The Right to Be Remembered: The "Mind War" of Brands in the AI Wave

Technology advances, yet people tend to forget more easily. Algorithms are defining what we see, but rarely shaping what we truly remember.

This coincides with Brian Arthur's excellent discussion in The Nature of Technology: Technology is not only the result of the economy but also its expression. It drives the continuous reconstruction of the social system and redefines the connections between people and between people and the market. In today's consumer society driven by attention, this reconstruction is manifested in the form of brands.

The relationship between users and brands has long been fragmented: a five - second stay, a short comment, a live - stream without following, or an advertisement swiped away in an instant. Technology continuously improves media efficiency, but it doesn't deepen people's relationships with brands. Brands are no longer automatically seen, and advertisements are no longer necessarily heard.

"Mindset" has become the most elusive yet crucial asset in business in this era. It is invisible, cannot be directly measured, and is not driven by volume, yet it determines whether a brand has long - term vitality. It is the reason why users still remember you after countless screen swipes and the cognitive anchor that flashes at the moment of decision - making.

The Hidden Cost of Attention

The Reshuffle of Brand Advertising

"Why do brands still need to advertise?" In today's market environment, this question is not ironic but rather reflects the anxiety behind the budget sheet.

In the past decade, the thinking of traditional brand advertising has quickly given way to short - term digital focuses such as ROI, CPC, and conversion rates. Conversion has become the KPI, and brands have become the backdrop of channels. However, the essence of brand value remains unchanged; it has just been diluted in the noise of algorithms and data. The pursuit of "integrating brand building and sales promotion" itself indicates that the value of the brand has not been forgotten.

However, the crisis of mindset cognition is spreading.

First, exposure does not equal cognition. Consumers swipe through thousands of pieces of information on their phones every day, but the brand retention rate is astonishingly low. "Being swiped" no longer brings "being understood." Even if brands invest huge budgets in producing video ads or short dramas, the audience's attention often only stays on visual and emotional triggers, lacking in - depth cognition and brand binding.

Second, user cognition is highly fragmented. In the past, a brand might only need a TVC ad or an event marketing campaign to build a public perception. But today, consumers in different circles, scenarios, and emotional states may form completely different and fragmented impressions of the same brand. This fragmented cognition cannot form brand assets uniformly and also makes the brand lose its coherent voice in subsequent placements.

In addition, there is a gap between mindset and placement ROI. Brand placement budgets have long been caught in the vicious circle of "producing a lot of content but not knowing which one is effective." The linear conversion model has been broken, the attribution method is no longer suitable for multi - touchpoint paths, the funnel model is becoming more like a "superficial KPI," and it is difficult to evaluate the real mindset gain.

What lies behind this is the comprehensive change in the media field and user behavior: Users are no longer passive recipients of information but have become selectors and producers in the context of algorithms. If a brand wants to enter users' minds, it is no longer just about "exposure + repetition"; it must build a mindset system that can be "evoked."

All these force brands to rethink: In the era of content overload, where does the value of a brand lie? How to rebuild user trust in the context of structural defocus? And how to judge whether an advertisement is truly meaningful?

More importantly, there are changes in the demographic dimension. The traditional label system based on gender and age has long been ineffective. Today, what really determines whether to make a purchase is the "mindset label" - the concepts, preferences, lifestyles, and subconscious cognitive anchors that users believe in.

Therefore, all industry attention has returned to the mindset itself, the most direct value of the human heart. Brands have realized that what they truly need to compete for is no longer exposure but mindset share. Because mindset is one of the few long - term values that can transcend platform iterations and fragmented touchpoints.

It was against this backdrop that on August 8, 2025, ByteDance's Marketing Cloud held the MindSight Brand Mindset Marketing Conference in Shanghai and launched the BMS (Brand MindSight Solution), a new brand mindset marketing solution.

An ultimate question that has haunted the marketing industry like a ghost is seeking an answer: How can a brand be truly remembered?

The Mindset Space Is Limited, but Technology - Driven Innovation Is Infinite

Answers are always phased.

Once, the BHT (Brand Health Tracking) model was a basic tool for enterprises to measure the health of their brands. Its core model, based on the brand funnel framework, quantifies performance from the cognitive to the conversion stage, providing brand owners with a basic marketing diagnostic mechanism. It once solved the problem of brand cognition in the traditional era.

However, in the current era of rapid content placement and changing user behavior, the drawbacks of this model are becoming more and more obvious: lagging response, fragmented indicators, and data disconnection.

The BMS proposed by ByteDance's Marketing Cloud is more like a systematic path reconstruction.

It takes "mindset" as the unit and no longer relies on the linear transfer model. Instead, it focuses on crowd perception, content understanding, and memory conversion. From mindset anchoring at the strategic level, to mindset strategies at the campaign level, to effect attribution after the campaign, BMS provides a closed - loop structure.

This is a full - link brand growth solution covering strategy formulation, efficient execution, and in - depth review, and it has been verified in the practices of many leading brands. Take the main product "Small Purple Bottle" of Chando as an example: First, it is necessary to "define the mindset." Relying on advanced semantic recognition and platform content behavior data analysis, the solution accurately captures the keywords and semantic structures in consumers' minds. Based on this, Chando identified core consumer concerns such as "anti - aging" and "staying up late for work" and combined with the efficacy advantages of the product's core ingredient "Hymagic." Finally, it successfully refined and established the mindset anchors for the brand, product, and scenario values.

