Internet products that once relied on "fission" and "ground push" to drive themselves to grow should also begin to "rub traffic".

Today, more and more online Internet products also begin to actively keep up with the traditional physical goods, trying to enhance their brand exposure and brand awareness and reputation by the way of brand endorsement.

Everything remains the same, both online and offline brands hope to spend this endorsement fee, earn more than just yell. As a result, signing the spokesperson has also become one of the battlefields for Internet products.

On April 17th, homework helped CEO release a full letter announcing that the Chinese women's volleyball team had become its exclusive spokesperson. Interestingly, two days ago, the youdao boutique course just announced the signing of Lang Ping.

You sign the champion team, I'll sign their coach.

During the enrollment period of summer courses, the rivalry among spokesmen has added a bit of gunpowder to the battle of online education.

This is not the first time that similar Internet products have been declared war by their spokesmen. As early as in 2011, Ganji.com and 58.com invited Yao Chen and Yang Mi to endorse them and spread out advertisements in a large area to launch a fierce brand war.

The image of Yao Chen riding a little donkey and the magic sound of "58.com, a magical website" shouted by Yang Mi can be called the pioneer of seizing the minds of users with magic advertisements in Internet products, thus opening the prelude to signing spokesmen for Internet products.

Today, when it is difficult to make a breakthrough in the means of online traffic, the operation of contract spokesmen has become more and more common in Internet products.As the embodiment of brand and product image, the idea of selecting spokesmen also reveals the development stage and growth direction of Internet products to a certain extent.

"Traffic" for "traffic"

From national-level artists to top traffic to sports stars, Internet products have a wide range of endorsements.

These various endorsements can be divided into several categories, the most common of which is the traffic school with heat as the core consideration.

The selection principle of the flow school is very simple, just find the most popular artist nowadays.

In March, Ouyang Nana was introduced to the post of BABA, mainly responsible for Taobao clothing industry operation and new forces week IP, Taobao official Weibo Corp also posted Ouyang Nana's work card, work schedule, weekly report, etc., to Ouyang Nana as a partner. At the same time, there are many discussions on the Internet about Ouyang Nana's rating of P7 and an annual salary of one million.

Of course, discerning people know at a glance that the entry is just a gimmick. Ouyang Nana essentially endorses Taobao New Power week. Taobao uses a series of topical marketing operations endorsed by popular florets to earn eyeballs. It is also a consistent operation that matches the social media marketing level of Taobao products.

Compared with the way "Ouyang Nana joins BABA" to create topics like "four or two dibs", some enterprises will choose to smash them hard when promoting them, such as signing multiple spokesmen at one time and directly catching all the most popular ones.

For example, at the end of 2018, Baidu, Inc. APP announced five spokesmen one after another, namely, Yang Zi, Li Yifeng, Deng Lun, Huang Zitao and Yi Qianxi, which was almost the hottest half of the flow map of the entertainment industry at that time, which can be said to have spent a lot of money on Baidu Mobile Ecology.

Whether it is trickery or spending money, the selection logic of the traffic school is very simple: the ultimate goal of all marketing activities is to drive growth. In the Internet context, the subject of growth is traffic.

The most direct purpose of the Internet product contract spokesperson is to achieve the conversion between "traffic" and "traffic", directly introduce the fan group of the spokesperson into the product, and promote the growth of the number of product users and daily active users.

It has become a necessary task for fans to "make data" for their idols and prove their commercial value to the brand. In this era of "fan economy", using the voice's own appeal to stimulate the growth of product users, this method is simple and direct, but it is always effective.

The exchange of "traffic" for "traffic" has also become the simplest, rough but quick logic for many Internet products to choose spokesmen.

By contrast, the growth group's choice of spokesmen is more in line with lean thinking. Unlike the "flood irrigation" of the top flow artists, most of the spokesmen of the growth Group are responsible for the mission of pulling users in a circle for the product.

