Brand rejuvenation is a hot word in recent years, whether it is the rejuvenation of brand image, the rejuvenation of brand marketing or the rejuvenation of brand culture, etc. have been valued by various brands.
Zong Qinghou, the founder of Wahaha, pointed out in the CCTV "Dialogue" program a few years ago that the most important reason for Wahaha's decline is the lack of innovative items.
In fact, in order to win back the market, the old brands began to change their thinking to reach the new generation of consumer markets.
All the way began to interact with consumers on the content platform, such as entering the vibrato, Xiaohongshu and other platforms; all the way is to learn from the new brand, in September this year, Yuanqi Forest and Chundu Food reached a cooperation to help the Chundu ham sausage, which has a history of more than 30 years, return to the mainstream consumer market; the other way is to use its own advantages in the old brand and gradually exert its strength.
Wahaha is also catching up with new consumption on its own advantage. After Wahaha launched sugar-free sparkling water in 2021, the spokesperson found the popular star Wang Yibo - instead of the usual Wang Lihong.
A
In the past, the brand won the CCTV standard king, named satellite TV programs, and gained exposure in large-scale variety shows as the main advertising path. But this approach is no longer mainstream today.
In today's new consumer market, the most popular path is "first lay 5,000 KOC reviews, then get 200 KOLs, and finally get the head anchor with goods, and organize the middle waist anchor shop channel" with the trend.
Hu Xuanwen, founder of soda liquor brand Airka Soda, previously said that the infrastructure of the food and beverage fast moving consumer goods track has undergone great changes in the past two years, the most typical is the media change, "Kuaishou, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, B station add up to almost the CCTV of that year." Consumer entrepreneur Diaoye, who shares the same view, said at the Xiaohongshu Future Brand Awards in 2020 that China's consumer brands are worth doing again today.
Sheng Xiang, head of xiaohongshu brand marketing strategy, told alphabet list that in recent years, the number of food and beverage track companies entering Xiaohongshu has increased significantly. "New consumer goods are growing too fast, and big brands are nervous when they find their market share being eroded, and their confusion is similar – 'How to combat the impact of new consumer brands?'" Why are our new products not very popular in the market? Holy Incense said.
Take the new brands that are most concerned about, for example, represent Yuanqi Forest. Many people have summed up the success code of Yuanqi Forest: First, the new product positioning of "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calorie" has created a track of sugar-free sparkling water; second, content marketing is done on platforms where young people gather such as Station B and Little Red Book; third, it is young packaging.
The new brand's code of success is precisely the weak point of the old brand. "The most anxious thing about old brands is that they don't know what users like." According to Shengxiang's observation, the new products launched by some old brands do deviate from the current market trend in terms of concept design and packaging, and it is easy to fall into path dependence at the marketing level.
Many national brands have successfully marketed in the past by relying on satellite TV to gain exposure, and their marketing ideas should let everyone hear and know me. "But now consumers have too many choices. Consumers know you're a big brand, but they'll choose products that make them more interesting and special. Saint Xiang said.
This is also the reason why many brands need to maintain close communication with young consumer groups on content platforms. Cai Pipeng (hereinafter referred to as "Peter"), general manager of panpan beverage business unit, told alphabet list that panpan beverage also needs to carry out product innovation and brand rejuvenation.
In recent years, the social communication of social media has brought many opportunities to brands, panpan beverage has been trying to keep up with the rhythm, and its marketing department has made many attempts to rejuvenate the brand, and the effect is not very ideal.
How can it be changed? "Pan pan beverage found the Xiaohongshu platform and cooperated with the Xiaohongshu platform to capture young users through content creation and achieve the growth of sales and brand value of Panpan Beverage." Peter said.
"The Internet provides a very good way to get customers, and brands should use this advanced tool." Mao Ping, a partner at LFC Takigo Capital, believes that if there had been no magnificent development of the Internet industry in the past few years, today's consumer industry would not be what it is today.
B
In 2021, the biggest outlet of the plant-based track is coconut milk products.
