Traditional advertising can directly promote products, but its function is getting weaker and weaker, which requires not only a lot of media investment, but also considerable production and creative expenses. Of course, any brand-making enterprise can't lack the promotion of hard advertisements, but at the same time, it can not only rapidly expand its popularity, produce a good corporate brand reputation, but also promote sales and solve a series of market activities such as "trust crisis".

At the end of 1990s, Dole Capsule hosted a large-scale planning activity, and Dole asked questions about women.

When is the most beautiful, causing the target consumers to compete for participation? Event planning captures the expression desire of target consumers, triggers word-of-mouth effect in the form of questions, and collects various articles, topics, pictures, etc. In the form of questions, and cooperate with TV stations to carry out beauty-seeking activities. In two years, it has been out of the limelight, grabbing enough eyeballs and making enough money.

Health care products can be sold as "dreams", and Duoer Capsule has set a good precedent.

At the same time, the Qiandao Lake source-seeking activity carried out by Nongfu Spring is also a very successful example of activity planning. Nongfu Spring is located in natural water, which not only has a unique selling point-Nongfu Spring is a little sweet, but also compares natural water with purified water in advertisements, and compares the example of garlic sprouting and growing faster in natural water with purified water, which deeply establishes the concept that "natural water is better than purified water" and leads consumers' questions to Qiandao Lake in a series of advertising activities. Is the water in Qiandao Lake the best natural water?

There is no doubt that Nongfu Spring can solve a series of problems for consumers as long as it can prove that the water in Qiandao Lake is the best natural water. During this period, Nongfu Spring launched the "Qiandao Lake Sourcing Activity". Anyone who drinks Nongfu Spring water has the opportunity to participate in this activity, presenting Qiandao Lake with beautiful scenery and fresh air to consumers, and completely eliminating consumers' doubts. This activity will also spread the concept of natural water in Nongfu Spring to a better place.

This activity not only made Nongfu Spring rank among the top three in the water market, but also made an image promotion for Qiandao Lake. It is said that the number of tourists in Qiandao Lake has tripled every year because of the advertising effect of Nongfu Spring. Visiting Qiandao Lake and drinking Nongfu Spring has become the fashion enjoyment of the city's "idle people".

To put it simply, activity planning is to attract the attention or participation of the whole people through activities, solve the problems encountered by enterprises in marketing activities, and finally improve sales or visibility and reputation.

In the eight-year planning, the author had the honor to plan activities for some enterprises, and specially extracted two cases for your appreciation.

Skyworth color TV, pay attention to children's college entrance examination.

In the middle of May 20001year, the advertising company I worked for served Skyworth color TV. At that time, the main concept of Skyworth color TV was "health color TV", and it was necessary to rapidly expand its popularity and reputation in the regional market. What kind of activities can make consumers remember that Skyworth color TV is a healthy color TV, and win word of mouth and popularity without falling into the stereotype?

July is the day of children's college entrance examination every year, and this time of year is the day that students and parents are most concerned about. During this period, the children who take the entrance examination need a good rest and study environment, but they are often disturbed by TV noise.

Taking Skyworth color TV as the breakthrough point, the author started to create the headlines and core copy of newspaper advertisements by reducing TV noise, paying attention to children's rest and study before the college entrance examination.

Creativity 1: If the TV volume is lower, the children's test scores will be higher.

Creativity 2: The wonderful program you are watching will affect your child's wonderful life.

Idea 3: How loud the TV is, how bad the child's mood is.

Core copy: This year, 740,000 candidates in Anhui will take the college entrance examination. They are your children or your neighbor's children. They are making a nervous sprint before the exam! In order not to affect children's rest and study, please turn down the volume when watching TV, even watching healthy Skyworth color TV is no exception!

In addition, there are TV subtitles in the auxiliary newspaper media, so that parents who are watching TV can consciously turn down the TV volume in the form of mobile phone subtitles.