In the brand image construction of Internet products, the product brand image is strongly bound with the spokesman image, and the personal image label of the spokesman or high-end or youth becomes the brand feature and brings more premium for the brand.

The signing of Zhihu Inc. to Liu Haoran in 2018 is a typical case.

Zhihu Inc. in 2018 ushered in 80 million new registered users and was labeled as high knowledge and high net worth, but it also means the difficulty and bottleneck of breaking the circle. At that time, Zhihu Inc. had to face the problem of solidification of user groups while creating elite, professional and in-depth platform tonality.

According to the Zhihu Inc. user characterization and Media value Research report released by Zhihu Inc. in 2017, 61% of Zhihu Inc. 's users are between the ages of 25 and 35 (born in 1982-1992)-compared with some of today's popular community platforms. it's starting to look less young.

Therefore, Zhihu Inc. chose "little fresh meat" Liu Haoran as the spokesman at this point in time, and the intention behind it is self-evident. Zhihu Inc. also pointed out directly in Guan Xuan's copywriting that Liu Haoran's value lies in "helping Zhihu Inc., gathering more people and serving more people."

Liu Haoran did have this ability at that time. In 2018, Liu Haoran became the youngest nominee in the history of Best Actor for the hundred Flowers Award for "Chinatown Detective 2", and the image of Qin Feng, a young detective, is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In addition to the film, Liu Haoran's variety shows "High Energy Youth Troupe" and "Star Detective" have also helped him consolidate the establishment of smart and good thinkers. Among the mass flow, the image of Liu Haoran's youth, campus and high achiever undoubtedly fits best with Zhihu Inc..

Liu Haoran's fans are obviously quite cooperative. In the Zhihu Inc. activities that Liu Haoran participated in, Zhihu Inc. spared no effort, so that Zhihu Inc. not only got a spokesman who meets the needs of his own brand development, but also enjoyed a handful of fan economic benefits.

Similarly, the Himalayas chose easy closing Qianxi as the spokesman out of similar logic, hoping to embrace the pan-entertainment ecology and attract younger users with the help of this "little fresh meat" spokesman.
Qianxi, who became famous at a young age, is certainly worth a lot of money, but it is still a good deal for the Himalayas: when the Himalayas held hands with Qianxi, a traffic idol who had just reached adulthood, the traffic icon was in a rapid rise and transition.
At that time, Yi Yi Qianxi participated in "this" as a mentor. That is, the second season of Street Dance is very popular, and the famous drama "12 hours in Changan" is coming online soon, and the film "Young you", which has attracted much attention since the beginning of filming, has also entered the publicity period, and the variety shows, TV dramas, and movies have blossomed in an all-round way. He won a very good public reputation.

And the Himalayas' efforts to embrace the pan-entertainment ecology through easy closure have also been effective, with the number of young paying groups on the platform rising rapidly. According to the data released at the Himalayan 123 Carnival in December 2019, post-90s and generation Z users accounted for 45.6% of the total number of paying users, and young spokesmen should have made a significant contribution to the composition of such users.

However, there are also some Internet products that are more likely to be confused by the spokesperson they choose.

For example, Genna Alice of choice is hunted. Compared with ordinary people, Genna Alice's status as a pianist is indeed "young and promising", but I have to admit, the great increase in her popularity in China is mainly due to the fact that she and Lang Lang have participated in some Reality Show which focuses on husband and wife's daily life-it really has nothing to do with her career as a pianist.

The position of Hunting in the market is a job search platform for middle-and high-end talents, but it has hired a spokesman with a vague professional label, and the logic behind it is puzzling.

The choice of spokesperson for KANZHUN LIMITED, another job search platform, is equally difficult to understand. KANZHUN LIMITED's first spokesperson is Chinese-American actress Wang Keying, who recently signed Wonder woman Gail Gadot and Liu Tao. In the general draft, KANZHUN LIMITED said that he hopes to encourage young people to choose the jobs and partners they like through spokesmen-- which also has little to do with their professional experience, and the logic is a little too euphemistic to understand.

