Wen 丨 Li Ke
"It is better to stand on top of the sky than to cover the earth", which is still reasonable today.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > old piece, here it is again</h1>
This summer, sugar-free Fanta began to gradually occupy the shelves of offline terminals, especially the freezers of supermarkets and convenience stores, harvesting the sugar-free beverage market together with ahHA small universe sparkling water, which is also a coca-Cola subsidiary.
In fact, in addition to sugar-free Coke, as early as two years ago, Coca-Cola has listed sugar-free Fanta and sugar-free Sprite products on the e-commerce platform. These products, whether in the outer packaging or in taste, are not much different from the original. However, due to the relatively niche category, it is difficult to see these products in circulation channels.
This year, sugar-free Fanta has quickly become popular among young people with its amazing taste. According to the feedback of many consumers, sugar-free Coke and sugar-free Sprite can still obviously taste the taste of sugar substitute flavoring, but sugar-free Fanta basically does not feel when drinking - this is the original Yuanqi Forest with the taste of popularity at the beginning of the evaluation (with the credit of erythritol). Some consumers have commented that sugar-free Fanta is the most successful sugar-free series of Coca-Cola products, and there is no one.
In fact, long before the Yuanqi Forest became popular, Coca-Cola had been deeply cultivating zero sugar sparkling water for many years. Although sugar-free Cola has been silently supporting Coca-Cola's performance with stable double-digit growth, it has always been considered a sugar-free version of carbonated drinks rather than "zero sugar sparkling water", and has not won the favor of yuanqi forest-level capital and media attention.
The combination of old items and sugar-free products has won the popularity of consumers as soon as they were launched, and it is not an isolated case.
Just a few days ago, Mondelëz's brand Oreo also launched a sugar-free sandwich cookie, which has begun to be shopped in large supermarkets and e-commerce channels in first-tier cities.
It is understood that the new product is based on the traditional Oreo biscuits, using a new sugar-free formula, no added sucrose, using maltitol to provide sweetness. Zero Sugar Oreo has replaced the traditional dark blue outfit with a blue-and-white tone, and the new Zero Sugar Oreo with a net content of 97 grams is two separate packages inside, while the net 320 grams package contains 11 small packets of 3 tablets each.
Although the sugar-free Oreo is still as high as more than 1800 kilojoules per 100 grams of calories, the calories of the biscuit category are difficult to be very low from the perspective of product attributes, and for most consumers, it is relatively healthier to consume as little sugar as possible.
Similar to the sugar-free Fanta situation, the Sugar-free Oreo gained many fans as soon as it was launched. On social platforms, many young consumers said that the sweetness of the product is real, the ingredients are "clean", and they are very much looking forward to the wide distribution of zero sugar Oreo in offline channels.
In the past two years, new categories and new concepts represented by sugar-free have become a boom in the consumer industry, and many Internet celebrity brands have risen to the ground, with the potential to subvert the industry. However, with the resurgence of old items such as sugar-free cola and oriental leaves, as well as new items such as Master Kong's sugar-free iced black tea, consumers whose curiosity about new brands has gradually faded suddenly find that the final consumption is still those familiar old brands.
So, why are traditional food and beverage companies "revived" under the siege of Internet celebrity brands and the general decline of public opinion?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" > strikes as soon as the dimension is reduced</h1>
On the one hand, on the product and marketing side, traditional enterprises often have a "bottom line".
Before the Yuanqi forest fire, the FMCG industry also had many products that took health care effects as marketing selling points, but most of them were still used as auxiliary publicity concepts, and the sales of products were mainly promoted through offline channels, pushing and a series of work such as ground push. In recent years, many food and beverage companies have begun to give up their lives and hope to use a certain concept to create explosive models and achieve "curve overtaking".
For example, in a factory's products, the advertising slogan says "KO sugar", "not afraid of fat", "low GI", but the ingredients use crystalline fructose. Some time ago, a factory launched a hyaluronic acid sparkling water, and the results were pointed out by the academic community that the publicity effect has exceeded the concept of ordinary food, which is exaggerated propaganda.
There are many more examples of this, and most of them are concentrated in the beverage industry. Although traditional large enterprises also occasionally have disputes over product standards, at least there has been no false publicity and major food safety accidents.
In fact, most large multinational food companies have compliance departments, which will review whether the company's various nutrition-related promotional materials comply with relevant national policies and whether there is any suspicion of false publicity and misleading publicity. It is precisely because of the existence of these sectors that the propaganda of large multinational food companies has not had major problems. Some local Chinese enterprises also have departments or positions with similar functions.
