20,000 is the number of new products that emerge in China's FMCG market every year, but most of these new products are drowned in the tide of the times, and few can run.
Among these new products, one new product is particularly eye-catching, and it is Moutai ice cream.
On May 29, the first anniversary of Moutai ice cream, Ding Xiongjun, chairman of Moutai Group, announced the report card of the first anniversary of Moutai ice cream: as of May 28, the cumulative sales of Moutai ice cream were nearly 10 million cups.
Category crossovers are common, but few really do well. Why is Moutai ice cream so successful?
01■ A two-way rush between categories, why can Moutai and ice cream go together? After thousands of years of ups and downs, baijiu needs a new story.
For Chinese, the meaning of wine is by no means ordinary, and the profound meaning of "etiquette" and "love" is contained in the intertwining of ideas, and deeply affects people's spiritual world. When the cup is changed, it is not only the wine in the glass that flows, but also the friendship of people. "Calling each other through the door, there is wine to drink", "Come late and want snow, can drink a glass of nothing", people are allegorical to wine, borrowing wine lyrically.
However, everything in the world is one and the same, and the long history and rich meaning have certainly given baijiu a decisive cultural status, and under the rapid changes of the times, the excessive cultural imprint has become a shackle on baijiu. "Too old-school", "not fashionable", "don't like the wine table culture"... The image formed subtly makes the younger generation reject liquor thousands of miles away.
According to a survey launched by Consumer Reports in 2022, only 6.8% of young consumers aged 18-34 said they "like baijiu and drink it often", and 13.8% said they "haven't tried baijiu yet".
This phenomenon is undoubtedly deplorable. If we strip away the cultural meaning attached to the wine and return to the wine itself, we will find that the mellow taste of the liquor is irresistible.
The tension between modernity and tradition is vividly reflected in baijiu, and ice cream also stands at a key historical node, waiting for a leap from functional value to emotional value.
In the early 90s of last century, China's local ice cream began to manufacture on a larger scale, and with the rapid development of the food industry, and thanks to the development of foreign brands in China, the mainland ice cream industry market expanded rapidly. According to data from the China Green Food Association, the market size of the ice cream industry in mainland China is expected to exceed 160 billion yuan in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 10% in the past six years.
What drives the rapid expansion of China's ice cream market is the dual logic of both quantity and quality. On the one hand, the per capita annual consumption of ice cream in China has increased from 1 liter in 1997 to 4 liters today; On the other hand, more and more consumers are willing to pay for higher quality, fresher and more interesting products.
We see that it is no longer limited to the traditional square sticks, cup-shaped, biscuit-shaped, cultural and creative new forms of ice cream are emerging one after another, sweetness and milk taste are no longer the only ice cream and ice cream, and various flavors can produce wonderful chemical reactions with ice cream.
Behind such an industry reality, there is a transmutation of ice cream consumer value: from the basic relief of heat and coolness to the source of emotional happiness, ice cream no longer only has functional value, its emotional value is equally important:
Whether it's social currency on holiday dates, snacks at home leisure, or rewards after hard work, ice cream has become a carrier for consumers to delight themselves.
At the same time, looking back at the history of ice cream, we will find that fusion can be described as a major gene of ice cream.
According to records, the origin of ice cream can be traced back to the second century BC, when Chinese creatively mixed rice and milk in a dish and then frozen in snow; The prototype of modern ice cream originated from a recipe brought back to Italy by Marco Polo, a smoothie mixed with a small amount of milk and puree.
Ice cream is born in fusion, and fusion will also inject a new era attribute into it, Moutai ice cream is a living example. The mellow aroma of Moutai and the frankincense of ice cream are intertwined, which not only finds a breakthrough path for the rejuvenation of baijiu, but also makes the emotional value of ice cream achieve a qualitative leap.
It can be said that the "marriage" between the two categories of liquor and ice cream is the result of a two-way rush, and Moutai keenly captures the category trend and promotes this integration.
02■ Entering the spiritual world of young people, why do they have a soft spot for Moutai ice cream?
From the perspective of category alone, it is still not enough to fully explain the pursuit of Moutai ice cream among young people, because many products that follow the category trend may not be successful, the core reason is that they substitute the user's perspective and gain insight into the needs of users with deep empathy.
The reason why Moutai ice cream can achieve such outstanding market results is precisely because it steps on the consumption psychology of young people, thus building an emotional bridge between tradition and modernity.
The first test is the ability to see the essence through phenomena. Although, as mentioned above, only a small percentage of young people say they love baijiu, does this mean that young people "hate baijiu"? This may seem like this, but once we look deeper into the consumption needs of young people, we will find that this is not the case.
