When I was a kid watching TV dramas on CCTV.
As soon as the TV series reached the key plot, an advertisement for Arowana cooking oil 1:1:1 popped up.
Did you see big advertisements since you were a child, and you thought it was our own brand in China.
In fact, we are all wrong, just take a look at it, in fact, Arowana has always been a foreign brand.
After more than 30 years of advertising and marketing in China, it has become the No.1 in the edible oil industry, what tricks does Arowana use?
How did you "deceive" more than a billion Chinese?
Founder of Arowana
Everyone must have heard of Arowana, but you definitely don't know about Yihai Kerry.
Arowana is actually a brand of edible oil, and Yihai Kerry is the company to which Arowana belongs. The founders are Malaysia's Kwok Hok Nian and his nephew Kwok Kong Feng.
Guo Henian's ancestral home is Fujian Province, and his father came to Malaysia with his brothers in the early 20th century to do business.
At first, they worked as clerks, opened coffee shops, and finally founded non-staple food and oil stores.
married a woman of the same clan and gave birth to Guo Henian, Guo Henian was also deeply influenced by his father, and he has studied business since he was a child.
Later, Guo Henian, who was only 24 years old at the time, saw the opportunity to buy rice, flour, oil and other non-staple foods in Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia, and resold them, making a fortune and becoming the richest man in Malaysia.
Later, in the 70s of the 20th century, Guo Henian was optimistic about the mainland and Hong Kong, and he had great hopes for China's future development.
It spent a lot of money to buy several plots of land in Hong Kong and created Yihai Kerry's first company, which was the first step in preparing to set foot in China.
In the 80s of the 20th century, after it was determined that Hong Kong would return to the motherland in 1997, Guo Henian took this reassurance.
It is believed that Hong Kong's return to the motherland will certainly bring a different kind of economic development to the mainland.
The first bottle of Arowana
In 1991, Guo Henian, who has many years of experience in oil surface processing, invested in the purchase of equipment and greatly improved the factory's facilities, environment and production methods.
At that time, China's development was still relatively backward, and each household still issued rice and oil stamps according to the unit to buy grain.
The Chinese people at that time did not pay attention to hygiene and packaging, after all, it was only a few decades to transition from the era of eating tree bark to eating, and it was not easy for some to eat.
Guo Henian believes that this market space is very large, and there is a lot of oil and water that can make a lot of money.
Edible oil in plastic bottles is designed to be easy to buy, so you don't have to worry about the storage of oil, and it is also very convenient to pour it out.
This design shocked the Chinese people at that time, and there was still this form of rice flour oil that could be sold.
However, at that time, there was no Internet marketing, and it was not enough to put a video advertisement, and many people at that time did not even have a TV, and more people learned about national events through newspapers.
Expand the market aggressively
At that time, in order to expand his business in the mainland, Guo Henian first fell in love with COFCO's reputation and took the opportunity to cooperate with COFCO to expand his development field.
However, COFCO saw that Arowana was originally using its own name to open the market, and seeing that foreign-funded enterprises wanted to occupy China's grain, oil, rice and flour market, COFCO urgently terminated the cooperation and set up another door.
Created "FLM" to compete with it, and since then, FLM and Arowana have begun to compete with each other.
Relying on his rich family background in Southeast Asia and other countries many years ago, Guo Henian vigorously invested in Chinese marketing, acquired a number of Chinese oil noodle factories under his own name, and became the top brand of edible oil in China in one fell swoop.
In 1996, Arowana launched a commercial for the first time on CCTV in China, and the main color of the advertisement was rubbed off.
Choose the big red and yellow that Chinese like, and the brand name is the light that accounts for the golden light, the dragon and the phoenix, and the year after year (fish), and take the single words of these auspicious words as the name.
Chinese pay attention to a good fortune, after reading it, who does not think that it is a Chinese brand?
Such an illusion has misled the Chinese people for decades, and they have never thought about this problem.
The packaging and name are exhausted, and its marketing methods are even more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In order to win the favor of the Chinese and appease the Chinese people's anxiety about food safety.
In the advertisement, it has repeatedly emphasized China's invention patent formula, China's first technology, and cold pressing process.
Chinese consumers are completely ignorant of these professional terms, and the promotion of Arowana gives people an image of safe, natural and high-end edible oil.
Arowana 1:1:1 viral publicity, let the Chinese people remember this catchy advertising slogan, although most Chinese people do not know what 1:1:1 is, but there is always a sense that the collocation is very reasonable, and the nutrition is very balanced.
At the same time, it sponsored the Chinese women's volleyball team in 2006, informing the public with a positive image;
In 2008, he won the edible oil supplier of the Beijing Olympic Games, making himself famous again in the Olympic event that the Chinese people concentrated all their energy on watching, and the brand of Arowana completely became a household name in the land of China.
A marketing crisis is coming
In 2020, when a batch of imported Arowana arrived in China, the customs found that the edible oil did not clearly indicate whether it contained genetically modified soybeans on the outer packaging, and was detained by the customs.
Therefore, it violates the national "Regulations on the Safety Management of Agricultural Genetically Modified Organisms", which is not only a deception to consumers, but also a lack of attention to food safety.
Arowana has also been caught in food safety problems many times before, and in 2012, Arowana was found to be unqualified.
Arowana said that it was because the storage conditions of the supermarket involved were unqualified, and the edible oil was irradiated by the sun when it was stored, which produced undesirable substances, resulting in unqualified inspections.
However, the supermarket involved said that the edible oil was directly put on the shelves of the supermarket after the purchase, and there was no storage for too long.
This matter has not been investigated and cleared, and then there is news that aflatoxin has been detected in edible oil.
Although the substandard oil was removed from the shelves in time, it is not important whether it is unqualified in transportation or not, and in the minds of the Chinese people, the image of Arowana has plummeted.
In 2023, the operating income will be 257.5 billion yuan, the net profit will be 2.85 billion yuan, and the profit margin will be just over 1%;
Moutai's annual revenue is close to more than 140 billion yuan, and its net profit is 75 billion yuan, with a profit margin of more than 50%. Moutai's revenue is only more than half of that of Arowana, but Moutai's profit is 27 times that of Arowana.
The status of Arowana has declined a lot, and the profit margin is not high, and the future is in jeopardy.
1. The market value of Arowana fell below 270 billion, admitting the use of genetically modified organisms and providing false materials from foreign suppliers. Sina Finance.2020-10-18
2. Arowana will achieve revenue of 251.5 billion yuan in 2023. Beijing News.2024-03-22
3. Kweichow Moutai's revenue increased by 18% in the first quarter, with a net profit of more than 24 billion yuan, and the growth rate of direct sales revenue slowed down. The Paper.2024-04-26