Taiwan's Hair Wash Songlin Town Monster Village is from the perspective of traditional culture to carry out cultural and artistic creation and rise of the village, he and The Provence Village in South Korea have in common that they are all analyzing the demand side of the market, determining a characteristic theme around the market demand side, cultural creation through legends, and then using artistic techniques to create villages and revitalize the countryside. 2009 Xitou Youkai Village Songlin Town Japanese Business Circle was officially born, in the Xitou Forest Recreation Area old gate of the new completed Japanese style shopping street, carefully built Japanese business circle is a wooden house thatched roof plus high hanging big red lanterns, dressed in Japanese and exotic style to sell clothes merchants to provide a variety of unique Xitou Yokai Village famous souvenirs, Xitou Yokai Village food and characteristic cultural and creative souvenir goods, the overall architectural style are with a strong Japanese Japanese style. The careful planning, design and investment and development of Mingshan Hotel, coupled with the complete opening of foreign procurement without admission fees, has created an endless stream of people for the scenic area of Xitou Forest Recreation Area, created more employment opportunities and business opportunities for the local area, and also brought great economic contributions to the whole Lugu area.
Background to the rise of monster villages
Adjacent to Xitou Forest Park, Youkai Village is actually a Mingshan Forest Hall and is a hotel that has been in operation for more than 40 years. Xitou Forest Park is located in the foothills of Phoenix Mountain in Lugu Township, Nantou County, at an altitude of 1150 meters above sea level, is a natural oxygen bar, with a variety of towering ancient trees and precious plants, is the experimental forest farm of NTU Agricultural College. It is a beautiful place, once a famous resort, attracting many young people to come here for honeymoons, and the Mingshan Forest Hall was previously named "Honeymoon Hall", which is also famous for a long time. But 15 years ago in Taiwan 9. After the 21 earthquake caused great damage, although the road was repaired, the number of tourists decreased a lot, and more retired people came to recuperate, and few young people knew about it. General Manager Lim Chi Ying Lin of Ming Shan Kaikan wants to revive the grandeur of the past, and after analysis, the target market is set on young people, because they are the most dynamic consumer group. Through the local characteristic monster legend, Lin Zong focused on the word "youkai", refined the elements, invited a very good design art team, through artistic creativity, created a "unique" yokai village, and "dry hemp" and "eight beans" have also become the two mascots of the yokai village. Relying on the particularity and novelty of the word "yokai", yokai village has become a well-known personalized village in Taiwan in a very short period of time, and has also been awarded the "Creative Life Business Certification" from the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Monster Village Commercial Street
The Road to Successful Exploration of the Revival and Transformation of Youkai Village (Development Measures)
Initiative 1: Select rare themes for market groups as the keynote of village development to attract the masses
After Lin Zhiying selected the target market for young people, he has been thinking about how to attract them. Although the scenery and fresh air of Xitou Forest Park have certain attractions, Taiwan's tourism resources are rich, and ordinary ecological advantages cannot arouse people's attention at the first time, and it is difficult to light up the signboard. After examining and pondering the cultural resources of Xitou, Mr. Lin Zhiying, the general manager at the time, chose the legendary story of the encounter with the monster that his grandfather experienced. Legend has it that during the Japanese occupation in Taiwan, Grandpa Lin (the grandfather of the current general manager of Youkai Village) picked up a black bear and a clouded leopard (named Kuma and Eight Beans, respectively) and raised them while working in the mountains. One day, Grandpa Lin encountered a monster while working, Kuma and Badou stepped forward, Badou gave up his life to save him, and Kuma also unfortunately disappeared, and the legend about this forest and Grandpa Lin was passed down. How to dig out resources on this legendary culture that sounds bland at first, General Manager Lin uses unconventional thinking to focus the story on "monsters". The word "monster" breaks through people's usual understanding of tourism and attractions, but it can catch people's attention at the first time.
Michael H. Goldhabel of the United States Goldhaber pointed out as early as 1997 that today's society is a society that is extremely rich and even widespread, and people's attention is the scarcest resource. Things that attract people's attention form commercial value, and attention becomes an economic resource that must be contested. Because only if the target market pays attention to a product or service, it is possible to become a consumer. The naming and concept of the monster village is accurate and attracts the attention of people, especially young people, to the greatest extent, forming the basis for future business interests.
