Editor's note: This article is from WeChat public number "Li Lemon" (ID: imslimeng), the author of IMS founder Li Lemon. 36 Krypton reprinted with permission.
In recent years, I have often heard people around me complain more about the younger generation:
Many bosses are particularly wary of the "Post-95s", thinking that there are many "Buddhist employees" among them, with no desire, no dream, no motivation, and many of them belong to the kind of small fortune (the pursuit of small but real happiness).
360 President Zhou Hongyi made it clear to regularly clean up the Buddhist staff, otherwise, the entire work atmosphere is as lifeless as the Dead Sea.
Many brand companies even regard "post-95" users as "low desire to survive".
No matter how hard a brand company tries to market, they are just "all right, all right, whatever". Even if you try to cut the price and dump the goods, they often do not care.
They always stay at home and solve everything on their cell phones. They don't care about the brand when they buy anything, as the brand only represents other people's evaluation and opinion. They know where their "comfort zone" is, and they only pay attention to some niche netroots brands. Even if you advertise everywhere, the size of fans on official microblogs and weibo is not even as large as some niche netroots brands.
The Post-60s, Post-70s and Post-80s generally have a high level of desire, everyone wants to earn more money, and money is never enough. No matter what class of people, even if they are already very rich and socially prominent, they still feel that the present situation is not their future, and there are still a lot of things to fight for.
However, after 95, 2000 groups, the concept of the obvious emergence of the "fault", food, clothing, housing and travel, suddenly entered the "desire for lightweight" era, so that people can not do anything about it.
At one time, the Japanese Mr. Miura used the phrase "falling into the lower class" to describe the lack of progress of the younger generation. There is an old Hong Kong song called "Downward Spiral", which contains the lyrics: "They are struggling upward, we are drifting downward."
Later, Kenichi Ohmae used the term "Low Desire Society" to describe the mentally disillusioned young generation, believing that low desire would create a "lazy society" and destroy people's motivation for upward mobility.
Nowadays, the post-1995 and post-2000 generations in China are also considered to be living in a "Buddhist society". The lower-class society, the low desire society and the Buddhist society are just different expressions of the same concept in different time and space backgrounds.
Yale University professor Chen Zhiwu has said: low desire (or Buddha) is actually a kind of affluent disease in the current society. This is already common in Japan, Europe and the United States, and the affluent Chinese society is following suit.
However, I'm more concerned about how this social reshaping will change the logic of business behind the scenes.
01. To see Indy is to truly see the brand
In fact, I've never agreed with the term "low desire" or "Buddhist".
Post-95s and post-2000s just desire to be elsewhere without your knowledge.
In the past, we have been in an industry, company, or business for a long time, and we have unconsciously "treated the existing state as common sense", gradually pulling away from the users.
For example, people born before 1990 who watch movies, television, and video sites see the screen in landscape orientation.
Suddenly, Jitterbug and Shutterbug are breaking the mold with a lot of videos on vertical screens, and a lot of people are not going to be able to get used to it.
However, people born after 1990 are used to cell phones taking care of everything, they are used to looking at vertical screens and are especially adapted to Jitterbugs and snapchats.
What's so great about video on a vertical screen?
It's that you no longer need to put your phone flat, which is more in line with the habits of younger users. Once videos on vertical screens became popular, society as a whole had no choice but to adapt.
By the same token, you only need to really read the true thoughts of the younger generation, and you'll find that low desire and buddhism are actually a kind of self reinvention, which in turn reinvents the business logic of this era.
Even Japan's so-called "decadent generation" catalyzed consumer brands such as Uniqlo, Daiso Lifestyle, Muji, and many others that have taken the world by storm.
Taking Muji Liangpin as an example, it is aimed at the low desire of the Buddhist life, "Muji Liangpin" literally means "no brand", but the main "reasonable cheap". Millet has been learning from Muji for a long time.
Indy has been doing de-branding, and there are three layers to this:
Breakthrough category
What does the Apple brand correspond to? Electronics.
What does the McDonald's brand correspond to? Fries and burgers.
What does Indy correspond to? Can't say.
Currently, MUJI has developed more than 7,000 products covering household goods, food, electrical appliances, clothes and even hotels ...... MUJI corresponds to a lifestyle rather than a specific type of product.
Rely on word of mouth, not advertising
Indy hardly spends any money on advertising space and time slots, saving a large amount of money on advertising.
So how did the Japanese know about Muji?
Ordinary Japanese tend to hold a special admiration for some famous chefs, famous designers, and famous writers, just as Taiwanese worship doctors and Koreans favor street performers.
MUJI often gets some "popular cooks" to perform live, and some "popular writers" to explain their life experiences. This is not an advertisement, but it obviously brings "word-of-mouth self-propagation".
Helping customers eliminate "all the details that could cost them money."
For example, mushrooms, tomatoes, and cucumbers in the supermarket are pre-selected in similar shapes and sizes, and then packaged to sell.
MUJI believes that the shape of the ingredients is not important, anyway, they have to be chopped into the dish, color, aroma, amount of just right, remove a lot of unnecessary procedures to minimize waste, naturally, is the "reasonable cheap".
