13 Marketing Keywords for the First Half of 2021

2021 is already halfway through. Looking back at the past six months, what happened in the industry?

Some time ago, the new distributor held an internal brainstorming meeting and used some keywords to describe the changes that can be felt in the first half of 2021: inventory peaking, category explosion, traffic black hole, accelerated change, technology upgrade...

These are my feelings as an industry media practitioner after obtaining massive amounts of industry information and communicating with many industry insiders. This may not represent the whole picture of the industry, but it at least shows that the industry is undergoing rapid transformation.

Based on this, New Distribution has compiled 13 key words for the first half of 2021 and shared them with you, hoping that you, who are in a rapidly changing industry, can feel the leap and iteration of the times and find certain trends and opportunities in uncertainty.

01Small category explosion

I believe that many people have witnessed the rise of innovative consumer brands. Whether it is the annual 618 and 11.11 rankings or the short video live streaming sales rankings, you can see many new consumer brands.

Small category, big explosion. For example, the mouthwash category, functional candy category, chicken breast category, etc., the corresponding ones are Canban, BUFF X, and Shark Fit.

In the past, the market capacity of these three categories was very limited, but now, with the emergence of new groups, new demands, and new media, small categories are experiencing explosive growth and blowouts.

02 Food for Healthy Living

0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories have almost become the must-have product selling points and communication language when the food and beverage industry promotes new products. With Yuanqi Forest positioning itself as a "sugar-free expert", it has quickly become a dark horse in the industry in a very short period of time, with more and more new products and new brands focusing on 0 sugar, 0 fat, and 0 calories in their own categories.

0 food generation, light health preservation. The consumption upgrade coincided with the rise of Generation Z. The trend of staying up late to maintain health has coincided with the rise in health concepts due to the epidemic. Under the new consumer groups and consumption trends, new growth points have been created in the food and beverage market.

03Looks are a must, please yourself and express yourself

Consumers born after the 1990s, especially those born after 1995, are a generation of consumers who have never experienced a sense of scarcity. The material environment is very favorable. We are living in the Internet world, the country is thriving, incomes are constantly increasing, life is constantly improving, and national self-confidence is constantly booming.

The rise of Heytea, Perfect Diary, KKV, Haomai, Pop Mart and a series of new consumer brands with super high appearance value is enough to show that in today's Chinese fast-moving consumer goods industry, transaction sovereignty is evolving from the earliest factory sovereignty, to brand sovereignty, channel sovereignty, and now to the era of consumer sovereignty.

04 New Wine and Tea for Generation Z

The low-alcohol beverage market is booming nowadays. Following the old low-alcohol brands such as Jiang Xiaobai Meijian and RIO Cocktail, a large number of new brands such as Berry Sweetheart, Zui E Niang, and Mi Ke Rice Wine have entered the market. Of course, various capitals also flocked in.

Even Pepsi and Coca-Cola, which sell sugary drinks, are seeking breakthroughs in alcoholic beverages; at the same time, Nongfu Spring also released its first rice wine + sparkling wine product, TOT Sparkling Drink, in May. Of course, while we see the popularity, we also see controversy. Is low-alcohol beverage a false demand or the real future? It's worth pondering.

05 Martech, DTC and Private Domain Traffic

Martech: Martech is the integration of marketing, technology and management, also known as smart marketing, which means that companies can achieve full life cycle management of users through technology driven by technology. The logic behind it is data + algorithm + scenario, which ultimately realizes marketing automation.

DTC (Direct To Customer) refers to a business model in which manufacturers directly reach consumers. In the context of the brand structure being concentrated in leading enterprises, DTC reduces the number of middlemen and is conducive to the rise of emerging brands.

Private domain traffic: refers to traffic that can be purchased repeatedly without spending money. Fans of common public accounts, friends in WeChat Moments, followed users on corporate Weibo, etc.

In the past two years, these three marketing terms have been very popular, but what I want to say is that no matter how popular they are, they are actually not that complicated. Focus on three core levers: shortening distance, expanding connections, and being precise and efficient;

Behind this is the transformation of the company's connection model, organizational model, management model and business model. We must pay attention to these changes. This is one of the important trends in future marketing and a marketing focus that large companies have paid close attention to in recent years.

06 Digitalization

Behind digitalization is essentially the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Through digital technological changes, technology has closely integrated the world's people with people, people with things, and things with things.

It represents an emerging force that is driving every aspect of the world, from convenience and entertainment to improving people's health.

Actions generate data, data discover patterns, patterns help make decisions, and decisions guide actions. Digitalization is a driving core that must be explored today.

