Source: Brand Issues
In 2023, the consumer market has experienced a rollercoaster year.
At the beginning of the year, the pent-up consumer demand was instantly released, and business contacts suddenly became frequent, driving a wave of "optimism". At the same time, it will take time for market performance and consumer confidence to recover. After the release of the "pent-up" demand and the balance sheet of the company, the market performance will inevitably return to the "weak reality", that is, the business performance will not be as optimistic as everyone estimated at the beginning of the year.
As the most important promotion in the middle of the year and the whole year, 618 and Double 11, platforms, merchants and head anchors are competing for price, and even the platform will benchmark the head anchors, focusing on "cheaper than XXX". However, the extended pre-sale period and strong discounts have not been translated into "good news", and the increase in the e-commerce market has shifted from "shelf e-commerce" to live broadcast e-commerce and Pinduoduo.
In the past, the wind of new consumption weakened, the large amount of affordable old domestic products became favorites, revenge consumption was transformed into revenge savings in stages, and "replacement" became the main line of consumption, covering all aspects of clothing, food, housing and transportation.
During the eleventh period, the number of international tourists did not reach the level of the same period in 19, and the demand for domestic travel was strong, up four percentage points from the same period last year, and under the boom of special forces travel, Zibo barbecue, Tianjin diving uncle, Guizhou "village super & village BA" and Jingdezhen "speechless bodhisattva" and other domestic attractions frequently out of the circle.
Amplified to the macro environment, the era of continuous asset leverage and rapid growth has passed, and brand management has returned to a normalized growth environment, that is, diluted the price-earnings ratio through real operating profits. In the stages that span different cycles, both enterprises and individuals are maintaining sufficient cash flow, quickly reducing leverage, and balancing desires. It is an objective self-healing process.
Looking back at the consumption phenomenon in 2023, we have summarized the ten annual brand keywords, which are nodes, specific small trends, and string together the fundamentals of the market from point to point.
The most out-of-the-circle marketing event this year is none other than the "Sauce Latte" co-branded by Moutai and Luckin, which has gradually spread into a social issue.
From the early days, young people sighed that their first sip of Moutai came from "Sauce Latte", to the later stage, let the elders in the family taste "coffee" for the first time - to taste whether the "Moutai" in "Sauce Latte" is "authentic", and then to "Moutai escorts Feitian Moutai", "Everyone is rubbing Moutai", "Moutai is about to become cooking wine" and "Moutai stops all joint cooperation" and other topics have appeared on the hot search.
On the one hand, it is the social currency of middle-aged people, in order to let more young people drink Moutai, Moutai has begun to diversify its categories (wine chocolate, alcoholic drinks, stick ice cream and soft ice cream, etc.), and on the other side is "Coffee" of young people's "morning C and evening A", which focuses on flavored coffee and has a popular matrix such as "raw coconut latte, coconut cloud latte, Biluo Zhichun latte".
The other side of the sauce latte out of the circle is the co-branded enthusiasm of coffee and tea chain brands. In terms of the number of activities, the most co-branded is Nai Xue's tea, which has been co-branded 26 times this year, which can be called the model worker of the beverage co-branding, followed by Luckin Coffee and Lele Tea, with 15 and 13 times respectively.
In addition to the out-of-the-circle sauce latte, co-branded routes such as Manner&LV, Heytea &Fendi and other wealthy routes are also popular. Tea and coffee brands with offline store scale effects have truly realized "channel is media, product is content", and have increasingly become the core path for luxury brands to rejuvenate, while milk tea and coffee brands have also improved brand potential and consumption stickiness, and achieved brand differentiation in categories with serious homogenization.
Of course, the wealthy route is not the only way to get out of the circle, the "ashore" co-branding of Mixue Bingcheng and China Post, the co-branded model of Nai Xue's tea and "Fantesi Music Universe", focusing on Jay Chou's personal IP feelings, and the two-dimensional linkage between Luckin Coffee and "Cat and Mouse IP...... These co-branding hit different circle audiences, and also met the internal needs of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency".
