Nongfu Spring Brand Content Marketing History

Starting from this issue, we will try our best to continuously study the memorable brands on the market for reference and learning by all marketers. If you need Guangbai to research and organize the marketing content of a certain brand, please leave a message. In this issue, we will talk about Nongfu Spring .

When it comes to Nongfu Spring, many people only know slogans such as "Nongfu Spring is a little sweet" and "We don't produce water, we are just nature's porters", but they don't know that Nongfu Spring's annual sales have reached 14 billion, and how it achieved this goal.

Today we will talk about the story behind Nongfu Spring from the perspective of brand content marketing.

Let us adjust the time to 1996, when Zhejiang Qiandao Lake Yangshengtang Drinking Water Company was established, which is the predecessor of Nongfu Spring.

In the first year of its birth, Nongfu Spring did something that shocked the drinking water industry. In the market dominated by purified water at the time, it opened up the "natural water" category market, proposed that natural water is more suitable for human drinking than purified water, and conducted a series of life comparison tests between natural water and purified water to prove the correctness of this view.

In 1998, in order to highlight the taste of its natural mineral water, Nongfu Spring launched its famous advertising slogan - Nongfu Spring is a little sweet.

After airing a 15-second TV commercial on CCTV, Nongfu Spring quickly became famous and its market share ranked among the top three in the industry.

The purified water companies were furious and, accusing the company of unfair competition, joined forces with 69 other companies to "encircle and suppress" it.

Faced with public pressure, Nongfu Spring took the even more extreme approach by holding a press conference, inviting the media to visit the factory, and conducting on-site experiments to compare natural water and purified water, thus resolving the crisis.

These two media exposures did not cause Nongfu Spring to decline. Instead, it gained more and more trust from consumers.

Next, Nongfu Spring’s marketing ideas became clear and firm, and it repeatedly used advertisements to consolidate the concept and status of “natural water”.

For example, there is an advertisement in which a successful man drinks Nongfu Spring and exclaims: This water tastes like the one I drank when I was a child.

Because in the early years many people drank well water or even spring water from the mountains, which were basically natural water.

In addition, Nongfu Spring also realized that many Chinese people at that time still had a mentality of worshipping foreign things, so they invited a group of foreigners to perform. They used Nongfu Spring to make milk powder for babies, cook rice and make coffee. After drinking it, the foreigners said in poor Chinese: "It's a bit sweet."

If consumers have the impression that even foreigners think Nongfu Spring is good, then it must be really good.

It even adopted the routine of idol dramas, where two strangers looked at each other at a train station and developed a liking for each other, using Nongfu Spring to express the sweet feeling.

Around 2000, when China was preparing to bid for the Olympic Games, the extremely perceptive Nongfu Spring expanded its marketing scenarios to the Olympic Games and sports fields, and that year it became the special water for the training and competition of the Chinese sports delegation at the Sydney Olympics.

They also brought in the then head coach of the national table tennis team, Cai Zhenhua, head coach of the national track and field team, Feng Shuyong, and the team doctor of the swimming team to endorse how suitable Nongfu Spring is for athletes. In a nutshell, Nongfu Spring natural water is good for athletes and is no different for ordinary people.

In 2001, when China successfully bid for the Olympic Games, Nongfu Spring launched another highly acclaimed marketing campaign - the 1 cent charity plan. For every bottle of Nongfu Spring purchased by consumers, Nongfu Spring will donate one cent to contribute to the construction of Olympic venues.

After supporting the Olympic bid, Nongfu Spring continued to launch the Sunshine Project, which uses the same routine: buy a bottle and donate one cent to the children to help them live and study better.

In the midst of this series of public welfare activities, in 2007, Nongfu Spring developed a new concept based on natural water - natural weak alkaline water, further consolidating the attributes of "natural water".

A wave of materials was also produced. The bottleneck of each bottle of water was equipped with a small pull ring marked with a pH of 7.3±0.5, and was provided with pH test paper to prove that Nongfu Spring's water is weakly alkaline and is natural water.

In 2008, another well-known slogan - We don't produce water, we are just nature's carrier - was born. From the perspective of brand concept, it once again explains what kind of brand Nongfu Spring is and what kind of water it produces.

From then on, Nongfu Spring embarked on a new marketing path, four-dimensional marketing from water source to products to cross-border to variety shows.

First of all, in terms of water sources, we launched the "Witness the Source Journey", inviting the media offline to experience the water and production process at the water source firsthand, and online, we continuously released documentaries such as "A Story You Never Known", "Every Drop of Water Has Its Source", "The Last Mile", "An Island of One Person", "One Hundred and Twenty Miles", and "A Day's Holiday" from water source exploration, testing, production to water delivery.

A Story You Never Knew

Every drop of water has its source

The Last Mile

Click here to view project details

An Island of One

Click here to view project details

One Hundred and Twenty Miles

A Day's Vacation

When it comes to water marketing, Nongfu Spring is most famous for an advertisement shot in 2018, which was rated by netizens as the most beautiful advertisement in Nongfu Spring’s history - what kind of water breeds what kind of life.

Since the previous one was shot in winter, another one titled "Spring, Summer and Autumn" was shot in 2019, which is equally beautiful.

In addition, in 2017, Nongfu Spring also shot a film with great humanistic spirit - "The Cooking Master" . Only good water can cook good rice.

It is worth mentioning that in this process, Nongfu Spring also used a little trick and cooperated with Youku to create an ad that can be turned off in 5 seconds. This made the audience curious about what the ad was about and ended up watching the entire ad. It is said that no more than 30% of viewers chose to skip the ad.

In terms of products, Nongfu Spring continues to launch new products and packaging, using high-value visuals to attract consumers. The most impressive ones are the high-end mineral water in glass bottles, natural mineral water for students in sports bottles, and natural drinking water for children launched in Changbai Mountain in 2015.

Nongfu Spring glass bottle high-end water

Nongfu Spring Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Animation Student Edition Natural Water

Children's natural mineral water

And the commemorative edition bottles of the twelve zodiac signs launched since 2016.

In terms of cross-border cooperation, in 2017, we jointly created 30 music bottles with NetEase Cloud Music. "Every song is a bottle of water, and only those who drink the water know the taste of it."

In 2018, we cooperated with the Palace Museum to create the limited edition Palace Museum bottle with the inscription "The Kingdom I Conquered for You in a Bottle".

The poetry bottles created in 2020 in cooperation with China UnionPay, each bottle has a poem from a child in the mountains.

In terms of variety shows, in order to attract more young consumers, Nongfu Spring's Vitamin Water once sponsored the phenomenal variety shows "The Rap of China" and "Idol Producer", and its Tea Pi once sponsored the popular variety show "I Am a Creator".

Finally, let me briefly summarize.

All of Nongfu Spring’s brand marketing content stems from its strong “natural water” category and strategic positioning.

From the initial announcement that "natural water is more suitable for human drinking" to breaking people's perception that purified water is clean and healthy water, to scientific proof, and then to the communication that always revolves around Nongfu Spring being "natural water", from form to meaning, it constantly tells consumers who Nongfu Spring is and the efforts it has made to become it.

After these have become a consensus among the market and consumers , Nongfu Spring continued to strengthen the symbolic label of "natural water" while beginning to extend its product strength around consumers, including new products, bottle design, packaging flavors, and scene usage.

To date, the symbol of Nongfu Spring's "natural water" label has been deeply rooted in the minds of consumers, and it is difficult for Nongfu Spring to find any rivals in the "natural water" category market.

Author: Advertising Department Store

Source: Advertising Department Store (p2gift)