Then comes the mindset strategy. On the one hand, it is about content. Produce highly relevant content according to the mindset words and target audience, and form cognitive units based on semantic resonance and interest tags. On the other hand, it is about influencers. Mindset is not purely brought by content but determined by the way of reach to build a trust channel. As the core touchpoints in the Douyin ecosystem, influencers can achieve twice the result with half the effort by finding the right people and telling the mindset content in the right way in the Star Atlas influencer ecosystem, advertising resources, and live - stream fields.

Finally, after differential placements targeting core audiences, potential audiences, and general industry audiences, Chando can obtain quantifiable mindset measurement results. According to the data, the audience assets of the Small Purple Bottle SPU have increased significantly. The number of A5 audiences has increased by 5x%, the number of A3 audiences has increased by more than 1x0%, and the proportion of brand associations has increased by more than 60% month - on - month.

Every piece of content and budget can bring attributable mindset value returns.

Another example is "Turtle Wax Kids." In the category of children's sunscreen where the mindset is not yet saturated, the BMS model also provides a clear and executable roadmap.

The Turtle Wax Kids team screened high - potential keywords from the brand word package through data analysis and finally anchored "high - protection sunscreen," "long - lasting power," and "sensitive to sunburn" as the core expressions of the product mindset. Combining "outdoor activities" as a high - frequency usage scenario, they further elevated it to the brand mindset and established the long - term positioning of "Asia's No. 1 children's sunscreen" and "scientific children's skin care."

Then, high - quality content centered around the core mindset was created and reached the star and influencer ecosystems through Star Atlas resources. Hot graphic elements were used to strengthen visual anchors, and live - stream stickers were used to guide mindset associations. At the same time, the product mindset and scenario mindset were woven into the scripts to strengthen users' cognitive transfer in real - life usage scenarios. The "sunscreen mindset" is no longer just a concept in voice - overs or captions but an association naturally evoked in daily scenarios such as playing by the seaside or camping outdoors. The "mindset logic wall" formed by this multi - touchpoint interaction gradually turns "being selected" into "being the first choice."

The results of the whole process can still be quantified. According to official data, the proportion of mindset associations for its main product has increased by 10%, the store entry rate of the mindset audience has increased by 12.36%, the conversion rate of the mindset audience has increased by 4.71%, and the brand's mindset ranking in the industry has risen by 4 places. More importantly, through a structural analysis of the mindset audience and the brand's 5A model, Turtle Wax Kids found that the purchase conversion efficiency of the high - mindset audience is much higher than the industry average, proving that its mindset - driven strategy not only enhances brand cognition but also brings actual business growth.

More importantly, BMS is not just a theoretical stage of "how to do it." It is an integrated system supported by solutions, tools, and a technological foundation.

ByteDance's Marketing Cloud integrates its functional products such as "Star Atlas," "Cloud Atlas," "Brand Advertising," and AI technology modules to provide a full - link product matrix for content production, influencer matching, placement paths, and data attribution.

Star Atlas undertakes the influencer ecosystem and efficiently matches the brand's target mindset with real - content producers, realizing "content as touchpoints." Cloud Atlas connects placement data with user behavior data, supporting budget allocation and strategy optimization in the mindset dimension. As the underlying support of the system, AI technology reduces costs and improves efficiency for the whole link through capabilities such as semantic recognition, content tagging, and popularity prediction, ensuring that brand actions are perceptible, measurable, and attributable.

In other words, the core value of BMS is to free brands from the "advertising as information bombing" and instead build real - sense cognitive assets centered around the mindset.

Brand Long - Termism

Ultimately, It Can't Bypass "Being Recognized"

Technology iterates, and the population changes. But the underlying logic of business has never changed: People only pay for brands they truly identify with.

In the era of AI reshaping the world, a brand is no longer just a piece of information in the content flood. It must become a cognitive anchor and the name that users actively evoke in their memories. Just as the original meaning of the word "mindset" represents the precipitation of cognition and understanding, rather than a short - term occupation of attention.

Any brand pursuing long - termism cannot avoid the fact that a brand cannot be remembered only by price wars and traffic operations. Instead, it should be "chosen" by precisely anchoring the mindset.

What really enables a brand to have the ability to cross cycles is never a popular video or a trending event but the mindset labels that repeatedly appear and are gradually strengthened in users' minds. This label could be "the small purple bottle for late - night skin care" or "the first association for scientific children's sunscreen." It is not given by the platform but built by users themselves through repeated content exposure.

Therefore, the value of BMS lies not only in the marketing methodology itself but also in the fact that it may be a logic for establishing a path of "trust, choice, and loyalty" in the era of AI content explosion. It helps brands find the keywords that can be repeatedly associated and makes each communication not a one - time "investment" but a micro - cycle of "mindset precipitation."

This is where BMS differs from the traditional marketing system. It does not take volume as the end goal but takes "whether it enters people's hearts" as the core measure. It is not a new system of "tool piling" but a systematic framework running through content strategy, placement execution, and effect evaluation. With the support of BMS technology and methods, whether the mindset can be established, retained, and captured and structurally analyzed by data is no longer just a subjective judgment.

It must be noted that ByteDance's Marketing Cloud does not attempt to replace brand judgment with BMS, nor is it a short - term growth tool. Instead, it provides brands with an action plan on "how to be remembered in the noise." It provides coordinates, feedback, and paths for trial - and - error and evolution.

Perhaps this is the rarest part of long - termism: making users remember you, not just see you.

We are not sure whether BMS will be the optimal phased solution to the problems mentioned above. But in an era when attention is diluted and cognition is increasingly precious, it at least provides brands with a sense of direction towards the human heart.

In this noisy world, there are always ways to reach people's hearts.