Text/Hu Yutong
Edit/Gale
The "first share of bird's nest" or will be born. Recently, the 24-year-old bird's nest old brand Yanzhiwu applied for a main board IPO and has been accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Subsequently, Yanzhiwu officially announced Zhao Liying as the spokesperson of the new brand on January 5.
Relying on the "bowl swallow" bird's nest products that are ready to eat, the total revenue of Yanzhiwu in 2020 reached 1.3 billion yuan, and its latest gross profit margin reached 51%. However, the efficacy of bird's nest itself has been controversial, and it has been accused of profiteering and hype marketing.
Looking at the "old account" of the House of Swallows, it once fell into the cloud of the "poisonous blood swallow" incident, because the blood swallows of the House of Swallows were tested to contain a large amount of nitrite, and long-term use would cause people to lack oxygen. Another bird's nest brand, Xiaoxian Stew, was also fined 200,000 yuan for falsely advertising the "Ten Deadly Sins".
The question of whether bird's nest is an IQ tax product has been repeatedly discussed, focusing mainly on the sialic acid component in bird's nest. Because its nutritional value cannot be identified, and consumers cannot give sufficient rebuttal evidence, "believe is true, unbelief is false" has become the best answer to avoid such questions.
And such a situation is not only in bird's nest products, most health food is a routine. Whether it is the main body strengthening or beauty function, health care products specialize in unfamiliar areas of consumers, once they fall into the knowledge blind spot, consumers are easy to obediently pay the "IQ tax".
Early days: wall-painting, brainwashing propaganda
Health care products, more accurately called health foods. In the 1990s, it was crowned with the word "health care" with marketing colors since its birth. A 37-year-old Huai Hanxin tried to make health care products, launched the first oral liquid product - Helios Biological Health Oral Liquid, and officially entered the early domestic health care product market.
Since then, a variety of "XX oral liquids" have been launched in a competition, and the most influential of them is the three pharmaceuticals.
A sentence of "three strains of oral liquid, there is a disease to cure the disease, no disease to strengthen the body", directly poking at the consumer's pain point, a bottle of oral liquid is advertised as a miracle medicine that can cure all diseases. Wu Bingxin, the founder of Sanzhu Pharmaceutical, is well versed in the marketing methods of advertising, spending money to publicize it on local television stations and major mainstream newspapers, and going to the countryside to promote oral liquid by providing free medical treatment services.
Considering the popularity of television sets in China at that time, Wu Bingxin came up with a trick: brushing three strains of oral liquid propaganda slogans in each village. The walls, telephone poles, and latrines were all printed with conspicuous white paint "If you are sick, please drink three plants", so that the three oral liquids were introduced to all of China.
In the 90s, the price of a bottle of three strains of oral liquid could even be sold for hundreds of yuan. But what does not match the high price is that the extremely simple ingredient list behind it is only common raw materials such as water, soybean germ, and white sugar. Even so, in 1996, Sanzhu Pharmaceutical relied on this bottle of "divine water" to achieve annual sales of an astonishing 8 billion yuan.
However, two years later, the strong momentum of the three pharmaceutical companies has taken a sharp turn. The cause was that an old man died after taking 8 bottles of three-strain oral solution due to the recurrence of the old disease. After the media report, the corporate image of Sanzhu Pharmaceutical was severely damaged, and its sales volume fell sharply. Even after winning the case, it failed to restore the original pomp and circumstance.
From the rise to the fall of the altar, the glorious moment of the three pharmaceutical companies lasted only six years. And this and that, another household health care product is quietly taking root.
It's brain platinum.
Giant Group, a company owned by Brain Platinum, was founded in 1995, which is actually not long after the founding time of Sanzhu Pharmaceutical. Perhaps drawing on the experience of the previous one, founder Shi Yuzhu also focused on brand promotion on brainwashing advertising.
Since the official launch of Brain Platinum, Shi Yuzhu has put most of the initial funds in advertising. Relying on a magic brainwashing song of "No gifts for the New Year's Festival, platinum for the brain when receiving gifts", it has become a national popularity and has become one of the gift choices for the New Year festival and visiting relatives and friends.
Not only that, this slogan expands the audience scope of brain platinum another circle, from health care products to gift consumption. It is reported that the initial advertising cost of Brain Platinum has exceeded 100 million, and even by 2019, its advertising expenditure has exceeded 1.5 billion, covering the population of China. The results of heavy investment in advertising have been remarkable, and the monthly sales of Brain Platinum as early as 2003 have exceeded 100 million yuan.
However, the propaganda term of brain platinum has also been controversial, and in 2015, "the human body contains brain platinum and can secrete brain platinum" was refuted by the Beijing Times. The report pointed out that brain platinum stole the concept of packaging foreign melatonin as brain platinum, and the ingredient has more side effects than tranquilizers. Shi Yuzhu's own response was also ambiguous, and did not explain the melatonin ingredients, saying that he "insisted on eating brain platinum before going to bed every day."
After this storm, Giant Group has not disclosed any sales data about brain platinum for nearly 6 years.
This kind of health care products, which are like a placebo effect, have fallen and been reborn one by one in the tide of the times.
Change the soup does not change the medicine, marketing first
If the health care products born during the 90s are still within the scope of physical fitness, the health care products launched after the millennium have expanded in a new direction in their functions: detoxification and weight loss and beauty care, and the wishful thinking is hit on women's bodies.
