Today I can't help but want to talk about the topic of "lifestyle brands."
Now, every brand claims to offer consumers "a better life." From the perspective of brand communication and marketing, as well as my experience and that many of my friends in buying products from many lifestyle brands, I want to analyze three common misunderstandings about "lifestyle brands" today.
"The aspiration of people for a better life" is a problem that we have been discussing and pursuing as a goal, and great brands always lead the way in spiritual pursuit.
For example, Apple's famous Think Different ad in the 1990s, which illustrates that truly visionary people always have unique ideas and Apple is creating tools for these people.
Nowadays, as long as you can make consumers identify with your brand value culture, you can attract and segment a group that fits with you with your brand philosophy and culture, and eat multiple categories with the same brand.
Just like Muji, their stores usually have half of their products as clothes, half as groceries, kitchenware, stationery, furniture, snacks, and now there's even food and hotels. Simply put, it wants to cover all of your life.
The founder of Uniqlo, Yanai, always considered Uniqlo to be a technology company. Their competitors are Apple, not Gap. High-frequency words that appear in their propaganda are definitely related to new technologies in fabrics.
But I see that many people have a misunderstanding of "lifestyle." If you fall into the following 3 misconceptions, it will be difficult to make good proposals and achieve results:
Misconception 1
Equating a good lifestyle with showiness and pleasure.
Sure, many advertisements like to depict the product's scenes as career success, a wealthy life, and gaining honor, so the images are of various career elites or high-end events. It seems that if you buy this product, you can also shine like a hollywood star.
However, I think what lifestyle brands need to truly understand now is the psychology of people at this level of consumption. You have to understand what people want to become when they choose this brand, what our starting point is when we choose a lifestyle, not just imagine or guess. Who's money is not earned by hard work, right?
And, showiness and pleasure are not called a good life because it is not from the heart and not a healthy lifestyle.
Even for some fantastic luxury brands now, their core users really recognize a certain lifestyle and brand culture, not just to showcase and show off their own brand names and big logos.
Misconception 2
Equating upgraded consumption with the more expensive the better.
The content of some bloggers is misleading, for example, just make the poster look good and add some florid words, and you can sell something that was originally 2 yuan for 2000 yuan.
Many people associate lifestyle, upgraded consumption, and higher prices, but in fact, some brands can sell low-priced goods a little more expensive, provided that there is an upgrade in quality and a promotion of the brand, which can provide consumers with more protection.
You can bring fresh emotional experiences to users or be more tasteful, more in-depth, or help users constantly improve, that is the true "upgrade."
I think under the background of our strength as a huge manufacturing country, truly attentive and good lifestyle brands should be able to make things better and better, and to provide more and more options for consumers to upgrade their own lifestyles.
Misconception 3
Equating Lifestyle with Simply Tagging
There are many types of people under the same label - today I am a mom, tomorrow I can be a working person. But my understanding of the content and my mom friends, my colleagues are all different.
What we actually need to do is to integrate into the user's life scenario.
People now not only buy something to meet basic needs, but also pay for the scenarios that can be associated and realized by the thing. This is the "lifestyle" that people want to build through the brand.