Business people and people over 35 years old generally love Moutai because of its elegance and mystery, because Moutai can highlight its pursuit of quality, meet cultural needs, and integrate into the social circle, gaining community recognition and self-satisfaction.
Therefore, it is not difficult to see that Moutai fundamentally meets the multi-dimensional needs of people's spiritual level, and these needs are things that human beings eternally pursue regardless of generation and race.
In this sense, young people have the emotional foundation to love Moutai. The data also proves this:
According to the survey, 21.2% of the young people interviewed aged 18-34 said that "baijiu is a traditional culture in China, and it will be drunk on most occasions", and 11.5% said that "people around them drink baijiu more, and they often drink baijiu driven by the atmosphere"; Among the young people who drink baijiu, Moutai has won the love of the most young consumers with 37.2% of the brand choice.
So why are so many young people reluctant to try baijiu? On the surface, it seems to be because of the stereotype on baijiu, but the more fundamental reason is that young people have a more self-centered consumption psychology and consumption behavior, which is difficult to be satisfied under the traditional way of drinking baijiu.
A clear example of this is young people's understanding of "pleasing others" and "pleasing oneself".
Traditional wine culture emphasizes pushing glasses and raising glasses to each other, the core of which is "pleasing people", while the new generation of young people is tired of pleasing others and emphasizing pleasing themselves.
According to a survey by the Communication University of China, fun is a factor that 84% of Gen Z consider when consuming, ranking first among all consumption purposes.
This is reflected in drinking, that is, young people want to drink in their own comfortable way, they do not like to be preached, do not like to please and obey, desire is the manifestation of self-awareness, desire is the bragging of character.
According to the survey conducted by NetEase Reading, more than eighty percent of young people prefer "light drinking", they prefer hazy, lazy slightly drunk, more than seventy percent are willing to have a glass of wine when they are happy, and solo drinking has also become an important drinking scene.
In this way, the proportion of Kweichow Moutai wine added by 1.6%-2% of Moutai ice cream can just meet the needs of the younger generation for light drinking, and it is more relaxed and casual to hold the ice cream cup.
The contrast between the thickness of the liquor and the lightness of the ice cream can just meet the desire of young people for personality openness, and the integration of multiple elements also alludes to the richness and inclusiveness of young people's personalities, and this is the key to the success of Moutai ice cream, and the price of about 66 yuan is also acceptable.
Further, Moutai ice cream helps the younger generation achieve self-identity. Undoubtedly, this is an era of multicultural coexistence and intermingling, and in this context, the ultimate propositions of "who am I", "where do I come from" and "where am I going" are even more difficult to answer.
But in terms of consumption trends, we see a clear context: the data shows that eighty percent of Chinese shopping carts are domestic products, and the per capita consumption level of domestic products after 90 ranks first among all generations.
This means that after the impact of imported culture, the younger generation still retains its own cultural subjectivity. As cited above, 21.2% of young people agree that "baijiu is a traditional culture of China", while modern ice cream is more a product of the West, through Moutai ice cream, a product that integrates East and West, young people can confidently complete the confrontation with imported culture, and finally achieve self-identity in collision and integration.
It not only grabs the stomach of young people, but also enters the hearts of young people, which is the mystery of Moutai ice cream capturing young people.
03■What inspiration does the success of Moutai ice cream have for us?
As mentioned above, tens of thousands of new products emerge in China's FMCG market every year, but most of these innovative products become "cannon fodder", let alone become phenomenal items like Moutai ice cream.
Moutai's brand appeal is difficult to replicate, but the successful innovation case of Moutai ice cream is very inspiring.
First, seek disruptive opportunities in category transformation. Cross-category innovation is a hot innovation direction in recent years, but not all categories can be organically combined. The reason why Moutai ice cream can explode is because there is a combination point in the development context of liquor and ice cream, rather than because of simple "curiosity" or "contrast".
Only by deeply understanding the logic of category change, grasping consumer trends, and daring to break through the routine can we find opportunities to subvert categories and open up a new path.
Second, explore the depth of humanity from the user's psychology. Users are living people, not cold research data, not boring labels, their consumption behavior contains more profound consumer psychology and emotional needs. Only by exploring the subtleties, finding the most itchy or painful points of the user, and innovating based on this, can we impress the user and hit the heart.
Third, capture the pulse of the times amid the noise of the crowd. An era will give birth to an enterprise that belongs to an era, but the wheel of time rolls forward, and enterprises need to pierce the fog of the future, not only manage the things in front of them, but also see the future direction. Undoubtedly, young people have become the strongest voice of the current era, the main consumption force of the new generation, and the consumer group that all enterprises cannot ignore.