Online report

In terms of media budget and arrangement, from May 17 to June 30, the day before the college entrance examination, a total of138,000 yuan was invested. During the advertising period, many parents called Skyworth headquarters to express their gratitude, and many media reprinted Skyworth's Love Tips. This successful activity planning has achieved good social effects. In the following months, Skyworth Color TV has achieved impressive sales performance in various appliance stores in the regional market, ranking first in sales for six consecutive months.

Shaanxi Pok Oi Hospital, looking for contemporary patients.

Shaanxi Pok Oi Hospital is a large state-owned hospital specializing in the treatment of infertility. In 2004, private infertility hospitals mushroomed, and an established state-owned hospital is undoubtedly the biggest selling point. It is no exaggeration to say that her brand is old. She was founded in 1968 and has a history of 37 years. It is one of the oldest treatment hospitals.

Marketing experience tells us that a hospital that has been engaged in professional treatment of infertility for 37 years in a row must have its special treatment effect. When people go to see a doctor, they are still very aware of the old hospital. When planning the image of the hospital, the author focuses on the image of the old state-owned hospital and skillfully embodies the advertising appeal of "big state-owned hospitals don't spend money" in the advertisement. In order to cooperate with the publicity, the author planned an activity for Shaanxi Pok Oi Hospital with the theme of "Looking for patients in the 1960s".

The theme copy is like this:

Shaanxi Pok Oi Hospital, founded in 1968, has a history of 37 years. This is one of the oldest hospitals for treating infertility. She grew up with her peers born in the 1960s. If you were born in the 1960s, if you don't have a baby, please tell us your troubles. We will send you free rehabilitation materials, free doctor's examination, free registration for medical treatment, free bed arrangement, etc. As long as you were born in the 1960s, you have the right to enjoy the first-class service of Shaanxi Pok Oi Hospital, and we will try our best to bring you children's laughter.

It is not difficult to imagine how old a person born in the 1960s is this year, ranging from 35 to 45. What kind of social and family pressure will he bear if he doesn't have children at his age! We helped them from the perspective of peers, which aroused the desire of patients in this age group, not only told patients about the 37-year history of the hospital, but also reflected the humanization and specialization of the hospital.

Activity planning is currently being implemented. Judging from the effect of early implementation, the hospital fully affirmed the activity planning. Here, I would also like to remind readers that if your friend in the 1960s didn't have children, you might as well invite him to Shaanxi Pok Oi Hospital, which is a large state-owned hospital with excellent technology and old brand.

On the skills of activity planning

The purpose of activity planning is to create consumers' eyeball effect and social effect. A good event planning is four or two thousand pounds, which can expand popularity and reputation and promote sales without spending more or less. Some activity planning seems ingenious, but it is actually a typical garbage activity planning. I see that many enterprises are doing such things almost every day, which is unacceptable.

So, what is the criterion for judging the success of an event planning? The author summed up four points:

1. Can it arouse the strong concern of the target consumers?

The author thinks that the activity planning should firmly lock in the "search radius" of consumers in order to arouse their strong concern. Different consumers have different "search radius". The target consumer group of Duoer Capsule is women aged 25-40 whose family income exceeds 3,000. These women have taste and have their own careers. Their search radius is "beauty, love, family, etc." , so they ask questions-"

If an event planner finds the wrong consumer group, it's like throwing fish into a boiling pot-you can't catch anything.

2. Is it closely related to products and services?

Activity planning must combine the selling points of products or services. No matter how subtle an activity planning is, if consumers only remember interesting activities and forget the product or service itself, it means that the activity planning is a failure. Some time ago, a health care product (brand name forgotten) made an activity plan, which was initiated by the local charity association and donated to the whole society. The company has invested a lot of money, but it has achieved little. This is because health care products are not necessarily related to the tsunami disaster in Indonesia. Besides, donation information is flooding all the media at this time. Who has time to pay attention to what appears every day?

Similarly, with the help of disastrous social problems, 84 Disinfectant held a love donation activity during SARS and achieved great success, which was inseparable from consumers' habit of paying attention to personal hygiene and disinfection during SARS. It is far-fetched to plan the activities of a clothing brand at this time.

