Starbucks you don't know: a very clever content marketing company.

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Everyone should have noticed this phenomenon:

Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, Nestle Coffee and other beverage brands all like to advertise on TV, online videos, bus stops and other places. Starbucks, the world's largest coffee chain, seems to post only ads on its Weibo, or occasionally one or two creative video ads.

Why is there such a phenomenon?

In fact, the issue of "Starbucks rarely plays hard" has been discussed for a long time.

Some people say:

Starbucks doesn't play hard, but it does a good job in other areas (such as public relations, brand stories and event marketing). In addition, the location of stores and exquisite packaging also have a very good advertising effect.

But if hard broad works in itself, why not do it?

Others say:

Starbucks has no need to advertise at home for the time being.

Higuang has a purpose, that is, many similar products have participated in the competition, consumers have formed the habit of consuming coffee, Higuang can remind you to come to our Starbucks house instead of going to COSTA.

At present, Starbucks is very successful: the Chinese did not understand coffee before, and he implanted the concept of "coffee = Starbucks" in the minds of the Chinese people. And for the time being, there are no obvious threats from competitors, so it is not time to advertise.

This is the most popular answer on Zhihu, and I agreed with it at first.

However, when I was analyzing content marketing in the beverage industry some time ago, I no longer thought so.

Earlier this summer, Starbucks launched a new bottled product, but this time it's not coffee, but milk tea-black tea star ice music and matcha star ice music.

If we say "coffee = Starbucks", then milk tea must not be equal to. Then why is Starbucks still not doing hard work?

In addition, how does it promote new products? And why did you adopt this strategy?

In this article, let's take a look at the mystery behind "Starbucks Marketing".

▌ 1. How does Starbucks promote new products?

Although I'm not sure when Starbucks will launch these two new products, the earliest news I can find so far is May 25. (the weird thing is: even on Starbucks' official Weibo, I didn't see any news related to this new product.)

However, this is not to say that Starbucks is so confident that it can be sold even without promotion.

In fact, from May 24 to June 8, more than 10 large accounts on WeChat participated in the promotion of new Starbucks products.

They all come from different fields, such as advertising, photography, fashion and so on, and promote the new products from different angles.

In the words of these KOL, what used to be a drink suddenly becomes something with "various magical properties", such as the following typical ones:

A drink that allows you to experience the British aristocratic flavor.

From the official account: the Sea of the Moon

"Summer vacation | want to hold an English tea party? It's not noble without it. "

A drink that allows you to experience the aesthetics of life.

From the official account: a woman with a fragrant soul

"Why does the foodie Initiative have the ability to live a better life? "

A high-end tea drink that pays attention to research and development and localization.

From the official account: advertising door

"Starbucks has made another strange move to sweep the rhythm throughout the summer! "

A drink that can make selfies more stylish.

From the official account: love Fan er

Instead of bringing the unicorn to China, Starbucks sent another selfie artifact.

Yes, Starbucks is very good at content marketing. It understands that audiences who like different content are bound to pay attention to different product attributes, so it is necessary to "talk to people and talk nonsense to others."

This is very different from the positioning theory that most people understand, they think: a product can only focus on one demand, for example, Wang Laoji has been focused on fire prevention.

Content marketing focuses on the matching of demand and audience. Although it also has a position, it has to set different positions according to different people.

In addition, Starbucks is also very good at using "influence" for marketing.

It chose these official accounts, either "trumpet talent", or "chicken soup talent", or "fashionistas".

1) the advertising media number does not say, this is the upstream of almost all information, at the same time, it is also a big horn.

2) Chicken soup also has its advantages-it is very good at making language that can resonate with people, bringing readers into a perceptual spiritual world. Starbucks just needs people to be emotional enough to be more likely to identify with its brand and buy its products. (more on this below)

3) Fashion numbers are even more important. What is fashion? Fashion is "if others buy it, I will buy it". It is a trend that follows the trend.

Allowing fashionistas to show off their Starbucks drinks will easily attract other "pseudo-fashionistas" to follow suit.

In addition, saying "Starbucks is suitable for selfies" is also implying that others spread it-those who like photography and selfies will definitely make Starbucks more beautiful than the real thing, and then post it on moments to attract more people.

I have to say, Starbucks is really resourceful.

▌ 2. Why adopt content marketing instead of hardcore?

If "Starbucks uses content marketing rather than hard marketing" is a business strategy, then we might as well analyze the problem from a strategic point of view.

First of all, what is the strategy?

The most important thing of the strategy is to find the key competitors, and then targeted to enhance their strengths and avoid weaknesses.

1. Who is the key competitor?

As far as offline stores are concerned, Starbucks' main competitors should be KFC and McDonald's. (costa doesn't count for the time being, its number of stores is less than 1max 10 of Starbucks, let alone other expensive and tasteless miscellaneous coffee shops.)

While Starbucks bottled drinks (including coffee and milk tea) are mainly sold in major merchants, so its main competitors should be other drinks, such as Coca-Cola, Nestle Coffee, Wei Quan juice and so on.

Well, now that we have found these major competitors, we should analyze the length of ourselves and our competitors.

two。 Pros and cons analysis

What are the advantages of Starbucks?

