A few days ago, the brand brother bought drinks at a convenience store and was surprised to find that the most conspicuous area on the beverage shelf was occupied by sugar-free drinks.
Especially sugar-free tea drinking, black tea green tea of various colors of tea, are under the banner of sugar-free, healthy, low calorie.
You should know that this kind of non-sweet drink a few years ago is really a bun of Tianjin Wei, and the dogs ignore it.
And now sugar-free drinks can fly sparrows to the sky and rush to the C position, in fact, thanks to a brand, that is, oriental leaves.
Speaking of oriental leaves, interesting stories are one after another, today I will follow the brand brother to see how oriental leaves have single-handedly reversed the transformation of Chinese beverages.
Let's turn back the time to ten years ago, the tea drinks in the supermarket were almost monopolized by Master Kong and Master Kong, and all kinds of tea drinks were similar packaging, and even the tastes were very similar.
What's more, almost all tea drinks are sugary.
Whether it is a unified iced black tea with a cold taste, or Master Kong jasmine tea with traditional tea making technology as the selling point, the sugar content is not low.
In fact, not only China, but also bottled beverages around the world, sweetness is the most important element.
At that time, consumers' thinking was relatively simple, drinking drinks is to taste sweet, if the drink is not sweet, it is better to drink cheaper mineral water.
In terms of human physiological response, sweetness is a taste that can bring happiness, so in the history of mankind, after getting rid of the difficulty of food and clothing, they are eager to pursue sweet that can bring pleasure to the taste buds, and the history of sweet drinks can be described as a long time ago.
However, it is also strange to say that in Japan, which is separated by the sea, the bottled tea drinks on the market are almost monopolized by sugar-free tea drinks.
As early as the 1980s, Japan's Suntory Co., Ltd. launched sugar-free oolong tea, the raw materials are still from our Chinese Fujian Province.
Until now, Suntory's oolong tea is the hottest product in sugar-free tea drinks.
So, in the same country with a tradition of drinking tea, why do Japanese people prefer sugar-free drinks?
In fact, in the final analysis, it is because the Japanese pursue light and healthy eating habits.
This important phenomenon, Nongfu Spring arrived early.
After visiting Japanese beverage companies, they believe that the trend of drinks will eventually tend to be low-sugar health, not to mention that for thousands of years we have Chinese not had the habit of adding sugar to tea.
Therefore, Nongfu Spring smelled the business opportunity very early and tried to preemptively take this blue ocean.
Oh no, with a sugar-free beverage market share of almost zero, called "Blue Lagoon" is pretty much the same.
However, the first bite of crab is not so good to nibble, not to mention that there are really brands that are poisoned by this first bite of crab.
Long before Nongfu Spring officially launched sugar-free tea drinks, Unity Group tested sugar-free tea drinks Chinese mainland.
In 2004, the unified launch of Chali Wang, a main sugar-free green tea, with a gimmick of "health drink" on the head, played a "back to the sweet, like a fresh bubble" slogan.
There is a saying that the king of tea was once the white moonlight of the brand's brother's heart, and the ingredients were really refreshing, different from those drinks on the market that added sweeteners and blended flavors.
But the reality is very harsh, sugar-free tea drinks have not been favored by consumers, less than a few years to disappear in disgrace.
Nongfu Spring certainly did not miss this important information, after all, the popular taste at that time was still relatively cheap and low-grade, so the failure of the King of Chali was almost predestined.
Then, if Nongfu Spring wants to open up a new world of sugar-free drinks in one fell swoop, it must start from a new perspective.
First of all, it is to make consumers aware of the harm of polysaccharide diets.
To educate consumers, Nongfu Spring's parent company, Yangshengtang, can't help but smile: this is an ancestral masterpiece.
I don't know if you have noticed that the brands under The Yangshengtang are all masters of advertising and marketing.
Whether it is the advertising slogan of children's nutrition products growing up happily, "So happy and happy to eat and grow up", or the farmer's spring that only works as a porter of nature, or the mouth lozenge that makes people blush and beat when making a mint-flavored tablet candy, Yangshengtang has successfully created a very deep impression in the minds of Chinese consumers.
Therefore, when Nongfu Spring launched the oriental leaves, it played two trump cards "original tea leaves" and "0 sugar and 0 fat", and accurately found the target customer group: the group that pursues the real taste of tea soup, and the consumer who has requirements for the body.
Nongfu Spring is well versed in marketing, the Chinese beverage market is so big, it is enough to hold these two customer groups.
Looking back at the former waves who died on the beach like The King of Tea, there is a common disease, that is, there is no eye-catching image packaging.
The previous brand brother also mentioned that in the past ten or twenty years, the packaging of Chinese tea drinks has hardly changed, with a round and rolling bottle body and a single color of style.
We can recall that some iced black tea and iced green tea packaging are almost exactly the same?
Nongfu Spring takes this into account, and if you want to open the market, you must have a package that people remember.
According to Wu Chaochao of the Yangshengtang Advertising Center, Oriental Leaves spared no expense to create a new packaging by the well-known British design company Pearlfisher, which is particularly good at making packaging for food and beverages.
