Co-branding, selling cute stalks, is brand marketing innovative or stagnant this year?

Reporter | Ma Yue Editor | HANA Xiang When we tried to review and summarize the annual trend of brand marketing in 2022, we found that some brand practices this year continued the trend of the past few years. Whether it is co-branding, official marketing or cute pet marketing, it can still get traffic for the brand, and consumers are willing to participate, but unfortunately there are not many fresh games this year. Perhaps the overall consumption environment downturn has weakened the brand's budget and energy. "Old routine" is a fairly safe card, but fortunately, some brands have also played new tricks in their past experience. Joint name or joint name "either in joint name or on the road of joint name"-Although cross-border joint name is nothing new, in 2022, the pursuit of joint name by consumer brands will be more enthusiastic and in-depth, and more interesting and interactive. For example, the icons of Japanese fashion circle, Xicha and Hiroshi Fujiwara, jointly "blacken" the cup body, the lid, the packaging bag and the limited art surroundings; Ruixing used the iconic "debris flow" style to package the design of coconut palm juice, realizing that "the soil is the tide to the extreme"; Since the cooperation between Xicha and the hit drama Meng Hua Lu, there has also been a wave of joint marketing of TV IP and new tea brands. Later, Naixue's tea also linked Ji and Moon Man, and Xicha even joined the game of "everything can be passed on", and continued to harvest new traffic with the help of old dramas that have been broadcast for more than 10 years; Needless to say, Harry Potter, the most popular classic IP in the world, cooperated with dozens of brands such as China Industrial and Commercial Bank, Holiland, Haima, Gourmet and Fauvism in one breath this year, and magically emptied fans' wallets with all kinds of surroundings. The essence of creativity is the new combination of old elements, presenting old elements in a new combination way. However, cross-border brands need complementarity and difference in elements, complementarity in functions and comparison in channels. Nowadays, under the popular planning thinking of rapid manufacturing, brands with active marketing such as new tea, baking, food and beverage have become major cross-border joint brands, and their increasingly creative ideas have become an important force for many new consumer brands to shape tonality and differentiation, which will drive growth in the competition in the second half. Therefore, this kind of creativity has evolved from the shallow joint name of putting logo together to the all-round cooperation from product research and development to packaging and surrounding areas. Compared with simply shooting brand advertising blockbusters or launching offline activities, manufacturing co-branded products is indeed one of the few ways to combine brand communication with sales promotion in an increasingly difficult communication environment. After all, if the product itself can drive consumers to plant grass or even re-create it on social networks, it is the best marketing. # In a niche podcast, focusing on wheat is different from a short video that quickly catches the eye with fast content. Many brands have begun to be interested in podcasting, a niche media platform, and have begun to incorporate podcasting into their marketing positions. In addition to advertising, brands including McDonald's, Nike, Sandun Half, Tmall International, domestic and overseas, MINI, POP MART, etc. are all becoming pathfinders of customized brand podcasts, which also makes the commercialization of China podcasts more possible. Although the foreign podcast market is mature, in China, podcast is still a low-key niche for a long time. Until 2020, the catalytic effect of the epidemic unexpectedly promoted the growth of online content services such as audio. With the hot discussion on social media, there are more and more producers and listeners of podcasts, and this kind of media, which was originally like a niche utopia, has gradually surfaced and formed a craze. However, the current positioning of brand podcasts is not to make their own programs into embarrassing "long advertisements", but to bring podcast resources and perspectives different from those of individual creators on topics such as entrepreneurship, literature, finance and sports lifestyle. Compared with short videos and live broadcasts, brand podcasts can shape the connection with users in a long period of immersion, and imperceptibly complete the establishment of brands. Large packaging has become a trend. In the past, food brands have introduced "mini" packaging to cater to people who want to lose weight. Now this trend has been reversed-they want bigger and bigger packaging. 