Analysis of the user growth strategy of "Zhong Xue Gao"

Why can fast-moving consumer goods like Zhong Xue Gao achieve rapid success? When it comes to Zhong Xue Gao, most people are familiar with it. This ice cream brand, founded in March 2018, became the top-selling ice cream brand in the "Double Eleven" Tmall ice product category in just 8 months; in 2019, its omni-channel GMV exceeded 100 million, and in 2020, this number was reached in less than half a year.

After nearly 30 years of development, local consumer brands have gradually regained the distribution channels and terminals they once lost through brand operations. It can be said that Zhong Xue Gao has been constantly breaking sales records in the ice cream category since its inception. Taking Zhong Xue Gao as an example, we analyzed the growth strategy of new consumer brands through Zhigua data.

1. Exquisite skin and delicious soul

When it comes to Zhong Xue Gao, many people start with its appearance. The name Zhong Xue Gao combines three Chinese forms, which is homophonic to "Chinese ice cream". The appearance of the ice cream is in the form of ten thousand pieces, with a Huizi pattern on the top, recreating the green tiles and white walls. The packaging carries the classical Chinese themes of "auspicious clouds" and "zodiac signs". The brand claims to be a domestic product and is close to various Chinese elements.

Of course, relying solely on its appearance and brand concept, it would be impossible for Zhong Xue Gao to gain a foothold in the ice cream market so quickly. The ideal effect that Zhong Xue Gao wants to achieve is to make consumers start with the appearance, fall in love with the taste, and be loyal to the quality. By carefully selecting raw materials and constantly introducing new flavors, we capture the hearts of consumers, making sure that every piece of ice cream not only looks good but also has an unforgettable taste.

The reason why it is called the "Hermes" of ice cream is largely due to the quality of Zhong Xue Gaoyuan's ingredients. Turpan's red grapes, Ghana's A+ chocolate, Japan's matcha, etc., the level of demandingness in terms of raw materials is almost never achieved by many traditional ice cream brands, and it has also subverted consumers' perception of ice cream.

Moreover, health and environmental protection have gradually become an important feature of the consumption upgrade of Chinese people. Zhong Xuegao strives to achieve "zero additives" in ice cream, not only without adding flavors and pigments, but also without the stabilizers, emulsifiers and colloids found in most products.

The popsicle sticks are made of natural straw, which is biodegradable and pollution-free, satisfying users' pursuit of environmental protection. There is a sentence printed on each popsicle stick. The process of consumers eating the ice cream is also a process of gradual "decryption", which is interesting. From purchase to consumption, it is full of ritual and expectation, enriching the user experience.

Targeting the mid-to-high-end market where domestic ice cream brands are vacant, creating differentiated products, embracing national trend culture and following consumers' environmental awareness with product concepts, strictly controlling quality and constantly innovating to enrich product flavors, focusing on user experience and enriching user usage scenarios , it can be said that this has laid the foundation for Zhong Xue Gao's brand growth.

2. Marketing combination leverages strengths to become the "top stream" in the ice cream industry

As an "Internet celebrity" brand, Zhong Xuegao's investment in brand marketing is self-evident. It can be said that it has the same purpose as new brands such as Perfect Diary, Huaxizi, and Yuanqi Forest.

They focus on brand promotion and product recommendation on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, WeChat official accounts, Weibo, and Bilibili, select artists who match the product's tone to endorse the product, and use top anchors on live streaming platforms to increase product penetration. They almost never choose traditional marketing and promotion methods.

1. Brand placement based on platform characteristics

Zhong Xue Gao has been ALL IN Tmall from the very beginning. Taking Tmall as its starting point, it is natural that it will not miss the trend of live streaming. On Taobao, the [Zhong Xue Gao Flagship Store] broadcasts daily in turn by real anchors and virtual anchors. In terms of brand placement, in the past 90 days alone, it has been placed in the live broadcast rooms of anchors such as Viya, Lin Yilun, Ye Yiqian, and Hu Ke. Among them, it was placed twice in Viya's live broadcast room in the past 90 days, with cumulative sales of nearly 70,000.

