The author 丨 no two
Editor丨Nuts
Recently, many netizens found that Nai Xue's tea shop has quietly changed its appearance.
From the small red book sent by a netizen in Nanning, Guangxi, it can be seen that on the front of a local store, the iconic Japanese hiragana "の" in the previous Naixue's tea logo was replaced with the Chinese character "of", and the English "NAYUKI" also became Chinese pinyin "NAIXUE", and netizens even suspected that they had encountered a cottage store.
In response, the person in charge of Nai Xue's tea responded to this, saying that this is an upgrade of the brand, and will start to replace all stores nationwide in December, and the new store will only have this name: "Nai Xue's tea".
I wanted to use the identity of Japanese products to get along with consumers, but I didn't expect to be estranged in exchange. Nai Xue's tea is now in a showdown, no longer pretended, I am a Chinese brand.
Going to "の" and "staying" seems to be a word difference, but in fact all Japanese elements in Nai Xue's tea brand are removed, that is, Nai Xue has made up her mind to tear off the label of "pseudo-Japanese". And many "pseudo-Japanese" brands like Nai Xue's tea have also embarked on the road from "pseudo-Japanese" to "localization".
1
From pseudo-Japanese to national tide
In fact, Nai Xue's tea name change has long been paved, and its affiliated "Shenzhen Pindao Catering Management Co., Ltd." began to apply for a series of "NAIXUE" trademarks as early as June this year.
Although the brand announced that it only started the nationwide logo upgrade activity in December, the new stores in Nanning, Shenzhen and other regions have already used the new logo, and the headshot of the brand's self-operated flagship store has also been replaced.
For a long time, although Nai Xue's tea has never claimed to be a Japanese brand, the Japanese elements in the logo and VI, and the decoration style of the Japanese trend, all give consumers the recognition of this Japanese brand.
Over the past few years, Nai Xue's tea has continued to open stores in high-end business districts, and its high-end market positioning and eye-catching design style have made it quickly out of the circle in the fierce tea drinking track to become the "first stock of new tea drinks", and was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in June 2021, which shows its ability to absorb gold, and the brand style of "pseudo-Japanese" has also been certified by the market.
However, Nai Xue's tea is ambiguous in terms of brand culture positioning. Over the years, its founder Peng Xin has explained more than once in public that "Naixue" is only her early screen name, and its brand vision is to let consumers feel the charm of Chinese tea culture, which actually shows the founder's strategy of wanting to take advantage of the "national tide" east wind to play the emotional card.
Nai Xue's first store in Japan did not officially open until July 2021, during which it held high the banner of "promoting and carrying forward Chinese tea culture" but was ridiculed by netizens, who were ridiculed by the group as "selling patriotic feelings under the name of Japanese".
After that, Nai Xue's tea was repeatedly searched for because of food safety issues, and the criticism of "pseudo-Japanese" was repeatedly mentioned by netizens every time. Although Nai Xue's tea does not use many Japanese elements at the product and brand level, these "hidden dangers" are still a time bomb planted by the brand.
Today, Nayuki's tea has changed its usual style of high-profile marketing and does not say anything about "de-Japaneseization", which shows its efforts to minimize the influence of "pseudo-Japanese". And in Nai Xue's tea action, it is difficult to say whether it has seen the lessons of several other "pseudo-Japanese" brands overturning.
2
Multiple "pseudo-Japanese" brands overturned
If Nai Xue's tea is still just a "edge" Japanese brand, MINISO is crazy to touch porcelain under the name of "Japanese companies".
Not only its logo, store decoration, and the products in the store are close to the past Japanese style, with a clear sense of Japanese brand Uniqlo and MUJI, MINISO also directly writes "FROM JAPAN" and "Japanese Lifestyle Brand" on many store posters, blurring the boundary between "Japanese lifestyle" and "Japanese brand", and using the information gap to guide consumers to "Japanese brand" on association.
After being repeatedly picked up by netizens as a solid Guangzhou enterprise, MINISO has become a thousand fingers, and its iconic red and white logo has been criticized by the outside world as a copycat version of Uniqlo.
On July 25 this year, MINISO staged another wave of commotion, its Spanish Instagram account posted a tweet introducing the newly listed "Princess series doll blind box" series of toys, but when promoting one of the Chinese cheongsam dolls, it was incorrectly translated as "Japanese geisha", which was pointed out by netizens not only did not correct the error, but the official customer service also replied with a smiley face symbol in confusion.
The incident caused heated discussions and was quickly searched. Less than a month later, a netizen who claimed to have worked in MINISO broke the news that the employee rules of MINISO stores stipulated that Chinese songs were not allowed to be played in the store, which once again caused netizens to indignate.
