What is the logic behind new consumer brands breaking through their circle and becoming popular?

In the new consumption dimension where concepts are constantly iterating and channels are constantly expanding, you have witnessed the hot sales of your dream products such as self-heating pot, instant snail noodles, Uni-President boiled water, Ubras seamless underwear, and Xuanma egg yolk pastry. You have also silently paid for the sentimental innovation of veteran manufacturers such as White Rabbit, Li Ning, Want Want, Hankou No. 2 Factory, and Weilong.

Enjoying innovation, believing in pleasing oneself and being loyal to values, the emergence of a wave of new consumer brands reflects a change in consumption concepts of the new generation of consumers. They pay for feelings, recharge their beliefs, pay for their looks and spend money on their personality.

Weiboyi’s seventh year-end issue will analyze the logic behind the popularity of products of 8 representative brands in 5 categories, showing the high-quality brands that have been active on social media platforms in recent years in multiple dimensions such as last year’s sales, reputation, public opinion, and popularity among Generation Z. How did they take advantage of the situation and "rise to the top" in 2020?

1. Representatives of new food and beverage brands: Li Ziqi snail noodles, Santonban

Core gameplay: Enter the market in a "light" manner, deeply grasp the life outlook of Generation Z, expand the voice through Douyin and Weibo KOLs, and make in-depth influence through Xiaohongshu KOL+KOC.

1. Li Ziqi Snail Rice Noodles

During the epidemic, the topic of Liuzhou snail noodles was on the hot search list 10 times. As of January 2021, the total reading volume exceeded 65 million and the number of discussions exceeded 35,000.

The most popular snail noodle brand this year comes from Sichuan internet celebrity Liziqi.

Data shows that in the first half of 2020 alone, sales of Liuzhou snail noodles reached nearly 5 billion yuan, of which Liziqi accounted for nearly half of the market, far ahead in terms of market share and brand awareness. The number of discussions on Weibo has exceeded 615,000 times, and the total number of readings has reached 210 million. The number of views of Douyin topics has reached 100 million, with most of the content being live broadcasts by food experts and merchants.

Among them, the hot topics discussed on the entire network recently revolve around basic product introductions such as taste, packaging, cooking methods, taste evaluation, value perception, etc. Thanks to the high-quality taste evaluation, rich ingredient display, and the popularity of snail noodles, Li Ziqi's snail noodles took off in the "trend".

2. San Dun Ban

Different from Li Ziqi's snail noodles, which adopted a bold approach to integration, "Santonban" has entered the battlefield on Xiaohongshu.

There are more than 10,000 derivative contents about drinking methods, cups, fat loss, evaluation, blind boxes, matching, etc., mainly mid-level KOLs and tail KOCs. The interesting life, light luxury, healthy, and positive energy attitude towards life displayed in the content have led the users to follow the trend.

In 2019, on Tmall’s Double 11, Santonban sold 600,000 pieces in just one hour, beating Nestlé, which had dominated the list for 10 years. During the 618 shopping festival in 2020, Santonban once again took the center stage on Tmall, with Nestlé and Starbucks following suit.

Sandunban has taken a different approach in the crowded coffee industry, taking "selling experience" and "selling life" as its core brand concept. It also uses this feature to deeply promote its products, and its hot topics on the entire network are mainly similar new consumer brands of Generation Z.

2. New Chinese cosmetics brand: Perfect Diary

Core gameplay: Well versed in the means of promoting products, using products to promote brands, integrating private and public domain marketing to achieve product and effect integration.

For emerging domestic brands such as Perfect Diary, it is particularly important to change the consumption concepts of Chinese people and respond to the psychological expectations of young users. From a product perspective, being from the same factory is the core competitiveness of internal products, and being a substitute is the core keyword promoted by competitiveness.

The quality is higher, but the entry threshold is much lower than that of big-name cosmetics. The high cost-effectiveness makes it popular among consumers who are just starting to learn makeup or who are looking for something new.

COSMAX, Intercos and Shanghai Zhenchen are the three main OEM factories of Perfect Diary, which also serve international brands such as Estee Lauder and Procter & Gamble. Their products are high-quality and stylish. Through the supply chain of big brands, they satisfy the "sense of belonging to big brands" of new consumers born after 1995 when they first spend money.

Perfect Diary, which has grown into a unicorn, focuses on refined delivery and circle marketing in KOL marketing, and makes detailed segmentation of users. The "wide-scale investment" we see is also cross-circle delivery to maintain high marketing volume.

Perfect Diary’s exploration of circles is mainly divided into four stages, and it continuously iterates and evolves the brand circle expansion model.

Image source: "The road to advancement of low-priced hot products in 2020"

• Brand exploration stage: New brands are small in scale and have low online influence. They get inspiration from catwalks and start from the fashion and beauty circles.
• Brand rising stage: In the early stage of a brand, cross-border collaborations, celebrity endorsements, KOL recommendations, and harvesting fans and art circles;
• Brand explosion stage: During the brand explosion stage, product categories are refined, spokespersons that match different categories are selected, and KOLs continue to promote products and reach the audience;
• Brand explosion stage: brand maturity, brand upgrading and breaking circle marketing, national style, two-dimensional, cute pets, food circles, etc.

3. Community New Retail: Pagoda, Miss Fresh

Core gameplay: Deep integration of online and offline, using social media to build reputation, and conducting regionalized in-depth marketing offline to quickly grow into a trusted brand.