5L A bucket of fruit tea, a bucket of crayfish, noodles and even pot-stewed meat, this year, the quantifier used to describe food was upgraded from "cup" to "bucket", and "ton" was used to describe planting grass on social networks. According to the take-away data of Meituan, the types of barreled tea products in beginning of autumn increased by 254% year on year. In July this year, the sales volume of barreled tea increased by 62% year-on-year, of which about 80% was fruit barreled milk tea. In addition to the common 1L specification, there is even an ultra-large capacity of about 6 kg. At least 23 brands, including Xicha, Gu Ming, Milk Snow Tea, Tea White Road, Shanghai Auntie and Yi Shu Diancao, have launched super-capacity barreled products, and more than 20 models are updated every month. The most direct reason why big packaging is popular is to attract attention. The topic of super-large or even giant packaging on social networks makes it an advertisement in itself. In addition, in outdoor sports scenes such as camping, large-sized packaged food also highlights the cost performance, and it has also become the best prop for easy "filming". Camping, playing Frisbee and outdoors have become the new passwords of scene marketing. No matter whether you really live in a tent or not, many people in the circle of friends in 2022 must have had such an "outdoor" experience-camping, frisbee, and even land surfing and paddling have become the hottest activities to occupy holiday social networks. As a substitute for tourism in the post-epidemic era, this kind of outdoor sports with leisure attributes has changed from a hobby of the minority to a social currency of the urban middle class. When outdoor sports are labeled as trends, they are combined with food, photography, clothing, fashion, pets and other interest circles, and the "outdoor+"model is derived, which has also become a new content for many consumer brands to seek marketing. Outdoor sports create a dream scene for consumer brands, thus digging out new demands. On the one hand, at the product level, many brands such as home, mother and baby, coffee, food and beverage have launched outdoor related surroundings through cross-border joint names. For example, Fauvism introduced camping supplies including camping mats and nightlight; Coffee brand seesaw launched camping gift box with hand washing pot; Babycare, a maternal and infant brand, launched a camping refueling package for novice parents who are keen on camping; McDonald's launched outdoor activities including potato kites and frisbee in summer. In the case of limited food and beverage consumption, many food and beverage categories, including mutton kebabs, hot pot and fresh tea, are aiming at the camping scene, launching related take-out and set meals, and even many cooked food brands are grasping the slogan of this scene. On the other hand, even if there are no products to combine, many brands take outdoor as a trend element, and follow the trend through pop-up shop, live broadcast and promotional videos. Literature is popular, and a kind of national creation under social network can stimulate netizens' greater participation and creativity by packaging scattered online pop stalks in the name of literature. Although it's a bit confusing, it really happened-the four major literatures, namely, vegetable market literature, crazy literature, bad literature, crazy literature and true literature, have all been contracted this year. The popularity of this kind of literature is largely due to its direct impact on people's emotional demands. In 2022, which is full of turmoil and changes, netizens look for * * * songs through such creations and have a spiritual massage in a self-deprecating way. Due to the considerable space for secondary creation and extension, a large number of UGC (user-created content) formed on social networks has become a marketing mine worth exploring. For example, KFC, which officially incorporated and carried forward the "Crazy Four Literatures", not only successfully registered its trademark, but also launched the "Crazy Four Literatures Festival" and officially launched the "V I 50" gift card. For example, under the background of Shanghai's official resumption of work and production in June this year, RT Mart supermarkets hung a stalk of "Vegetable Market Literature" combined with "True Story" on their shelves. The reason why its copy is out of the circle is because it has a sense of humor that is grounded enough to deconstruct real life with popular stalks. Under the tide of "pet economy", using cats and dogs to attract consumers' attention has become a common marketing operation of brands. According to the iResearch report, young people are the main force of pet consumption at present, among them, the post-90s generation accounts for 33%, post-90s generation accounts for 14%, post-80s generation accounts for 27%, and pet owners aged 26-36 account for 74%. From the perspective of gender, the number of female pets has reached 6 1%, which also occupies a dominant position in consumption. Following the success of McDonald's classic hamburger box-shaped cat nest at the end of 20021,KFC has made great efforts in pet marketing this year. Jointly launched a cat nest with a pet brand, and jointly launched a jumping chicken toy and a Dundun chicken pet nest with a pet brand Zeze. Coffee brand seesaw and plant milk brand plant label launched the "National Baby Limited" plant coffee activity, in which Shiba Inu and tabby cat were made into cotton candy and enjoyed a "bubble bath" in coffee. Subsequently, the same was true of the joint name of seesaw coffee and LineFriendsminini, which adopted many "lovely" elements in the product and its surroundings. In pet-related marketing activities, in addition to cuteness and face value, interactivity and playability have also become the key to breaking the circle. Simply put, it is whether this activity can stimulate more users' desire to spontaneously "sun" on social networks.