Besunyen is one of the classic cases, from the official description, it will position its own brand in functional health tea, focusing on healthy weight loss, laxative effects. And this was once the "first share of slimming tea", but now it has been exposed that it has relied on selling buildings several times to "continue life", and has also issued ten profit warnings, obviously, Besunyen's slimming tea story has not been told.
The most direct reason for Besunyen's downward spiral is that in 2016, the State Food and Drug Administration issued a new regulation: health care products must not use words that promote the efficacy of products. This provision directly hits Besunyen's "life gate" - the word "weight loss" in the product name "Besunyen Slimming Tea" can no longer be used.
Why a name change can cause such a huge reaction, it has to start from the founder of Besunyen. Zhao Yihong, who has spent nearly a decade in Master Kong's beverage sales position, set his sights on the tea drink market 20 years ago, but the tea he wants to make is not a traditional tea on the market, but a health tea with slimming effects.
After establishing brand differentiation, the first thing Zhao Yihong had to do was to start Besunyen's signboard, and advertising became the fastest way. Since 2006, Besunyen has focused its advertising on the TV screen, mainly promoting two teas, slimming tea and Changrun tea. According to public information, Besunyen's expenditure on advertising reached 49.1 million yuan in 2007, accounting for more than 30% compared with the marketing volume of 163 million yuan in the same year.
According to statistics, in 2014, Besunyen sold a total of 4.5 billion sales based on these two cups of tea. Besunyen, which tasted the sweetness, also began to increase advertising expenses year by year, and also invited the well-known actress Xu Jinglei to speak for it, playing the slogan of "losing weight to the end". On the other hand, Besunyen was named more than 20 times by the relevant departments for suspected advertising violations, issued a number of fines, and once appeared on the blacklist of the Guangdong Guangdong Food and Drug Administration.
While expanding marketing expenditure and accepting fines, the public's doubts about Besunyen have increased. Among them, the senna leaves in the ingredients of Besunyen Changrun Tea have been pointed out to be the same as the laxative ingredients, and the diarrhea caused by taking them has caused the illusion of weight loss. Coupled with the increase in consumer awareness of fitness exercise and nutritious diet in recent years, these weight loss scams are self-defeating.
In addition to the weight loss effect, health care products have dug out a new category - beauty and beauty. Different from the former, these health care products based on bird's nest, ejiao, and peach gum will focus on exaggerating the efficacy of the product in marketing publicity.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, some studies have shown that its nutritional value is far inferior to milk and eggs, turning the nutritional value of health products themselves into a matter of opinion. Liu Jialing, the former spokesperson of Yanzhiwu, declared to the outside world that her maintenance secret is to "eat bird's nest and only choose Yanzhiwu", which is regarded by the outside world as implying that bird's nest has the effect of prolonging life. Li Youquan, CEO of Yanzhiwu, said that the advertisement of Yanzhiwu never directly said that there was any effect, and there was no consumer fraud.
The promotion of advertising and star effect can make a health care product quickly reach the peak, which is the same as the wall-brushing propaganda method in the 90s. But these "Schrödinger effects", when completely opened, consumers can see whether it is a scam or not.
"Fabricated concept" and launch kols
After experiencing overwhelming advertising, consumers have learned to improve their ability to distinguish health care products. On the contrary, these health products that earn IQ tax must also keep pace with the times, and they need to change their ways of fooling around.
How can consumers be confident that these products are really effective? Consumers need to give up their sanity.
In psychology, people's irrational judgment of things is called cognitive bias. The most direct way for merchants to create cognitive bias is to create information differences, and to confuse consumers by making up new concepts and new terms to achieve the purpose of blind consumption.
"4 effects in one: imported white kidney beans - sugar barrier, mushroom powder - oil absorption, 70 kinds of fruit and vegetable essences - excretion, patented ingredient CITRZYME - high combustion." This is the effect given by an enzyme brand with a monthly sales of 30,000 yuan on the promotional poster, and the string of "professional terms" is dazzling.
Enzymes, which are also one of the concepts of health care products introduced to China by Japan in recent years, are actually another term of "enzymes" and belong to a kind of protein. Enzymes on the market are entered into the human body by oral means, when passing through the digestive tract, they will be decomposed by pepsin, trypsin, intestinal peptidase, and finally absorbed by the human body in the form of amino acids.
Not only that, some enzyme products borrow this name, or sell some counterfeit and shoddy products or laxatives. Last year, a 63-year-old Aunt Wang, after eating enzymes for 3 years, was diagnosed with a brown snakeskin-style pattern on the intestine.
Not only the middle-aged and elderly will become the sales target of health care products, but the consumer population has begun to tilt towards the new generation. According to CBNData data, in recent years, among the consumers of health products, the post-80s and post-90s are the main consumers, and the performance of the post-95s is particularly prominent in the growth trend.
Source from CBNData data
To capture the hearts of young people, now businesses use KOLs from various channels to create momentum, from micro-businesses in the circle of friends to short video bloggers, borrowing the mouths of others to exaggerate the efficacy of products. In today's smartphone era, these pervasive psoriasis advertisements are more difficult to avoid than TV advertisements, and consumers are invisibly invaded by various product advertisements.
Most of these promoted KOLs also use the identity of "witnesses" to explain what kind of effect they have after eating, and the description of the advertorial and the real experience looks almost the same. In this way, consumers will find it difficult to distinguish the authenticity of the efficacy and naturally fall into the trap of the merchant.
But it is not difficult to find that the final fate of these IQ tax products will face extinction. In the iterative update of products from generation to generation, no matter what kind of marketing means, the point of change is to use the point of information asymmetry. And when the early marketing dividends are exhausted, these IQ tax products will be abandoned by consumers.