Marketing to "Post-80s"

"Will you wear Metersbonwe?" Someone asked Zhou Chengjian, the founder of Metersbonwe. The scene quickly quieted down after a burst of laughter, and everyone was speculating how the man who was rumored to be "the richest man in the domestic clothing industry" would answer. This is the press conference held by Metersbonwe to celebrate the successful listing at the end of August this year. Where the spotlight flickered, Zhou Chengjian smiled honestly, "I'm not too young, Smith Barney is more suitable for those young people who pursue fashion." At the training booth", his tone was far from the modesty of answering reporters' questions. He said: "The clothes of Miaoguo Temple are all the same, and I need an independent 'face'."

Splicing these two seemingly unrelated words together, a careful person will find that Zhou Chengjian It just happened to make the best interpretation for the brand essence of Metersbonwe. That is "young" and "unique", that is, the "unusual path" that Jay Chou interprets in the commercial.

To see how "unusual" this brand is, look at its performance. In 2007, the total profit of Metersbonwe was 433 million yuan, and the gross profit rate was 38.84%, which was higher than the average level of 34.39% of listed companies in the clothing industry; among the 157 casual clothing brands familiar to the 14-35-year-old consumer group , it topped the list with a first mention rate of 35.6%, and even some top international brands are afraid of it; and the "selling a piece of clothing every two seconds" that the media is scrambling to report makes it more like a legend .

Without the many post-80s generation as loyal fans, Metersbonwe would not be able to write this legend alone. This casual clothing brand has always positioned its main consumers as young people aged 18-25 who pursue vitality and fashion. From today's point of view, this positioning covers almost the entire post-80s population.

This group has a population of over 100 million, is still young and has little family burden, so it has surging purchasing power. It is precisely because it can attract their attention and win their hearts that Metersbonwe can stand at the forefront of the competition.

Keeping up with the speed of the post-80s

The post-80s live in an era of relatively abundant material, and brands are in close contact with them almost every day. This encourages them to be "fascinated", so that they can't be "dedicated" to any one brand. The fashion made by the clothing industry can only capture the hearts of the post-80s generation by keeping it fresh and fast, continuously launching new products, and seeking novelties and differences. In Zhou Chengjian's words, "the era of consumers knowing how to consume has begun, and we need to meet the needs of consumers as quickly as possible."

Metersbonwe has an independent R&D team of more than 130 people, who are at full capacity and launch more than 7,000 products every year. The cycle from design to shelf for these products is 50 days. Other domestic apparel companies can only launch 2,000 new styles each year at most, and it takes half a year for the shortest time to be put on the shelves.

In order to ensure that the products can fully cover the age group of 18-25 and meet their needs, Metersbonwe designers have the opportunity to conduct large-scale inspections across the country four times a year to investigate fashion trends and consumption trends. The company also has a dedicated market research department, which cooperates closely with external research companies every year to conduct 84 satisfaction surveys on consumers throughout the year. Inside the company, employees born in the 1980s are sometimes convened for discussions to listen to their suggestions on products.

Results are often reflected in product improvements. For example, the severe winter is approaching, and down jackets are the best choice for people to keep warm. However, due to the deep-rooted impression of down jackets that are bloated and do not show a figure, many young people reject them. Metersbonwe learned through research that the functionality of down jackets is the basis rather than the most important factor to attract young people to buy them. The top is style and price. Accordingly, Metersbonwe, on the basis of doing a good job in the functionality of down jackets, has intensified efforts in the research and development of styles, and set the promotion slogan as "Youth, Vitality, and Publicity", which is more in line with the attitude of young people. , in order to change consumers' inherent impression of traditional down jackets.

The prosperity of the Internet has shortened the distance between the post-80s generation and fashion capitals such as New York, London, Paris, etc. The latest fashion trend conferences can often be seen online in less than an hour, and in the next hour, the post-80s generation has already I am following the map. This makes it easier for the post-80s generation to integrate with international standards than their predecessors.