Initiative 2: The art design team creates the image of the local characteristics of the monster village for the target market, carries out cultural and creative development, and creates a regional IP
Successful eye-catching is only the first step, and the subsequent maintenance is more challenging. The person in charge of the management of the yokai village directly pointed out that "the Mingshan Forest Hall runs a hotel, if it is a 'terrible yokai', how dare people come to live?"? So on the basis of eye-catching, the art design team of Youkai Village carried out the personality positioning of "KUSO Cute and Funny". The term KUSO originated from the cry of a protagonist in a game when attacked by an enemy, and was later given the meaning of a spoof, referring to a culture of hooliganism that deconstructs serious themes to construct comedic or satirical effects. In the eyes of young people in Taiwan, KUSO is synonymous with nonsense, funny, and funny, so the monsters in the yokai village are not terrible yokai, but funny and cute yokai, and the yokai village culture fully embodies the spirit of KUSO. This cultural personality positioning accurately caters to the preferences of young people in this target market. The number one image representative of the monster village shows the cute and warm side, one is the clouded leopard Badou who sacrificed to rescue grandpa, and the other is the black bear wither who rescued his grandfather but has disappeared since then, they are brave and cute and touching, and they are the mascots of the yokai village. In order to conform to the yokai image added by the yokai haunting legend, it is also designed in full accordance with the KUSO cute and funny positioning to have a clear personality, under the role of the attention economy, the name of the yokai village is rapidly launched through various communication channels, and the target market of youth has a high degree of interest and recognition in its spirit.
This tells us that through the selection and positioning of the target market, a specific local culture is excavated, the development of characteristic cultural resources is realized, and then the elements of this characteristic culture are refined, and the cultural image that jumps out of reality is built through the development of art and cultural creation, which is vivid and diversified, so as to realize the symbolization of culture and create its own brand image. The villagers' recognition of the KUSO culture promoted by the enterprise is the recognition of the business philosophy, which has also become the key to the success of the operation of the monster village.
Kuma (left) and Eight Beans (right)
Initiative three: Diversification and industrialization of the "monster" image
On the basis of the symbolization of the monster legend culture, the monster culture and cultural and creative products are constantly excavated and developed, first of all, the monster image of the yokai village is not limited to dry hemp and eight beans, there are many types of yokai images, after all, the yokai village can not lack yokai, their cultural and creative art design inspiration comes from anime stories, such as long-nosed tengu, seven-eyed door blocker, sake ghost, some from the local traditional stories, such as some mountain gods and mountain demons, yokai image diversification. Through the interpretation and artistic treatment of different perspectives, the image of the monster demon god formed is different but does not feel terrible, and the overall tone is young and funny. In addition, the cultural creativity based on the funny KUSO has also been applied to various traditional industries, and the operation of popular local snacks, gifts and hotels has developed rapidly, and the industrialization transformation of quantity and quality has been guaranteed. The participants in the operation of Youkai Village have basically realized the large-scale operation of professional division of labor and mutual assistance in these three major industries.
A high-spirited commercial street
(1) Cultural and creative snack industry
In terms of cultural snacks, you can fully feel the style of the yokai village, and the scene of daily queues for hot purchases also shows the attractiveness of yokai culture into the snack industry. The appeal comes from three aspects: the material, the shape and the naming are all designed according to the KUSO positioning. First, the personality KUSO of the material can be used as an example of the most popular "biting cat bread" in the monster village. The biting cat is a well-known perennial herb in Xitou, with sharp spiny hairs, which can be painful when touched, and it takes a day or two for the pain to clear, and it can be relieved by applying it with Amonia or urine. But at the same time, the fresh leaves of the biting cat are mashed into juice to treat venomous snake bites, and Europeans also use it to treat diabetes. Its leaves can be eaten after boiling, and have the effect of invigorating blood, dispelling wind and relieving pain. Therefore, the baker of the monster village creatively combined such a peculiar plant with salmon and corn as ingredients to add to the bread production, and directly named it "biting cat bread". The naming and materials are in line with the KUSO positioning of the monster village, attracting tourists from the monster village to wait in long lines to buy. Second, the representative of the KUSO style in the shape is "yokai ice cream", which is different from the common white and pink ice cream, which is half orange and half black, and the color is quite abrupt (of which orange is cantaloupe, black is bamboo charcoal). However, under the abrupt color, it produces a sweet and non-greasy high-quality taste, and almost everyone has a hand. Third, snacks with the cultural personality of the monster village KUSO can be seen everywhere. For example, in the Qiqu Mountain King Bun Shop, the buns with different fillings are named "Mountain Buns/ Taiwan Buns/ Mainland Buns/ Grains with Buns", as well as eye-eyed wheat noodles, demon chicken, black heart shop, demon eight stir-fry, dry ma ka noodles and so on.
