The underlying logic behind Weilong spicy strips marketing!

At the end of last year, it was reported that Weilong would go public in Hong Kong in the first half of 2021. Recently, Weilong once again obtained a Pre-IPO round of financing. This may be the last round of financing before Weilong's listing, preparing to raise US$1 billion to become the "first spicy snack stock."

According to the data disclosed by Weilong, its performance is in a stage of rapid development. In 2019, Weilong's overall revenue was 4.909 billion yuan, a growth rate of nearly 43% compared to the sales of 3.5 billion yuan in 2018. The revenue target for 2020 is 7.2 billion yuan, and sales are expected to exceed 10 billion yuan in 2021.

How did Weilong go from selling snacks for 50 cents at a roadside stall to selling 5 billion yuan worth of snacks a year?

The birth of Weilong can be said to have originated from a flood. Its founder Liu Weiping originally made spicy dried tofu in his hometown of Hunan. Due to the severe flood in 1998, farmland was submerged and the raw material soybeans for making dried tofu were difficult to produce. As a last resort, some people began to use wheat flour to make gluten instead of dried tofu, which later became "spicy strips".

However, since Hunan is not a major wheat producer, Liu Weiping saw no hope, so he moved to Luohe, Henan, a famous food production area, and founded Weilong in Luohe. At the beginning, Weilong was just a small workshop. Thanks to Liu Weiping's series of god-level operations, Weilong became a strong company.

In order to promote its spicy strips, Weilong used traditional marketing methods such as setting up stalls, posting posters, and hanging colorful flags, so that consumers within hundreds of miles knew about Weilong’s spicy strips.

It was not until 2003 that Liu Weiping registered the trademark "Weilong" for his spicy noodles and registered the company the following year. Since then, Weilong has become the first spicy noodles company in the country to be established.

Liu Weiping's ambition is not limited to Luohe, but even Henan. He wants to make it bigger and stronger and let consumers across the country know about it. Therefore, as a prerequisite for achieving nationalization, the creation of a brand image is essential.

In 2010, Weilong began to invite celebrities such as Zhao Wei and Yang Mi to be brand spokespersons, which quickly increased its popularity.

But Weilong’s real comeback happened in 2016. By leveraging the marketing momentum of iPhone, Weilong became very popular and also moved towards the high-end route.

After that, Weilong established its position as the big brother in the industry through product, marketing and brand building. It not only achieved nationalization, but also became famous abroad, becoming another Chinese condiment "luxury" after Lao Gan Ma. For example, the unit price of Weilong spicy strips on the Amazon website in the United States is as high as US$14, equivalent to more than 90 yuan, and it is even higher in the UK.

Today, Weilong sells more than 10 billion packs of spicy strips a year, with annual revenue exceeding 5 billion and a market value of 60 billion, becoming a national brand. What did Weilong do right?

In fact, Weilong’s journey has not been all flowers and applause. It has almost grown up amid doubts. "Junk food" and "single product structure" are all reasons why people are not optimistic about Weilong.

In response, Weilong launched a series of rectification measures.

1. Product innovation to meet consumers’ multiple demands

Since we are solving the problem, we must get to the root of the problem. Products are the first point of contact between brands and users. The key to changing the public impression is to start with products.

In the tide of health, reducing oil, sugar and salt is not only the national standard for the spicy snack industry, but also the ultimate pursuit of young consumers today. In response to this, Weilong has made great efforts in product research and development and has set up a central research institute for spicy snack foods. After professional R&D personnel have experienced and verified the product ingredients, they have developed new spicy snacks.

Weilong has also made improvements to the taste, reducing the spiciness of the original spicy strips from spicy to sweet and spicy, which is more in line with the public taste.

Of course, a good product must be both beautiful inside and out. In terms of product packaging, Weilong abandoned the cheap transparent packaging used at the beginning and instead used fashionable aluminum foil and aluminum film packaging, and imitated Apple's minimalist style, which also left people with a clean and hygienic visual impression.

Weilong packaging before

Weilong Packaging Now

The innovative Weilong spicy strips are both attractive and filling, satisfying consumers’ multiple demands for deliciousness, appearance and health.

2. Make the production workshop "transparent" to create a high-quality spicy strip image

People actually have deep misunderstandings about spicy strips. For example, the legendary spicy strips are made of toilet paper and gutter oil, and the production is dirty, messy and poor.

In response to industry pain points, Weilong adopts a fully automated sterile production workshop and announces the conditions of its factory and production workshop to the public, showing the neat, clean and tidy production lines to users. It wants users to see the safety of the food, change their perceptions, and implant the image of Weilong's high-quality spicy strips in the minds of users.

