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"New National Tide We Make", on December 22, the "2021 Domestic Product Innovation Ceremony" sponsored by The Southern Metropolis Daily was held in Guangzhou. At the meeting, the "2021 Domestic Products Innovation Top 100 Research Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") was released, and the 2021 Top 100 Domestic Products Innovation Brands and the annual pioneers, annual empowerment platforms, annual creative design products and other domestic vanes were announced. In addition, entrepreneurs from enterprises and investment institutions will exchange and collide with the six major trends of innovation presented by the selected brands in the 2021 Top 100 Domestic Products Innovation List.
Domestic product innovation, brand driving force.
The 2021 Central Economic Work Conference pointed out that it is necessary to fully implement the new development concept, accelerate the construction of a new development pattern, comprehensively deepen reform and opening up, adhere to innovation-driven development, and promote high-quality development. Brand is a comprehensive embodiment of the competitiveness of enterprises and even countries, an important resource for participating in global competition, and an important support for China's industrial economy to promote high-quality development.
Nandu Big Data Research Institute New Retail Laboratory Research Group expanded the survey sample to the previous shortlisted 200 domestic brands, "Report" data show that the current domestic brands in channel innovation is diversified and personalized characteristics, IP and traffic are mostly used for operational innovation, product innovation pays attention to differentiation and the needs of specific consumer groups, more and more aesthetic and visual design to attract consumers, in the construction of consumption scenarios to achieve both humanization and technology, business model innovation has obvious category attributes. However, it is necessary to be vigilant that false publicity, trademark and patent infringement have now become the most frequent risk factors for domestic brands.
Channel innovation Diversification and personalization
Market changes are accelerating, "new consumption, new crowds, new needs, new channels" put forward new development requirements for domestic brands, and a new generation of domestic brands ushered in the era of "omni-channel". According to the channel layout of the brands on the top 100 domestic product innovation list, Nandu found that their online channels include: Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Vipshop, Douyin, Kuaishou, WeChat Mini Program Mall, etc., and offline there are brand self-operated stores, collection stores, pop-up stores, smart vending machines, large supermarkets, etc. Among them, different industries such as beauty, food, and tide play also have their own unique vertical channels.
From the 200 shortlisted brands in this survey, it can be seen that seizing the new channel traffic dividend to create a blockbuster is the consensus of almost all brands. They are adept at leveraging the traffic dividends of new channels to open up brand awareness and reach as many online channels as possible.
Relatively speaking, the live broadcast layout of beauty brands is the most mature. Among the 22 domestic beauty brands on the list, more than 90% of the brands have been on the live broadcast room of the head anchor, only one brand has no official live broadcast room information, and more than 80% of the brands choose to broadcast on Tmall, JD.com, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms.
In addition to beauty and skin care, domestic brands from the clothing, shoes and bags, food and milk and beverage industries are also regular customers in the live broadcast room. The 9 clothing and shoe brand and 17 food FMCG brands on the list of the top 100 have all set up live broadcast rooms in the brand flagship store. The use of vertical channels to circle the small crowd, cultivate deep users, and establish brand professionalism is another channel strategy for new brands. This path is more common in skincare brands and 3C digital.
In addition to the layout of mass channels and vertical channels, some more innovative brands will create their own channels such as self-built APP and community, which can effectively enhance fan stickiness once established, and the brand's control over the channel is also stronger.
It can be seen that omni-channel penetration has become a trend of brand channel innovation. Among the top 100 brands on the list, nearly 90% of the brands have established a balanced layout of online and offline omni-channels. The trend of omni-channel balanced layout is particularly evident in the food FMCG, 3C digital, life appliances, clothing and shoes and bags industries.
Operational innovation IP, traffic private domain
In the choice of operating channels, most of the domestic brands focus on breaking through a single channel or choose a few key channels to operate: such as Xiaohongshu, WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. No matter what channel, it has become a mainstream trend to develop the DTC (directly face consumer) model and shorten the path to reach consumers.