Daily live streaming of products not only helps the brand gain exposure, but also allows potential buyers who enter the store to learn more about the products. By placing live broadcasts in the top Taobao live streaming rooms, it can increase sales while expanding the brand’s voice.

As a product that is sensitive to seasons and regions, few brands would place an offer for ice cream in live broadcast rooms. Therefore, the brand communication effect of appearing in the live broadcast rooms of top anchors and celebrity anchors is more advantageous than that of other types of brands.

As a grass-growing and social platform, Xiaohongshu has a huge number of young users and a strong ability to create trends and hot spots, allowing new brands to gain widespread attention in a short period of time. At the same time, it can also provide timely feedback on product problems and shortcomings.

Moreover, the high-quality fan base of Xiaohongshu platform is highly consistent with Zhong Xuegao's target users. Therefore, when Zhong Xuegao launched its first batch of products, it almost simultaneously promoted it on Xiaohongshu and found a large number of KOLs and amateurs to experience the product launch.

To this day, Zhong Xue Gao is still very popular on Xiaohongshu. In Q1 2021 alone, there were more than 700 influencers on Xiaohongshu who associated related products, of which more than 60% were amateurs.

For a brand, if it does not appear in front of consumers frequently, it will soon be forgotten. In other words, Zhong Xue Gao also has a strong presence in the off-season. The delivery process can also help brands screen users and complete user education.

In addition to Taobao and Xiaohongshu, Zhong Xuegao also has a large number of bloggers posting unboxing and review videos on Douyin and Bilibili, and the products in Douyin’s store are associated with multiple broadcasters. In the past 30 days, 28 products were promoted and 34 videos were associated with them, with a total sales volume of nearly 170,000. It also began broadcasting on weekdays in March.

Zhong Xuegao also uses Douyin and Weibo as outlets for brand promotion and interaction. Release concept videos, brand micro-films, new product advertisements, etc., personalize the account image on Weibo, make official announcements of spokespersons, preview new products, stimulate user participation in welfare activities, etc., and interact with relevant partners to achieve the effect of building momentum for new products.

2. Leverage multiple brands to expand user circles

From the content posted on Zhong Xuegao’s Weibo and Douyin, we can see that Zhong Xuegao has made cross-border collaborations unique. Borrow the existing influence of other brands to enhance the influence of your own brand. During the Double 11 event in 2020, we conducted cross-border collaboration with 6 brands.

It cooperated with Luzhou Laojiao to launch the Blackout ice cream, with Three Squirrels to launch the Giant Squid Seafood ice cream, with Roewe to launch the Lazy Addiction ice cream, with Xiaoxiandun to launch the bird's nest lava ice cream, with Nayuki Tea to launch white peach, taro, and chocolate ice cream, and also launched a joint gift box with Fiyta.

Utilizing large-scale cross-border efforts to help brands reach diverse consumer circles, such a marketing matrix can be said to be a breakthrough for the brand. In addition to gaining traffic, it also helps the brand to develop more potential users.

In addition, it has also collaborated with Wahaha, Wufangzhai (Dragon Boat Festival), Oreo Coffee Workshop, Zhuxian Town Woodblock New Year Paintings, etc., to market new products in the form of conceptual short films combined with nodes, further maintaining the brand's popularity and topicality.

3. Celebrity endorsements highlight brand style

As an ice cream brand, Zhong Xue Gao chose film and television actors Tong Liya and Zhou Yiwei, who are widely recognized by the public and have a large number of passers-by, as brand spokespersons to endorse the brand and highlight its brand image.

And on November 11, 2018, the company officially announced that TF-boy's junior fellow student Ao Ziyi was its spokesperson, and launched a new product, [Ecuadorian Pink Diamond] ice cream, priced at RMB 66 per piece. All 20,000 pieces were sold out on the same day, and other ice cream products also flourished. Sales exceeded RMB 4 million in one day, and the brand's reputation was further expanded.