At the same time, the media also exposed that at the signing ceremony of MINISO's cooperation with foreign companies such as Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria, in the presence of the founder, the Japanese flag was actually hung on the table. A series of "death" behaviors have brought a severe public opinion crisis to MINISO, and the consequences are also reflected in the capital market. In just two days, MINISO's share price fell 10.34%.
On August 18 this year, MINISO finally issued an apology statement on its official Weibo, apologizing for its use of "Japanese designer brands" as a marketing selling point, and announcing that it would completely complete all brand "de-Japaneseization" rectification by March 2023, while repeatedly claiming that it is a genuine local Chinese company.
At this point, MINISO's behavior of touching porcelain Japanese companies for many years has finally come to an end.
Similar to MINISO's and Nayuki's tea, the Japanese brand of touching porcelain is also a "circle-breaking" weapon of Genki Forest. The Japanese minimalist packaging design, coupled with a huge "Ki" character on the bottle, and the small print "Produced by Genki Forest of Japan National Co., Ltd." behind the bottle, all help it quickly dominate the domestic sugar-free beverage market.
In this regard, the marketing department of Genki Forest also frankly admitted that in the early days, they focused on Japanese style because young people liked two-dimensional and Japanese culture at that time, their preferences were there, and as young people's likes diversified, they also had to adjust their brand strategy.
Today, Genki Forest has also changed the "ki" on the packaging to "qi", and the head and Nai Xue's tea are the same: to upgrade the brand and recreate the image of "domestic products". In July, Genki Forest announced that it would launch a new product "Genki Coke", which confronted Coca-Cola head-on in the name of domestic Coke, engaged in "patriotic feelings", and gradually eliminated Japanese genes.
In addition to these emerging brands, it is not uncommon for some established national brands to overturn when playing the "Japanese" concept. Last year, Nongfu Spring launched a "dawn white peach flavored sparkling water", and claimed that the dawn white peach it used was "produced in Fukushima Prefecture" in publicity, but ignored that Fukushima is the location of Japan's nuclear wastewater leakage, and was immediately denounced by netizens.
Afterwards, Nongfu Spring slapped his face at the speed of light, saying that there were no ingredients imported from Fukushima in the ingredients, but this statement was not forgiven by netizens.
The accident of several major brands constantly overturning also shows that in today's consumer environment, the strategy of brands blindly approaching the Japanese system and hoping to create a high-end and high-end brand image is no longer easy to use.
3
Success is also Japanese, defeat is also Japanese
Japanese marketing has made great contributions to brands quickly getting out of the circle in the new consumer field. As a developed country adjacent to China, Japan has a great influence on young people in many aspects, such as culture and lifestyle.
Around 2018, Chinese people's respect for Japanese products has reached the extreme, from Japanese toilets, rice cookers, cosmetics, eyebrow trimmers, etc. The Japanese minimalist design style, aesthetic art, and the spirit of "ingenuity" adhered to in Japanese products are very conducive to the brand to establish its own brand characteristics.
Japanese goods, in the minds of Chinese consumers at that time, represented a more refined and high-class lifestyle, and these coincided with the overall social trend of young people at that time. Egoism, her economy, celibate economy... All came into being at this time.
Domestic brands directly copy Japanese brands, which cater to the psychological trend of young people, outlining a high-end high-grade life scene for young people, and the prices of these brands are often much lower than the normal Japanese prices, so once launched, they are very popular, helping brands quickly locate their target customers' circles and consumer portraits, and efficiently have a large number of fans.
With the continuous improvement of China's international influence, the willingness of Chinese people to consume tends to be rational, the filter of foreign big brands gradually dissipates, and the national tide begins to blow in the field of consumption, and high-quality domestic products are becoming more and more popular. Young people are no longer superstitious about the real foreign big brands, not to mention the "pseudo-Japanese series" with the name of foreign brands.
The Japanese-style gene that once helped the brand out of the circle has now become the original sin of the brand, especially when the brand is deeply involved in the turmoil of product quality, it will be repeatedly mentioned every time, and labels such as "fake foreign devil" and "big brand copycat" have become a stain that these brands do not want to mention, making the brand more difficult to break free from the crisis.
This time, several "pseudo-Japanese" brands have successively carried out "de-Japaneseization" actions, and called it "brand upgrade", which can be regarded as the reflection of domestic brands as a whole, and also shows the change of the entire social value orientation.
But how much can these renames and surnames do to save brand performance; If the product power cannot keep up, how far the marketing-driven brands can go is actually another question mark.