My friend who works in advertising has been unable to sleep recently and is in a state of counting sheep every day.
It’s the intensive period for CNY submissions again, and 2027 is the Year of the Sheep again. I think about sheep (creative ideas related to sheep) during the day and count sheep at night, so that I can’t hear any words related to the pronunciation of yang.
“Now I just want to wait until the pitch is over to show off the mutton skewers, boiled mutton, and mutton scorpion. Those who have passed the proposal and been killed will all be destroyed by gastric juices and intestines.”
I thought that there were so many cases of horse arrests in the Year of the Horse, but in the Year of the Sheep, the situation might get better. Homophonic memes have become a guarantee, and the practice of borrowing celebrity surnames to create topics is limited to e-commerce promotions.
But reality seems not to allow it.
Although the gameplay mentioned above is old-fashioned, not many people can completely reject similar ideas.ConvenientandSafety. And, what if you don’t do it but someone else does it and wins the pitch with a related proposal?
This is not just a question of who is embarrassed or complains about “the customer is not good”.
1. Applying zodiac signs can make up for the embarrassment of not being able to find insights.
The year of the ox is about the ox, and the year of the horse is about the horse. This set of marketing conventions has been fixed. Except for the year of the rat, which is not easy to implement due to the image and meaning, it can be implemented almost without any problems in the other years.
Versatility and safety are key.
The zodiac idea has therefore become a guaranteed solution that many brands can choose within limited budget and time.
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Universal and safe, what does it mean?
The cost of understanding is low, and you don’t have to bend your brain when watching advertisements. In short, the ad did not challenge common sense. If there is a dragon, then you will be lucky, you will have sex immediately, and you will be very bullish in the New Year. This is the case.
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What else can GM solve?
It can solve the embarrassment of not having a theme or finding insights, and leave enough room for the launch date.
When will we admit that it is only in rare cases that the brand determines the theme direction from the beginning.Fresh、OriginalofGood insighteven more scarce.
Especially during the Spring Festival, many campaigns are used to package the purpose of selling goods – the theme is posted later, and Spring Festival growth is the core.
The zodiac idea is so commonly used because brands can use it to communicate with consumers.Share a festive language. Even if it seems far-fetched, sometimes it is suspected of being a coined word.
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Because today, the zodiac has almost only the secular function of “being consumed”.
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Consuming zodiac signs—purchasing physical objects, or browsing related topic content—has also become a subconscious choice for people to celebrate the New Year, talk about the Spring Festival, and participate symbolically.
When the New Year and the Spring Festival become more formal than meaningful to the public, this kind of symbolic participation by the whole people will also take on a certain mechanical nature.
In this context, entering into the zodiac context is equivalent to finding a CNY shortcut.
This shortcut is soTemptingnot only combines the theme of the Spring Festival, but also joins the army of misappropriating zodiac symbols, allowing the image concept of dragon, snake, horse, cow and sheep to be incorporated into TVC, posters, and packaging limitations.
2. The zodiac has become a symbol of consumption during the Spring Festival
appropriatemeaning toReinterpretation。
There are many ways of interpretation, many of which are illogical at first glance and still puzzling upon further inspection.
Common ideas include
1) Find stars whose names are related to their zodiac signs and collaborate with them.
2) The universal co-branding method is that there are never too many useful IPs.
3) Around the zodiac, compose words and refine concepts and propositions in various ways.
I heard that the first typical phenomenon this year is that Yang Yang’s name appears repeatedly in CNY brainstorming meetings and proposals.
Yang Yang YANGYANG, the chosen one.
I just don’t know if any agency writes particularly differently on the PPT selection strategy page.
Or after they are launched one after another, a certain brand can use the flawless logic that Yang Yang and X brand are the best match, and they can take advantage of the accumulated potential energy in one package.
Based on the above ideas, I also thought about several directions using AI. Some of them have collected advertisements from people around them that they proposed but were shot down.
Just to open up ideas, not to be complete. Any similarity is purely coincidental.