Luckin's new summer raw coconut latte became popular, and the C-end product thick coconut milk supplied to Luckin was followed by a fire; it was established in October last year, and the cocoa full score of the main sugar-free coconut milk completed three rounds of financing within half a year; in August, Yuanqi Forest also launched a new product "Summer Wind" low-sugar coconut milk.
Peter said: "This year, Pan Pansheng's online and offline sales of coconut juice have increased by 600%, and we also see the potential of this track. "In July, Pan Pan launched a new thick coconut milk, which is a coconut milk product based on tea, coffee, roasting and cocktails.
This kind of interactive drink is exactly what young people like today, and they like to do their own research on new and fun things. At the beginning of this year, this new consumer group "invented" convenience store bartending, using two common drinks and wines such as wild grid and lemon tea, coconut milk and baili sweet to concoct a delicious cocktail.
The development of potential products is only the first step on the road to rejuvenation. When Cocoa received a new round of financing in May, she said that in reaching consumers with new marketing methods, the content delivery of Xiaohongshu and Douyin channels is the key.
Pan Pan has realized the importance of new channels, and if he wants to break through in the coconut milk war, he has to make up for the lesson of content marketing. So when Pan Pan found Xiaohongshu's marketing planning team, Xiaohongshu also realized that this was a good brand "renewal" opportunity.
In the process of cooperation with Pan Pan Beverage, Xiaohongshu is like a 4A advertising planning company, doing product research, content planning, event marketing and other proposals for it.
"In the memory of many people, the impression of Pan Pan still stays in food such as small bread and puffed potato chips, and even many people can't distinguish between Pan Pan food and Pan Pan security door." The holy incense said that hope needs a gripper.
It is understood that Fino thick coconut milk backed by Luckin's raw coconut latte, this kind of buff (bonus) is a unique advantage, which most brands do not have. Therefore, the marketing planning team of Xiaohongshu must first help Panpan's thick coconut milk to find the difference point, and use a symbol or a sentence to let consumers remember Panpan thick coconut milk.
"Hope thick coconut milk, really delicious thick." This slogan was born in this context.
In the process of communicating with the Pan Pan team, Sheng Xiang learned that the recipe and raw materials used by Pan Pan would make the taste of thick coconut milk more mellow, so Xiaohongshu designed a new Slogan for Pan Pan that was "really delicious and thick" and printed it on the packaging.
Sheng Xiang explained that "really delicious and thick" has several meanings, the first is to emphasize the characteristics of thick coconut milk "thick"; the second is that Pan Pan is a Fujian enterprise, "thick" is a common tone word "roar" used by Minnan people, with regional color; third, in the future, thick coconut milk can be used along the label of "thick" to make youthful attempts, such as using thick shoes, thick school bags and other concepts to strengthen the "thick" mind.
After solving the problem of brand tone and positioning, the next issue of looking forward to the rejuvenation of brands is to strengthen interaction with consumers in the content community. The solutions given by Xiaohongshu include content planting and grass, as well as the application of multi-scenario products.
That is, Little Red Book assists Pan Pan in finding the right KOL and publishes drinks and foods made with thick coconut milk. In addition to the conventional raw coconut latte, Xiaohongshu and Panpan have jointly built more use scenarios, such as thick coconut milk to make popcorn coconut milk puffs, coconut coconut jelly ice cream cups, coconut milk pho and other desserts, creating a number of application scenarios of Pan Pan thick coconut milk.
When a product is gradually integrated into the consumer's lifestyle, it is naturally one step closer to the consumer. Driven by KOLs, some ordinary users have also begun to try thick coconut milk and publish reviews on the platform. "The proposition of thick coconut milk is that everyone is a master of special blends, and many consumers gather on the Little Red Book, and they will dig up a lot of new drink combinations." Peter said.
"With the attribute of strong grass planting, consumer participation is higher, and even new scenarios for product use can be developed, extending the scope of use of products." Ye Liyue, marketing director of Panpan Beverage, also said that compared with traditional delivery methods such as tv drama insertion, content can be precipitated for a long time when it is placed on content platforms such as Xiaohongshu.