The R&D team of Oriental Leaf has traveled back and forth between China and the United Kingdom many times, communicated the implementation plan, and finally finalized the packaging presented in front of us, the transparent bottle body on the lower circle, the main visual inspiration on the bottle body is derived from the traditional Chinese brush strokes, according to the different types of tea, oolong tea, jasmine tea, black tea and green tea, respectively, the corresponding picture elements are sailing ships, butterflies and flowers, tea horse ancient road and ancient temple temple.
This ingenious design also won the Silver Medal for Design from pentawards, the world's highest award in the world of design.
The product is ready to go, and the next step is the best play of Nongfu Spring and start telling the story.
Although Chinese's history of tea drinking dates back to Shennong tasting hundreds of herbs, up to thousands of years.
But to promote these mythological myths and legends, young people certainly have little interest.
Then Nongfu Spring did the opposite, starting from the Maritime Silk Road, recreating the story of Chinese tea crossing the ocean to the European royal family, and using the European tea name "Oriental Leaves" as the name of the product line.
With the promotion of TV advertisements, a refreshing feeling comes to the face, making consumers curious and want to find out what the magical oriental leaves are.
In 2011, Nongfu Spring grandly launched the sugar-free tea series "Oriental Leaves", when some tea lovers saw such a decent transparent bottle, in fact, there were some doubts?
As we all know, the most precious thing in tea is the nutrients such as tea polyphenols and amino acids that are easy to lose, which will easily deteriorate and produce harmful substances after direct sunlight and long-term placement.
Therefore, there is a saying that overnight tea cannot be drunk.
Oriental leaves claim not to use tea powder, the use of raw tea brewing, then tea in a transparent plastic bottle, is not it easier to deteriorate?
In fact, such concerns are not superfluous, in just two years after the listing of oriental leaves, consumers continue to break the news on social media, claiming that the same batch of oriental leaves they bought have different shades of color.
There is even oriental leaf oolong tea produced on the same day, one bottle of pale yellow and clear color, and the other bottle is already as deep as amber.
In response to these doubts, Nongfu Spring explained that natural substances will inevitably undergo oxidation reactions over time, and beverages with additives will remain unchanged in color, even if the liquid color of oriental leaves changes, they can be safely drunk during the shelf life.
But this statement does not calm consumer doubts.
Oriental leaves just entered the market, it fell into such a crisis of public opinion, in order to save the brand image, Nongfu Spring's chief engineer Han Zhengchun once again responded in the official micro, he said that the formula of oriental leaves in addition to tea, only added baking soda and vitamin C to delay the oxidation of beverage liquids, in addition to no artificial additives.
Han Zhengchun even guaranteed his own personality that there was absolutely no problem with the quality of oriental leaves.
In order to "prove their innocence", the research and development team of Oriental Leaf published the test reports of different batches of drinks.
Eh, this wave of operations is not a bit familiar, I think that when the mineral water of Nongfu Spring was questioned about the unqualified water quality, they also published test reports in the major media.
Speaking of oriental leaves, the reason for using this transparent lower upper round bottle body is to hope that consumers can impress the crystal clear beauty of oriental leaves.
Oriental leaves have spent a lot of scientific research investment, using a lean formula to avoid premature oxidation of tea.
At the same time, the small cap is also very controversial, and the gasket and sealing method inside the bottle cap have been specially designed to block the air to a greater extent.
As for whether the recipe and design can prevent the oxidation of the beverage, it is not the most difficult problem of oriental leaves.
On this side, the crisis of public opinion has not yet been lifted, and on the other side, another thing has happened, allowing the oriental leaves to reproduce the crisis of word of mouth.
As mentioned earlier, in the past, sugar-free beverages had almost no foothold in the Chinese market.
Consumers' taste buds have long been accustomed to the fact that beverages must be sweet.
Whether this sweetness comes from natural sucrose or artificial sweeteners, in short, sweetness is the political correctness of the drink.
In this simple and crude consumption environment, sugar-free oriental leaves are a heretic, which has been badly evaluated by many consumers.
In 2015, a famous list of the top ten difficult drinks was released, and oriental leaves were unfortunately included in the list.
Say one more word Ha, this list also has the same door, but also the red scream produced by Nongfu Spring, really makes people cry and laugh, Nongfu Spring is not very fond of the positive consumer's taste habits?
Then again, we can also do a survey, if you know the oriental leaves because of this list of unpalatable drinks, please raise your hand in the comment area, I believe there must be a lot of friends.
It is really an ambush before, there is a chase after the soldiers, the early road of oriental leaves is twisting and turning, in the reputation of consumers, it is hard to get half a good reputation.
However, Nongfu Spring firmly believes that oriental leaves will wait until consumers grow up.
Therefore, oriental leaves are regarded as a product line that can put long lines to catch big fish, even if it is not profitable at the moment, we must insist on doing it.
In fact, there is another point, the brand brother not only feels sorry for the oriental leaves, but also admires the persistence of the oriental leaves from beginning to end, that is, the price positioning.
