I don’t know if people who work in marketing have such confusion: Why do you only need to take a look at the products launched by some merchants, or even just hear a few words about them, to know them very well, and use them like this? Find it accurately among the vast sea of ??similar products. On the contrary, some businesses have racked their brains and exhausted their efforts to launch products, but they have not aroused many people's memories...

So, what went wrong?

This book "The Super Symbol Principle" co-authored by the two founders of China's well-known strategic marketing creative consulting company, Hua Shan and Hua Nan, will answer your confusion and teach you how to Influence consumer purchasing behavior through the right marketing methods. In this book, the author will use easy-to-understand language and a large number of practical marketing cases to analyze the creativity and creation principles behind "super symbols" in detail.

This book is divided into four parts: "Cultural Matrix", "Purchase Reasons", "Super Symbols", and "Shelf Thinking".

Let’s break it down one by one and talk about the previous one -

1. “Cultural Matrix” (from a marketing perspective, it tells you how to naturally integrate your products into people’s daily lives )

①Concept

These four words are the first mantra of the "Super Symbol Principle". To put it simply: How to parasitize your own products and brands into Human beings live in this huge cultural matrix.

The characteristic of the cultural matrix is ??that it is inevitable, and the form of occurrence is collective unconsciousness and spontaneous involvement. All matrix behaviors are carried out subconsciously.

For example, our Spring Festival is a maternal behavior that is participated in by people in the Chinese cultural circle. It originated from the Yin and Shang Dynasties and is still popular today. Once a maternal behavior is formed, it is irresistibly powerful, and the rituals and symbols contained within it are passed down from generation to generation.

Every action we take is to fulfill the needs of the mother body, because it is everywhere. For example, a person who goes to the toilet has four characteristics of maternal behavior: cyclical, repeated, irresistible, and a real daily reflection.

Human society has prepared the scenes and props needed by the mother for each of our actions. For example, we have breakfast in a certain scene every morning, maybe at home, or maybe in a breakfast shop on the street. The props are steamed buns, fried dough sticks, and soy milk provided by the merchants in the shop. There are also different types of steamed buns. How do you distinguish which ones are meat buns and which are vegetable buns?

At this time, it is time to switch to another concept - symbols.

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② Brand parasitism

The role of symbols is to reveal the value of products and props, and to speed up the communication of information between props and prop buyers. efficiency.

At this time, the focus has moved from the cultural matrix to the next stage - brand parasitism. That is to say, let the product act as a prop in the cultural matrix.

To achieve brand parasitism, one must achieve a prerequisite - let one's own products come from the mother body, go to the mother body, become the mother body, and strengthen the mother body. The realization of brand parasitism will inevitably lead to subsequent purchasing behavior.

After the prerequisites for brand parasitism and purchasing behavior have occurred, the next step is to transform and occupy the words, symbols and rituals in the specific cultural matrix. Find the symbols, rituals, and words that best fit your brand, and then take hold of them.

Take the Valentine's Day mentioned in the book as an example -

What we can see in this picture is that Xibei uses kiss discounts to make its brand and Valentine's Day, the mother body, produced the hook and successfully achieved brand parasitism. As time goes by, every time Valentine’s Day comes, we will associate it with this activity. This is similar to Double Eleven every year. When that day comes, everyone thinks about the same thing.

Once the brand is successfully parasitized, it has been successfully finalized. What needs to be done next is to continuously strengthen its rituals and make it become a part of the maternal ritual.

2. "Reason for buying" (from the consumer's perspective, tell you how to capture the hearts of consumers)

So, how can you successfully parasitize the brand?

This time comes the "reason for buying", which is to awaken the maternal activity in people.

The first step is to determine the "super words". For example, when the best-selling book "Tibet Code" was born, "Tibet" and "Tibet" were used as super words, and "an encyclopedic novel about Tibet" was the reason for purchasing. The clever combination of the two can instantly inspire The purchasing desire of consumers who are interested in Tibet also gives consumers ample reasons to purchase.