However, whether it is reasonable or strange, stars rarely turn down endorsements that come to their door. However, from the perspective of Internet products, it is necessary to see whether this usually expensive endorsement fee can really be "worth the ticket price".

In traditional industries, spokesmen can influence product sales immediately, with direct feedback, short cycle and obvious fan role. Take fast consumer products as an example, spokesmen fans can drive sales through repeated consumption, and gradually develop consumption habits, rather than fan consumers, when facing the choice of physical goods, they are also easily affected by the image of the spokesperson on the commodity packaging.

But the logic of Internet products is different. FMCG favored one-time direct purchase sales, in the Internet products have become the number of daily active users, advertising inventory, conversion and repurchase. In the absence of real demand, it is difficult for fans to reuse the product reluctantly to add valuable data to the product.And how to keep the influx of fans and turn them into long-term users, the core also lies in the product itself rather than the spokesman.

Therefore, when selecting spokesmen for an Internet product, a deeper consideration should be how to increase brand awareness and consolidate brand tone through spokesmen, rather than simply relying on the celebrity aura of spokesmen to harvest a group of fans who "come quickly." it's possible to go faster.

So, how to choose the spokesperson?

Under the strong binding relationship, the spokesman and the brand thrive and lose.

A suitable spokesman can create value for the brand, and an inappropriate spokesman will also make the brand anxious. So for Internet products, how to choose spokesmen?

In judging the spokesperson, "fit" is probably a more important criterion than "good or bad". A suitable spokesman requires the harmonious unity of the spokesman's image and product positioning. Specifically, it needs to be measured from the aspects of market cognition, target user groups, product functions and so on.

First of all, at the level of market cognition, popularity is the most basic consideration for a spokesman: if the public does not know the spokesman, how can we talk about the value of endorsements?

Market perception also has another meaning: the image label of the spokesman should be clear enough. For example, Ouyang Nana represents youth and vitality, while Liu Haoran represents the desire to learn, studious and bookish. Choose a spokesman with a distinct image, so that the public can understand the characteristics and ideas of the product through the spokesman as soon as they come into contact with the product.

Secondly, qualified spokesmen should be attractive to the target user group of the product.

Homework help to choose the endorsement of the Chinese women's volleyball team is very ingenious. Although the users of educational products are students, the decision-making power of consumption is in the hands of parents. For the group of parents, the Chinese women's volleyball team is undoubtedly a very persuasive national motivational idol, which represents the spirit of continuous struggle and self-improvement, but also perfectly in line with parents' expectations of their children.

Based on the same logic, CHINA ONLINE EDUCATION GROUP also chose tennis champion Li Na as her spokesperson.

For products dominated by young female consumers such as Taobao New Power week, it is not difficult to understand the choice of Ouyang Nana. Ouyang Nana has a healthy image, while relying on the vlog fire, the updated daily clothes on Instagram are also popular with young people, and their popularity and ability to carry goods are very good among the target population, which is obviously a suitable choice for fashion products for young women.

For used car trading platforms such as Guazi and Yi car, most of the target users are men who are sinking into the market, and the selected spokesmen should also be more approachable and close to the people, and have recognition among the target user groups. The final choices of these products, Lei Jiayin and Shen Teng, do meet such criteria-imagine that if Yi Qianxi endorses Guazi, a large number of middle-aged male users on the platform may not even be able to name him, let alone enhance the brand's favor.

Thirdly, the image of the spokesman also needs to be consistent with the function and positioning of the product.Unlike food and beverage, clothing, daily necessities and other products that everyone will use in traditional industries, the user circle of some products in the Internet is fixed, if you choose a spokesman who is almost impossible to use this product, it would be very abrupt.

This is the problem with recruitment and KANZHUN LIMITED's selection of Genna Alice and Gail Gadot as spokesmen. the two spokesmen are not closely related to the demand for a job, and the workplace label is not clear.