For new domestic brands, the easiest way to operate out of the circle is to use cross-border joint names to "brush" the sense of existence. For new brands in the early stage of their founding, cross-border co-branding is the lowest investment cost exposure method, and old domestic brands enter the young user base through co-branding with new IP. In the 11 categories listed in the top 100 domestic product innovation list, more than 80% involve IP joint or cross-border cooperation, which shows that this is the most common design method for domestic brands. Among them, brands in the fields of beauty and skin care, food FMCG, and home department stores are all cross-border joint "ashes- level" players.
In addition to the joint IP, to create a virtual persona, to shape the brand IP is the new and old domestic brands and users to close the effective path, a good IP image can not only come with a circle powder effect, but also inject stronger vitality into the brand, the IP strategy of the top 100 domestic innovation brands has been studied and found that the domestic brand not only works the appearance of the IP image design, the naming also takes great care, emphasizing the sense of intimacy and grounding.
The rise of social media has also given brand merchants more opportunities to use celebrities, Internet celebrities, and celebrities on platforms such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin to "plant grass" to spread products, which in turn triggered spontaneous communication among fans, which has become a common warm-up path before the launch of new products.
It is worth noting that regardless of new and old brands, the construction of the membership system is a compulsory course. Through the study of the membership system of the top 100 brands of domestic product innovation, it is found that the trend of private traffic is obvious, and the creation of its own membership management system can open up and unify members from different platforms into the self-built membership management system, and the operation of the membership system can not only effectively enhance the repurchase, but also can be used for new product co-creation. Among them, the new brand attaches great importance to the use of members, and since its inception, it has targeted the establishment of a membership system covering all channels.
Product innovation Differentiation targets specific needs
Product innovation is the foundation of domestic brands, behind which is the brand's grasp of the latest consumer trends and subtle observation of user habits. From the perspective of the top 100 brands in domestic innovation, the essence of product innovation is differentiation, and differentiated innovation comes from the opening up of new categories, the discovery of new experiences, new consumer demand, and the application of new technologies.
One of the differentiation strategies of the top 100 brands in the domestic product innovation list is to specialize in subdivided categories, which not only grow fast, but also are more favored by the investment market. Its growth path is mostly in the fiercely competitive Red Sea market, avoiding the strong categories of head brands, targeting the pain points and needs of Chinese consumers to develop products, detonating the market in one fell swoop and opening up a new track. A typical example is the functional skin care track of this year's fire.
In addition, with the change of social structure, new formats such as "single economy", "she economy", "silver economy" and "pet economy" have emerged in an endless stream. With the change of living habits, it also derives the "lazy economy", "fitness economy", "sleep economy", "night economy", "beauty economy"... Cutting into differentiation from specific groups of people and specific consumption scenarios has also become one of the product innovation paths of domestic brands.
Among the shortlisted brands, another path for the birth of many new categories is the application of new technologies, which can be used to upgrade traditional products and are often used to create new categories. This path is also particularly obvious in the mobile phone, home appliance, digital 3C industry, reviewing the major updates of hardware technology products, mostly driven by technological innovation and application.
The improvement of technical capabilities also provides a certain foundation for product diversification, and the development of multi-brand matrix is also a common operation strategy of senior domestic brands. In some highly competitive industries, the life cycle of brands is limited and the speed of elimination is fast, and the launch of diversified sub-brands can be more flexible to cope with competition. Another trend is to launch sub-brands with main segmentation functions for emerging industry tracks or groups of people, and sub-brands with clear positioning are more likely to gain market recognition than comprehensive brands. According to the survey, multi-brand operation is particularly obvious in the field of beauty, home appliances, and 3C digital.
Design innovation to visualize, aesthetic "eye-catching"
The new retail laboratory of Nandu Big Data Research Institute conducted a survey on the design innovation department of 200 shortlisted domestic brands and found that most domestic brands can be described as making sufficient efforts in product appearance, hoping to let consumers be attracted to stop from the moment they first see the appearance. Many brands reflect the beauty of the national tide through the color, composition, shape and some typical oriental aesthetic elements of the product appearance, or build up the "visual cognition" of consumers, so that the brand image can preconceived and occupy the minds of consumers. Among them, such design features are more prominent in the three categories of beauty and skin care, food FMCG, home department stores and clothing, shoes and bags.
