When Consumers Have the Final Say, What Should Brands Actually Do?
When consumers hold the power to interpret, to choose, and to walk away, brands must turn their new narrative into products, channels, incentives, and organizational action.
Who Defines “Worth It”? Part 5
I
For many brands, the so-called “new narrative” exists only in the ad agency’s conference room.
The old line was “A century of heritage — a toast to a successful life”; now it’s “A toast to everyone who refuses to be defined.” The old ads featured accomplished men in tailored suits; now they feature young people, independent women, and laid-back lifestyles. The screen used to be filled with golden palaces; now it’s camping, cycling, and city nights.
The words have changed. The personas have changed. The visuals have changed.
But back in the actual business, the product still comes only in large bottles at high proof; distributors are still rewarded by shipment volume; banquet venues still drive bottle-opening rates through round after round of toasts; sales training still teaches “how to get the guest to drink one more glass.”
The brand says “we respect your choice,” while the organization pressures consumers into the same choice at every single touchpoint.
That is not a new narrative.
That is a new desktop wallpaper on the same old operating system.
In the previous four articles, we completed the diagnosis: consumer goods are undergoing a “revaluation of consumption legitimacy”; consumers have evolved from role-players and achievement-seekers into sovereign individuals, gaining the power to interpret, to choose, to walk away, and to build; the authority endorsements, status codes, and lecturing posture that the old narrative relied on are losing their force; and the brand–consumer relationship must shift from “I define you” to “I understand you, I enter your story, I support your choices.”
Four articles, one thread: consumers are increasingly able to say “no,” and brands increasingly need to prove “I deserve your yes.”
But at the methodology stage, we can no longer stop at attitude.
Listening, playing the supporting role, moving people, lifting them up — these are relationship principles, not action plans. What a brand really has to answer is:
Which of the consumer’s scenarios am I entering?
Which specific tension am I responding to?
How is the value I offer validated by the product?
What exactly does the consumer do in that scenario?
And what must the organization change to make it happen?
If a brand cannot answer these five questions, its new narrative remains nothing more than an emotional poster.
So let me state the most important judgment of this article upfront:
A narrative is not the story a brand tells. A narrative is a scenario script that assigns roles, rights, actions, and rewards.
A brand’s true narrative lives not on its posters, but in three places:
Whom the product makes life easier for;
Who is allowed to say “no” in the scenario;
What behavior the organization ultimately rewards.
If these three things don’t change, no matter how youthful the copywriting becomes, it is still a pseudo-narrative.
Of course, consumers having the final say doesn’t mean brands should fall silent — brands still need to define their own stance and boundaries; only the way of doing so has changed. In the past, authority came from “I know better than you.” Today, authority can only come from “I actually delivered, and you can verify it.”
III
Moving from diagnosis to action requires four tools. Each answers a different question.
The PEST Growth Compass answers: where should the brand enter.
The Five-Layer Value Pyramid answers: what value does the brand actually create.
The Six-Layer Narrative Action Chain answers: how is that value actually delivered.
The Five Acceptance Gates answer: is it a genuine narrative, or an exercise in self-congratulation.
These four tools are not a pile of stacked frameworks. PEST chooses the battlefield, the Value Pyramid builds the structure, the Six-Layer Action Chain handles delivery, and the Five Gates handle acceptance testing. The order cannot be reversed. Many brands start by trying to come up with a catchy slogan, but the slogan is the last step, not the first.
IV: First, Use the PEST Growth Compass to Find the Brand’s Position on the Consumer’s Map
The PEST here is not the traditional macro-environment analysis, but a narrative growth compass I propose: Position × Emotion × Scene × Tribe.
Position — the role you occupy.
A brand must first answer: in the consumer’s story, who am I, exactly? A judge, a teacher, an instrument of proof — or a companion, a witness, a translator, a guardian, a provider of tools?