Use data to make accurate decisions and integrate data decision-making capabilities into business processes. For an enterprise, the essence of digital transformation is to reconstruct enterprise boundaries, reshape organizational structure, and build core competitiveness that adapts to the new environment around data production factors. However, for traditional enterprises, the transition from traditional informatization to digital transformation is not something that can be achieved overnight. Clear goals and lasting endurance are very important.

Tony Saldha, head of P&G's global digital transformation, expressed this in his book "Digital Transformation Roadmap":

“70% of enterprises fail in digital transformation. The core reason is that the founding team is unfamiliar with digital expertise and terminology. For an enterprise to succeed in a transformation, it must adopt a completely new business model and competitive strategy.

In summary, the core of the digital wave is actually at the back end. In essence, it is to make the front end lighter and the back end heavier. But how to become lighter and how to become heavier is a topic worth thinking about and discussing for each of us.

07 BC Integration

Countless companies today are facing the problems of increasing marginal costs of deep distribution, decreasing results, and decreasing number of store visitors. How to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs is a core issue that all companies must face and solve.

BC integration, B stands for distribution and C stands for dynamic sales. BC integration is essentially the integration of distribution and dynamic sales.

BC integration can greatly improve the efficiency of traditional marketing of enterprises, reduce marketing costs, and enable enterprises to have in-depth interactions and connections with consumers in physical stores on a large scale, ultimately achieving rapid distribution and sales of goods.

However, many companies already have a large number of practical cases on how to integrate distribution and sales. Big brands such as Jiang Xiaobai, Six Walnuts, Jinjiu, and Uni-President have all summarized their own market practices.

08 Fast Moving Consumer Goods Distribution B2B

The interconnection of the fast-moving consumer goods industry is not only the interconnection between brands and consumers, but also the interconnection of the entire chain of distributors, wholesalers and retailers. This requires the supply chain system behind us to achieve omni-channel collaboration.

In the context of "full-scenario transactions" in today's era, it is necessary to achieve separation of people, goods and warehouses, independent delivery as soon as possible, and complete the comprehensive digitalization of the distribution B2B chain.

09 Big merchants and digital distribution

From the recent China Resources Snow Beer's clear-cut push for distributors to transform into large-scale merchants, to PepsiCo's push for distributors' digital transformation, to the past one or two years, more and more fast-moving consumer goods companies are constantly adjusting and upgrading their channel strategies.

The deep distribution that was previously dominated by brand owners is gradually shifting to one that is guided by brand owners and dominated by local distributors. The era of deep distribution is coming. The rising labor and management costs, the maturity of distributors, and the use of digitalization are giving the traditional commercial circulation system new life.

10 Community e-commerce, midfield? The end?

Community e-commerce has really experienced many twists and turns, from the invasion of giants and unlimited investment, to government supervision, and now to the departure and contraction of giants. In just half a year, all the lofty ambitions of the past have now vanished.

The progress of this stage of the track seems to be much faster than the outside world predicted. In this turbulent time, giants are hitting a wall one after another. Has community group buying reached its end? Or is it a halftime break?

11 Focus on intra-city retail (O2O)

Due to the catalysis of last year's epidemic, the current same-city retail O2O is developing rapidly. Almost all first-tier brands have increased their investment in O2O. Words such as strategic cooperation, deepening cooperation, and key cooperation continue to appear in the promotional content of cooperation between relevant O2O platforms and external brands.

O2O is currently in a period of rapid growth, and more and more manufacturers have realized that it is not only a sales channel, but also a global marketing platform. A large number of young groups and major decision-making groups (married women) are active on various O2O platforms.

12Short videos and live streaming

The two major short video e-commerce platforms, Tik Tok and Kuaishou, are becoming new traffic hubs for fast-moving consumer goods manufacturers. This year, I have heard from more than one or two brand friends that they are investing heavily in TikTok and Kuaishou.

On April 8, Douyin held its first e-commerce conference and proposed the concept of "interest e-commerce" for the first time; on July 22, at the Kuaishou e-commerce service provider conference, the person in charge Xiao Gu proposed the three key words of Kuaishou e-commerce in 2021: focus on trust e-commerce, focus on brands, and focus on service providers. Build trust in e-commerce and continue to tap into the second growth curve.

13. Quality Growth

In the past, when companies talked about growth, they talked more about horizontal growth, opening more dealers, expanding coverage, competing in price wars, increasing product sales, and then gaining industry status. But now when talking about growth, more people are talking about "quality growth."

Optimize supply chain capacity and improve circulation efficiency, and adjust and optimize marketing and channel models. By increasing gross profit, optimizing production capacity and reducing distribution costs, we can achieve more and higher profit growth.

These 13 industry keywords are what New Distribution has seen and observed over the past six months.

Author: New Dealer

Source: New Distribution