-depth excavation of various cultures to find the roots of culture, plant the tree of experience, and bear the fruit of aesthetics. Thus, a new style of oriental makeup and culture has been brought to the world, and finally a global brand and symbol – the original spirit, national brand and responsibility that have always been deeply imprinted in the core DNA of Hua Xizi.
In addition to Hua Xizi, there are countless examples of developing or reactivating a brand through cultural innovation, such as Coca-Cola, Apple, Nike, Disney…… Looking closer, there are Chinese brands, as well as Li Ning, Bubble Mart, Guanxia, NEIWAI and so on.
We found that when brands are empowered by culture, they create strong and lasting emotional bonds between consumers.
Peeking into the leopard in the tube and using the brand concept that highly resonates with consumers and consumers is the biggest brand asset of startups and will be the norm in the future.
Shape brand temperament
Temperament was first proposed by the ancient Roman doctor Galen, and is one of the characteristics of personality psychology, which is more used to describe people.
So why is the brand temperament derived?
The trust of traditional brands often comes from the “outside”, that is, through slogan-style advertising, education, design letters of trust, etc. to seize the minds of consumers, which is a kind of “enclosure” movement from the outside in;
However, with the increasing maturity of the consumer market, the trust of consumer brands at this stage often comes from the exploration of “inward”, such a brand is like a living person, with its own true and independent values, character attitude, spiritual pursuit, young people because of their true personality traits.
This brand temperament is the product of a series of summations, such as image design, product design, personality design, internal culture, founders, etc., which are composed of a series of elements.
So, what is brand temperament?Brand temperament = the connotation, life or soul of the brand, also known as endogenous force and static marketability.
At the brand level, it covers:
- Personality setting:What kind of character is it? Am I humorous, rigorous, professional, or funny?
- Language Settings:How to communicate with users? What kind of expression is in line with the brand personality? Which ones are not advisable?
- Image setting:What kind of visual presentation and which style is mine?
- Action setting:What are some interesting marketing campaigns that relate to users?
Next, I would like to analyze Hua Xizi’s product system, visual system, design system, communication system and content system through the branches and details of a tree, and see how Hua Xizi shapes the brand temperament?
Huaxizi brand temperament tree
Isn’t it intuitive? Based on the research and exploration of oriental aesthetics, Hua Xizi chose to successfully implant the brand characteristics of oriental aesthetics into the minds of consumers under the oriental aesthetic system, with makeup as the carrier and culture as the medium.
There are also our common brands, Nike is (credible, hardworking, sports), Disney is (fun, entertainment, IP), coconut water (ghosts, catching horses, earthy flavor), Laoxiang chicken (chicken feet, clucking, drama).
Corresponding to the content communication output, the whole system of brand new product research and development, packaging design, Tmall detail page, new media content, posters, advertising content and so on has a clue to coordinate.
You can see that all the copywriting that Apple has disseminated to the outside world is very “apple”.
This is the language feeling that Apple wants to convey to consumers, and its unique “minimalist” expression, because the characteristics are distinct enough, it has been imitated by many brands, and it has also been imitated by Weilong.
For shy brands, the ultimate goal of shaping brand temperament:Let users feel that the brand is a real person, show their interesting soul, and communicate deeply with users, so as to build relationships and preferences with the brand.
When we cultivate our internal skills, a complete brand with products, tonality, consensus, and user traffic will be there. At this time, we will do popular word-of-mouth marketing communication, and in the process of reaching from products to consumers again and again, consumers have a cognition of the brand, and the brand is endowed with brand power.
Therefore, I would also like to give you a thought, from the perspective of brand tone setting and brand temperament shaping, how to concretize and consistently express your brand value? Fill it out.
This article is excerpted from Chapter 2 of “Breaking Word of Mouth”: Brand Content: How to Do a Good Job of Content at Different Stages of Branding?
