
If you want to be popular, you must make people angry
There are many kinds of human emotions, and the four basic emotions are happiness, anger, sadness, and fear.
Joy promotes sharing, sadness seeks empathy, fear seeks dependence and reassurance, and anger leads to aggression and a tougher stance.
The combination of the four emotions can also produce compound emotions such as worry, expectation, jealousy, happiness, compassion, and sympathy. These emotions are constantly generated, spread, and resonated in the market, which is the fundamental force to promote purchases, trigger spread, and stimulate demand.
Among all emotions, anger is the most powerful, and it is also the emotion that is widely used in the market.
Today, let’s take a deep look at the application of anger in marketing.
The Use of Anger in Marketing
Let me first talk about a relatively low-level method that many people are using: directly inciting confrontation, intensifying conflicts, and inciting public anger. This is the easiest way to play in the self-media industry.
Everyone has different perceptions and receives different information, so it is normal for everyone to have their own views on the same thing. But after you wander around the Internet, you will find that there is always a group of people who are afraid that the world will not be chaotic: they extend the difference of views into a conflict of positions, and then escalate the conflict of positions into a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy. Another sentence of “what is the intention?” successfully ignited the anger of the public.
Dr. Zhang Wenhong said not to eat porridge for breakfast, but to drink milk and eggs. These people came here after smelling it: porridge is a traditional Chinese breakfast, and to oppose eating porridge is to oppose Chinese tradition, and to oppose Chinese tradition is to infiltrate the platform for Western culture. You still say that the Pfizer vaccine is good, then you are the academic comprador of Western capital in China, and the black hand of imperialism infiltrating our culture.
Look at this “logic”, isn’t it powerful? If you are not angry, you are not Chinese.
Genetic modification, traditional Chinese medicine, and women’s rights are all enduring classic topics that appear on the Internet in different positions every now and then. Every time they appear, they can bring a wave of traffic and further tear apart two groups of angry people.
Russia-Uzbekistan conflicts, labor-capital relations, and other emerging tearing topics in the past two years often stir up various platforms and groups. These angers have the spreading power to overwhelm everything. No matter how big a company encounters it, it will inevitably be unlucky.
Last year, the most famous case was Sima Nan tearing up Lenovo.
This year, the most famous one is Haitian Soy Sauce. Originally, Xin Jifei’s “Technology and Hard Work” was positioned as “exposing the black”, and it focused on food safety issues that the public cares about.
By making all kinds of “synthetic food”, it has added a lot of worry and disgust to our common people’s food. At this time, the object of everyone’s anger is vague, and it may be various small vendors, small restaurants, small factories and other people who do not pay attention to food. A safe enterprise may also be a regulatory department. Until Haitian jumped out to claim it, all the public sentiment was directed at it, so the stock price plummeted, and the public relations were extremely embarrassing. This belongs to the category of do not die.
What was more lively earlier was Simba’s bombardment of Dongfang’s selection. Simba’s position is also unique: “I am the son of a farmer, and the corn coming out of the field is 7 hairs per ear, and after a certain selection recited a poem, an ear of corn was sold for 6 yuan, which is unconscionable.” Look, “The farmer’s “Son”, it’s a standpoint, if you don’t talk about what’s right or wrong, it’s just “losing your conscience”, and you go right away to stir up hatred.
If we are reasonable, as a farmer, I absolutely hope that the more expensive the corn, the better. As long as the market can accept it, I never want to fight a price war for agricultural products, and I don’t like the “Northeast Farm Wife” who breaks business rules like that.
But to be reasonable, there is no traffic, and hatred is fine. This kind of method is still relatively low-end, and it is used a lot by self-media, and some Internet celebrity companies use it a lot.
While effective, it is also risky. Fire cannot be contained in paper, and anger is easy to backfire. Looking at Sima Nan’s embarrassment now, and the reputation of Simba and the “Northeast Farmer’s Wife” in the corn incident, we also know the risks of this method.
There is only one kind of anger that is really valuable, worthy of our application, and can rise to the strategic level, and that is the sense of anger based on values.
Embed anger in values
Jobs said that the most relevant thing about marketing is values.
According to Philip Kotler, Marketing 3.0 is values-driven.
Ye Maozhong said that far-reaching values are one of the four elements for the rise of a brand.
These Chinese and foreign marketing masters, everyone puts values in an extremely important position.
