Mooncake, now not only undertakes the "practical" functions of folklore inheritance, family reunion, business socialization, etc., but also is the culmination of the dispute between tastes, the dispute between the north and the south, the dispute between factions, and the dispute between the company, and has always been at the forefront of the topic list in August of the lunar calendar every year.
At the same time, as a consumer product, mooncakes have also witnessed the iteration of consumers' crowds, and through the continuous improvement and upgrading of packaging, taste, marketing and channels, they have steadily moved forward on the road of "net red" and rejuvenation.
According to iiMedia Research, China's mooncake sales increased from 13.18 billion yuan in 2015 to 20.52 billion yuan in 2020. The food consumption attributes of mooncakes are also returning, with more than 70% of consumers buying out of their own food; more than 60% of consumers prefer traditional Chinese style mooncake packaging, of which post-00s are more willing to pay for their appearance.
Image source: Guangzhou Restaurant official website
CBNData Consumption Station (hereinafter referred to as Station C) recently interviewed Guangzhou Restaurant , a long-established restaurant in Guangzhou that has been established in 1935 and has been catering for more than 80 years. With the changing consumer demand, the frequent emergence of various new restaurants, and the increasingly fierce market competition, how to revitalize the old brands in the new consumption trend is a problem that the long-established restaurant brands such as Guangzhou Restaurant have been facing.
According to the annual financial report of Guangzhou Restaurant, the company's net profit growth rate in 2020 reached 20.69%, and the year-on-year growth rate of total operating income was nearly 9%. In the past 5 years, the performance of Guangzhou Restaurant has also maintained rapid growth. In this article, Station C tries to answer how Guangzhou restaurants can achieve their "upgrade leap" on the mooncake from the three aspects of products, channels and shelves.
New flavors, small packages, product innovations are always on the way
Taste is a must for the annual brand "mooncake war".
In order to attract more young people, brands have never set limits on their innovation in taste, and some tastes are also biased towards "heavy mouth". Since the appearance of durian mooncakes, there have been snail powder mooncakes, rattan pepper flavored crispy beef mooncakes, cold pot skewer mooncakes, stinky mandarin fish mooncakes, hairy crab vinegar popcorn mooncakes and other fancy mooncakes.
The continuous emergence of new flavors also represents the emerging new needs of young people. According to iiMedia Research, nearly 40% of consumers will prefer new flavors, and more post-95s have higher requirements for products with different flavors.
The Guangzhou restaurant marketing team told Station C that since 2017, the company has accelerated the brand's taste research and development, and launched the durian cheese quicksand mooncake and other flowing heart filling mooncakes that year, which has won the praise of many young generation consumers. The Western-style lava flow heart mooncake gift box launched in 2020 sold more than 100,000 boxes in the first year of listing. For women, Guangzhou restaurant combined tea taste to launch the French cheese ice skin series mooncakes, which also received good feedback from the market.
Image source: Guangzhou Restaurant
In addition to taste, in terms of product specifications, Guangzhou Restaurant also fits the current "home economy", "one person food" and other scenes, and launched a small package.
"According to market research, 'small size', 'mini', etc. have become a trend for young consumers to buy mooncakes, so we have also made corresponding adjustments when developing products." For example, the development of 50g of single-pack flow heart mooncakes has also adjusted the weight of a single cake with some oil skins, from the original 187.5g to 180g, and the original 105g of a single gram to 95g. The Guangzhou restaurant marketing team told Station C.
Online and offline channels work together to radiate from the Pearl River Delta to the whole country
Every year in the middle and autumn, for the mooncake brand, in addition to the improvement and upgrading of the product side, the greater challenge is the ability to control the channel.
After years of cultivation, Cantonese mooncake has steadily opened up the inland market outside Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and gradually covered cities in East China, Southwest and North through regional agency and other systems.
"The sales of seasonal products, in addition to the promotion and sales policies, the coordination of production and marketing is relatively important." Guangzhou Restaurant Marketing Team said.