Obviously, its greatest feature is its advantage (otherwise it would not have lived so well), that is, "brand culture", or "storytelling ability".

From "the profound meaning of LOGO" to "the connotation of decoration details", to "CEO for employees (partners) to go to college", to "hide the mysteries of the menu", to "bring your own cup for free, promote environmental protection", and then to "customers' relaxed experience in the store" … All emphasize the connotation and culture of the brand.

So what are its disadvantages?

It is also obvious that it is not cost-effective at the material level. Coffee in other houses usually costs no more than 10 yuan, but it costs more than 30 yuan, not to mention mineral water and 10 yuan candy.

3. make best use of the advantages and bypass the disadvantages

In this case, if Starbucks participates in hard and broad investment on a large scale, there will be several problems:

Commercial advertisements for the purpose of promoting products are difficult to express the "profound cultural connotation" of the brand.

Advertising in a similar form in the same place as other brands reduces Starbucks' differentiation (such as "connotation" and "coercion").

Once the differentiation is reduced, it is easy for users to treat Starbucks as the same thing as the products of other brands, which is not a good thing for Starbucks, which is not cost-effective.

So, to get users to pay, Starbucks needs to bring users into a relatively closed scene, avoid direct comparisons with other brands, and then slowly tell their own brand stories and cultures.

And content marketing is a good choice.

Every content has a theme, and once people enter the topic set by that content, they are less likely to care about other information that has nothing to do with the topic. For example, when people read articles on the theme of "Aesthetics of Life", they are less likely to pay attention to information such as "performance-to-price ratio", let alone KFC and Coca-Cola.

It's actually the same as watching a movie.

When you are watching Titanic, because the theme of the movie is "Love", your thinking will be emotional and focus on the characters and plots. Instead of thinking about "how to improve the night navigation system of large ships" and so on.

And if you are watching a scientific and educational film called the Mystery of the sinking of Titanic, the situation is completely reversed.

In addition, Starbucks will focus its marketing on the social media platform and be able to collaborate with another advantage.

People prefer to say "I went to Starbucks today" rather than "I drank a bottle of Coca-Cola today".

In other words, Starbucks' relatively high-end positioning makes it more topical.

That's why, while Starbucks is far behind delicious and Pepsi in terms of sales, its influence on social platforms is not lost to them at all.

Source: FooAds.com

Therefore, Starbucks likes to do content marketing and social marketing, is to magnify its own comparative advantages-brand connotation and topic; but it does not do the traditional hard broad, it can avoid exposing its own disadvantages-low cost performance.

▌ III. Content marketing is storytelling.

Just now we said that Starbucks is very good at telling stories. Does that mean that content marketing means "telling your own stories behind closed doors"?

It's not.

"Story" is just a form, and the key to the content is to create a scene that is most beneficial to your product.

To share with you another marketing case, which is also from the beverage industry: "I drank 16 kinds of energy drinks in a row, and my heart almost exploded."

This is a soft article written for a small brand of energy drinks.

KOL in this paper drank 16 kinds of functional drinks for several days and evaluated which of them had the best refreshing effect. Finally, it is concluded that "strength health care" has the best effect.

And "Power Health Care" is the advertiser of this soft article. (I speculated)

Compared with other drinks in the article, the most obvious disadvantage of Li Health is its low brand awareness. However, it is not useless.

According to the description, it contains almost twice as much taurine and caffeine as Red Bull.

And this is its most obvious advantage-the refreshing effect is better.

Then how can you show your advantages?

Let's do a test!

What are you going to compare?

It's better than a pick-me-up, don't say anything else!

And this is what I just said, "create a scenario that is best for your product."

Although this article is rough as a whole, it does reflect a kind of strategic thinking-to change the competitive basis of products from "brand awareness" to "refreshing effect" by evaluating the individual attributes of different products. In fact, the reason is very similar to the running score of Lei Jun's an Rabbit: I set the rules in my field. No matter how big your Apple Samsung brand is, you can't run me.

However, the name of this brand and the packaging like drugs are not worth learning.

The general view is that: if it is a drug, who would like to drink something like medicine often?

If the manufacturer just wants to use the image of the drug to highlight its strong effect, then why look for an entertainment official account like "eating and drinking laboratory" to promote it.

In addition, the name "Power Health Care" feels like a vulgar, third-rate product, and its "image cost" and "health cost" are relatively high.

▌, sum up.

Starbucks likes to do content marketing and social marketing, is to magnify the relative advantages of the brand-brand connotation and topic; while it does not do the traditional hard broad, it is to avoid exposing its disadvantage-low cost performance.

This is a strategy of building on one's strengths and avoiding weaknesses. PS, it is not to say that low performance-to-price ratio is not necessarily suitable for hard and wide. Apple and Nike are not cost-effective, but they can still be hard and wide. One of the reasons is that "mobile phones and clothes are the rigid needs of most people, but coffee is not in the Chinese market."

In addition, although everyone is talking about "brand stories", this does not mean that you have a "good story". The key is that the scene created by this story should maximize the advantages of your products.

Self-discipline gives me Freedom is a good story in itself, but if Coca-Cola adopts this story, it is tantamount to making a wedding dress for Farmer's Spring.

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