More importantly: which old role am I prepared to retire? If baijiu still casts itself as the judge of relationship rank, it can never truly respect the consumer. If a grain-and-oil brand still acts as the drill instructor insisting “you must cook at home,” it will never enter the lives of people who live alone or cook lightly.
Let’s demonstrate with a baijiu brand. Suppose it plans to enter the “small gathering of friends” scene. Its old role was “judge of relationship rank” — what liquor you serve your friends defined how much you thought the relationship was worth. Now it must step out of that role and become “witness to the moment of reunion” — I don’t define how much your relationship is worth; I help you put your sincerity into words.
Emotion — the emotional contradiction.
A brand cannot settle for a single emotion word. “Healing,” “ease,” “joy” are not insights — they are adjectives any brand can use. A genuinely valuable emotional insight must be a tension:
I want to express how much someone matters, yet I don’t want to prove the relationship through price and drinking capacity; I want to take care of my body, yet I don’t want to turn my life into a nutrition chart; I want to join a group, yet I don’t want to lose my own boundaries.
Emotion is not a single point but a conflict between two desires. The brand’s value is generated precisely in the process of helping consumers resolve that conflict.
Back to that baijiu brand. Its emotional contradiction is: I want a long-awaited reunion to feel solemn, yet I don’t want friends to force themselves to drink just to save face. This contradiction sentence has three parts — what I want to gain (solemnity), what price I refuse to pay (forced drinking), and why the old solution forced me to choose between the two (because the old solution bound drinking capacity to sincerity).
Scene — the concrete scene.
A scene is not a big word like “young people,” “women,” or “the new middle class.” A scene must be concrete down to: who enters it, when, with whom, and for what reason; who holds the power to decide; who can refuse; and what refusing costs.
Drinking is drinking, but a business banquet, a small gathering of friends, a solitary tipsy evening, and a family holiday are four entirely different power structures. Without breaking scenes apart, a brand can only keep treating everyone crudely with one product and one script.
That baijiu brand’s scene is: old friends reuniting after a long time, three or four people, not a business function, no need for pomp — but needing a touch of ritual so the reunion feels taken seriously.
Tribe — the community.
Consumers rarely reach a judgment on the brand’s words alone. They also look at: who is using it, who vouches for it, who shares a life experience like mine. The question the brand should ask is not “how many followers do I have,” but: who will testify to this value? Who is willing to take part in defining it? Who will carry it into the next moment of real life?
A complete PEST positioning can be written as a single sentence: in what scene, facing a group of people who want to gain something yet refuse to pay a certain price, the brand stops playing what old role and instead plays what new role; through what products and actions it helps them accomplish what relational or life task; and which people jointly verify and spread this meaning.
That baijiu brand’s PEST positioning is: in the scene of old friends reuniting after a long time, facing people who want to express how much the relationship matters yet refuse to prove it through drinking capacity, the brand stops playing the judge of relationship rank and becomes the witness to the moment of reunion; through a light-burden product, freely chosen ways of drinking, and a shared toast, it helps friends put their sincerity into words — and lets every table create its own way of commemorating the moment.
That sentence is not ad copy. It is an action map.
V: Then Use the Five-Layer Value Pyramid to Answer What the Consumer Actually Gets
Positioning answers “where you stand.” But the brand must ultimately still create value. I divide the value in the new narrative into five layers.
Layer one, functional value: what problem does it solve? Does it work well, is it safe, is the quality consistent? However strong a consumer’s sense of agency, they will not tolerate bad taste and unstable quality for long just because a brand “really gets them.”
Layer two, experiential value: how does using it make me feel? Relaxed, comfortable, delighted — or troublesome, tense, burdensome, and out of control? Function answers “can I,” experience answers “do I want to.”
Layer three, relational value: how does it make others treat me? Does a bottle of liquor make relationships more sincere, or push people into a test of obedience? Does a gift help me express what I feel, or force me into a price-comparison contest? Relational value determines whether a product, once inside someone’s life, adds respect or adds control.