But pay attention to everything. For example, Heytea's "Buddha Hey Tea Latte" touched sensitive religious topics, the complex activity rules and material aesthetics of Overlord Tea Ji caused dissatisfaction among fans of the original "Tomb Robbery Notes", and LOEWE and Spirited Away IP co-branded were accused of having no aesthetics...... Whether the brand positioning and image are consistent or complementary, whether the peripheral product design and quality are aesthetically pleasing, whether the image rate can be improved, how to set the threshold of marketing activities, whether the high-end image of luxury brands will be "diluted", etc., should be considered holistically, after all, once the decision is made, thousands of stores will be rolled out at the same time, and any small problems will be quickly amplified.
The AIGC (Artificial Intelligence Generated Content) scenario, which presents results to users in the form of chats, has sparked a global upsurge of attention to AIGC. In the latest disclosed financing information, OpenAI's valuation has also reached the $100 billion mark, second only to Musk's SpaceX in market value among unlisted companies in the United States.
In addition to the rising valuation of OpenAI, major platform companies have hoarded GPU computing power chips and launched their own general-purpose models, such as Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan, Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen, Tencent's Mixed Yuan and Byte's Doubao.
In specific brand marketing scenarios, AIGC is changing in terms of content production, personalized and accurate recommendations, and interaction methods.
In April this year, Blue Label completely stopped outsourcing expenditures, and with the blessing of "AIGC+IP (virtual IPs such as Su Xiaomei, K, and virtual national style music girl group Wuyin)", the net profit attributable to the parent company in the first three quarters increased by 847.94% year-on-year. Brands such as Zhongxuegao, Volvo, JD.com and Lenovo have all appeared on the street with AIGC commercials;
The package design AI provided by plug Co., Ltd. in Japan only requires users to upload materials, and can generate thousands of packaging designs in one hour, and calculate their popularity in 10 seconds. Through cooperation with a major Japanese food manufacturer, the sales volume of a certain beverage increased by 135% after changing the packaging;
Taobao, JD.com, Kuaishou, and Baidu continue to deploy AI customer service and AI shopping guides. JD Cloud launched ChatJD to lay out intelligent dialogue customer service, Taobao and Tmall launched the "AI Ecological Partner Program" to provide merchants with intelligent generative services in the fields of content, data and customer service, and Baidu, Baidu's e-commerce brand, launched new AI gameplay methods such as virtual shopping guide, AI shopping list, virtual live broadcast room, and AIGC grass planting......
On social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Citywalk has been recommended by many travel bloggers and lifestyle bloggers, attracting a lot of attention and followers. Regarding the understanding of "Citywalk = Walking the Bend", some netizens said: "Walking the bend is a park community at the doorstep, and pressing the road will also be a repetitive and familiar route, but CityWalk is completely purposeless physical and mental relaxation, an exploration of life in the unknown world, and a slow-paced romantic atmosphere. ”
In last year's keyword of the year, I took stock of one word - "relaxation". Citywalk, which focuses on finding a slow pace in a fast-paced city, is a concrete way for young people to return to a sense of relaxation.
According to Xiaohongshu's "2023 Annual Life Trend Observation Report", in 2023, topics related to "citywalk" will be viewed more than 2.1 billion times on Xiaohongshu, with a year-on-year increase of 140 times, and more than 3.7 million notes share stories related to "citywalk", with young people aged 24-33 being the main force of citywalk.
On the brand side, according to the data of the Mojing Insight Report, the top 10 product categories discussed in Citywalk include clothes, mobile phones, cameras and shoes, of which the clothing category accounts for a large proportion, accounting for 17.0%. Some tourist attractions, cafes, restaurants and other offline brand merchants have launched related themed routes and activities to attract tourists to participate by planning Citywalk.