Offline, Guangzhou Restaurant has continuously expanded its business scale and laid out the national market. In 2018, Guangzhou Restaurant invested 900 million yuan to build two food production bases in Meizhou and Xiangtan, Hunan. Hunan is an important raw material production place for Guangzhou restaurant mooncakes, and the layout of processing lines in Xiangtan is obviously the best choice. After stabilizing the key markets of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the eastern, western Guangdong, central And east China regions will be set as footholds, and gradually extended to the whole country.
As of the end of the third quarter of 2020, Guangzhou Restaurants had a total of 834 distributors, including 560 in Guangdong Province and 274 outside the province. Through distributors outside the province, the company's sales channels gradually began to penetrate from the Pearl River Delta region to central China, east China, southwest China and other regions to the national market. In the first three quarters of 2020, the brand's out-of-province sales revenue increased by 21.43% year-on-year, and the proportion of revenue also increased to 22.34%.
In recent years, Guangzhou restaurants have also accelerated the brand's online channel layout: deeply cultivating e-commerce channels, including Tmall, Jingdong two major platforms, and other O2O platforms, etc., entering the celebrity live broadcast room, developing "home" mini programs, and developing self-operated official mall websites, etc., online sales continue to make major breakthroughs.
Make good use of the new shelves of live broadcasting, and the revenue of word-of-mouth has doubled
More and more mooncake brands appear at the top of the Tmall popularity list, becoming the main choice for consumers to buy mooncakes. Behind this change is the transformation and upgrading of the business strategy formulation of long-established brands under the trend of channel integration.
Cantonese-style mooncakes, which have the earliest momentum and are particularly "shouldered" by product strength and marketing influence, have always led the consumption trend in the "factional competition" of mooncakes. Take the initiative to "go out" and rely on product strength to fight the world's Cantonese mooncakes, but also take the initiative to go to the new shelves, and stage a "shelf battle" in the live broadcast room.
In the past two years, guangzhou restaurants and other long-established brands have begun to build their own live broadcast teams and increase investment in live broadcast and short video platforms.
Image source: Guangzhou Restaurant Taobao Live Room
The marketing team of Guangzhou Restaurant believes that through live marketing to drive the brand, build the brand, integrate the traditional marketing style into the live broadcast, create high-quality content and combine the brand and reach the target user group for a long time and efficiently, in order to complete the marketing and conversion of the user group, thus bringing a longer-term brand effect.
Guangzhou restaurant adopted a two-way strategy in the live broadcast, through the brand self-broadcast product test, through the implantation of stars / head anchor live broadcast room to form a brand effect, the use of the talent, star planting effect and fan stickiness, expand the influence of the enterprise to enhance the conversion of the live broadcast room. Do a good job of private domain traffic, undertake and maintain good fans, and maximize the effect of sales conversion.
"No matter what kind of live broadcast form, the function of live broadcasting is far more than 'bringing goods', but more importantly, it has brought more influence and new opportunities to the brand." The Guangzhou Restaurant Marketing team told Station C.
At present, Guangzhou restaurants mainly invest in brand self-broadcasting, and will also cooperate with celebrities and head anchors in important promotions, and constantly optimize the form of live broadcasting, and maximize their advantages by using "live marketing" to maximize their advantages and find the best way. At the same time, live broadcasting can reach the target consumer group faster and wider, guide the online crowd to the brand store, and bring traffic to the store.
In the live broadcast planning of Guangzhou restaurants, the next step is to cultivate a more complete and experienced live broadcast team, deeply produce high-quality short videos around product content, form topic marketing, talent planting, brand promotion, form long-term content output, and accumulate precipitated fans to expand brand influence. And also planned to create a live broadcast matrix, according to different account styles, enhance the user's product attention, innovative live content and fan interaction to enhance the sense of trust of fans.
Author | Haotian