It can be said that there are some old-school processes that seem to be unnecessary to be abandoned, and the reason why they have survived to this day is also the lessons accumulated from the tragic experience of various companies rolling over the car in that year.
As early as April this year, Yuanqi Forest self-revealed milk tea "publicity 0 sucrose" is actually "high sugar and high calorie", was criticized for deliberately misleading consumers, but also caused the media and public opinion to criticize, there are views pointed out that Yuanqi Forest is in an important stage of transformation from Internet red brands to listed companies and large entity enterprises, if there are major hidden dangers in product quality and brand publicity, the serial effect brought about by related negatives may be unbearable for enterprises. Instead of waiting until the company is exposed after it grows to a certain scale, it is better to take the initiative to burst the "bubble".
This also shows from the side that large enterprises are indeed more disciplined than Internet celebrity brands in product quality and marketing.
On the other hand, traditional brands have an offline channel system that has been built over the years, and it is easy to form a trend of encirclement and suppression of Internet celebrity brands.
Many emerging FMCG brands have a three-tier theory of "origin market, potential energy market, and harvest market". In short, it is to collect market feedback and live data through channels such as official self-operated stores and core research terminals; and then create brand potential through e-commerce platform flagship stores, large KA, convenience stores and head anchors with goods; and finally push products into the large circulation market and form a decentralized benign sales.
However, in the actual operation of Internet celebrity brands entering the line, such a channel transition is difficult to complete. National traditional FMCG enterprises often take decades to establish a distribution system built by thousands of dealers. To some extent, the fate of these dealers and manufacturers has long been closely tied together, just like the old couple who live a life, or there are contradictions and disputes, but it is difficult to separate them.
Taking the battle between Yuanqi Forest and Nongfu Mountain Spring Sparkling Water as an example, consumers in many markets have found that it is difficult to see the shadow of Yuanqi Forest in many channels this summer, especially freezers. According to reports, many dealers of Nongfu Spring have been required to sell exclusively, and under the airtight freezer layout of traditional enterprises such as Nongfu Spring, Coca-Cola, master Kong, etc., the freezer resources of Yuanqi Forest appear to be alone.
Not to mention, in the sinking market where medium and low-end FMCG brands are very popular, the overall competitiveness of higher-positioned and more expensive Internet celebrity brands still has a big gap with the former. What's more, such a traditional big brand in the intensive market cannot solve the impact of cottages, fakes and more low-quality and cheap products in the sinking market; for ambitious Internet celebrity brands, sinking is not an easy task.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="29" > last</h1>
At a dialogue event at the Venice Film Festival, a Chinese filmmaker asked an award-winning director: Who is the audience for your film? Who are you filming for?
The director felt very strange, and hoped that the other party would make it clearer, "I didn't understand."
Chinese filmmakers also said that we have a saying in making movies, that those who kill Matt will win the world, or whoever grabs the market in the urban-rural combination or the third- and fourth-tier cities will get the world, so how do you divide the audience?
This time, the director finally understood, he said, "My film is made for all mankind." ”
One strives to study consumers, one devotes oneself to products – this is the difference between web dramas and international film festival award-winning works.
In fact, the same is true of the food and beverage industry.
With the technical reserves and research and development capabilities of large enterprises, there is almost no technical threshold for making sugar-free products. However, for traditional FMCG companies, emerging brands, including sugar-free, will indeed be a supplementary way for companies to stimulate sales and build brands, but the basic disk is still those enduring home products. These products are silently spread throughout the country, they may not please a certain group of people, but they are indispensable "necessities" for most consumers.
At the moment when digital marketing is gradually breaking down traditional marketing barriers, a company is quickly popular through a certain concept or a large single product, and it is not unusual to circle a wave of popularity or even the story of dealers to make money, and it can also earn enough eyeballs. However, similar to other products under the traffic thinking, the internet celebrity brands in the food and beverage circle study consumers and scenarios too much, rather than studying products and channels.
This also leads to the fact that once traditional enterprises come back to their senses, or free up their hands to reduce the dimensionality of the impact on Internet celebrity brands, the process will be much easier than most people think. The internet celebrity brands that open up the market can easily fall into the dilemma of not being able to enter the harvest channel from the potential energy channel, and may eventually evolve into an early "Luckin" financing game.