Layer four, agency value: does it help me keep the right to decide for myself? Can I understand it on my own terms? Can I refuse, pause, and exit without being humiliated? Can I use it to express “who I am,” rather than have it dictate “who I should be”? This layer is the most important new value in the era of the sovereign individual.
Layer five, co-creation value: can it help a group of people build new rules and a new community? Jing Jiu being redefined by young women, Mixue Bingcheng receipts being traded by consumers as tokens of stories, Xingxingren becoming an emotional symbol by which ordinary people recognize one another — behind all of these is not merely “the brand tells a good story,” but consumers taking part in generating the meaning.
The lower layers drive repurchase; the higher layers create premium, identification, and spread. The classic mistake of traditional brands is building products that only reach layer one while claiming layers four and five outright in their advertising. New consumer brands make the opposite mistake: they open with attitude and community, while function and experience can’t survive a second purchase. A truly effective value structure must have meaning on top and evidence underneath.
Back to that baijiu brand. Its five layers of value are: at the functional layer, stable product quality, clear information, well suited to small gatherings; at the experiential layer, easy drinking that doesn’t turn pleasure into a burden; at the relational layer, no encouragement of round-after-round toasting pressure, and no reading of refusal as a loss of face; at the agency layer, everyone can choose what to drink and how much — or not to drink at all; at the co-creation layer, every table can leave behind its own toast, its own story, its own way of commemorating.
Six: The Six-Layer Narrative Action Chain — Turning “Value” into a Set of Executable Business Actions
With the PEST positioning and the five-layer value structure in place, only now do we arrive at real implementation.
Layer one: Find the contradiction, don’t just list needs. The need is “I want drinking to be more comfortable.” The contradiction is “I want to celebrate earnestly with my friends, but I don’t want to prove my sincerity with my body and my alcohol tolerance.” Needs lead a brand straight toward functional improvement; only contradictions lead a brand toward value reconstruction.
Layer two: Take a stance, don’t just pile up nice words. A brand stance is not “a beautiful life” or “a life of quality.” A real stance must make three things clear: what I protect, what I oppose, and what I am willing to give up as a result. That baijiu brand said: protect “friendship that needs no proving,” oppose testing sincerity through drinking capacity, and be willing to give up a portion of the one-off sales gained through aggressive drink-pushing. Without giving something up, there is no stance.
Layer three: Define your role, don’t grab the lead. The brand still needs to take on a clear role — it can be witness, companion, guardian, translator, or tool provider. Playing a supporting role does not mean lacking expertise. A good supporting actor must know exactly what problem they are responsible for solving, and also know what they must never do in place of the protagonist. Mixue Bingcheng doesn’t grab the lead role; what it does is act as the uplifter behind “you can spend 4 yuan and hold your head high.”
Layer four: Build evidence, don’t just patch on copy. Any value proposition must be translated into evidence that consumers can see, touch, use, and verify. That baijiu brand’s evidence: offering product formats matched to small gatherings, allowing drinks of different alcohol strengths — even non-alcoholic ones — into the same ritual, and making the first toast not “bottoms up, no exceptions” but each person saying one sentence about why today is worth gathering for. Consumers don’t believe because they heard the value; they confirm the brand truly stands on that side only after seeing the same behavior in contact after contact.
Layer five: Rewrite the scenario script, don’t just tell a story. This layer is the most critical. The previous layers were about “thinking things through clearly”; from here on, it’s about “exactly how to act.” A story answers “why”; a script prescribes “who does what at which moment.” The old banquet-table script was: the host chooses the liquor, the brand tier defines the specs, rounds of toasting test the relationship, whoever refuses bears the social cost, and empty bottles prove sincerity. The new script is: first state why we are gathering today, each person chooses their own drink and how much to drink, everyone shares the same toast but not the same intensity, and the relationship is proven by expression and memory, no longer by physical burden. This is what reconstructing a narrative really means — because it changes what people do within the scenario, and it changes the distribution of power between people.
