How do Internet celebrity stores create hit products?

This article mainly analyzes from four aspects: consumption trends, product positioning, product packaging, and marketing promotion . What exactly did the Internet celebrity stores do to attract the attention of users? What is their methodology for continuously creating hit products?

Internet celebrity stores are a term that has frequently appeared in offline catering in recent years. Nowadays, in large shopping malls in first- and second-tier cities, there must be several Internet celebrity stores with long queues.

What did these Internet celebrity stores do right to make consumers willing to spend 5 hours queuing to buy a cup of milk tea?

Next, I will analyze it from four aspects: consumption trends, product positioning, product packaging, and marketing promotion .

1. Consumption Trends

1. The wave of consumption upgrade

There are so many offline stores, but most of the Internet celebrity stores we are familiar with are concentrated in the catering industry. Not only is the catering industry easy to attract crowds and has high-frequency demand, but it is also the first industry to be directly transformed as consumption upgrades.

For example, Heytea and Nayuki, two popular online stores, have found their own entry point in the consumption upgrade. Their prices are much more expensive than previous low-end tea drinks, but their ingredients and taste are much better than low-end tea drinks.

By entering the blank area of ​​strictly selected middle-class consumption and adding some product and marketing innovations, it can quickly become popular.

Whether it is Heytea, Nayuki or the recent Luk Kin Coffee, they have all caught up with a period of consumption upgrading and a rapidly growing market. The market growth of industries such as tea, coffee, and offline catering has increased at an astonishing rate in China in the past two years. China's tea consumption has an average annual growth rate of 10.89%, and China's coffee consumption has an annual growth rate of 15-20%, which are much higher than the global growth rate.

The rapid market growth and the wave of consumption upgrades have given Internet celebrity stores a wave of natural growth dividends.

2. User habits change

Another macro reason is actually related to changes in consumer behavior habits. Today, those born in the 1990s have gradually become the main consumers and communicators, but unlike their predecessors, they are the only child generation, and most of them have no habit of doing housework.

Therefore, when choosing food, people will consider eating out or takeout more rather than cooking at home. This not only saves the trouble of cooking, but also allows for social sharing, which to a certain extent has stimulated the rise of offline catering.

In fact, it is not only the catering industry. The hot sales of a series of home appliances such as air purifiers, sweeping robots, dishwashers, etc. are all due to changes in the living habits of mainstream users. It’s just that the catering industry is an industry that attracts people, which will be more intuitive and has spawned many Internet celebrity stores.

2. Product Positioning

1. Occupy the domestic market niche

As mentioned above, Internet celebrity stores are generally driven by consumption upgrades in first- and second-tier cities. They occupy the empty space in the market and in the minds of users, that is, products that are both high-quality and cost-effective, like NetEase Yanxuan .

The prototypes of such products can usually be found in developed countries or regions. In fact, many of the Internet celebrity restaurants we come into contact with have similar products that have already become popular on social sharing platforms such as Instagram. They only need to be localized and modified to gain consumer recognition.

For example, Heytea’s newly launched bubble tea is very similar to the Luckin Coffee wall-mounted brown sugar pearls, which originated in Taiwan but has very few stores in mainland China; another example is the dirty buns, which first became popular in South Korea.

In addition to occupying the consumption upgrade space of new catering, creating localized specialty catering by mixing local elements can also be unique. For example, Heytea mixed cheese milk cap with traditional tea drinks and (claimed to the outside world) invented cheese milk cap tea, thus opening up a new tea beverage category in the domestic market.

2. Middle-class consumption with both cost-effectiveness

The mainstream group of people who are upgrading their consumption is the new middle class, who have more disposable funds than the previous generation, but are not high-end people. So we can see that today's Internet celebrity stores have good cost-effectiveness based on the improvement of product quality.

Take Nayuki’s Tea as an example: the price is between 20-30, which is higher than the roadside takeaway tea and slightly lower than Starbucks . But judging from the ingredients and quality, it is indeed conscientious. Its domineering juice series has high-quality fruit ingredients and uses a lot of ingredients. From the perspective of cost-effectiveness, it is already very good.

Another example: Heytea’s new product, Bobo Tea, is a pearl tea drink made from brown sugar boiled for several hours. It takes longer to make than regular tea drinks and is currently sold for less than 20 yuan, which is a good price-performance ratio.

In fact, it is not just the internet-famous tea shops. If you think about it carefully, you will find that almost every internet-famous restaurant that can make you queue for more than an hour has a strong cost-effectiveness.

3. Product Packaging

1. High-value design

An important feature of consumption upgrading is the upgrade in product design and packaging, that is, the upgrade in appearance. Not only internet-famous restaurants, but also hardware such as home appliances are paying more and more attention to product industrial design and appearance packaging design.