Zhou Chengjian has a very open mind about this. He believes: "With the opening of the market, some excellent foreign brands have entered the Chinese market. In fact, it is a better learning opportunity for our Chinese original brands. Excellent foreign brands We have done a lot more than we have in understanding the way of life and understanding the service standards. In the past, we could only learn from a distance, but now we can learn from a close distance, which allows us to progress faster.”

Metersbond Weiwei has carried out long-term and fruitful cooperation with well-known designers in France, Italy, Hong Kong and other places. First Vision Expo and other international professional expositions. It is said that when ZARA, a famous Spanish clothing retail brand, landed in Shanghai, Metersbonwe sent a special person to study various details in their store, including display, turnover speed, fabric grade on clothing labels and knitting techniques.

Chou Chengjian himself is quite concerned about this trend. There is a huge screen installed in his office, and the constantly changing pictures on the screen have only one theme - the latest fashion show in Europe and the United States. Whenever Zhou Chengjian looks up, he will have a panoramic view of the latest fashion in Europe and America. He said: Capturing the information from the forefront of international fashion and integrating it with the needs of domestic consumers is what Metersbonwe has been doing in recent years.

Selling personality

When talking about the post-80s generation, people will inevitably mention the word "personality", which is like a label on their body that cannot be erased. They seek to be different and like to be unconventional. When choosing a brand, they pay more attention to whether it is consistent with their own life ideas and attitudes, and whether it can show their own personality.

Zhou Chengjian is obviously aware of this, he said: The era of personalized consumption has arrived, and brand personality has become the core factor for consumers to choose casual clothing.

This is not only an era of personalized consumption, but also an era of rapid imitation. In the clothing industry, every latest style can be copied in batches and put on the table like a McDonald's hamburger. ZARA makes a living from this and has achieved sales of more than 6 billion euros.

While it is difficult for any one brand to dominate in style or fabric, individuality is more of a brand spirit. As David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, said: "It is the overall personality of a brand, rather than trivial product differences, that determines its final position in the market."

Chou Chengjian's efforts to create a brand personality, It started when the brand he founded was named "Metersbonwe". Although now he likes to interpret it with richer meanings in various occasions - beauty: beauty, fashion; special: unique, individuality; s: here, attentive, focused; state: country, homeland; prestige: prestige. It all adds up to "creating a beautiful and unique personality, being attentive, and promoting the prestige of the nation"—but in fact, the slightly tongue-in-cheek name was originally meaningless. Zhou Chengjian just wanted to make it "beautiful and foreign".

It would be superficial to say that the post-80s generation favored Metersbonwe because they mistakenly thought that it was an international brand. But if you understand "3Q", "Orz", and various "Mars texts" on the Internet that may be confusing; if you know that Jay Chou named his album fantasy "Fantasy", You can easily understand their enthusiasm for the brand. They are not keen on wordplay, but are looking for alternatives to the conventional with their boundless imaginations. The name Metersbonwe just fits their grammar rules.

The post-80s not only "speak Martian text", but also "listen to Jay Chou". Even if you can never hear what this small-eyed musical boy is singing, it doesn't affect the post-80s generation screaming, crying, or even fainting at his concerts. His fan base is big enough to boost the popularity of any brand.

Before Jay Chou, the spokesperson for Metersbonwe was Aaron Kwok. Although he looks handsome and has a high voice, for the post-80s generation, the Uranus superstar born in the 1960s is old, and he belongs to the last century. The choice of Jay Chou as the image spokesperson is considered by many to be the most proud of Metersbonwe.

In the beginning, Zhou Chengjian was not interested in Jay Chou's popularity, but his personality. His songs are always lazy, as if humming will become a melody. His expression is always cool, with a bit of rebellion. When he wears Metersbonwe clothes, spins a basketball freely in his hand, and tells you to "don't go the usual way", do you think he's an endorsement of a product? NO! He is speaking of personality.