More than 7,000 products, all "unnecessary details that cost money" are removed.
Consumer brands are a social currency, a label for your social identity. Not bad, that's what most people think. Roughly 40% of people in Japan own at least one LV, and 92% of Japanese women are LV users, in addition, 90% of Japanese women own Gucci, more than 58% have Prada, and more than 51% have Chanel.Some years ago, Japan alone contributed 30% of Hermes' sales, and in recent years Because of the great explosion of Chinese female consumers, it is only because of the Japanese this proportion has declined.
However, configuring luxury brands in no way affects most people's budget-conscious mentality.
When you really read "Downward Bound" and "Low Desire Society", you will find that the Japanese younger generation has a deep-rooted "psychological split" - extreme "upward admiration", and they are willing to spend a lot of money for the sake of a label (luxury brands); extreme "downward drift", and most of the consumption scenarios are particularly pragmatic and calculating. A label (luxury brand) is not afraid to spend a lot of money; extreme "downward drift", most of the consumption scenarios are particularly pragmatic and calculating.
The core heart of Indy's de-branding is one - not to classify the crowd (e.g., who is middle class, who is small-town youth, who is a potential target user), but only to classify the consumption scene.
Note: Only consumer scenes are categorized. Consumer brands mostly target the crowd more than the scene, and Muji is the opposite.
The same person can spend a lot of money on stock trading and business occasions, but he or she will compare the goods in supermarkets and food markets and spend carefully. In different consumption scenarios, the "deepest concerns" in people's minds are different.
For "the deepest concerns of people in different consumption scenarios", the product mix is the most powerful, the brand is only a by-product of this process. These, too, can only be achieved by truly understanding society and human nature.
The unprecedented success of Indy has proved a key point: the low desire, Buddhist young generation, they are not really low desire, just more drifting desire, not easy to be captured by consumer brands. This requires a new business logic to match.
02. As soon as possible to establish a "central command room" to cope with marketing changes
Over the past 30 years, Japan's younger generation has been negatively labeled as "small-minded," "low-desire," and "low-class," forming the social backdrop for the country's economic stagnation and business decline. This has formed the backdrop for Japan's economic stagnation and commercial decline.
However, really smart corporate brands (like Indy) are willing to understand them, read them, and instead realize major business innovations and break out.
China's younger generation is facing a similar dilemma today, and more Chinese brands need to hit the pulse of their needs and make more changes.
For example, China tends to use the term "Buddhist" to describe the young generation's lightheartedness and lack of desire, such as "Buddhist life," "Buddhist love," "Buddhist buyers," "Buddhist employees," etc. Bosses don't like these employees, and brands don't like these users. Bosses don't like this kind of employees and brands don't like this kind of users.
However, the world is changing and there is always a need to find good solutions and evolve new business logic.
Many years ago, based on the business logic of "aiming at the scene rather than the crowd, and being a lifestyle brand rather than a product brand", Muji has successfully captured the drifting consumer demand of the young generation.
Nowadays, in the context of social e-commerce and new media, "accurate business based on particulate society" will become the biggest breakthrough point.
In the past, if you wanted to know about a person, you filled in the form with name, gender, ethnicity, education, place of origin, age, height, blood type, ID number, work industry and income status, and that was the whole picture of a person. But what is the commercial value of this?
Not anymore, your consumption data, mobile payment or transfer data, where you show up every day, how many steps you take every day, restaurants you like to eat at, facial features and even your daily state of mind and emotions, and so on, such a huge, multi-dimensional and timely data record, you as a person are like being looked at under a microscope.
Today, we have entered a high-definition "particulate society", supported by the innovation of big data and accurate imaging, the consumer demand market is no longer a blurry painting, but a high-definition image with extremely fine pixel particles.
Post-95 and post-2000 young generation are the aborigines of this era of big data and high-definition image, and the biggest change they bring is the "particulate society". Everyone has his or her own characteristics, and they are getting more and more different, you live your life, I live my life, and the common points are getting less and less trivial.
Especially in the brand selection, "brand public area" is getting smaller and smaller, the kind of a brand can target a consumer group situation will not happen again.
The post-95 and post-2000 young generations are basically indifferent to mass-consumption brands, and a lot of "niche netroots brands" continue to rise.
In this context, the MIT Media Lab emphasizes that a compass is better than a map, and that directions are more important than paths because paths change from time to time, whereas the skill of using a compass belongs to the category of the unchanging. So, what are some actionable practices?
Personally, I'm a big fan of the Obeya Room brand that Procter & Gamble started.
The biggest challenge for branding companies in the "particulate society" is unpredictable change, and the greatest value of the Obeya Room is its flexibility in mobilizing resources and responding to all kinds of change.
Procter & Gamble is the world's largest advertiser, with annual advertising budgets typically ranging from $6 billion to $8 billion.
However, P&G's huge brand matrix, mainly for the mass consumer group, in the consumer group highly "particulate" at the moment, must make changes.
For example, a breaking news story can instantly hype a topic, a