The lululemon Align series uses CITYWALK's hot topics and activities to build brand momentum, and uses online promotions for Queen's Day and travel season to focus on transformation; Keep launched a CityWalk campaign called "Conservation of Heat" in Beijing, linking up with several food chain stores to focus on "sports is to eat better", and Xiaomi uses the urban humanities theme of City Walk to focus the lens of the new 13 Ultra in Chongqing #CityImage Slow Travel Project#;Danish footwear brand ecco teamed up with sports community CO-FUN to make a series of city walks in Shanghai, each time with a different theme route but eventually ending with an offline store......
This also reflects the ability of lifestyle to continue to ferment and get out of the circle in Xiaohongshu. The just-concluded Xiaohongshu WILL business conference shows that Xiaohongshu's "grass economy" is evolving in two directions: one is to make grass planting more efficient and certain, and the other is to transform the demand generated by grass planting.
Before and after the WILL conference, according to people familiar with the matter, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business this year has achieved remarkable results, and it is expected to achieve a net profit of $500 million, far exceeding the company's estimated profit of less than $50 million at the beginning of the year. From the ability to plant grass represented by the Citywalk lifestyle, to the acceleration of the completion of the closed loop of "planting grass and pulling weeds" in the commercialization of the community, to the influx of Zhang Xiaohui, Dong Jie and other exquisite female stars into Xiaohongshu's live broadcast, Xiaohongshu in 2023 has found its own rhythm on the path of commercialization.
This year's Black Friday in the United States has become the main battlefield for Chinese e-commerce platforms to go overseas.
SHEIN has led the fire to the full custody business model (the merchant gives the goods to the platform, the platform sells them, and the seller only needs to provide the goods), and TEMU, which shines in the Super Bowl, further develops it and then controls the price. During the Black Friday period, SHEIN, TEMU, AliExpress and tiktokshop will "roll" the Double 11 gameplay in the US market again. The ever-lengthening Black Friday activity cycle, the price advantage continues to attract price-sensitive consumers. In some categories, Amazon's discounted prices are higher than TEMU's daily prices.
In addition, during the event, TEMU played "as low as one discount", "$200 coupon" and "any 3 products for free" and other policies, many goods are sold at the price of "material fee"; tiktokshop also provides merchants with 50% discount subsidies; before this year's Black Friday, AliExpress Cainiao cross-border preferred warehouse stock increased by more than eight times year-on-year, most of which are shipped to countries covered by the "global 5-day delivery" service.
Under the impact of emerging platforms, many Amazon merchants have seen a decline in traffic and sales. And also for emerging platform merchants, the low-price strategy has also affected profits. The wind of double 11 involution finally blew to the other side of the ocean.
And whether it's SHEIN or up-and-comer TEMU, their success in the U.S. market began with a bill. The Trade Promotion and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, enacted in 2016, allows every legal or natural person in the United States to import $800 of goods duty-free per day. Cross-border e-commerce, especially low-value cross-border e-commerce such as SHEIN and Temu, fits this condition perfectly.
One of the most effective ways to spread the word is to repeat it consistently. Just as the "big mouth" Yu Chengdong shouted the slogan of "far ahead" at previous press conferences, it has become the "super label" of Huawei brands, especially consumer business brands. At this year's mate 60 series press conference, the discussion about whether the product uses self-developed Kirin chips continued to ferment, and then Andy Lau's endorsement of Huawei mate 60RS Extraordinary Master also rushed to the hot search. This popularity also extends to other consumer businesses, such as Huawei's press conference in the world of questions and intelligence, Yu Chengdong also shouted far ahead, and the number of bookings for related models has also risen.
For technology-based brands, new product launches have become the core event of the brand. Compared with decentralized social communication, Huawei's press conference is a typical central field, which is easier to form the perception of the brand's "leading position", firstly, the information transmission is one-way, and the audience passively accepts the information, and secondly, the "Huawei" and "far ahead" in the central field represent the industry status and authority, and can form a trust relationship, especially when expanding other businesses, such as Huawei's automotive business.