Layer six: Transform the organization, don’t leave it to the marketing department alone. In the end, a narrative is not fulfilled by advertising but by the organization. If the brand says “moderation, at ease” while sales incentives are still calculated by bottles opened per table — the bigger the campaign, the faster the contradiction is exposed. What the organization rewards is what the brand truly believes.
That baijiu brand’s organizational transformation: distributors are no longer judged solely by bottles opened per table, but by the number of effective small-gathering occasions, repurchase rates, and proactive recommendations; frontline scripts are banned from using phrases like “you’re not giving me face” or “if the friendship runs deep, down it in one gulp”; the product team innovates around scenario-based repurchase, not around one-off volume pushes.
This new narrative may lower the immediate consumption at any single table. But what it wins is more consumers willing to enter, more occasions willing to repurchase, and a brand relationship people are willing to keep for longer. This is not asking the brand to give up growth — it is shifting growth from “squeezing out one round of drinking” to “earning the next choice.”
Seven: Finally, Acceptance Through Five Gates
Once a narrative is built, don’t first ask “is this line beautiful enough?” First ask whether it can pass five gates.
First, real contradiction. Does it respond to a genuine tension that consumers actually experience, or a pseudo-need the brand invented for itself?
Second, product evidence. Without watching any ads, can consumers sense the same stance from the product, the price, the information, and the service?
Third, space for agency. Do consumers have the right to interpret, the right to choose, the right to exit, and room to participate in building?
Fourth, participation mechanisms. Can consumers only watch and share, or can they genuinely rewrite the usage, the rituals, and the meaning?
Fifth, organizational consistency. When short-term sales conflict with the brand’s stance, which behavior does the organization actually reward?
Before getting to the formula, run three of the simplest stress tests: Pull the advertising — are the product and the service still saying the same thing? After allowing consumers to say “no,” does this business model still hold? When a big deal conflicts with the long-term stance, what is the organization willing to give up?
If you can’t answer these three questions, what you’ve done is not narrative reconstruction — it’s just a communications upgrade.
These five items can be condensed into one formula: Narrative actionability = real contradiction × product evidence × space for agency × participation mechanism × organizational consistency. Why multiplication? Because if any single factor approaches zero, the whole thing fails. However moving the story, if the product doesn’t deliver, it’s deception; however excellent the product, if refusal isn’t allowed, it’s control; if participation is allowed but there’s no clear stance, it’s pandering; however beautifully the front end speaks, if the organization keeps rewarding the old behavior, it’s theater.
Eight
Now we can re-answer the question this series began with: who defines “worth it”?
It is not defined unilaterally by the brand, nor offhandedly by the consumer. Consumers define what kind of life they want to live and decide whether this thing is worth their investment; brands define which side they stand on and use what products, rules, and actions to deliver on their promises. Both sides, through relationships that are entered voluntarily, can be exited, and can be verified, jointly generate “worth it.”
The power of judgment has indeed shifted from the brand to the consumer. But the responsibility for building has not disappeared — it falls even more heavily on the brand. The brand can no longer draw down trust on the strength of history, authority, and share of voice; it must prove itself with products, prove itself with scenarios, prove itself with the organization.
Brand growth in the past meant pulling consumers into your own story and having them act according to the role the brand assigned. Brand growth today means first entering the life consumers are already building, finding a valuable position, and then continually proving: I deserve to stay here.
Narrative is not the story you tell consumers. Narrative is what consumers actually experience after they enter into a relationship with you.
In the end, only one sentence remains: Consumers are responsible for judging whether it’s worth it; brands are responsible for making “worth it” real.
This is the final installment of the “Who Defines ‘Worth It’?” series. Five essays — from the revaluation of consumption’s legitimacy, to the migration of agency, to the failure of old narratives, the building of new relationships, and the reconstruction of the operating system. The endpoint of the new narrative is not a more moving line of advertising, but a way of doing business that gives consumers genuine choice across products, scenarios, and relationships — and makes them willing, again and again, to re-authorize the brand.