In addition to "face value", many domestic brands have begun to pay attention to functional innovation, and product design is more humane. This feature is most evident in the categories of household appliances, 3C digital and some small household appliance brands and home department stores.
In addition to the innovation of the overall appearance design, many of the top 100 brands in the domestic product innovation list have even begun to add Chinese style to the visual elements such as font font type, symbol, size and shape, of which the food FMCG category is particularly obvious. Many brands use traditional Chinese calligraphy fonts as design highlights, such as the "mei" in the two characters of the ome wine brand "MeiMi" originating from the calligrapher Lu Kamzhi, and the word "see" originating from the calligrapher Zhao Mengfu. Domestic brands even take into account the impact of weight and size on consumers, pasta brand hollow specially adjusted the weight of the product plus packaging, so that its four-box combination set of pasta can be just stuck in the first weight of each express logistics regulations.
More domestic brands have integrated more ingenuity and brand concept into the outer packaging or express packaging box of the product. For example, when ANTA Hydrogen Running Shoes 2.0 was launched, it replaced the traditional shoe box with a potato chip packaging bag, and wanted to pass on to consumers the concept that the weight of this pair of running shoes was about equal to the weight of a pack of medium-sized potato chips.
In recent years, the concept of green consumption has also been more and more integrated into domestic brands, and many brands in the list of the top 100 domestic product innovations have shown this characteristic. For example, beauty and skin care brands are fundamental, emphasizing the use of green packaging and recyclable and degradable technology, and the packaging is also used in soybean ink printing.
Scene innovation is both humanized and technological
Judging from the 11 categories focused on in the report, more than half of the categories prefer to build novel consumption scenarios offline, which has nothing to do with whether the brand itself started online or offline, and more and more brands that have no offline stores before have begun to consider the layout of single-brand stores or enter the distinctive collection stores. The increasing number of experience halls, concept stores, pop-up stores, or various themed brand stores often introduces a lot of "black technology" or reserves experience scenes that match the brand positioning. Among them, the beauty and skin care category is particularly keen on the construction of offline scenes, and many of them are landed in the "experience hall" mode.
In addition to offline "landscape", many new brands have strengthened the use of products through advertising and marketing at the beginning of their birth to deepen consumers' cognition, so that users will most likely have preconceived notions about typical brands in a certain category when they generate consumption intentions. This feature is more evident in FMCG and 3C digital categories. Especially the latter, Nandu found in the survey that the most favorite use scenario of this type of brand is "linkage", strengthening the concept of "everything can be connected" by consumers, and then using a single product to better leverage the sales of its full range of products, creating a sense of full-scene use of smart phones and other devices.
In addition to the construction of the use of scenes, many domestic brands have begun to cooperate across fields in order to break the original sales scenes, and integrate the "burst points" that brand products need to highlight into the consumption space of completely different tracks, so that the integration of scenes can make users experience more interesting. For example, consumers can experience the brand's home textile household products, personal care products, household appliances, digital products, etc. when staying in the "Ningbo Wanda Mehua Hotel | Made in Beijing", and most importantly, any user with a good experience can place an order on the spot, and then deliver it to the door by Jingdong Logistics.
In order to strengthen the consumer mentality of "bringing home the five-star SPA", the aromatherapy skincare brand has cooperated with Park Hyatt Ningbo to launch the "Book-by-Book Approach" SPA, which incorporates aromatherapy and is accompanied by the corresponding essential oil formulation of its brand. Guests staying at the hotel will also receive a book-by-book aromatic souvenir so they can take it home for the experience.
Model innovation has obvious category attributes
The business model innovation of the top 100 brands in domestic innovation shows obvious category exclusive characteristics, such as the emergence of new brands in the beauty and skin care category, mostly based on the DTC business model, and a small number of OEM models; more traditional categories such as clothing, shoes and food FMCG pay more attention to the layout of the supply chain link, and the new retail model combining online and offline still occupies the main position; 3C digital or some new sports brands are more with Internet style, and the business model presents the characteristics of "multi-dimensional". Private brands such as NetEase Yanxuan and Beijing Dongzuo and Wanning MANNING, which are directly incubated by retail giants, include a variety of categories and have obvious ODM business models.