Finally, there is long-term, continuous repetition. As early as the 2020 Mate 40 press conference, Yu Chengdong shouted the slogan of being far ahead, and some media statistics showed that Yu Chengdong said "far ahead" 14 times in a press conference. The slogan is like a nail, and it needs to be continuously hit by the brand in the core scene in order to implant it into the minds of the audience, and accelerate the realization of consumption decisions with Huawei's national pride of "domestic technology brands breaking through the blockade".
From this point of view, Huawei is a combination of "domestic feelings" and advanced technology, such as BYD, new energy, drones, DJI, etc., all of which represent the identity of Chinese brands to occupy the head of the consumer technology subcategory, and can also stimulate brand identity.
Emotional value is moving out of the workplace context and into mass consumption. Good insights are often based on the "common divisor" of public sentiment.
Compared with the brand context of "education" and "leading", young people now prefer the brand of "Internet mouth". Just like Lele Tea's "One Punch! series" some time ago, through the exaggerated pictures and the copywriting of "Workers' Inner OS", a group of consumers said that they were very "up-to-the-top".
Correspondingly, those marketing behaviors that try to change or go against the preconceived notions of young people are very "subordinate".
I have previously compared and analyzed "Victoria's Secret" and "inside and outside". In essence, I think that raw materials, supply chain and technology are not too much, after all, China's OEM industry system is so perfect, not to mention the big category of women's underwear.
But the difference between the two lies in the emotional and value positioning, "Victoria's Secret" represents the "pleasing him" thinking, and the "perfect body" it emphasizes makes Victoria's Secret underwear become an "outerwear" (worn for others to see), and the feeling of "body anxiety" for women is "body anxiety". The "inside and outside" breaks the sexy label, from the design without steel rings to the concept of embracing all kinds of figures, conveying the thinking of "pleasing yourself".
This emotional value experience has three important meanings:
The brand is expressed by attaching various emotions (product design and communication materials);
Establish differentiation and resonate with consumers (break the traditional impression of the category and cater to the rigid needs of emotions);
The emotional value chain that guides them to generate consumption behaviors (to achieve consumption stickiness and emotional premium).
A brand is in a way that expresses its relationship with the world. How to maintain the logical self-consistency of young people's hearts and let them "go up" has become particularly important. The recent popularity of "crazy marketing" - "brands and workers 'go crazy' together" is the best example.
To reiterate, it is particularly important for brands to maintain the logical self-consistency of consumers' hearts, rather than increasing consumers' inner sense of conflict, when positioning emotional values. In addition to brand marketing, the significance of many live broadcast anchors is not only cost-effective products, but also the companionship of emotional value. This is also the reason why Dongfang Xiaosun caused public anger when he "dropped his mobile phone", "held a meeting" and criticized the "fan circle" in the Dongfang selection live broadcast room. And the chairman's sentence "Dong Yuhui is used for love" made Gaotu Jiapin win the favor of the "mother-in-law" and the public, and quickly achieved the achievement of 100,000 fans online, and the number of fans exceeded one million within 2 days.
Just as Brother Xiao Yang talked about two points when he recalled the reasons for his popularity: first, when others see my video, they will think of themselves, and second, after watching my video, fans will feel happy.
In the face of an uncertain market and the adjustment of stable income expectations for the future, the public has returned to rational consumption and enriched their savings.
Looking at savings first, the data shows that in the first 11 months, RMB deposits increased by 25.65 trillion yuan, an increase of 130.1 billion yuan year-on-year. In November, RMB deposits increased by 2.53 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 427.3 billion yuan. While savings levels remain high, growth has slowed. With the recent reduction in deposit rates, the level of savings will be further released.
