Nowadays, brand marketing is no longer limited to rigid advertising in the traditional sense. As consumers increasingly pursue personalization and emotional resonance, a marketing strategy with "storytelling" at its core is gradually becoming mainstream.
At the heart of this strategy is to tug at the heartstrings of the target audience by constructing an engaging story that cleverly integrates brand ideas and product features into the plot, thereby achieving deeper brand awareness and loyalty.
Dongfeng Honda recently joined hands with Dapeng to shoot a creative advertisement, using a comic story to present the selling point of the product, and what is hidden behind it is the brand's excavation of the target audience.
Dongfeng Honda × Dapeng Fun Advertisement "Lingverious"
Staging a hilarious rescue
From TVCs to short-form videos to interactive content on social media, brands are constantly exploring how to use stories to reach fans and turn every touchpoint into a memorable brand experience.
Based on this, Dongfeng Honda and the well-known director Dapeng jointly created an interesting advertising short film called "Lingzhi", which unveiled the mystery of the new model - Honda Lingxi L.
The film uses the temporary disappearance of Lingxi L, who is used as a shooting prop, as a gimmick, and the gaffer, photographer and other characters stage a series of hilarious rescues in order to fool the director Dapeng, arousing the audience's curiosity and desire to watch.
The whole advertisement from the witty story line to the rich and flexible camera movement, the magic creativity runs throughout, and at the same time, do not forget to intersperse the selling points of Lingxi L's products suitable for various car use scenarios to the audience, giving consumers the feeling that Lingxi L's product is the same as this advertising creativity, young and smart.
Among them, the title of "Lingvery" also has a bit of a pun, on the one hand, it refers to the fact that Dapeng and his team in the film are very professional and bright, and on the other hand, it also refers to the aura and youth of the product.
With the funny character design of Dapeng itself, the viewability of the entire TVC has been improved a lot, in other words, as soon as you see Dapeng in the first shot, you may have already started to laugh, and even want to watch what you want to do.
From the marketing level, this is also the underlying logic of the brand's "storytelling", as an automobile product, Lingxi L's advertisement seems to be a bit funny and nonsensical, but in fact, it is a unique way to find the communication contact point between itself and consumers, anchoring young consumers.
Take the fun as the guide
Soft implantation to achieve the selling point of the product
An interesting TVC can often make the brand's marketing communication twice the result with half the effort and quickly penetrate into the consumer circle, just like the popular Internet memes "Mixed Yuan Taijiquan" and "One Give Me Giaogiao", which have become popular recently, all of which reflect the strong communication power of interesting content.
As early as 2020, Dongfeng Honda joined hands with Shen Teng to perform a comedy micro-film around the core of youth and dreams - "Shen Lang's Siwei", which tells the story of Shen Lang's pursuit of love and dreams played by Shen Teng in a funny way for 16 years, and interprets the theme of "living up to youth and living up to you".
From graduating from high school in 2004 to 2020, in the past 16 years, Shen Lang spared no effort to pursue his crush Siwei, even if scooters, motorcycles, and wheelchairs took turns, he could never catch up with Siwei who drove a CR-V.
Shen Lang never found a chance to talk to Siwei, and the sincere words he wanted to say were stranded for 16 years. It wasn't until he drove the latest CR-V that he caught up with Siwei and told the other party about the problems and truths in his heart.
There are a lot of funny scenes in the plot, such as when I thought I was going to confess, I didn't think I was asking about the car, and there are more than ten years of all that way, which really makes people want to complain.
Or the previous Chevrolet teamed up with Jiang Long and Zhang Chi, the tacit partners of the "Dream Runner-up" of the "Annual Comedy Contest", to launch the "Wish Friend Limit" sitcom, which brought joy to the audience while high-energy output product selling points.
At that time, the comedians were in the heat of the day, and the film started from Zhang Chi's dream, telling the story of wishing between him and Jiang Long, the "God of Lights", and wonderfully interpreting the friendship of the gods through three wishes.
Chevrolet's intelligent car connection system "Xiaoxue OS" also plays an important role, with its intelligent voice, automatic upgrade, constant temperature control and other functions as the plot connection point, the essence of which lies in the soft implantation of the product selling point with fun as the guide.
Targeting young consumers
Create a fun image
In this era of audience distraction, users' immunity to "cramming" is increasing, and to some extent, only ads that really cause users' mood swings can maximize consumers' memory of the brand.
In the commercial film "Lingzhi", Dongfeng Honda skillfully used the marketing strategy of "storytelling", which not only successfully attracted the attention of the audience, but also effectively conveyed the product information.
The logic behind this approach is to create a more authentic and vivid brand experience by building a compelling story framework that naturally incorporates the core values of the brand and product.
Compared to traditional direct marketing, this method can significantly improve the acceptance of advertising content, especially in the current era of information overload, where consumers are increasingly tired and even resistant to rigid commercial messages.
Dongfeng Honda clearly knows this. The whole short film unfolds in a light-hearted and humorous way, through a series of absurd yet intelligent plot settings, which not only shows the tacit cooperation between the staff behind the scenes, but also appropriately highlights the advantages of Honda Lingxi L in different life scenarios.
However, it is not so much a simple soft implantation of the product as it is an interesting process of building a brand image.
With the post-95 and post-00 users on the social consumption stage, the current young consumer group has an obvious psychological need - they are eager to see unique creative content, and prefer stories that can resonate rather than simple sales slogans.
On the one hand, with the help of Dapeng, a natural comedian image, the brand gives the public a desire to "watch it". On the other hand, the light and humorous style of painting makes the product more jumpy, giving Lingxi L a youthful tone.