3. Is it the original activity planning of this industry?

If your activity planning is to imitate others, especially peers, then I still advise you not to waste money, because every consumer likes the new and hates the old, and consumers only remember the products or services that first put forward the activity. Imagine if a brand of mineral water also launched the activity of "exploring the source of a mountain spring", or a male health care product launched "When is a man the strongest?" Are you interested in this activity?

Many small and medium-sized business owners complain that their businesses are small enough to plan activities. In fact, no enterprise will not do event planning. As long as we dig deep into the selling points of its products or services, we can find suitable and creative activity planning. Many enterprises always follow their competitors when planning activities. You 1 buy 3, I 1 buy 2. If you organize a consumption tour to Hong Kong and Macau, I will organize a consumption tour to Singapore and Thailand. As we all know, imitation and plagiarism will lose people themselves. Enterprises should try to plan their own unique activity plans, or hand them over to Beijing Zhongshi planning agency which is good at such planning.

With the above three conditions, combined with the current market situation, it is possible for marketers to make a sensational event planning scheme.

Development status and trend of global planning industry

The high development of modern science, technology and industry has brought us a high degree of material civilization, but also brought very serious problems to human society, such as population explosion, energy crisis, resource depletion, environmental pollution, unbalanced ecological balance, bloated cities, traffic congestion and so on. The problems we are facing are becoming more and more complicated. Solving such problems requires not only personal experience and wisdom, but also the joint efforts of a team of scientists, technical experts, economists, financial economists, management scientists and sociologists to find solutions to complex problems. Therefore, the international community has an increasing demand for professional planning services.

At present, the planning service industry in developed countries is quite mature, covering finance, investment, information, education, training, real estate services, infrastructure projects, industrial design, logistics management, environmental protection, law, finance, evaluation and even advertising and public relations, involving almost all aspects of social life. Moreover, the market operation is standardized, the degree of specialization is high, and the laws and regulations are sound, forming a relatively stable planning industry and service system. With the globalization of social and economic production and life, planning industry plays an increasingly important role in all aspects of people's lives, and its proportion in the industrial structure has become a symbol and symbol to measure a country's economic development.

Global planning market scale In recent years, the planning industry has developed rapidly around the world and experienced unprecedented long-term high-speed growth. During the 20 years from 1980 to 200 1, the world planned market grew at an average annual rate of 12%. In 200 1 year, the global planned market scale reached11400 million USD. In the increasingly fierce competition environment, the leading companies in the planning industry pay more attention to the innovation of ideas and methods, as well as the effective implementation of planning schemes and the evaluation of planning effects, and have made great progress in service means, technical methods and service models.

American planning industry has the highest income in the world, followed by Western Europe, Japan and Canada. However, it is worth noting that about half of the planning income in the United States comes from overseas planning markets. This is the result of the successful transition from manufacturing economy to knowledge economy, the implementation of knowledge export strategy and the increase of foreign investment in the United States.

The main factor affecting the development of global planning market is 1, which is the main driving force to support the global planning market. Due to the continuous demand and the development of emerging markets and other market factors, the planning service market will continue to grow and develop. According to the analysis of IDC in the United States, although the main driving forces of each region are different, the main driving forces of the global planning market should include the following aspects:

& gt merger and acquisition of enterprises > gradual deregulation of the market and the promotion of privatization process

& gt Business Process Reengineering in Enterprises

& gt Rapid application of new technology

& gt Promote the process of global integration

& gt Market liberalization trend

& gt The economic development prospect is optimistic.

& gt favorable conditions of capital market

2. The main obstacle to the development of global planning market is planning service expenditure, which has a great influence on the planning service market, but it varies greatly in different parts of the world. The factors affecting the global planning service market mainly include: the slowdown or decline of global economic growth, political instability, emergencies, legal restrictions and so on.

Global planning market opportunities

& gt industry opportunities

Globally, financial services, banking, manufacturing and communication are the largest markets for planning services. The highest growth space is in financial services, banking, communications, retail and commercial/engineering services.