Therefore, a spokesman who has a clearer workplace label may be a better choice. In a scene such as looking for a job, users are more likely to find a projection of their own image.

In addition to the requirements of positioning fit, nowadays, "overnight popularity, overnight black"The story is staged almost every day, and the value of spokesmen rises and falls, sometimes as elusive as A-shares.

If the spokesperson is well chosen, he may be able to bet on a "potential stock" early and usher in a surge in endorsement value.

A classic case is that Keep has been working with Li Xian since 2017 to launch a series of fitness courses in the name of "practitioners". At that time, although Li has been a little popular through the online drama "River God," it is completely incomparable to the amount of fan-sucking crazily because of the hit TV series "Dear, beloved".

After Li Xian's series became popular, the series of fitness videos that Keep cooperated with Li Xian brushed a wave of existence for Keep and became a sharp tool for both sides to absorb powder, resulting in a win-win classic cooperation.

However, for brands, it seems that the choice of "white horse stock" has been thundered from time to time. For example, Luo Zhixiang, because after the popularity of "extreme Challenge," the original three hot variety shows this year suddenly revealed the chaos of his private life and became a "bad performer" that brands and platforms were afraid to avoid. This made Mengniu, who had just been announced by the official the day before the incident broke out, wanted to cry without tears, and it was even more difficult to say that "Sword and Expedition", which began to be widely advertised by Luo Zhixiang at the beginning of the year.

At present, Mengniu has already removed Luo Zhixiang's relevant materials, and the official Weibo Corp of "Sword and Expedition" can no longer search for information related to Luo Zhixiang, but even if the brand responds quickly, there are stains that cannot be ignored on the brand image, and the lost advertising investment is also difficult to recover.

After binding the brand to the spokesperson, the risk that the brand needs to bear is not just the marketing effect discount caused by the inappropriate spokesman.A spokesman for virtue is the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the brand.

Therefore, avoiding spokesmen who may be "thunderstorms" is also a major criterion for brands to select spokesmen.But in the increasingly magical Internet world, it is impossible to say what kind of unexpected circumstances the spokesman will be pushed into the abyss of public opinion-Xiao Zhan's "227" dispute is a typical example.
In order to avoid the problem of the spokesman "Thunder", there are also Internet executives simply go on the stage to endorse. The most memorable case in this respect is the founder of Jumei, Chen ou. The sentence "I speak for myself" successfully opened Jumei's popularity and made the founder's image strongly bound to the enterprise today.

In addition, virtual idols are becoming more and more popular in the spokesman market. The commercial value of virtual idols such as Chuyin Future and Luo Tianyi has been fully confirmed, and the actions of brands in this area are also more and more.

Lovely and unified Laotan sauerkraut have used several protagonists in the animation "Magic Master" as spokesmen, and the effect of bringing goods is quite good. Recently, Tmall Xinpan also teamed up with nine anime spokesmen, including Beautiful Girl Warrior, Wonder woman, Superman, Transformers, Kumamoto Xiong, Doraemon and so on, to launch the campaign "Animation Hero Save the Earth", which also took a fancy to the value of virtual idols.

In games, animation and other fields, virtual spokesmen are no less popular than real-life stars, and have a strong appeal to two-dimensional users. For brands, virtual spokesmen not only meet the needs of the market for a younger audience, but also eliminate all their worries about the negative image of the spokesperson, and it is also a more and more popular choice in recent years.

Generally speaking, whether it is the personal endorsement of senior executives, the choice of virtual spokesmen, or the stars of contracted artists, for Internet products, at a time when the cost of buying volume is getting higher and higher, signing spokesmen is indeed a good way to open market awareness, break through the growth dilemma, and attract circle users.

But before asking which spokesperson can bring the greatest value, these Internet products need to think clearly about their own product positioning, target users and future direction.After all, in addition to the endorsements of senior executives themselves, no matter what kind of spokesperson they are, the expensive endorsement fee can not escape-- then the traffic generated by the spokesperson also needs to be caught by the product, and the money spilled is not wasted.