1. Baiguoyuan

At the end of 2019, Baiguoyuan was the first in the industry to test the live streaming field. It not only conducted cross-border live streaming with Liu Tao, but also launched a joint live streaming method of Zhao Wei and Baiguoyuan Vice President Zhu Qidong, "star × president", to explore multi-scenario and multi-channel marketing.

The company also improves its reputation and credibility through origin tours. Since the first Thai durian origin tour was launched in April 2019, Baiguoyuan has organized more than 10 origin experience tours to date.

By inviting senior fruit fans, industry media, franchisees, etc. to visit Baiguoyuan’s multiple special supply bases at home and abroad, they can experience the planting technology and picking and processing processes of fruit brands such as Qingni Wang Durian, Xige Coconut, and Feizishao Lychee, and witness the natural conditions and artificial management details of the production areas with their own eyes.

On the Douyin platform, the three major topic tags #百果园#, #百果园不好吃,三无返货#, and #百果园科学普# have been played over 100 million times, and the company has more than 1.7 million fans. Its core concept has been deeply disseminated through the social media network, allowing users to have a deeper understanding and trust in the Baiguoyuan chain service brand.

2. Daily Fresh

MissFresh is a B2C e-commerce application focusing on fresh food and daily necessities, which enables users to quickly purchase healthy and green fresh food and daily necessities online and have them delivered quickly.

It relies on a strong supply chain and suppliers to meet the urgent needs of users, and cooperates with well-known Weibo bloggers and some companies to release its own promotional videos and creative advertisements, giving more Weibo users the opportunity to learn about MissFresh. When the base volume is relatively sufficient, we will once again use social media platforms to increase users’ reputation and favorability.

Taking the Douyin platform as an example, its topic #每日优鲜有哪些# has prompted netizens to quickly participate in showing off their dishes and cooking skills. While showcasing their delicious dishes, good quality and low prices, they also conveyed their own values ​​​​and life concepts.

4. New fashion trend: Pop Mart

Core gameplay: Lead category innovation, use young people’s aesthetics as the core entry point, and conduct targeted marketing for Generation Z.

In December 2020, the trendy toy company Pop Mart was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. For a time, the blind box model and the Generation Z economy became widely discussed. The concept of blind boxes originated from the popular lucky bags in Japan. Similar capsule toys and blind box products are now an important form of sales of anime and film and television peripherals, or designer toys.

According to the "Post-95 Players' Shopping Power List" released by Tmall, nearly 200,000 people spend 20,000 yuan a year on collecting blind boxes, and some consumers even spend millions of yuan a year on buying blind boxes.

Under the guidance of the appearance economy and fun fashion, blind boxes have gradually become the mainstay of subculture circles, and collecting and showing off blind boxes have become the main content form of precise traffic in the circle.

Taking Xiaohongshu as an example, its new products, jasmine, limited editions and other content have attracted much attention. Its cross-border marketing joint models are also deeply loved by users and have received high attention. It has become a cultural symbol of niche circles, and through vertical platforms such as Xiaohongshu, it has created interest circles and repeated marketing to form a virtuous cycle of belief.

5. New catering concepts: Haidilao and Nayuki Tea

Core gameplay: Differentiate from the standard service, taste and environment of traditional restaurants, find a new way to provide a communication point for the brand and create a truly long-lasting online celebrity store.

1. Haidilao

Haidilao was born with a unique perception and can be regarded as the most forward-looking Internet celebrity restaurant in China. As early as 201x, Haidilao became popular on Weibo for its "more than humane" service style.

Hot words such as "If you praise the melon as delicious, you will be given a watermelon" and "If you act cute, you will be given a doll" struck people's hearts for the first time on the Weibo platform. Netizens infiltrated the urban users who opened stores through the modification, interpretation and picture books of Haidilao-style service, which also led to the early success of each store. Even if there were few in-store discounts, there would still be long queues when the store opened.

In recent years, with Haidilao's urban layout, its services have once again become a hot topic. Topics such as #Unlock Haidilao's hidden services#, #Haidilao's homemade hot pot soup base#, #Haidilao beef noodles#, #Haidilao manicure#, and #Haidilao's homemade milk tea# are active all year round.

As leading enterprises become more and more famous, their management models and marketing methods are also attracting much attention.

On platforms such as TikTok and Xiaohongshu that have emerged in recent years, content related to Haidilao has always created hits. Its birthday service, seasonings, various ways to save money on dining and other self-created topics, through real scenes, KOLs have made the online and offline linkages closer, making Haidilao a trend in lifestyle and food.

2. Nayuki’s Tea

After resuming work, the number of readings of the Weibo topic "The first cup of milk tea in autumn" reached nearly 2.4 billion. Faced with the long-suppressed market explosion, the new tea beverage industry has achieved a rapid recovery. The leading brand Nayuki's Tea has significantly increased the speed of new product launches in the second half of the year, and the number of newly launched tea beverages is about twice that of the first half of the year (data statistics come from Nayuki's Tea's official WeChat public account).

On April 1, 2020, the day of Luo Yonghao's much-anticipated live broadcast, Nayuki's Tea was a popular product in the first half. Its Nayuki's Tea x Luo Yonghao specially customized greeting cards sold 91,800 pieces and achieved sales of 807,840,000, ranking third on the product sales list.

At the same time, Naixue's Tea, with its core selling points of appearance, diverse product categories, and sweet taste, has also penetrated into the minds of young people through the influence of different circles of fashion KOLs, food KOLs, and store exploration KOLs, allowing its tea concept to be quickly recognized and acknowledged, driving a new offline consumption boom.

Author: iSocial

Source: iSocial