In the era of the rise of domestic products, how much room for growth will the brand upgrade of Li Ziyuan bring to it?
A bottle of milk has been selling well for nearly 30 years, and Li Ziyuan can be said to have mastered the "traffic password".
Author|Mu Jiujiu
Editor|Huang Xiaojun
Source|Deep Krypton New Consumption [ID: xinshangye2016]
Cover image|Plum Garden
"Generation Z" is setting off a new round of domestic consumption.
As the main force of the new generation of consumption, they have completely different consumption habits from their predecessors, and their consumption concepts are becoming more and more diversified, and they are more willing to pay for creative, personalized and aesthetic products, and their unique cultural confidence also makes them more favorable to domestic products. Based on this, long-established brands such as White Rabbit, Jianlibao and Tongrentang have taken advantage of the situation to embrace young groups and try to polish the "new color" of the brand.
Just recently, the veteran domestic Li Ziyuan also launched a brand upgrade activity and held the "2023 Li Ziyuan Super Brand Conference" in Hangzhou.
As a long-established enterprise, since its establishment in 1994, Li Ziyuan has gradually developed from an inconspicuous small factory to a leader in the dairy industry in Zhejiang Province, and then become a national classic sweet milk brand recognized by consumers across the country. Its popular item "Sweet Milk Milk Drink Series" has won the love of generations of young audiences with its unique taste.
Old domestic products embrace a new generation of consumer groups, how many opportunities will Li Ziyuan brand upgrade bring to them?
01
Li Ziyuan's "Long Red Code"
Stick to the youth consumer group
A bottle of milk has been selling well for nearly 30 years, and Li Ziyuan can be said to have mastered the "traffic password".
In 1994, Li Ziyuan was born in Jinhua City, known as the "hometown of dairy cows in the south". Once launched, its sweet milk milk beverage series products have been loved by the majority of consumers, with annual sales increasing at a rate of more than 50% or even doubling, all the way to become the head enterprise of Zhejiang milk beverage industry, and gradually grow into a leading brand of sweet milk milk beverage in China.
In 2021, Li Ziyuan was listed on the A-share of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and became the "first sweet milk stock". In recent years, its revenue has maintained a growth trend for six consecutive years, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20%. Among them, the "sweet milk drink", which is a popular item, is loved by countless young people.
According to Sullivan's survey data, according to the retail sales volume of Chinese mainland sweet milk drinks in 2022 ("tons"), the sales volume of Liziyuan sweet milk milk drinks reached 233,000 tons, with a market share of 46.6%, ranking first in the Chinese mainland sweet milk drink track.
In the most volatile consumer goods industry, the reason why plum garden sweet milk can be long-lasting may be found in the Product-Market Fit (PMF) model - to find the best fit between product and market.
In the "PMF pyramid model", there are a total of 5 layers, each element is a layer of the pyramid, and is directly related to its upper and lower layers. From bottom to top, the 5 layers are: your target users, your users' unmet needs, your value proposition, the product's feature set, and your user experience.
The target user at the bottom is naturally the basis for the brand's growth from 0 to 1. Xu Zheng, former vice president of GE (China) Co., Ltd., mentioned that target users are the key target; Well-known investor Wei Zhe also believes that women around 25 years old are the focus of the consumer market, which are typical target user positioning.
On Li Ziyuan, its target users are young consumer groups. As early as 2009, Li Ziyuan had two "centering", one is the product centering of "focusing on the milk beverage market", and the other is the customer centering of the "young consumer group", that is, the choice of target customers.
For a long time, Li Ziyuan has remained steadfast and constantly growing and seeking breakthroughs. It is precisely for this reason that under the market positioning and guidance of "young consumer groups and youth leisure, nutrition and convenience", Li Ziyuan's "sweet milk drink" has become the youth memory of generations of young people and a sweet companion in young people's lives.
At present, in the face of the new demand generated by the new generation of consumers, Li Ziyuan, the "companion" of the young consumer group, is constantly upgrading through insight into the market and the characteristics of the young group, in order to better suit the young consumer group.
02
Embrace young consumers
Keep up with consumers
There is a discussion of "crowd strategy" circulating in the new consumer space. According to this view, brands should select a targeted group of people and then improve the experience of the product for them around the needs of this specific group. At the same time, through refined user operation and leading brand content, strengthen the emotional connection between brands and users.
The "2023 Li Ziyuan Super Brand Conference" is a brand strategy and image upgrade made by Li Ziyuan around new consumer groups.
In response to the aesthetic preferences and consumption tendencies of the new generation of consumer groups, Li Ziyuan not only updated the brand role and super symbol "Li Ziyuan classmates" to realize the upgrading and renewal of the whole product packaging, but also released the latest brand slogan "Youth is not sweet?" Drink a bottle of plum garden! ", emphasizing the close connection between youth and sweetness and the brand.