Our companies seem to agree, so all companies “hang their values on the wall.”
Half of the companies are talking about “products with great value for money”, more than half of the companies are talking about “achieve a win-win situation with customers”, almost all companies are talking about “market-oriented, satisfying users”, and almost All enterprises are advocating “integrity-based”. Others are a little more ingenious, using some traditional cultural words or famous aphorisms, such as “Sufficiency is a blessing”, “Self-improvement and others” and “Only the paranoid can survive”.
Of course the content is correct, at least it makes sense. But it can only be “hanged on the wall” and cannot fall to the ground at all.
These words can’t touch the emotions of employees at all, can’t touch the emotions of collaborators, let alone the emotions of the market. The employees felt that this had nothing to do with him, were they trying to make fun of him again?
It’s too difficult for the bosses and executives. I think you are very hardworking, but the grassroots employees and collaborators think you are very self-satisfied. Then how can you expect such values to be passed on to the market, to resonate with the market and customers?
Let’s take a look at how marketing masters make such an illusory thing of value land.
Jobs said: “I think it must be those who think differently to buy an Apple computer. Those who pay for an Apple computer think differently. They represent the innovative spirit in this world. , rather than some mediocre people who just want to get the job done. What they want in their hearts is to change the world, and they will use all possible tools to achieve it.”
Jobs’ ideal is to “change the world”, compared to the general enterprise’s “provide more than Are value-for-money products” and “a win-win situation with customers” more ambitious and difficult to implement?
Jobs’ method is to give an opposite, “people who do nothing, people who only do their jobs.” These specific people are the objects to be criticized, and people can see and touch them at once. The “sense of anger” towards them is the main driving force behind the resonance of “Change the World”.
A solitary yin does not grow, a solitary yang does not grow, with opposites, the grand theme of “changing the world” comes alive at once.
Similarly, if Jobs said to Sculley, the president of Pepsi, “Come and change the world with me”, it would sound very powerless, especially like a big fool who painted cakes. But what he said was “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or change the world with me?” It was still “painting cakes”, but with the opposite of “sugar water”, emotions arose, and “changing the world” instantly became exciting. Full of imagination and resonance.
Then look at this sentence again – “There is no middleman to make the difference”. This is a slogan and business idea that I have complained about countless times, but there is no doubt that it has a very powerful force.
It takes advantage of ordinary people’s wrong intuition and lack of business common sense, thinking that the money they bought for high-priced products was hacked by “unscrupulous middlemen”, which aroused strong emotions, aroused strong resonance, and created widespread spread.
Not only is Guazi second-hand car such an advocacy, but early street stalls, pyramid schemes, direct sales, micro-businesses, e-commerce platforms, TV shopping, and now live broadcasts, short videos, and various businesses, large and small, often use This kind of routine.
Although it is anti-intellectual, it has the power of transmission and vitality, and it cannot be rooted out in a short time.
Embedding a sense of anger in the values, making the corporate vision three-dimensional and perceptible, and providing emotional value to the audience is an efficient way to make the values come true, and it has a wide range of applications.
Drucker said that the value of an enterprise is to solve social problems.
As a boss, you must first clarify what kind of social problem you have solved. If you cannot find out this problem, your company will not survive long.
When you find this social problem, you must let it be perceived by people, making people aware of the seriousness and urgency of the problem, the harm of this problem, and how “hateful” the people and things that create this problem are.
Only in this way can you make the people who follow you have a strong sense of mission, make your collaborators empathize with your values, and let the customers who consume your products have emotional resonance, so that your brand can have emotional value.
The main framework of marketing is 4P, also called “marketing mix”, which is the tactical level. The 4P combination is led by STP, which is the strategic level, and the origin of the strategy is the vision, mission and values of the enterprise.
Letting your values feel angry is not a matter of tactics but a matter of strategy. It is a matter of solving “why the war” is a big deal.
Most enterprises are used to being “balanced and stable” and are always used to saying “words from “The Analects”” and “words that are harmless to humans and animals”. But these “tall” words can’t find any faults. Because they lack a sense of anger, they lack appeal. They cannot make employees and partners act in concert, let alone make consumers resonate strongly with you.
Therefore, it can only be used to “hang on the wall”.
This kind of “balance and stability” is the biggest risk: if you are not angry, you will not be popular; if you cannot make some people angry, then your company will not be angry.