In addition to online, Zhong Xuegao also expands its influence and fission through "pop-up stores + offline stores", attracting users to take photos and check in with unique styling, and then leading them online through various themed activities, forming a closed loop of check-in + sharing + traffic.

From a multi-faceted online layout, to adopting marketing and publicity strategies with different orientations based on the characteristics of the platforms, we have identified the needs of Generation Z consumers, developed new products based on the characteristics of our partners to expand the user circle, seized the live broadcast trend to launch broadcasts and placements on multiple platforms in an all-round manner, used the influence of celebrities and big brands to build momentum for ourselves, and became a top player in the ice cream industry in one fell swoop.

3. From ice cream to desserts, driving the market forward

At present, Zhong Xue Gao has obviously become the representative brand of Chinese ice cream, and recently, Zhong Xue Gao launched new products other than tile ice cream for the first time. The product is called "Zhong Xuegao's Cake", a boxed ice cream dessert with two flavors: "Xing Yu Nian" and "Zhi Mei Long Li".

After launching "Zhong Xue Gao's Cake", the recent viewing data of the Zhong Xue Gao flagship store live broadcast has shown a clear upward trend.

Zhu Baowei, editor-in-chief of "China Ice Cream" magazine, said in March this year that unlike the emergence of new flavors a few years ago, this year's ice cream market mainly shows two major trends. One is the return of new and old brands to classic flavors, and the other is the trend towards desserts. China has become the world's second largest dessert consumption market. People born in the 1990s and 2000s are accustomed to and like to use ice cream as desserts and snacks at home.

According to the data from the Forward-looking Industry Research Institute, the market size of my country's ice cream industry reached 40.3 billion yuan in 2017, an increase of 3.33% over 2016. It is predicted that the market size will exceed 50 billion yuan in 2018. According to statistics from the Longpinxi China Ice Cream Market Research Center, the total volume of China's ice cream market reached 123.937 billion yuan in 2018, and there is still ample room for new brands.

It can be seen that after Zhong Xue Gao used ice cream to increase brand awareness, the launch of "Zhong Xue Gao's Cake" may be an attempt to layout a new consumer track and promote the dessertization of ice cream. Once this model is established, Zhong Xuegao will be able to replicate its product research and development, marketing, supply chain, and channel experience to products in other categories, providing the brand with new growth potential and paving the way for its "long-term success."

Brands without innovation awareness and product development capabilities will face greater challenges, which will drive more brands to invest in product development, supply chain management and logistics, extend industry boundaries and promote the evolution of the ice cream market.

These two cakes have been launched for half a month. Although there seems to be no obvious investment in the live streaming platform at present, if you search for "Zhong Xuegao's cake" on Xiaohongshu, you can see a lot of picture and text notes, most of which are from junior experts and amateurs. It is also being vigorously promoted on the Weibo platform, and some WeChat public accounts have begun to publicize Zhong Xue Gao's cakes.

Perhaps it will be launched in major live broadcast rooms soon, allowing users who are currently attracted to it to try it out.

In addition to the new products launched this time, the founding team registered Jumao Food (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. just one year after the establishment of Zhong Xuegao. In April 2019, Li Daju's Tmall flagship store was officially launched. The average selling price was lower than Zhong Xuegao, and it was mid-range in ice cream.

In addition, Zhong Xue Gao’s parent company also launched the high-end frozen dumpling brand Li Xiang Guo at the end of 2019. From this point of view, Zhong Xuegao has always been targeting consumers' "refrigerators", which shows its ambition to penetrate into household consumption scenarios.

From its sudden emergence to the creation of new consumption scenarios, Zhong Xuegao's brand building path not only has the logic of new consumer brands becoming popular quickly, but also has its own unique thinking.

Will “Zhong Xuegao’s Cake” bring Zhong Xuegao a replicable product creation route or other new inspiration? Let us wait for feedback from the market.