& gt regional opportunities

Although the United States is still the largest planned market, with steady growth and many opportunities, other regions also show growth opportunities and rapid development momentum. For example, the Asia-Pacific region will be the fastest growing region in the world planning service market in the next few years, among which South Korea, Hongkong, Thailand and Chinese mainland all show a trend of continuous growth in the planning market. Latin America will also become a region where the planning service market is growing rapidly, among which Mexico and Brazil are the most prominent. In Europe, investment planning from the government is expected to increase, and corporate merger and acquisition planning and restructuring planning will continue to grow.

& gt market segmentation opportunities

In the next few years, planning services in global business and IT strategies will grow fastest. In the field of logistics planning, logistics planning in banking, finance, public utilities, communications and other industries will grow rapidly, with the largest market space in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Due to the increase of global mergers and acquisitions, there is a great market space for the change management and planning of mergers and acquisitions. Because planning customers pay more attention to return on investment (R0 1) and cost saving, the planning of process improvement and business process reengineering will have high growth opportunities.

The key factor for successful competition of planning organizations is on a global scale. Through the analysis of a large number of competitive factors for the success of planning services, some research institutions suggest that planning institutions should pay special attention to the following factors in their development:

& gt Depth and breadth of planning services provided.

Providing total solutions is becoming one of the first choices for end users. The overall solution includes planning, development, implementation, maintenance and support. However, the providers of total solutions realize that one-stop service cannot bring long-term competitive advantages to customers. Therefore, planning organizations that provide overall solutions must have deeper professional knowledge and expand the scope of services provided. This king should be achieved through the growth, cooperation and alliance of institutions and mergers. For example, in July 2000, IBM Global Services (one of the predecessors of business innovation service companies) acquired arago, a leading planning company in market research and marketing planning; In April of 20001year, it acquired four experienced Mainspring strategic planning companies; In July 2002, it acquired PricewaterhouseCoopers Planning Company. This series of mergers and acquisitions greatly enhanced IBM's planning service capability, and its revenue in the fourth quarter of 2002 increased by 17% year-on-year.

& gt diversified price strategy

In order to maximize customer income, improve customer satisfaction and open up new customer segments, the pricing model of planning services based on time and data has been shaken. Under the condition of modern economy, planning service agencies are trying various alternative price models, including fixed time/fixed price model, risk/benefit * * * bearing model and equity payment model. Planning service organizations must evaluate various price structures and choose pricing models to meet customers' needs, and plan the price strategy of service contracts.

In the United States, although many leading planning companies still focus on fixed-time and quantitative charging models, they have begun to combine some value-based pricing structures. At the same time, more and more high-tech production enterprises entering the planning field began to adopt the pricing model of fixed pricing. While other planning organizations began to adopt the price model of risk return and equity payment.

& gt strengthen the relationship with end users.

Establish a long-term and stable relationship with the decision-making level of end users in key fields. As the decision-making power of IT planning has been transferred to senior business managers and higher levels within the organization, planning consultants should strive to establish strategic partnerships with customers, which is very important for planning institutions. The establishment of these relationships includes decision makers of end-user committees, industry experts and strategic experts from the customer's point of view. This is equally important for high-tech manufacturing enterprises, because they do not have strong end-user relationships in business, and professional service organizations need to strengthen these relationships.

& gt mutually reinforcing partnership or cooperation mechanism

Faced with fierce competition, new market entrants and potential channel conflicts, it is necessary for planning institutions to establish strengthened win-win partnerships and create new ways of cooperation.

Trend analysis of global planning market The world planning market is undergoing major changes, mainly from demand and supply. On the demand side, the change of demand originated from and ended with the first wave of "E" shock, which led to the end users being more cautious about starting e-commerce projects, and will lead to the drastic changes in new consumption patterns and the characteristics of planning contracts.

On the supply side, the competition pattern has changed greatly, which is mainly hindered by the development of e-commerce service model. The pattern of the original "big five" accounting companies and ambitious software and hardware enterprises has changed greatly, and they have poured into the planned market.

