"Selling cute" sold 4.4 billion yuan,"cute" economy beyond your imagination!

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From the opening of Line friends ushered in 22 million passengers, to a variety of coffee shops with IP, theme parks, and then let young people indulge in the Jiahua machine.

Apart from other profit points, they all seem to have one thing in common: "cute". The must-kill skill of offline drainage: using "cute", "taking pictures" and "showing pictures" to improve the frequency of consumers entering the store and the length of stay.

Consumers want to return to a lovely and simple state in this complex society, and these cute things, like playmates, give them sense of security.

On April 21, 2017, three squirrels publicly issued shares on the gem, with revenue of 4.423 billion yuan in 2016, an increase of 116.47% over the same period last year, and a net profit of 237 million yuan, a 26-fold increase over the same period last year!

"three squirrels" cut into the leisure snack market with individual nuts, carry out brand building with "acting cute" as the core, innovate the mode of management, and develop rapidly.

The phenomenon of "cute" has become popular in social networks, and a new marketing model based on meeting consumers' emotional demands arises at the historic moment, and with the help of the rapid and multi-faceted spread of new media, it has gradually become a cultural phenomenon. and even form a new economic format.

In the market, there are all kinds of coffee shops, themed restaurants, endless holiday marketing and brand mascots with cute IP. It shows that the cross-border integration of "cute economy" and catering economy is forming an industry, culture and marketing trend!

1 Why is "acting cute" so popular?

What is a "cute economy"?

Baidu encyclopedia interpreted it as "economic behavior spawned by a series of cute products, in order to promote the sale of printed cartoon images and attract consumers to buy."

This should be seen from the consumption habits of consumers and the experience advantages brought by "cute" itself.

Why do people have no resistance to "cute"? Some studies have shown that consumers have the psychology of "seeking beauty" and "seeking new". They like to keep up with the trend and pay attention to fashion and novelty. Consumers prefer the consumption of "pretending to be forced" and pay attention to the experience of "taking pictures", "posting pictures" and "like".

While the consumer groups targeted by the "cute economy" are mainly post-80s and 90s. With studying and working in other places, the phenomenon of singles is common, and it is easier for "post-80s and 90s" with empty nests to take these "cute things" as emotional sustenance. Through the design of these goods, get some experience of decompression, fun, cure, companionship and giving sense of security.

The answer is: the advantage of passenger flow inspired by "cute".

1. The "cute" image is easy to communicate with consumers and improve their participation.

"acting cute" is often embodied through a variety of pleasant non-verbal symbols, making the rich expressions of people in the real world virtual and personified, with the characteristics of vivid, lovely and easy to understand. it can shorten the psychological distance with consumers and form a close relationship between brands and consumers.

The line theme store in Shenzhen has a tall line theme image at the door to restrict passenger flow, allowing girls and young men to enter and take photos at one time.

The entire line theme space includes coffee shops (brisk business, long queues comparable to tea queues not far away), theme clothing sales halls, and various styles of t-shirt. What makes people feel that the experience is excellent is that a special photo area has been set up to meet the needs of customers to take photos and send them to their moments.

2. "acting cute" can increase the salience of the brand and shape the personality image of the brand.

No matter whether the enterprise carries on the brand image management or not, the brand always has an image in the hearts of consumers.

This image is the brand cognition and association formed by customers according to their own understanding and experience of the brand. "cute design" often has distinct personality characteristics, which can increase the salience of the brand.

From Kumamoto Xiong to three squirrels, from two-dimensional plane to three-dimensional technology, their expressions and body language are ironic and anthropomorphic, which are purer, more direct and more interesting in emotional communication than other experiences.

3. it is easy to cultivate loyal customers and improve brand loyalty.

"acting cute" will form a unique "cute culture", bringing together consumers with their own individual characteristics into the community.

The phenomenon of "cute" has spread rapidly on social networks, and many "cute" things have their own fan pages, which are sought after by a large number of netizens, and in the long run, they have accumulated consumers' loyalty to "cute" things.

This relationship is not only the dependence of emotion and attitude and the loyalty of consumer behavior, but also the cohesion of consumers through brand culture, making them form a sense of community belonging, and then actively involved in brand communication and the consumption of products or services.

(2) how to carry out "cute" planning for catering brands?

With "acting cute" as a symbol, we can not only innovate brand design, but also carry out brand extension, and interact with consumers in a fresh way.

Through acting cute, the brand culture is expressed in a relaxed and lively symbolic form, which is consistent with the consumers' psychology of pursuing happiness and interest. The use of "acting cute" strategy in food and beverage brand building mainly has the following points:

1. Create your own cute mascot

Through the way of virtual spokesman, the brand image is expressed visually. The personified expression image of acting cute clearly highlights the brand personality, and through the personification expression with consumers, it closes the stickiness between brand and consumers.

There is such a celebrity "Dragon sister" in Da long Meng, which can be given away when members spend more than 200 yuan. Mengmeng K's lovely image has gained thousands of fans.

As long as you upload the photos of long Mei's entourage to Weibo, prefix # to the topic of taking Dragon Mei on a trip #, and record the story of yourself and Da Longzhu, and then @ Da Longyi hot pot, you can participate in the selection, and the winner can win a suitcase worth thousands of yuan.

Now, as long Mei travels all over the world, the big dragon is also widely known, and the cost is just the cost of making dolls and a box of money.

2. take advantage of the marketing node of the festival to explore the bright spots of fun.

Festivals are the best time to generate consumption opportunities, in the festival node, to use "cute" to increase consumers' desire to buy, is a way to increase the popularity of the market.

On May 20 this year, the theme activity of "endless fun" has become a dark horse in the catering industry, a simple and interesting way to play:

In the quack-feeding restaurant, following the classic action of cute fun, sucking your fingers to take photos and @ sucking your fingers to feed the official WeChat, launched the topic of # sucking fingers than cute #, causing nearly 70,000 people to participate and comment, and the topic was exposed more than 5.2 million times. it can be said that it was a screen scan.

3. Create a social place / platform under the name of "cute".

Communication psychological distance consists of cognitive distance, emotional distance and attitude distance. Spatial distance, social distance and time distance affect psychological distance together.

Like Line friends and Kumamoto cafes, everything you can experience in the store for a long time can form a social pattern.

This social model increases contact and interaction with customers, enhances customer experience, brings more trust between consumers and brands, and word-of-mouth communication effect between consumers and consumers.

3 summary

Under the premise of the same product quality, a good-looking store must attract more customers. Because, the appearance is the most perceptible.

Through its personified image and interesting name, "cute" is not only easy to be remembered by consumers, but also easy to communicate, which is the unique feature of "cute" brand planning.

"cute" brand marketing not only conveys the brand concept to the audience one-way, but also pays attention to the communication and interaction with consumers to attract customer participation, especially through new media to carry out entertainment marketing, attract customers to actively participate in the marketing process, and carry out brand construction in the way of "user-generated content" (UGC).

Therefore, acting cute marketing is based on interaction with consumers, actively carry out communication with customers at the same time, mobilize the initiative of customer communication, and absorb their participation as much as possible.

It is worth noting that it is impossible to hope that consumers will actively contact and love this cute spot if they only create a cute spot and do not work hard on the product.

Nowadays, the single behavior that customers only make consumption sparks with static cute things is not a long-term solution.