3. Develop new categories and enrich brand product lines

It is really unfair for Weilong to be accused of having a single product line. Weilong has been enriching and expanding its product line for a long time. In 2014, Weilong invested a large amount of money to build its third food production base, and the instant noodles and konjac production lines were also built.

Around 2017, the self-heating food craze broke out. Weilong actively followed up and launched a self-heating hot pot brand "Beiguoxia" for people with strong taste buds in Sichuan, Hunan and Chongqing, focusing on the spicy flavor of Sichuan and Chongqing. In 2018, Weilong launched the "Zilaishu" spicy noodle hot pot product, entering the convenience food market.

In 2019, Weilong began selling hot and sour noodles and charcoal-grilled sausages on Tmall. Not only focusing on spicy foods. In 2020, Weilong launched a new series of soft-boiled eggs.

According to the introduction on the official website, Weilong Food has currently developed dozens of products in four major categories: noodle products, bean products, konjac products, and vegetable products.

Product diversification not only retains more users for the brand, but also increases the brand's competitive advantage. After all, consumer demand is very changeable, and the era of relying on big single products to conquer the world is gone forever.

It has to be said that Weilong has created a food brand that allows users to eat with greater peace of mind by improving its soft and hard power. This has also differentiated Weilong from other brands and rapidly increased its brand influence.

Nowadays, when talking about Weilong, many users' impression of it is: fashionable, friendly, healthy and convenient. In addition to the support of hard-core products and technologies, a large part of the credit can be attributed to Weilong's marketing strategy.

1. Leverage marketing to gain traffic and attention for the brand

As the saying goes, opportunities are permanent, but hot spots come and go. For example, on April Fool's Day this year, Weilong took advantage of the opportunity to launch a series of limited new products, such as spicy strips with cherry blossom flavor, coriander flavor, and sour bamboo shoot flavor. However, April Fool's Day is April Fool's Day, and netizens are destined to only be able to enjoy the products with their eyes, but not be able to eat them.

Weilong’s most classic way of taking advantage of the situation is to leverage Apple’s press conference. On September 8 of that year, hundreds of millions of Apple fans in China were waiting for the launch of the iPhone 7, but in the end it was not a competitor but Weilong that grabbed the headlines. Apple probably didn't expect this.

At that time, Weilong released "Hotstrip 7.0", the entire visual design of which completely imitated the style of the iPhone. With large product pictures and personalized copywriting, Weilong spicy strips are instantly on par with the iPhone. It was this opportunity that allowed Weilong to appear on Weibo's real-time hot search list, gaining traffic and attention, and becoming the focus of the day.

2. Cross-border marketing to establish a brand that is fun and trendy

Weilong has a wealth of cross-border cases, from collaborating with Baozou Comics to launch emoticon packages, cooperating with Tmall to launch retro-style marketing, to experienced drivers driving, to trying game-style advertising, etc. Weilong has demonstrated its brand's playful and trendy image through various cross-border marketing.

Moreover, every marketing action of Weilong will be coordinated with store sales activities to form a closed marketing loop and help stores achieve conversions.

3. Humanized marketing gives the brand "vitality"

Today’s society is becoming more and more entertainment-oriented and fragmented. If a brand wants consumers to fall in love with it, it must try to be as personalized as possible. Just like those brands that are very personalized and have their own ideas always attract more attention than those brands without personality.

During the Dragon Boat Festival in 2020, Weilong launched the "Weilong with You" competition, which personified the marketing of spicy rice dumplings, endowed glutinous rice, meat, and corn with souls, and made the marketing more smart and interesting.

Through anthropomorphic marketing, Weilong has endowed the brand with "vitality", making the brand no longer cold but a "human" with warmth and emotions.

Through its unique marketing creativity, Weilong has not only pushed the brand to the center of the topic and become the focus of user attention, achieving communication fission, but also helped the brand establish a deeper emotional resonance with the audience, standing out among many brands. It can be seen that with efforts in products, marketing, production workshops and other aspects, Weilong has developed its brand into a leader in the spicy snack industry and has become a true national snack in the hearts of consumers.

However, going public does not mean everything is perfect. Weilong still has a lot to work on. Just like Coca-Cola trying to get rid of the label of "Happy Fat House Water", Weilong also needs to quickly get started on the road to "health" and completely tear off the label of "junk food"!

Author: PR Madman

Source: PR-MEN