Yokai Delicious Cafeteria
Monster Village Hotel
(2) Cultural and creative gift industry
Cultural and creative souvenirs with the charm of yokai culture are also an important industry in yokai villages. Although it is also a gift of hanging ornaments, cups, piggy banks, hand puppets, pastries, candies, and liquor, like snacks, it is unique in its naming, shape and use of materials. More representative ones such as god barrel shortbread, monster umbrella and so on.
(3) Cultural and creative hotel industry
Kuso Bunka Inn is the most important property in yokai village, and it is directly named after "Kumakan" and "Yakudokan". The beds, televisions, cups, and wall bathrooms in the hotel are all made of kuma, croton, or cute yokai images, reflecting the strong KUSO positioning. The successful industrialization of special snacks, gifts and hotels in Yokai Village is based on the culture of yokai legends, supplemented by creative means, adhering to the consistent KUSO funny positioning, accurately impressing the target market of young people.
This has a lot of enlightenment for us to carry out the creation of art revitalization of the countryside, art and culture "creativity" in the process of realizing the revitalization of the monster village is extremely necessary, the choice of the monster legend of this cultural resource to develop the behavior itself is a huge creativity, the selection of the monster legend cultural resources challenges the traditional Chinese philosophy of pursuing auspiciousness (but can not be contrary to it), the "monster" and "demon god" these elements to achieve the old and new, with unusual thinking to achieve creativity, and with modern artistic techniques to express it It has created its own village IP - "Monster Village", which has successfully attracted the attention of the younger generation. Through the creative use and meticulous management of artistic and cultural resources, the commercial value of the "monster" attention economy has been continuously explored.
Yokai Village souvenir
Initiative 4: Centralized management of business districts, open operation, and joint development of cultural and creative products
Let's start with centralized management. The operation of the business circle of youkai village adopts the mode of free application and centralized management, and the hotels, hotels, restaurants and shops that apply for settlement and investment in scenic spots are not loose and separate business methods, but are uniformly managed by the Mingshan Forest Hall, and the manager carefully plans the "business circle design + business circle operation + business circle promotion" of the monster village, grasps the unified development direction of the entire business circle, and the cultural products and shop operations developed by the villagers must comply with the basic style of the KUSO culture of the monster village. Thus maintaining the sustainable development of the cultural and creative personalized characteristics of kuso business districts. Then let's talk about open operations. On the one hand, the business district is fully open to tourists through the "no charge" open model, which gets rid of the constraints of general tourist spots, tourists can visit this cultural village without spending a penny, but the vast majority of tourists here will not be able to help but pay for shopping, and the result of free is an endless stream of tourists and consumption. On the other hand, the hotels and hotels in the business district belong to the same group, but most of the shops are open to investors, as long as they can comply with their centralized management requirements, youkai village welcomes creative merchants from all over the world to sell and invest in goods, which also attracts many talented entrepreneurs to settle in, bringing more exciting yokai ideas.
Development effectiveness
Youkai Village has created an artistic mountain town market, attracting a large number of customers and creating great purchasing power, while local villagers have shared this market for free, and they have become members of the shared "Yokai Welfare" by selling cultural and creative products, opening characteristic homestay services, and forming community tour guides. At the same time, the commercial benefits of Yokai Village have stimulated the development of "me too" in neighboring village communities, which will enable more yokai cultural tourism projects to appear in this mountainous area, thus promoting the development of the entire Lugu Township into an upgraded version of KUSO cultural and creative groups. While enjoying creative arts and market resources, local villagers "wisdom feeding" enterprises through the development of cultural and creative products, "resource feeding" through the operation of cultural and creative shops, and "scale feedback" through the development of surrounding projects have in turn provided wisdom, resources (funds, manpower), scale effects, etc. for the further development of youkai villages, expanding the scope of dissemination of youkai village culture, and forming their own regional IP.
Xitou Monster Village has been awarded the "Creative Life Career Certification" from the Ministry of Economy, Lin Zhiying, general manager of the Xitou Monster Village Theme Hotel, said that in addition to making the Monster Village a cultural and creative center, the village chief Lin Zhiying is more adhering to the spirit of careful management, brain design, and return to the local area, combining artistic techniques and local tourism industry, changing and enriching the appearance and tourism connotation of Xitou scenic spots in Xitou, leading the team to dedicate wholeheartedly, give back to Lugu Xitou, enhance competitiveness and get a number of affirmations, becoming a model in the industry, known as the representative of nantou County's cultural and creative industry.
One village and one product research group of agricultural planning and design institute of China Agricultural University
Agricultural Planning Service Platform of China Agricultural University
Agricultural Planning and Design Institute of China Agricultural University