Another factor that affects the planned market is the economic situation of major economic powers. Some analysts believe that the economic slowdown in the United States will not affect the scale of IT planning services purchased by global enterprises in the next few years. However, the planning market will be impacted in the short term. In fact, this kind of influence is influential. According to statistics, the scale of global planned market in 2003 will be the same as that in 2002, and the market growth rate will be almost zero. On the other hand, the structural change of enterprise planning service expenditure will lead to the redistribution of planning service market segments.

IT companies enter the planning market. As the growth of the hardware market slows down and profits drop, more high-tech manufacturers begin to shift to the high end of the value chain and enter the planning field ambitiously. IT companies such as Hewlett-Packard, speer, Unisys, Infosys and SAP are all strengthening their front-end business planning capabilities.

These companies cultivate their ability to provide planning services through acquisitions and other means. They used to help enterprises install and integrate various complex IT systems. Now these companies also want to gain market share of management planning, and they have indeed become a new army of management planning. The main advantage of these technology companies in planning services is that they have a good positioning of the planning services provided by end users, which benefits from their deeper understanding of customer business, which comes from customer strategy and implementation.

However, these companies still face many challenges. They must show the continuity of the services they provide. Once they enter the field of planning services, they must formulate the strategy of planning service consistency, including hardware, software and services, so that the services they provide are complete and sustainable. These enterprises must also be prepared to resolve possible conflicts with channel partners, including planning companies and system integration companies. Entering the field of planning services will threaten the business of these companies. Therefore, innovative cooperation and joint methods are needed to solve these conflicts.

Another challenge is to understand the planning services provided by these companies. Many people think that the services provided by these companies are only about product planning and do not have strong and fair strategic planning capabilities. High-tech companies that are constantly entering the field of planning are cultivating their planning service capabilities beyond their products and technologies. In order to prove this unique ability, these I-D companies need to form strategic partners and alliances with planning agencies to publicize their planning concepts.

Management planning faces great challenges. The global economic recession in 1980s and early 1990s made people question or even deny the prospect of management planning. However, with the improvement of the economy, the purse of the planning industry quickly recovered to its original level. However, in recent years, management planning has to take these challenges seriously.

& gt One of the challenges: order reduction

Starting from 1998, AT&T Company "cancelled most of the previous work of hiring planning consultants". Now, compared with five years ago, AOL- time warner Inc.'s planning expenditure has dropped by 75%. At present, American Express spends only a small part of its money on planning.

& gt Challenge 2: Market Transfer

In American business circles, the long-term close relationship between large companies and traditional management planning companies has come to an abrupt end, but this does not include dean planning companies such as IBM and Accenture. In 2000, Ting Planning accounted for 57.9% of the global planning service market. According to IDC's analysis, this figure will reach 60.2% by 2005. Including McKinsey; AT&T, which was deleted from the list of service providers by strategic planning companies including Boston, will pay 2.6 billion dollars to Accenture, a large technical consulting company, in five years to "transform its personal long-distance business sales and customer service business". With the increasingly close relationship between technology and the overall business objectives of enterprises, the planning market share of planning companies with strong technological advantages will gradually increase.

& gt The third challenge: improve the customer planning ability.

In the past few years, many large enterprises have strengthened the construction of internal strategic research teams and changed the way of hiring planning experts. They either hire a small number of planning experts to cooperate with their own research team, or recruit people directly from the planning company. In AOL time warner Inc.'s 19 strategic team, 12 comes from McKinsey, Boston and Bain planning companies. In 2002, American Express also poached at least five planning experts from McKinsey. The direct benefit of this is to reduce the expenditure on planning services. In this way, enterprises can gain a lot of knowledge and start to do this work independently. And often hiring planning experts will hinder the development of the corresponding skills of employees within the enterprise. Narrowing the gap with management planning companies will greatly change the management planning market.

Although facing these challenges, it does not mean that management planning is at the end of the road. These planning companies have a strong knowledge system and a large number of experienced talents accumulated all the year round. Faced with these challenges, the company must make a choice, at least the planned market structure in the future will be very different from the past.

With the strengthening of world economic integration and international cooperation, as well as the increasing complexity and uncertainty of the world economy, planning institutions will play an increasingly important role in various fields, and the global planning industry will face better development prospects and broader development space.