The price of oriental leaves is about 5 yuan, which is definitely not a people-friendly stall.
This is also the consistent style of Nongfu Spring.
Take Nongfu Spring mineral water as an example, for more than ten years, the pricing of domestic brand bottled drinking water is basically about 1 yuan, and Nongfu Spring advertises the use of high-quality water sources, so the initial pricing is more expensive than the general pure water.
From this point of view, Nongfu Spring never disdains the low-cost and low-price play, and the oriental leaves are no exception.
According to the official website, Oriental Leaves use Nongfu Spring to brew high-quality tea, so naturally it will not sell cheaply to reduce their style.
In the past ten years since the listing of Oriental Leaves, no matter how the market response is, the price of normal specifications has been maintained at about 5 yuan, which has also become a consumption threshold in disguise, opening up the price gap with other hot sugary tea drinks.
Throughout the ten years of oriental leaf history, the brand brother can only have one word to describe, that is, "born at the wrong time".
Whether it's a forward-looking healthy, sugar-free positioning, a chic and innovative product packaging, or an advertising campaign that does the opposite.
Oriental leaves are undoubtedly a pioneering tea product, saying that it is not timely, may be because the steps are too early, consumer habits have not caught up with its pace at all.
However, feng shui takes turns, and looking at the current Chinese beverage market, health is already the most high-profile label.
In recent years, we've seen more and more news about the harm caused by excessive sugar intake, and until now, bottled drinks seem to be synonymous with unhealthy.
As a result, the trend of sugar-free drinks has become more and more fierce, until now, the popular drinks in supermarkets, whether it is tea or soda, or even traditional carbonated drinks, have zero sugar zero calorie versions.
Now that the product research and development capabilities of domestic beverages are also increasing, sugar-free drinks have long been rid of the stereotype of dark cuisine.
Yuanqi Forest is a very good example, this emerging domestic beverage brand, eyeing the change in tastes of the Chinese people in recent years, launched a series of explosive sugar-free or low-sugar drinks in one go, all the way back.
In the face of such a situation, the oriental leaves seem to be able to look at the ocean and sigh, quite a feeling of cooling after the predecessors planted the trees.
In the past ten years since the advent of oriental leaves, sales have been tepid, but Nongfu Spring has not given up on it.
I don't know if you remember, Nongfu Spring also launched a sugar-free drink a few years ago——— milk tea, milk tea is also a product developed from the health level, in the domestic bottled milk tea is full of flavors and creamer under the premise, milk tea claims to use high-quality milk source to prepare real tea, of course, the price is also much higher than other low-quality drinks.
It is conceivable that this milk tea product that goes against the trend has also not won the favor of the market, but in a year's time, it is embarrassingly delisted.
On the other hand, Oriental Leaves, even if the first ten difficult drinks "infamy" have been sold flat, but this product line has not been cut.
In 2021, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the listing of Oriental Leaves, two new products will be launched again, one is green mandarin Pu'er, which uses high-quality Pu'er and Guangdong Xinhui tangerine peel from Yunnan, and the other Isabi tea uses steamed green tea and Northeast rice.
The flavor of both teas is very niche and has hardly been seen on the Chinese market.
Fortunately, this time on the new, oriental leaves have not experienced the same bad reviews as the slaughter list a few years ago.
On the one hand, it is still adhering to the use of high-quality raw materials, which has won the praise of some tea drinking enthusiasts; on the other hand, in marketing, it has once again played tricks, with a number of platforms such as a certain sound, and promoted a variety of fancy drinking methods.
Kung Fu pays off, the 2021 Chnbrand 2021 China Consumer Recommendation Index SM (C-NPS) released the latest data, in the tea beverage recommendation list, oriental leaves surprisingly strongly topped the first place.
The emergence of two new products seems to have really brought a glimmer of light to the oriental leaves.
Nowadays, when we search for oriental leaves on social media, we see more and more consumers praising and liking, and the "black history" of the past seems to have become a harmless topic.
We can even say that the oriental leaves, the originator of this sugar-free tea drink, finally waited for the day when consumers grew up.
The word-of-mouth revolution of oriental leaves seems to have been completed, is there any more surprise in the future?
The brand brother felt that it was completely possible to wait and see.
However, when the brand brother clicked on the official website of Nongfu Spring again, he found that the new product development of Nongfu Spring was indeed very Buddhist, and it was still an old friend for many years.
In recent years, after several iterations of domestic beverages, consumers' tastes have become more and more tricky, and their acceptance of new things has become higher and higher.
Therefore, major brands are trying to change their tricks, constantly introducing various restrictions and new flavors to cater to the changing fashion.
How to consolidate the position and play a beautiful new card may be the most important problem that the Oriental Leaves need to solve.
About the oriental leaves, almost everything has been said.
I don't know what you think about sugar-free tea drinks, welcome to leave a message in the comment area, the follow-up brand brother will also chat with you about the major brands, don't forget to give the brand brother like support Oh, we will see you in the next issue.