Looking at the consumption side, the total retail sales of consumer goods in November were 4.25 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.1%, and the growth rate was 2.5 percentage points faster than that in October, rebounding for four consecutive months. From January to November, the total was 42.79 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.2%, and the growth rate was 0.3 percentage points faster than that from January to October. Compared with the growth rate in 2019, this year's consumption fundamentals are still rational and pragmatic.
Pinduoduo's market capitalization surpasses that of Alibaba, which may partially reflect the capital market's expectations for consumption. According to third-party statistics, in the past four quarters, JD Retail, which bets on the "consumption upgrade" route, has revenue growth rates of 7.6%, 0.7%, -1.2%, and 11.3%, while Pinduoduo has been 65%, 46.2%, 58.2%, and 66.3% respectively in the same period. On Xiaohongshu, there are also many people who share notes on how to find good things on the 1688 wholesale website.
Under the trend of rational consumption, consumers are not abandoning the "brand premium", but the unnecessary "brand premium", a large number of new consumer brands in the middle price band, focusing on consumption upgrading, have fallen into the trap of pseudo demand. And brands with the precipitation of mental assets are recovering market share.
For example, in the TOP10 beauty sales ranking on Double 11 in recent years, new domestic products that used to rise by relying on content dividends and channel dividends have gradually faded out of the list, while traditional brands such as L'Oreal, OLAY and Estee Lauder firmly occupy the forefront position.
"The market is a voting machine in the short term, and a weighing machine in the long term. "Similarly, in the transformation of the consumption cycle, brands with profitable growth and continuous appreciation of brand equity are more able to win in rational consumption. Internet celebrity brands that do not respect objective laws and grow savagely need to find new logical self-consistency and repositioning in addition to the story of "replacement".
The hottest check-in spot this year, Zibo barbecue must be on the list.
Its popularity is inseparable from the local support for the barbecue industry and the city's positioning to attract tourists from Jinan. The first wave of traffic to Zibo barbecue came from Shandong university students who pursued special forces travel, who poured into Zibo from Jinan and other cities in the province and shared the tourism pomp and circumstance on social media. They are the seed users of Zibo barbecue that are popular all over the country, and they drove Zibo to completely detonate during the May Day holiday.
Different from the relaxed and freewheeling feeling of Citywalk, the special forces tour focuses on a thorough and detailed travel plan, and a race against time to take photos and check in. Young people try to challenge the boundary between time and physical strength with the lowest economic cost, in exchange for the richest tourism and cultural experience, the core characteristics are "short time, many attractions, low cost, high efficiency", and have a clear result orientation - I have been here, I have seen, I feel, I have checked in.
According to the data of the "Douyin 2023 Summer Cultural Tourism Data Report", special forces have a strong role in driving the tourism market this summer, with more than 430,000 people choosing "special forces" tourism, an increase of 373% month-on-month. Under the "journey" of the special forces travel, the uncle of the diving of the Lion Forest Bridge in Tianjin, the village BA and village super in the southeast of Qiandong, Guizhou, and the "speechless Bodhisattva" in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, have all become Internet celebrity check-in points.
Work is getting more and more volatile, life is getting more and more stressful, and young people are using a special forces tour that seems a little "extreme", looking for a way to decompress with "work hard, play hard".
On the evening of September 11, Li Jiaqi said "which Li is expensive", like thunder, and blew up Huaxizi into a unit of measurement (one Huaxizi = 79 yuan), and also completely set off a "business war" about cost performance between old domestic goods.
It was the bee flower that started this "war" first.
In the video related to the Li Jiaqi incident, Bee Hua turned on the "fan absorption mode" in the message area - "I'm sorry, can I pick up fans weakly?". Others say so, it is estimated that it can't afford to make any splashes, but it is a bee flower that "has not changed the packaging for 36 years, and has only increased by 2 yuan in 10 years".