This kind of shaping of personality was finally recognized by the post-80s generation. There is a joke that was widely circulated among college students as proof: a student climbed the wall and entered the campus, and was caught by the principal on the spot. The principal asked him: " If you don’t go through a good gate, why do you want to go over the wall?” The student pointed to his clothes and said, “Meisterbonwe, don’t go the usual way!” It can be seen that for the post-80s generation, Metersbonwe is a personality 's representative.

Aside from these fancy moves for marketing, we can clearly see that Metersbonwe's move to create individuality reflects the "user-centered" marketing concept. However, excessive user-centricity can easily put brands in a dilemma. The casual clothing brand Semir, which also uses the post-80s generation as its main consumer group, has encountered such an embarrassment.

Because people generally think that the post-80s generation is indifferent and irresponsible, Semir made a series of advertisements based on this feature, with the slogan "I can't control global warming, but at least I look good". As soon as this advertisement came out, there was a lot of condemnation on the Internet, and even many post-80s people joined it.

Semir's advertising failure is enough to warn people that consumption is not only an act of self-satisfaction, but also a moral responsibility. As a well-known brand, while catering to consumers, it should also take the initiative to guide them towards the bright side. Metersbonwe realized this early on. For example, in 2007 before the "plastic restriction order" was launched, Metersbonwe took the lead in launching the "fashionable eco-friendly shopping bag" to promote environmental protection as a fashion. Now, when major brands and merchants have launched shopping bags, Metersbonwe fans born in the 1980s have a great sense of superiority because they are ahead of the trend.

Focus on communication and interaction

In 2007, Metersbonwe has an important initiative - the collective transformation of three brand spokespersons into "fashion consultants". They predict the fashion trends of each season to consumers and provide them with overall dress guidance. This is unique in the entire clothing industry.

Although it is only a virtual identity, "Fashion Consultant" has transformed Metersbonwe's product sales from a traditional sales pitch to a consultative one. This symbolizes the communication and interaction between the brand and consumers, and shortens the distance with consumers. This is in line with Zhou Chengjian's concept that "the closer the service model is to consumers, the more durable it will be".

Close means close communication. In the post-80s group, only children are the majority, and they are inevitably lonely in life, which makes them more eager to communicate than others. Moreover, as idol worshipers, many people like to regard celebrities as opinion leaders, study their dress and imitate them. For them, fashion means more of an imaginary star life. Metersbonwe's "fashion consultant" just met their request.

In order to prevent this title from becoming a meaningless gimmick, Metersbonwe stores launch a quarterly "Celebrity Favorite" series, where "fashion consultants" personally select their favorite clothes and display them in a special area for Fans and consumers choose. These "fashion consultants" are even involved in the product design process, and the products they participated in designing were just launched last month and sold in limited quantities at the terminal. It is not difficult to imagine how the veritable "Jay Chou's clothes", "Wilber Pan's clothes", and "Zhang Shaohan's clothes" will attract fans.

In the display of the terminal store, Metersbonwe also tried to make it have elements of communication and interaction, moved the online entertainment and information display platform to the store terminal, and built a fashion consultant touch screen in the leisure area, allowing Consumers enjoy a lot of fun interacting with celebrities while shopping.

As a generation that grew up with the prosperity of the Internet, the post-80s generation always prefers to obtain various information and content from the Internet. According to the media usage habits of the post-80s generation, Metersbonwe chose the new media that the post-80s fashionistas are obsessed with, such as "Maopu" and "Audio Troupe", as an interactive communication platform.

Maopu.com is known as China's "No. 1 Entertainment Portal". Its users are mainly between the ages of 18 and 35, and the post-80s generation is the most active, which just overlaps with Metersbonwe's consumer age group. In the video played by Metersbonwe on Maopu, users can choose different styles of clothing to create individual styles for Jay Chou. In Metersbonwe's website, consumers can match clothes for any of the three spokespersons, and they can also get the spokesperson's evaluation of their fashion DNA according to the matching effect.

Designing images for your favorite stars is no doubt a fan's dream. This interactive mode not only allows consumers to understand the latest styles of Metersbonwe in autumn, but also participates in the re-creation of Metersbonwe brand culture.

