The logic of brand "social currency"

If a brand wants to "invade" the minds of consumers, we need to understand the consumer's purchase decision journey. Whoever can occupy the minds of consumers will ultimately win in the competition. The author of the following article introduces how brands can penetrate into the minds of consumers. Let's take a look.

01

In commercial competition, the real battlefield is not the terminal war, product war, or price war, but the battle of consumers' minds. Whoever can occupy the minds of consumers will win in the end. If brands are likened to viruses, then successful brands are those that can successfully invade consumers' minds. (This is a metaphor. Put aside moral judgments. Brands and products are ultimately creating value for customers.)

02

If a brand wants to "invade" the minds of consumers, we need to understand the consumer's purchase decision journey. Every decision node is an opportunity for the brand to "invade". The consumer decision journey is divided into five steps:

1. Problem identification, for example, I have dandruff on my head, what should I do?
2. Information search. Once you realize there is a problem, start searching for information and research what kind of product can solve the problem raised by "problem identification". You can watch advertisements, read soft articles, ask relatives and friends, read posts on online forums, read notes on Xiaohongshu, go to a professional care store to ask sales staff, or watch live broadcasts on Douyin and Taobao.
3. Evaluate alternatives. Consider several purchase options and then evaluate them by combining your own feelings with the suggestions of friends and family.
4. When making a purchasing decision, I like one plan and my boyfriend suggests another. One plan is more expensive and the other is relatively cheaper. How should I decide?
5. The purchase behavior, and finally follow their own plan, or adopt the plan suggested by their boyfriend. Now the live broadcast or Douyin that is doing well is to compress all the information of the five processes of consumer decision-making, so that consumers can complete the order and decision. This is also one of the reasons for the high return rate of live broadcast.

03

Consumers have two main methods for problem identification: either lowering the actual situation or raising the ideal expectation. After consumers realize the problem and want a solution, they start to search for information. Information search generally comes from four sources:

• Source of experience: Although I haven’t bought it myself, I have seen friends use it or talk about it.
• Personal sources: ask family members, relatives, colleagues, neighbors, friends, classmates, etc.;
• Business sources: information obtained from advertisements/soft articles, and information obtained from corporate official websites.
• Public sources: information broadcast by mass media,

04

Among the four sources of information, personal sources play the biggest role in purchasing decisions. Because when friends and family recommend a product to us, the areas in our brains responsible for rational evaluation are closed, while the insula responsible for "social emotions" (such as desire, pride, shame, guilt, sympathy, and love) has intense activity. When word of mouth works, we replace rational thinking with emotion, and we transfer our trust in friends and family to the product (friends are endorsing the product with their personal credit). This is completely opposite to the brain activity when we see advertisements. When consumers see advertisements, they will fall into rational evaluation and subconsciously feel disgust.

05

To make a brand spread like a virus, we need to consider six aspects:

1. Let the brand's products become social currency. Just like people can use money to buy goods, social currency can "buy" good reviews and more positive impressions from friends and family. For example, if you find a good text and post it to your circle of friends, and it immediately gets everyone's likes, the text content is your social currency.
2. Inducement: Linking to more frequently mentioned external conditions can make people think of our products often. For example, "Rainy days and chocolate are more suitable", the purpose is to hope that you can think of that brand of chocolate on rainy days, and rainy days are the temptation of chocolate. People are depressed on rainy days, and eating sweet chocolate makes them feel better. Gongrunxiang tea paste, for example, achieves temptation through analogy, because the tea paste category is less well-known, but the product is really good, that is, safe and convenient, and better than drinking original tea in some scenarios, so Gongrunxiang uses "Women eat donkey-hide gelatin, men drink tea paste, Dongfang Guili, Gongrunxiang tea paste" to achieve temptation.
3. Emotions: Driven by emotions, people will willingly repost and spread information. Many self-media people are very good at using emotions to achieve their goals.
4. Public visibility: Making something more observable makes it easier for you to imitate it. Take TikTok for example.
5. Practical value: People like to pass on information that they think is useful to others. For example, why does your mother always send you articles like "The 6 Harms of Long-term Late Sleeping" or "Learn These Five Things and You Will Have a Successful Life"?
6. What people are most willing to talk about are those ups and downs of the story. Good brands are all "super storytellers".

06

In specific business operations, how should we use the above six aspects? We need to turn all the purposes of the brand into a "super social currency" that empowers consumers. When considering the above six aspects, we should turn the brand into the "social currency" of users, and then penetrate this "social currency" into the daily lives of consumers. We can truly achieve the spread of the brand like a "virus".

07

When consumers have ideas but are not very good at expressing them, there happens to be certain content that can help them express their ideas.

1. Can my brand communication content help consumers “express their ideas”?
2. Whether our brand can help consumers shape their image.
3. Whether our brand can enable consumers to find similar ones.
4. Can our brand satisfy consumers' desire to show off?
5. Can our brand help brands express emotions?
6. Can our brand help consumers show their love?
7. Is our brand able to help others?
8. Whether our brand can provide consumers with something to talk about.

08

Master the brand’s “social currency” logic and make the brand a super virus.

Author: Liu Yichun

Source: WeChat public account "Liu Yichun's Brand Business Innovation (ID: shangyeyiguohui)"