The alphabet list also found that after achieving obvious results in cooperation with Xiaohongshu, it is expected to increase the content of thick coconut milk on content platforms such as Xiaohongshu. At the same time, Pan Pan, as a snack provider for the Winter Olympics, also launched the Winter Olympics illustration interaction on Xiaohongshu to help the Winter Olympics, which triggered many bloggers, users and discussions in Xiaohongshu.
Different from the traditional media delivery of Pan Pan Group in the past 25 years, this is also the first time that Pan Pan has interacted with consumers in new media content channels through the form of "planting grass" and slogan of the content of Xiaohongshu after the listing of new products, and has achieved very good communication results.
"Through the cooperation with Xiaohongshu, hoping that Houye Milk has been listed for only two months, achieving hundreds of millions of exposures and million-level interactions, and the total online and offline sales have exceeded one million, and good results have been achieved." Peter (i.e. Cai Pipeng) told the alphabet on the phone.
C
Li Feng, founding partner of Fengrui Capital, saw in April this year that on the shelves of 711 downstairs, a popular beverage brand was squeezed from the original core position to the far left of the 5th row by the new and old brands of sparkling water new products, and issued a feeling that the shelf competition in 2021 was far more cruel than last year.
Since the epidemic in 2020, under the advantages of consumption upgrading and China's supply chain, new consumer brands have risen rapidly, and the number of new listings of consumer goods companies has also increased rapidly. The rise of new consumer brands is due to the capture of new product needs of users.
Users refer to the new consumers of Generation Z, most of whom are already internet natives, appearing on content platforms such as Xiaohongshu, B station, and Jitter. These content platforms somehow better understand what young people want. Just like panning to obtain "new consumers" through the Little Red Book platform, he also learned a new way of dialogue.
Traditional brands have channel advantages, research and development advantages, and supply chain advantages, which can make it faster in the new consumption track. "All the old brands were the most successful new brands of the year." Ali vice president Chuixue said in an interview with the media before that the core vitality of the old brand is the pursuit of quality, and the second is the long-term precipitation of business management ideas.
A number of old brands have already taken action, only in the beverage track, last week, Nongfu Spring launched the "Milk Tea" series of products, the core selling point is the popular low sugar; in September, Coca-Cola China launched a low-flavored wine to drink Japanese lemon sparkling wine.
This is also a new change in the new consumption track this year: the traditional consumer goods companies with stronger channels and research and development capabilities continue to innovate in new products, while re-engaging with consumers on content platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Station B, and Jidak.
Taking Xiaohongshu as an example, as of now, its monthly active activity has exceeded 200 million, and more than 70% of the users on the platform are post-90s. The content of the notes precipitated on the Little Red Book platform largely represents the hobbies and trends of young people.
It is understood that today many new brands are studying the comments of Xiaohongshu users every day, and when they see the key points, they will immediately feedback to the product part. Xiaohongshu has also formed its own set of methodologies - "IDEA" marketing methodology, that is, from Insight insights to needs, Define define products, Expand seize the track, Advocate advocates brands to help brands inspire products and brand communication inspiration, providing corresponding solutions for more old brands to "renew". Old brands such as Vantage, Yili, Pizza Hut and so on, in different categories and products, reach new consumers through content, and co-create and interact with them.
That is to say, the ability to pay attention to user feedback and rapid iteration is an important reason for new consumer brands to run faster, and it is also where old brands need to make up lessons. Perhaps, when the old brands with supply chains and funds make up for the lesson of content marketing, the competition between new and old brands will really begin.
Resources:
1. "Consumer Investment Debate: What are the Real Barriers to New Brands?" " Inspur New Consumption, September 2021
2. "Innovation Opportunities in Food and Beverage丨WISE2021x New Brand Innovation Trends Summit Roundtable Discussion, 36kr, July 2021
3. "Fengrui Capital Li Feng: This year and next year, the offline competition for consumer goods will be very cruel", Blue Shark Consumption, October 2021
4. "2020 Plant Protein Beverage Innovation Trends", Tmall TMIC, July 2020
5. "The new brand of coconut juice is fierce, can the coconut tree still sit still?" Interface News, August 2021