The Future of Blue Cat Brands from the Perspective of Brand Value

"Three-stream companies sell products, second-rate companies sell brands, and first-class companies sell standards."

This is the perception of brands in the traditional industry. Paying attention to the brand has become an inevitable trend of economic development and maturity. For the enterprise, the brand means the dependence of consumers on products and services, as well as stronger market competitiveness and price advantage.

The animation industry pursues the eyeball effect under the attention economy. The significance of the brand cannot be overemphasized. From the brand perspective, the domestic animation industry has the following features:

I. The cartoon industry is a cultural industry. What I do is image and brand. The core value connotation of enterprises and products is the brand. The brand is extremely important to the development of the industry and the competition of the company. The author once shared with the insiders and the core of domestic animation companies. When it comes to competitiveness, the core competitiveness of an outstanding animation company has been referred to as: a strong brand under effective execution;

Second, the industry is in the start-up period, there is no strong brand in the true sense, let alone brand standards, the existing brand is very thin, vitality is very fragile;

3. The brands of animation companies mainly include corporate brands, product brands (animated cartoon images) and personal brands. In terms of their value points, products (animated cartoon images) are the brightest pearls in the brand chain;

Fourth, the brand is alive, it requires constant innovation and maintenance.

The BrandAsset Valuator BAV, a world famous advertising company, is a tool used to measure the brand's health and establish and manage brands. This article will use the "brand equity assessment" system of Jan Robkai. BrandAsset Valuator BAV) as a perspective and standard to look at the problem, taking the domestic animation image blue cat as the object of consideration, comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the brand value and future development of Sanchen Blue Cat.

Sanchen Blue Cat's greatest value to the Chinese animation industry is in its promotion of industrialization of the industry, but brand management is not very successful. The overall impression given by Sanchen Company is that it is good at playing the world rather than good at the world, and the ability to create a brand is stronger than that of a business brand. As a research object, it has strong reference and practical value. This article argues for neutrality, objectivity, and fairness. It hopes to give some inspiration to the parties involved in the industry and the managers and investors of the company. At the same time, it is also looking forward to using this “brick” to bring out more beautiful jade.

The BAV system regards the brand's differentiation, relevance, respect, and knowledge as the four pillars of brand building (as shown in the figure), in which differences and correlations Sexuality constitutes brand strength, respectability and recognition constitute brand status. Difference mainly refers to the brand's uniqueness and differences. Relevance refers to the suitability of the brand to the target consumer group. Respect degree is the reputation of the brand we often talk about, and awareness is the degree of recognition—consumer. The degree of understanding of the brand.

Differentiation

(Differentiation),

Brand strength
Respectability

(Esteem)

Brand equity evaluation

system
Brand position
Knowledge

Relevance

Brand strength

The difference is the value-added ceiling set by competitors for the Blue Cat brand;

There was no motivation before, and there were pursuers afterwards. Brand inertia led to the lack of differentiation, and potential leading brands gradually lost their first-mover advantage.

Relevance: The ageing and ruralization have already determined the brand value and positioning.

difference

“Diversity” is the core and foundation for building a brand. There are three main components – distinctive, outstanding and unique. In terms of uniqueness, the Blue Cat is gradually losing its advantage; at the same time, the outstanding style of the brand also fades. This is an important factor in consumers willing to pay high prices for the brand's products. The Sanchen Blue Cat brand is becoming mediocre. In simple terms, the characteristics of “roadside goods” are increasing; in terms of brand personality, its original “unique” original spirit is being reduced, and brand appeal is not clear enough.

Nowadays, the pattern of the buyer’s market has been formed. Faced with the competition of similar products and services, the difference in the brand can be transformed into the pricing power and profitability of the product. When the difference is lost, the target consumer group will choose the product and service, and the price will Became the dominant factor, in recent years the domestic white goods industry after another price war is the ultimate manifestation of the difference after the dislocation.