1) Artists/Celebrities
* Surname and first name with yang
Yang Yang, Yang Mi, Yang Di, Yang Zi, Yang Ying, Yang Chaoyue, Yang Rong, Miriam Yang, Yang Yuying, Yang Kun, Yang Wei Linghua (the female lead singer of Phoenix Legend). Liu Yang, Shen Chunyang, Xiao Shenyang…
Among them, Yang Mi once had the nickname “Evil Beautiful Sheep”. The double buffs of “Yang” and “Beautiful Sheep”, coupled with her “fate” that comes with popular advertisements, may really stir up some splashes if put into a suitable campaign.
Stabbed the sheep’s nest
In addition, Shen Chunyang and his wife are showing signs of becoming popular, with good popularity and reputation on social media.
Original topics include: Shen Chunyang and his wife raised their daughter Shen Jiarun from a wealthy family; Shen Chunyang is little Shenyang’s lucky star. However, this kind of family husband and wife team is more selective in brands. How to avoid becoming “local but not local, foreign but not foreign” in the end is also a test.
*Athletes and astronauts:
Yang Yang, Yang Wei, Yang Liwei, Yang Shuyu. The two sisters are called Big Sheep and Little Sheep by fans.
Yang Liwei
2) IP
①”Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf”
The more national-level IP it is, the easier it is to fall into mediocrity when used. Finding the right characters and telling the story in a focused and targeted way can create opportunities.
For example, characters that have been discussed more frequently on social media in recent years are Lazy and Big Big Wolf.
The former is synonymous with anti-internal friction and simple philosophy. The lifestyle of eating and sleeping without any distractions makes migrant workers who feel guilty and anxious even when they rest extremely envious.
Big Big Wolf has even more room for expansion. For example, if you want to marry, then marry Big Big Wolf. Big Big Wolf loves his wife first. After people reach middle age, they become more empathetic to the Big Wolf. They always fail to catch the sheep, but they never give up. “I will definitely come back” after each episode has become a courage that moved many people.
There are also some basic characters: Boiling Yangyang, the originator of dog licking, Xiao Huihui, who is careless but has a tutor, and Nuan Yangyang, who is always a supporting role but always cheers…
Compared to sending out all Yangcun staff, this kind ofcharacter-first narrativemore likely to causeEmpathyandDesire for discussion. The focus of the campaign will therefore be more specific – whether it is playing emotional cards or talking about updated values.
Because the character’s narrative has been updated, the relationship between the brand and IP is no longer a licensing transaction of “borrowing symbols”, but more like a cooperation of “co-writing personality”. There can be many specific presentation methods:
You can rectify the names of the characters and create sequels with Easter eggs; you can also relax your thinking and selectively combine characters to form CPs for them.
②Shaun the Sheep
Shaun the Sheep has three time points: the 2027 Chinese Lunar Year of the Sheep, the 20th anniversary of the first independent animated series, and the third big movie “Shaun the Sheep 3: Monsters Attack” will be released in China in a few days.
③Cookie Friends Lamb Roll
Lamb Juanjuan is the cheerful and coquettish little lamb in Cookie Friends. He has a soft and healing temperament and is the protagonist of the most popular emoticons on the Internet. As a social cow’s little sun and a mother’s baby girl, it focuses on a relaxed and warm sense of companionship and is deeply loved by young girls.
④dongdong sheep
DongDong Sheep is the therapeutic lamb IP of Flying DongDong, a trendy toy brand under South Korea’s CLOCKHOUSE studio. It became popular due to its linkage with the game “Egg Party”. The image is white, round and furry, and is defined as an “emotional and cute social symbol”.
3) Four-character idioms, common expressions and more related to YANG
The three Yangs are prosperous, joyful, elated, high-spirited, born toward the sun, and antelopes hang their horns
The Sheep Wool, the Golden Fleece, and the Year of the Sheep are open
*Allusions related to sheep
Su Wu shepherds sheep, is as virtuous as a lamb, and turns a stone into a sheep
Ren Bonian’s “Su Wu Shepherding Pictures” is now in the collection of the Palace Museum in the Qing Dynasty.