Philip Kotler, the "father of modern marketing", proposed in "Marketing Revolution 4.0" that based on big data, community and value marketing, enterprises will shift the focus of marketing to how to actively interact with consumers, respect the values of consumers as the "subject", and let consumers participate more in the creation of marketing value.
Brands want to deepen their emotional connection with their target audience, and it is important to export values through brand content and resonate with users.
On this basis, Li Ziyuan chose to cooperate with QQ Music, a music platform popular with young people, to jointly open the "2023 First Li Ziyuan Sweet Girls Selection Competition" to jointly create an IP for long-term campus competitions.
In addition, based on the core circle of QQ Music - campus, Li Ziyuan also launched the country's first "Girl Sweet Star Program" with the former, committed to discovering and cultivating sweet stars.
It is worth mentioning here that from the perspective of consumer consumption habits, the brand recognition generated by people in college will continue to graduation, even after marriage and childbirth, and the self-spread of college campuses is wider, which is conducive to allowing young consumer groups to participate in Li Ziyuan's brand growth plan and continue to collide with new vitality.
In addition to this core circle focus, after this brand upgrade, Li Ziyuan will also take the central government as a TV platform, and carry out online and offline brand communication in more than 100 cities, 6 provincial capital subway stations, 40 urban high-speed rail stations and nearly 400 buses in 80 cities across the country, while cooperating with new media channels and new gameplay, making Li Ziyuan's new brand image deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
03
Brand effect continues to empower
The vitality of old domestic products is still there
Nielsen statistics show that from 2018 to 2022, the overall market of liquid milk is growing, especially in the rural market, showing huge demand space, and constantly accelerating the trend of sinking dairy products.
Among them, milk-containing beverages with rich and nutritious tastes with the dual attributes of dairy products and soft drinks have the most obvious growth, and have now developed into an important category with a higher growth rate than dairy products and soft drinks.
According to the statistics of Toubao Research Institute, in 2022, the market size of milk-containing beverages is expected to be 136.17 billion yuan, with a CAGR of 7.41% from 2017 to 2021. With the increase in people's consumption level and the growth of demand for flavored beverages, it is expected that the dairy beverage industry will maintain a compound annual growth rate of 5.4% in the next five years, and the market size is expected to reach 161.23 billion yuan in 2026.
As an enterprise that has been deeply engaged in milk-containing beverages for a long time, Li Ziyuan has developed into the first in this sub-industry.
Behind the outstanding achievements is Li Ziyuan's corporate values of focusing on the milk-containing beverage industry for 29 years, focusing on and professionally doing one thing well and doing a good job of a bottle of milk.
This value is first and foremost reflected on the supply side. In recent years, in line with the upgrading and development of the food and beverage consumer market, Li Ziyuan has built 5 production bases in Jinhua, Zhejiang Longyou, Jiangxi Shanggao, Yunnan Qujing and Henan Hebi, and initially completed the national industrial strategic layout.
Taking Longyou Liziyuan production base as an example, the base has advanced fully automatic production equipment, which can reach an annual production capacity of 120,000 tons of beverages and dairy products, 20 million PE bottles, 36 million PP and PET bottles and 50 million cartons.
Secondly, this value is also reflected in the channel side. Through the combination of distribution and direct sales, Li Ziyuan has achieved all-round expansion and extension in chain stores, shopping malls, supermarkets, schools, breakfast and other channels, and improved the market rate of products.
In addition, relying on independent research and development and technology introduction, Li Ziyuan's products continue to innovate and enrich product categories based on market research and consumer demand.
At the same time, combining different channels, Li Ziyuan has also developed different products. The breakfast channel is mainly 260g tray of sweet milk, while the school channel mainly promotes 450ml sweet milk and 225ml sweet milk to meet differentiated needs.
The accumulation of these supply, channel and consumption ends directly empowers the brand, forms a brand effect, and establishes a good brand reputation.
At present, Li Ziyuan, which has become a well-known domestic product, has not stopped, on the one hand, it is upgrading its brand image to make it more suitable for young consumer groups, on the other hand, it is also constantly improving its back-end R&D and manufacturing capabilities and front-end marketing innovation capabilities, so as to build a century-old store and continue to innovate and develop.
In terms of front-end marketing innovation, Li Ziyuan has established a long-term cooperative relationship with the strategic brand marketing consulting company Hua & Hua to strengthen the investment in brand publicity and marketing activities; In terms of back-end R&D and manufacturing, Li Ziyuan is committed to attracting talents and strengthening R&D with the concept of "innovation and transcendence", and constantly carries out product innovation and technological innovation.
Powered by talents, technology and product innovation, Li Ziyuan, which closely follows the young consumer group, has more room for development in the future after brand upgrading.