Surfing netizens found that in addition to the "sickle" of some new domestic products, there are also the "conscience" of old domestic products, and everyone flocked to the bee flower live broadcast room. In conjunction with the hot event, Bee Flower also released short videos such as "What can I buy here for 79 yuan" and "1 gram only sells for 0.02 yuan", and cooperated with the live broadcast room to put on the shelves three washing and care packages that are priced at 79 yuan and weigh about five and a half catties.
After so many years of being an "honest person", Bee Flower finally relied on "cheap management" and became a representative of conscientious domestic products. After the "Which Li is expensive" incident, Bee Flower broadcast live for 95 hours in a row. During this period of time, Bee Flower's official Douyin increased by 2.76 million fans, with an average of 30,000 per hour, and GMV exceeded 25 million yuan.
Topics such as #Bee Flower picks up boxes for delivery#, #Bee Flower production capacity is tight and out of stock# and #Bee Flower CEO's hair is proved to be proven# and other topics have also appeared on Weibo hot searches, and the topic reading volume has exceeded 100 million and has become a "basic exercise". Subsequently, old domestic products such as Vitality 28, Yu Meijing, Hongxing Erke and Spicy Prince joined the "business war" of domestic products.
Looking back, whether it is Li Jiaqi or Dong Yuhui, the road of IP growth itself is full of uncertainty and cannot be replicated. However, if the success of such top anchors is understood as a replicable certainty, and produces a kind of arrogance towards the IP or fans, it will form a huge reputation backlash. Under the stock competition, any head anchor or brand loses ground, and there will be a competition to quickly make up for it.
How popular was this year's concert?
According to data from the China Performance Industry Association, in the first three quarters of this year, the number of domestic performances reached 342,400, and the box office revenue was 31.541 billion yuan, an increase of 453.74% over the same period last year, far exceeding the level of the whole year of 2019. Beacon data shows that from January to October 2023, the music category accounted for less than 4 percent of the number of performances, and performances contributed more than 9 percent of the box office in the performance market.
In addition to the release of normal entertainment demand and the counter-cyclical nature of the entertainment industry, different cities have also given the green light to concerts, and then through "a concert brings fire to a city", driving consumer demand including tickets, hotels, travel tickets and catering. Jay Chou's Haikou concert attracted 154,600 spectators and achieved tourism revenue of 976 million yuan, while Xue Zhiqian's concert in Quzhou, for example, attracted 56,000 spectators, bringing 124 million yuan of tourism income and 690 million yuan of consumption to the local area.
Many brands are also out of the circle in the concert boom, such as Haidilao and Damai cooperation, fans can enter the store to enjoy an 88% discount on designated dishes by virtue of the "want to see" screenshot or concert ticket stub on the APP. At the end of some concerts, Haidilao also shouted the slogan "Haidilao free bus picks everyone up for hot pot, Haidilao is waiting for you in the wind and rain";
The crossover between Helena and TME, the "lady brand", extends from the online QQ music product end to the joint EDC at the Road to EDC electronic music tour party, and the 2023 EDC CHINA at the electronic music festival site, actively entering the circle by integrating electronic music elements, and establishing a sense of identity among the trendy young audience;
Yunnan Baiyao, which is a healing department, and Li Jian, who is full of healing singing, opened the online concert "Like the Sea" in the video, which is Li Jian's approach to nature again after the valley concert, and it is also another step taken by Yunnan Baiyao on the road to delivering healing......
Behind the concert economy, consumers are paying more and more attention to experiential consumption, paying attention to the personalized characteristics, emotional additions, cultural connotations, etc. of goods, and are eager to obtain energy from them. For example, the instant happiness brought by dopamine marketing, the free atmosphere brought by concerts, the relaxation and soothing brought by fragrances and perfumes, or the IP co-branded models and customized design models launched by various emerging consumer brands, all achieve emotional resonance with consumers by mining the connotation of IP.
"Cost-effective 'dopamine' acquired consumption" will become a new scenario.