Since the main consumer groups are concentrated in the young groups with high aesthetic requirements, Internet celebrity stores spend a lot of design fees on LOGO, VI and various materials and posters. Just from the exquisite illustrations on the materials, one can get a feeling of high appearance, high quality and high class.

In addition, good design can encourage consumers to share products, making them want to take photos and forward them to their friends .

2. Highly recognizable

Being recognizable means having its own product style, which is largely reflected in the product packaging design.

Nayuki’s petty bourgeois and sober style, Heytea’s simple style, ZeeTea’s cool style... as well as the ins style, girlish style, street style and even rustic style... you can find the corresponding Internet celebrity store. This is the brand visual identity created through graphic design and interior design.

Being recognizable not only reduces the user's selection cost, but also makes the user think of the brand first, which is the mental resource that occupies the first place in the segment in positioning theory. In addition, the creation of offline scene atmosphere can also promote the dissemination of photos and online sharing.

3. Visual symbolization

Symbolization is actually an important technique in brand theory. The most classic one is the shape of the bottle of Absolut Vodka. Consumers can associate it with Absolut Vodka as soon as they see the shape of the bottle. Absolut Vodka has also invited many artists to design and create bottle patterns.

Nowadays, the practice of brand symbolization can be seen in the joint promotion posters of most brands. In recent years, the domestic liquor Jiang Xiaobai has also been continuously strengthening the symbol of its bottle shape.

From Heytea’s stick figures, Nayuki’s flower illustrations, Tai Er’s “rough” style of pickled fish, to luckin coffee’s blue polka dots, all of them are designed to create brand symbols. Through the visual symbolization of products, a lot of promotion difficulties can be reduced, and many promotion activities can also be launched.

The most typical Internet celebrity store is luckin coffee. I believe everyone can associate the blue polka dot symbol with this coffee brand at a glance, and it is also advertised as the "little blue cup" to the outside world. Subsequent promotional activities can also use the unified elements to carry out, for example: ladies wearing blue polka dot clothes can get discounts, etc.

4. Marketing Promotion

1. Create a hot store scene

Many media outlets have revealed that Internet celebrity stores hire people to fake queue up to create the illusion of being popular and attract more users to queue up to buy. But in fact, the queue can be controlled manually by the cashier. When there are many people, they will move faster, and when there are fewer people, they will move slower, and basically they can maintain the scene of hot sales in the queue.

This kind of store atmosphere can promote hesitant users to place orders and trigger onlookers to follow suit.

This is similar to the "singing sales control" technique commonly used in sales offices in real estate sales. Every time the salesperson closes a deal, the sales center will broadcast "Room XX in Building XX has just been sold", creating a hot selling scene and atmosphere. Other hesitant buyers will be more likely to sign contracts, forming a virtuous circle.

The atmosphere of the cargo field in offline businesses has always been an important basis for users’ consumption choices.

2. Local account promotion

In the promotion of Internet celebrity stores, local media placement plays a role in igniting the market. Whether it is the opening of a new store or the launch of a new product, the first wave of resources will be concentrated on local WeChat accounts such as "food, drink and fun".

Then, we will launch corresponding marketing plans such as listing, Internet celebrity recommendations, media evaluation, user UGC , etc., and then move to strong operation and promotion on larger full-network platforms (such as Tik Tok and Weibo).

Putting up local WeChat accounts is the most critical part of the listing rhythm of Internet celebrity stores, and it plays a very important role in attracting customers to the store. Only after users come to the store will they consider the product, design, and sharing fission attributes. Generally speaking, local lifestyle accounts have very accurate fans and a high conversion rate , making them very suitable for internet celebrity brands in the catering and lifestyle sectors.

3. Internet thinking marketing

Internet celebrity stores have strong online marketing capabilities and will do their best to stimulate your desire to share and spread the word at every user touchpoint:

(1) Hunger Marketing

The queuing phenomenon mentioned above can be considered hunger marketing, but more Internet celebrity stores limit the number of people, quantity, and season of sales for certain popular products . On the one hand, it is a consideration of raw materials and product production, and on the other hand, it also brings about the effect of hunger marketing.

Another operation is: when a new product is launched, it is first launched in a certain "master store" and then launched in stores all over the city after a while.

• First, it creates a sense of scarcity in the queue;
• Second, it can create enough gimmicks to attract user attention.

HEYTEA Black Gold Store

When you have to queue for an hour for a cup of milk tea and each person is limited to buying one cup, no matter how good it tastes, you will want to post a picture of it on your Moments after buying it. The scarcer the product, the more it can stimulate users' desire to share and show off.

(2) Brand ritual

Many products tell you how to use them when they are promoted. There may be some official suggestions on how to eat a certain food in a celebrity store. This is how to create a sense of ritual for the brand.