In the beauty and skin care category, the brand multi-DTC model represented by Dr. Yaoer, Runbaiyan, Baizhicui, Perfect Diary, etc., which emphasizes "facing consumers directly", brands no longer need to use wholesalers, retailers or distributors to reach the market through layers of links, but can build their own channels (such as official websites, social accounts, e-commerce, etc.) to reach consumers in an independent identity of the brand, so as to obtain first-hand consumption data and feed back the production and operation of the brand. In this model, big data capabilities become a key winning factor.
On the other hand, relatively traditional food FMCG and clothing and footwear categories need to complete digital transformation and upgrading because they are more affected by the Wave of the Internet, so the transformation of the supply chain and the use of new retail models that combine online and offline are more common, and many of them also maintain franchise or semi-franchise models to accelerate expansion. For example, the pullback is to create its new retail sales model by establishing low inventory, and then integrating online and offline and big data applications. The Internet celebrity brands of Yongpu Coffee, Yuanqi Forest and Yellow Swan Raw Eggs have chosen the self-built supply chain of the asset-heavy model to open up the entire industrial chain road.
For 3C Digital and some new sports brands, it can be said that it has its own Internet gene, and the business model presents a multi-dimensional layout. Xiaomi has publicly stated that its business model is the triathlon model of "hardware + Internet + new retail", this "triangle" only revolves around users, selling hardware and Internet services to consumers through the "online + offline" new retail model.
concern
Four major risks into the domestic brand "warning line"
With the further upgrading of the retail consumer market, the changing domestic and foreign market environment, diversified trading models, and increasingly detailed regulatory regulations have put forward higher requirements for the compliance and sustainable development of enterprises. Whether the products of an enterprise brand have had quality health/safety issues, whether there are negative evaluations and public opinions, and major complaints have become important indicators that directly affect customer transactions, and they are also key factors in measuring the value of a brand. Our research has found that false publicity, trademark and patent infringement have now become the most frequent risk factors for domestic brands. In addition, the risk of property rights disputes and advertising spokespersons should not be underestimated.
In the beauty and skin care and food FMCG categories, nearly half of the brands have been exposed to false publicity and have a mixed reputation; in the categories of clothing, shoes and bags, and home cleaning daily chemicals, many domestic brands (especially "long-established" brands) have been involved in trademark infringement disputes for a long time; brand intellectual property rights/patent disputes are more concentrated in the category of living appliances. In addition, with the increasingly frequent promotion of e-commerce, such as unfair competition, product quality and after-sales service problems, and online shopping contract disputes continue to emerge, which reflects that there is still a large room for improvement in product quality, shopping after-sales, reverse logistics and other links of domestic brands.
Zhao Lijie, partner of Beijing Yinghe Law Firm and director of the Intellectual Property Center, told Nandu reporters that there are three reasons for these risks of independent brands: First, most manufacturers have insufficient understanding of the importance of intellectual property rights, fair competition, and consumer protection; second, many manufacturers have insufficient capacity reserves in intellectual property rights, fair competition, consumer protection, etc., and lack of professional personnel support for related work; third, due to false publicity. Illegal acts such as intellectual property infringement may bring huge or even excess profits to manufacturers in the short term, and it is not excluded that some manufacturers are willing to take risks. It is recommended that brand manufacturers establish and improve the compliance system suitable for the actual situation of the enterprise as soon as possible, form a good compliance culture, and be more conducive to the development of the enterprise.
Producer: New Retail Research Group of Nandu Big Data Research Institute
Planner: Zhen Qin Tian Aili
Data/Report Coordinator: Tian Aili
Written by: Nandu reporter Xu Bingqian
Data Collection: Ma Ningning, Xu Bingqian, Fu Xiaoling, Huang Pei, Wang Chenchen, Tian Aili, Kong Xueshao