*Cultural relics related to sheep
Four-goat Fangzun, Hotan green white jade three-goat
*Famous paintings related to sheep
Zhao Mengfu’s “Two Sheep Picture”
Chen Juzhong’s “Four Sheep Picture”
*Poems related to sheep
The wild geese cut off Hu Tianyue by the clouds, and the sheep in Longshang returned to the grass smoke. ——Wen Tingyun’s “Su Wu Temple”
The setting sun shines on the countryside, and the cattle and sheep return home in the back alleys. ——Wang Wei’s “Weichuan Tianjia”
The sky is clear, the fields are vast, and the grass is blown by the wind, and cattle and sheep can be seen low. ——Northern Dynasties folk song “Chile Song”
At dusk, the sheep and cattle came down. ——”The Book of Songs·Wang Feng·The Gentleman in Service”
*Words related to sheep in terms of glyph structure
beautiful——From sheep to big, big sheep are beautiful. Sheep directly assumes the criterion of “beauty” in the glyph.
good——From Yang Congyan (or Cong Eryan), Yang marks the semantic direction of “good luck” in the glyph.
Xiang——From the sound of the sheep, the sheep not only expresses the sound but also participates in the expression, pointing to Fu Rui.
keep——From the food to the sheep, he also participates in the semantic construction of “support” as the “owner of the meal”.
*More topics and ideas about sheep
In the Year of the Sheep, foreigners make a fool of themselves; is an alpaca a sheep? If the Year of the Sheep were to be translated into English, would it be sheep, goat, or ram?sheepGood yearRaise xx; Nourishing Yang Qi in the Year of the Sheep…
There is a folk saying that people born in the year of Sheep have a hard life. If you want to borrow it, you may want to start with how to overturn it cleverly.
sheep, goat, or ram
3. Repeat the same old tune
By December, CNY projects of all sizes will be launched one after another. The above-mentioned Sheep YANG project is indispensable, more or less, either reasonable or can only be understood with “abstraction”.
But what is certain is that the most popular items will not come from them, because the most popular items cannot be planned.
It’s not just a matter of chance, but also that real hits are never limited by routines or rules.
The cutting-edge direction, in particular, is fresh and clever enough to refresh the mind and break the cycle of lethargy.
As for routines and rules… With the perfect collaboration of algorithms and AI, borrowing routines and rules to learn from and then copy has become a silent epidemic.
Regarding this phenomenon, we discussed it in the article on CNY in the Year of the Horse at the beginning of the year.
An article by Shuying also expressed a similar point of view, and it was more concise and accurate – “Really good ideas have no sense of reference.”
Rules, references, “similar gameplays”… what is the meaning of their existence?
Prove that there is some rationality.
It proves that this kind of gameplay has been passed before.
In short, find a posteriori case so that various judgments can be based on evidence and the strategy can be defended.
A posteriori is very important. As said in the comment area, “risk transfer + responsibility transfer” can be achieved, which can bring data and psychological certainty.
To further complicate matters, decisions and practices within the organization have to be considered. Unless, you can connect with someone who can make the decision and be responsible for the direct results.
This collective mentality is especially prevalent when bonus periods disappear.
Anything strange, new or different will be infinitely magnified and defined as a “risk”.
However, the echo wall effect within the circle has been collectively ignored. Even join in the fake carnival.
On the one hand, it is castrated and on the other hand, it is involuted. In the long run, it will be difficult not to be consumed and shrink to the point of disappointment.
Fortunately, the ultimate reviewer for advertising is users and consumers, not peers or countless big shots. They are usually silent, and they are always “called by netizens” as representatives of self-media literature, but when they encounter truly good advertisements and junk advertisements that they can’t help but complain about, they will still vote with various actions.
I just hope that the industry and users can reach a relative consensus on this year’s annual hit. Let “hot products” live up to their name and no longer be a marketing term that whitewashes the situation.
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