The key to a reason to buy is to impress, not convince. It constructs a sentence around the parent word and uses the most concise words to create a sentence that is both touching and rhyming, making the consumer's heart skip a beat, thereby impressing him with the desire to buy.

When we come up with a reason to buy, every word must closely surround the reason for buying. The product copy is to quickly list the evidence that proves the reason for purchase, and the way of proof is always to impress, not to persuade.

When everything is ready, you need to start with marketing. The essence of marketing is to spread the reasons for buying.

3. "Super Symbol" (tells you how to establish your own brand and let you stand out among peer competition)

①Every behavior we do must comply with Symbol instructions;

② Products are flowing, symbols are eternal.

When we find a cultural matrix, the first thing that catches our eyes should be the symbol system. For example, during the Spring Festival, what appears in our minds are a series of symbols such as couplets, door gods, and Spring Festival Gala, a series of rituals such as respecting ancestors, and New Year greetings, and a series of words such as Happy New Year, Congratulations on getting rich, and bring the red envelope.

WeChat red envelopes became popular overnight by capturing the rituals and words in them.

Symbols are first used to communicate quickly and convey value. They often have natural visual impact. For example, the current black and white checkered trademark of Reader Book Company and the packaging design of a bottle of apple juice have used the visual impact to make more and more consumers remember it subconsciously.

The process of transforming traditional symbols into registered trademarks, achieving protection, and forming public assets of operators is the process from symbols to "super symbols". As a product of intellectual property, super symbols have three major characteristics: registrable, identifiable, and descriptive.

Any value of any product can be expressed through super symbols.

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③ The only important question: What is a super symbol?

It is first of all a choice, and operators need to consider what kind of traditional symbols to choose for transformation , which requires thinking about the self-evidence of symbols. It should not only have a strong visual impact, but also be clear at a glance. The product should be placed directly without any explanation, so that everyone who sees it can automatically understand it based on common sense.

It represents a constant value. Only by ensuring its constancy can symbols have higher and higher values;

It controls the reward and punishment mechanism for operators. It can both attract buyers and repel non-buyers. In this sense, the super symbol realizes the moral purification function of the market economy;

It represents an ultimate willpower around which everything serves.

4. "Shelf thinking" (teaching you how to quickly attract consumers to buy your products without hesitation, so as to have the greatest competitive advantage)

First of all, you need to define what "shelf thinking" is ”——The place where product or brand information communicates with consumers. And the world is a world full of shelves.

In order to remain invincible in business, operators need to have a territorial awareness of shelves. That is to say, treat the shelves as your own territory and firmly occupy it, and declare your ownership of this territory through your own super symbols, so that competitors will not be able to squeeze in.

It was said before that "products are flowing, and symbols are eternal." Now it is also "commodities are flowing, and shelves are eternal."

In addition to territorial awareness, operators also need to have shelf awareness, that is, be aware of the shelves at all times. In the entire life cycle of a product on the shelf, the first time a consumer meets their eyes is the most important. If the consumer understands the reason for purchasing the product when he first sees the product, he has only two choices: one is to arouse his interest, and then use the specific words in the cultural matrix he carries to describe the product. Take a look at it and maybe pay for it; the other is to not need this product and then walk away immediately.

The efficiency and success of communication depend on the order and speed of communication between products and consumers. The key to success can be summed up in one sentence: Use super sentence structures and phrases to speed up reading.

Creating an eternal super symbol on eternal shelves for eternal buyers is a lifetime job for every operator. I believe people who are engaged in related industries have a deep understanding of the fun and challenges involved.

5. Conclusion

The language of this book is easy to understand, and it shows its strong practicality in the combination of theory and practical cases.

For operators, it is the bible of marketing. If operators can invest their creativity in all aspects of product creation and brand building, it is possible for their products to become a super symbol, occupying all the shelves and the cultural matrix in the hearts of consumers, thus overnight In between, change your destiny!

For laymen, it can answer their confusion about why they prefer only one category among similar products.

For companies seeking brand creativity in marketing, it can provide very high reference value in product R&D and design, trademark registration, and promotional copywriting.

As long as humans still have eyes and ears, and still use language, the concepts described in this book will never go out of style!