Digital Age: How To Break Brand Circle?

"If the brand is water, the digital age just means that its container has changed, the speed of water flow or the sound of water flow has changed, but the water quality itself has not changed." On December 20, at the 2020 China brand value management forum sponsored by 21st century economic report and jointly sponsored by Genyuan Consulting Group, Shi Qianli, the marketing planning director of Xingzheng asset management, made the above views.

In the digital era, data will become the core resource for human beings to maintain and operate. Due to the characteristics of unimpeded flow of data, the boundaries of industries and industries are melting, the boundaries of enterprises are more blurred, and the unsolved puzzles are increasing. The path and possibility of brand marketing are increasing exponentially. Digitization, brand and cultural symbols are the three key words of this forum. When it comes to "digitization", a well-known hot word, people are seldom unfamiliar with it. However, there is still no clear answer for the whole industry on how to apply digitalization to brand marketing and how to help the brand to carry out concrete image construction.

What can be determined is that the development of the times is changing rapidly. Both the brand side and the platform side need to adapt to the market with digital logic through constant changes. In addition, taking the user experience and user-centered idea as the core, and developing brand characteristics that adapt to their own characteristics, the brand side or platform can break the circle, out of the circle, and remain evergreen.

The change and invariance of brand in Digital Era

"In the process of brand building, the methodology of brand positioning and the methodology of brand strategy have not changed much so far." Huang Fei, chief solution and Innovation Officer of CRM business of China Telecom Group, said that the focus of brand marketing in the digital era is to deeply understand customer insight and focus on one point; the strategy is to remove "some things that are not so important".

The so-called "removing something that is not so important" refers to sticking to the original intention in the process of brand building. No matter how the world changes, as a living creature, the way the brain works maintains a set of logic. This means that when doing brand strategy, we need to find a core positioning first. "And this positioning often reflects the positioning of enterprise business. No matter what new products or new company's strategic brand, we should abide by this principle. " Huang Fei thinks.

In fact, sticking to this "point" is not easy for the brand, which poses a higher challenge to the enterprise's brand management. Nowadays, in different platforms, the audience's preferences are also different. Brands need to adapt to these platforms, thus forcing the brand to "change".

In fact, the "tangle" of "change and invariance" encountered by brands is precisely caused by the digital era. In this era, data will be the most core resource for human beings to maintain and operate in the future. It is mobile and can be passed through without hindrance through agreements.

In the view of Huang Shengmin, senior professor of Communication University of China and director of China advertising Museum, in the digital era, all boundaries are melting, all motion trajectories are becoming platform, and the boundaries of enterprises have become blurred. This has formed three basic phenomena: first, the production of information content is infinite; second, the transmission is infinite; third, the state of receiving is infinite.

"These three" infinity "happen to be the biggest confusion encountered by operators, brand operators and producers." Huang Shengmin takes the brand as an example. He thinks that the brand is very important originally, but when everyone becomes the information publisher and disseminator, the brand control fails.

"What the brand needs to change is that under a core brand positioning, to decompose and spread brand information to various channels and circles, it needs to change at any time according to the changes of channels and circles. 100 people may have 100 preferences. " Huang Fei stressed that in this process of adaptation, digital means are very important, and brands need to use this to manage the experience of different users.

However, it is also a process easy to go astray. "There are also some negative cases in recent years. Some enterprises may be very popular for a time, but they quickly disappear into people's view." Huang Fei said that sometimes the more a brand wants to do something, the more it will lose focus. Once out of focus, it is impossible to form a continuous brand equity.

"It's very important to stick to it, and it's something that the brand won't change." Huang Fei said.

At present, the development of the times is changing rapidly, as a brand side, in this era, we should also be clear about some changes and unchanged.

Xu Qionghua, director of brand public relations of Ping An Bank, put forward that what the brand should remain unchanged should be "user-centered", stick to the values and continue to empathize with users, as well as the insight and experience Optimization of users' needs, as well as the demand for high-quality content. What the brand needs to change is the differentiation of its own brand and business, which should be ensured through constant changes to ensure sufficient differentiation Knowledge.

The trend of digital brand is irreversible

There is no doubt that digital means are deepening the interaction between brands and consumers. Especially under the catalysis of the epidemic situation, such interaction is more significant because of digitization.

It is reported that during this year's epidemic, the technology team of Ping An Bank quickly online all the process operations that originally required customers to go to the outlets or spend a long time, so as to provide customers with financial service needs in a timely manner. "Brand digitization is the means of empowerment and the improvement of realization ability and operational efficiency, which should be adhered to for a long time." Xu Qionghua said.

Indeed, the influence of digital on brands has penetrated into all walks of life. Wen Jing, senior brand director of Wudaokou School of finance, Tsinghua University, believes that digitalization strengthens the opportunity for audiences in the education industry to create brand experience. The education industry through digital transformation, through the online way to increase communication with the audience, but also for different audiences to hold different content sharing, thus creating more brand experience.

However, a controversy is that the digital age has brought direct links or personalized links, and the media attributes of brands have been weakened. Therefore, how much the value of the existence of the brand, began to trigger some discussions.

Bai Changhong, Dean of the Business School of Nankai University and founding director of the school of tourism and service, said that the digital era has brought more momentum to brand building, such as new media channels, communication methods, expression methods and symbol ways, but also brought some de medium efficiency.

"Brand itself is a symbol. Reviewing the connotation, function and role of a brand is actually a process of gradual evolution." Bai Changhong pointed out that in the process of evolution, a question has arisen: in today's digital age, do enterprises still need to rely on brands as much as in the industrial era?

For this problem, Bai Changhong believes that brands are still needed in the digital era. In the process of continuous development, the brand has been given more meanings on the basis of the earliest symbolization, such as cultural meaning, spiritual meaning, emotional meaning, etc.

The development of brand in the digital era, although there have been fundamental changes, but for enterprises, brand digitization is the only way for enterprises to face the future intelligent era.

However, Xu Qionghua also pointed out that there are many difficulties in brand digitization. She believes that the main difficulty is that digitization involves a lot of data operation and technology development, which are closely related to the enterprise's own operating environment and industry characteristics. "The key is to explore a digital path suitable for your brand and build a team that understands customers, data and science."