In the "Audio" game, which has hundreds of thousands of online users and 100% of its users are young and fashionable people, players can dress up "their" at will with virtual clothes provided by Metersbonwe. The clothes many people wear in real life are surprisingly consistent with their virtual characters in the game.

Thomas Friedman, in his book "The World Is Flat," named "upload's ability to harness online communities" as one of the top 10 drivers of a flat world, while Metersbonwe listed It is used as a marketing tool.

Brand Up

In the past 13 years, Metersbonwe has cultivated a large number of loyal young consumers, and has brought itself to the position of the No. 1 casual wear brand in China. However, a considerable part of the post-80s generation has entered the workplace, and some have even made small achievements. Changes in the living environment affect their consumption habits and preferences. Many people think that Metersbonwe, who simply shows off their individuality, cannot keep up with their growth, and they need more mature and meaningful clothing. If the "adolescence" can be properly extended, it will be the best of both worlds for Metersbonwe and consumers.

The most active purchasers of Metersbonwe are college students, aged 18-22. In order to tap the 23-25-year-old consumer group market with more consumption potential and extend the casual clothing product line, Metersbonwe cooperated with MLC, a famous French clothing brand consulting company in 2007, to subdivide the products into " Two series of "Campus" and "Urban", and commissioned two completely different design teams to design the products.

In October of this year, Metersbonwe simply separated the "city" series into a high-end brand ME&CITY. This brand aims at the upstarts in the workplace after the age of 22, which just forms a strong complement and support with the original "Campus" brand "Metersbonwe". Its brand spokesperson also uses the more intellectual and mature Wentworth Miller. As the hero of the hit drama "Prison Break", Miller is very appealing among young people. Some people even equate him with Michael in the film, thinking that he is the embodiment of wisdom and courage, and this is the temperament that new people in the workplace admire most.

Although there are concerns that the continued expansion of product diversity will somewhat weaken the product's personality, the premium brand is also at risk of consumer acceptance of its style and price. However, Zhou Chengjian hopes that its compound annual growth rate will exceed 30%, which seems to be full of confidence.

ME&CITY's operation method provides the basis for Zhou Chengjian's self-confidence. Metersbonwe separates this brand from the original "Metersbonwe" brand and operates independently. In this way, in the age group of 18-35, Metersbonwe has two sub-brands at the same time. With the support of a stable and huge consumer group, Metersbonwe is bound to further increase the overall market share of Metersbonwe .

The leading position of "Metersbonwe" in the market also enables ME&CITY to have an innate channel resource advantage. This indicates that "ME&CITY" has the prerequisites for rapid penetration and rapid market occupation, which is unmatched by any new brand from scratch.

Because consumers are a group with more purchasing power, the style of this brand of clothing is more restrained and refined, and the materials and workmanship are more sophisticated. The positioning of this brand's products is not like other Metersbonwe products. civilianization. This lays the foundation for Metersbonwe's future sales revenue.

In 1990, American marketing expert Robert Lauteerborn put forward the 4C theory of marketing. That is, customer-centric marketing, paying attention to and meeting customers' needs in terms of cost (Cost) and convenience (Convenience), and strengthening communication with customers (Communication). At that time, the youngest post-80s generation had just come to the world. And now, this theory is becoming the key to unlocking this huge commercial gold mine of the post-80s generation.

Study on the characteristics of the post-80s generation, it is not difficult to find the applicability of this theory to them: they grow up with the halo of "little sun", and they also require everything to be self-centered when consuming; quite a few of them People are still relying on the support of their parents, so they take "not buying expensive, only buying right" as the consumption criterion; they reject complexity and pursue the comfort and convenience of consumption behavior; as only children, they are afraid of loneliness and eager to communicate.

While people are still discussing whether this theory is too advanced, Metersbonwe has already done it - that is, to provide the most personalized products at popular prices, and to communicate and interact throughout the marketing activities. .