Since the establishment of the blue cat, the brand has a unique difference. Whether in the end-consumer or the product marketing channel, this difference will promote the recognition of the brand and the formation of the transaction, but Sanchen did not grasp the opportunity given by history. Heads, further, on the contrary, the internal management and other factors such as the departure of the founder and other external reasons, the blue cat's brand building is in a stagnant state. Mainly reflected in: First, the blue cat image in the formation of a certain brand influence, that is, after the formation of a de facto quasi-leading brand, did not carry out effective brand maintenance and value enhancement, on the contrary, still remains in the original extensive business model and extensive type In terms of brand management, the market structure and target consumer groups are changing. At the same time, the negative news related to the company often appears. These exposure problems are only the tip of the iceberg. If the handling is not good, any effort on brand building will be lost. This is the significance of playing Jiangshanyi and keeping the rivers and mountains difficult. Secondly, following up the brand's erosion of the brand image of Sanchen Blue Cat, as a brand from Changsha City, Hunan Province, has emerged as a blue cat, rainbow cat, blue rabbit and bobcat. The "three cats" within the "three cats", as cartoons, use a unique image to win the cartoon image, which shapes the uniqueness and difference orientation to be stronger than homogenization, but the existence of the other two cats in the same city form a de facto homogenization.

Under the premise of legal management, following and imitating strategies are also an effective means. There are also successful cases in this respect. The strategic choices of the "free rider" of Rainbow Cat Blue Rabbit and Bobcat have certain feasibility, but they are forerunners. The blue cat brand also takes the cat as the protagonist, and also uses the low-age children as the target audience. Too strong image associations cause great harm to the brand differences and uniqueness. On the other hand, the “Three Cats” target customer group is from children under 8 years old. Their ability to discern elements such as brand VI (visual system) is weaker than that of other audiences, which further strengthens the follow-up of brands to blue cats. Impact.

Correlation

Relevance refers to the suitability of the brand to the consumer. The blue cat embodies in the relevance of the brand mainly two characteristics, one is the younger age, the second is the ruralization, as the brand operator, Sanchen is in the brand relevance " In terms of positioning, younger age should be an initiative choice. Under the premise that youngsters in Japan are completely “brainwashed” by pirated comics in Japan and South Korea, it is indeed a good idea to lower the age of animation. However, “ruralization” is positive. It was the producer who had never thought of it, and was least willing to see it. The younger generation is far more than the production level of the current domestic animation industry, and it is not just the “ruralization” and “marginalization”. The pain of the Blue Cat family is also the common pain of the entire domestic animation industry. There is a reference standard to illustrate this issue. The majority of Blue Cat's franchisees are concentrated in the central and western regions and cities and towns below the prefecture level in the interior. The radiation area is dominated by urban and rural areas.

The above two characteristics have determined that in the brand's core consumer groups, a professional terminology—the standard audience—can be used to describe the relevance of the Blue Cat brand: teenagers under the age of 8 in prefectures and cities in central and western regions.

The negative effects of young age and ruralization on the blue cat brand include:

1. Standard audiences determine the reproducibility of content and models, thereby intensifying local competition in market segments. The market's capacity is set. Excessive homogenous products will dilute brand gold content. The result is that the partners, especially franchisees, Advertisers and image authorizers are divided and weakened. Such a truth can be seen from the production of the content of the Hunan film and television program, which is known as the Hunan TV Army. When the "Rose of the Treaty" and the "Happy Camp" and other entertainment programs were popular, all over the country there was a similar change in the country. The program, the performance of latecomers, and the crowds of viewers and advertisers in these differentiated brands, played down the strength of the brand.

Second, the impact of the gold content of the target segment market on the extension of the industrial chain. Blue Cat's "standard audience" is a group of sub-markets with relatively low purchasing power and weak household spending power. It seems that no advertiser is willing to invest too much effort in young people who do not have much income and do not have too much spending power.

Third, the non-mainstream positioning of target consumer groups has determined the brand's non-mainstream. Anime cartoon brand can be made into all ages, size, killing, like international famous brands Garfield, HELLO KITTY, etc., but the blue cat brand from the beginning to kill the scalability of this target group, so in this sense, the blue The cat brand can only become the narrow public brand of the designated crowd.

Differences and correlations

Considering the formation of discrepancies, attempts to establish a relationship, if the brand's difference is higher than the relevance, then the brand is a healthy brand. In this case, due to the uniqueness of the brand and the irreplaceability in the market, The brand has the potential and space to grow into a strong leader; if the situation is opposite to the brand, the relevance of the brand is higher than the difference, which means that the brand has a tendency to develop towards popularity. This trend means that the uniqueness of the brand is gradually disappearing, making the price It has become the dominant factor influencing purchases, which in turn affects the pricing power of enterprises and the profitability of enterprises. From the analysis of differences and correlations, the Blue Cat brand has already shown a decline.