Just like the eating suggestions of “twist, lick and dip” in the early Oreo advertisements, it not only helps you strengthen your awareness of the brand’s uniqueness, but also promotes sharing and dissemination of brand rituals.

(3) New traffic platform dissemination

The popularity of Internet celebrity stores on the entire network is due to exposure on large-traffic platforms, and the traffic dividends brought by the rise of new platforms such as Tik Tok and live streaming have played a significant role in promoting Internet celebrity stores, and also indirectly proved that these Internet celebrity stores do have a good sense of the Internet.

Nowadays, common activities such as "shoot a video on Douyin, get XX likes and get an iPhone for free" can all generate a certain amount of popularity on the new platform. Some stores have become popular entirely because of new traffic platforms such as Douyin, such as "Answer Tea".

Through a variety of media forms on a series of different platforms, Internet celebrity stores are also constantly building brand IP awareness, strengthening user stickiness and emotional recognition, and bringing in their own communication traffic.

(4) Pay attention to the key words in the copy

The value of copywriting is magnified in the Internet communication environment. As an Internet communication brand, Internet celebrity stores pay more attention to the creation of golden sentences in copywriting.

We often see "Internet-sense golden sentences" of complaints reflected in the outer packaging of Internet celebrity store products. An appropriate copy can arouse users' willingness to share, and the diversity of copy can also make up for the monotony of visual design style and meet the sharing needs of different groups of people and in different scenarios.

4. Rapid product iteration

People who often visit Internet celebrity restaurants should be able to feel that the menus of many Internet celebrity restaurants are not fixed and the dishes often change. In other words, many Internet celebrity stores are constantly iterating their products and creating new popular items.

The rapid iteration of products can not only continuously carry out marketing and promotion operations for new product launches, but also keep up with popular trends, ensure the brand's popularity, and maintain user freshness.

In addition, the iteration of services can also gain user reputation. For example, Haidilao ’s waiting time and various services, from providing snacks to providing manicures, are constantly helping the online promotion of Internet celebrity stores.

The above analyzes the logic behind the popularity of Internet celebrity stores from four aspects: consumption trends, product positioning, product packaging, and marketing promotion. But in reality, many Internet celebrity stores are relatively "short-lived". There is even a saying that "Internet celebrity stores will not survive more than three years". Huang Taiji and Diaoye Beef Brisket, which were once very popular, are almost nowhere to be heard now.

Two major “causes of death” of Internet celebrity stores

1. Insufficient product strength

Many Internet celebrity stores have become popular on the Internet due to excellent marketing, while some Internet celebrity stores are well-known to the public because of their brand concepts.

However, marketing promotion is more of icing on the cake for brand building, and it still needs strong product support. Without sufficient product strength, repeat purchases cannot be generated and continuous business can be turned into a one-time business.

In the early days, the internet celebrity restaurant Diaoye Beef Brisket had the problem that its products could not support the brand. Diaoye Beef Brisket used many innovative marketing methods, such as internal testing, celebrity tastings, etc., and also worked hard on packaging design and tableware design. However, the beef brisket products were generally not highly evaluated and could not form spontaneous recommendations from users, so they have naturally disappeared now.

Most internet-famous restaurants opened by celebrities have the problem of insufficient product strength, for example: "Nice to Meet You" allegedly opened by Han Han, Meng Fei's small noodle shop... Consumers have always complained that the reputation does not match the reality, and most internet-famous restaurants opened by celebrities ended in failure.

In addition, Internet celebrity stores usually have popular products, but nowadays users’ tastes change too quickly, so Internet celebrity stores also need to constantly upgrade and iterate their popular products to adapt to new consumption trends. If product innovation cannot keep up and the product is easily copied, it will easily become a short-lived phenomenon.

2. Supply chain and operations cannot keep up

The short-term popularity of Internet celebrity stores can allow the brand to expand rapidly, but after the rapid expansion, the catering industry will face considerable pressure in terms of supply chain control, employee training management, and store operations. If it cannot be well integrated and optimized, the capital chain will easily break. Franchise stores are more likely to have a series of problems such as inconsistent service quality and brand tone.

These supply chain and operational issues are actually common problems in the catering industry. It’s just that most Internet celebrity stores are often marketing-oriented, and they tend to underestimate the difficulty of supply chain and store operations and ignore the essence of the industry. Rent, food, and labor costs remain high, and in the end they can only close down.

In general, the emergence of Internet celebrity stores has indeed given new vitality to offline catering businesses, but looking at the various Internet celebrity stores now, there is still a mixed bag. With the deepening of consumption upgrades, many Internet celebrity stores should shed their "Internet celebrity" halo and become product-service oriented catering companies like Haidilao. In addition, Internet celebrity stores that only rely on marketing to become popular will eventually be abandoned by consumers.

The author of this article @传播体操郑卓然 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games