In-depth interview with Yuanqi Forest and Heytea: How to create hot products through new marketing?

The timeline of 2020 is coming to an end, and the brand new year of 2021 is about to come.

Looking back at 2020, we have heard too many anxious voices. This year has been an extremely extraordinary year for both companies and brands. This may also be a year that requires rethinking more than ever before.

But looking back, we found that many dark horse brands in the industry have gone against the trend. Some of them have become the first in the industry, and their products are sold out as soon as they are launched. Some have only been established for three or four years, but have already sounded the bell for listing.

With the rise of a new generation of domestic brands, new brand marketing strategies have entered the public eye. Domestic beauty brands "Perfect Diary" and "Hua Xizi", well-known brands in the meal replacement market "Wang Baobao" and "Lijiang Shop", and food brands " Yuanqi Forest ", " Heytea " and "Nayuki Tea" have all achieved dazzling sales results and brand reputation. From products to marketing methods to consumer services, they have perfectly captured the hearts of a large number of new generation consumers.

The “vast” Chinese market is experiencing a surge in consumption upgrades. From these industry leaders, we may be able to find the strategies and development ideas for new consumer brands:

In the new tea beverage market, Yuanqi Forest, a brand that focuses on healthy tea beverages, has a brand positioning that coincides with the current needs of consumers. As a result, it became popular in a short period of time and became one of the popular tea beverage brands on the Internet. The "CP" of Heytea and Nayuki's Tea, which are basically synchronized in their core products, pay more attention to the importance of multi-channel development, and have expanded retail channels, created diversified consumption scenarios, and improved the brand's ability to resist risks.

In the food field, the "high-end snacks" strategy that Bestore has insisted on deploying has gradually been recognized by the mainstream market; Wang Baobao, which focuses on the new trend of meal replacement consumption, innovates on the basis of traditional cereals, enters the product market from the perspective of consumption scenarios, and creates a new consumption scenario for consumers that combines enjoyment and health.

In the beauty market, take Huaxizi as an example. In just three years, it has grown from a new brand to a popular overseas brand, becoming a domestic beauty giant with more than 4 million Internet followers, and has established a profound "national style" brand image in the minds of consumers.

With the continuous upgrading and evolution of the consumer market, the Chinese people's consumption concepts are also changing. More and more brands have gained the favor of the new generation of consumers through product precipitation, creative marketing, and occupying e-commerce platforms, and are running wildly on this new consumption track...

"What actions have you taken in brand marketing this year? What new products have you launched? What achievements have you made?"

“Have you encountered any problems or difficulties in brand building? How did you overcome them?”

“How do you view product innovation? What difficulties did you encounter in the process of achieving brand innovation, and how did the team solve them?”

…

Blue Whale Muddy Waters interviewed the heads of seven brands, including Yuanqi Forest, Heytea, Nayuki Tea, Huaxizi, Liangpin Shop, Wang Baobao, and Amino Mason , to discuss the development and marketing of new consumer brands, and how to seize trends and grow in the future?

1. Behind the popularity of tea beverage market: product and brand upgrades

Brand: Yuanqi Forest

@ Vice President Zong Hao

“Our ultimate breakthrough point is not the brand , but the product itself.”

2020 is an extraordinary year for Yuanqi Forest.

In terms of product innovation, we have launched a new category of "pure juice + microbubble" products; we have iterated many new flavors of sparkling water, such as cherry blossom, lychee, lactic acid bacteria, lime ginger, summer black grape, Wang Lin green apple, etc. Summer black grape flavored sparkling water was sold out twice during this year's "Double 11" period; we also launched coffee-flavored milk tea, made from the best Arabica coffee beans; in addition, in order to meet users' demand for small packages, we also launched small-capacity mini versions of sparkling water and milk tea.

In the domestic market, during this year's "618" and "Double 11" e-commerce festivals, Yuanqi Forest surpassed traditional international beverage giants on Tmall and JD platforms and won the double crown of water beverages on the entire network.

In terms of overseas markets, Yuanqi Forest has also achieved new breakthroughs in its overseas performance. Currently, Yuanqi Forest products have been exported to more than 40 countries including the United States, Canada, Germany, Singapore, and Australia. In July this year, it also obtained the Singapore HCS health logo.

In brand building, we have also encountered difficulties: the drinking water market is a fully competitive red ocean. The companies standing before us are those that have been deeply involved in the market for more than ten years. These companies have rich product structures, broad user bases, and clear brand images. In such a red ocean, how can new brands break through the siege?

Ren Zhengfei once said, "Once the tofu is ground, people will naturally buy it." We believe that Yuanqi Forest's ultimate breakthrough point lies not in the brand, but in the product itself. Therefore, what Yuanqi Forest first established was a research and development center rather than a company.

Secondly, we found that when it comes to beverages, young consumers think “I want health and beauty, but I can’t afford to be unpalatable.” We need higher quality drinks that can meet more of their needs, which creates conditions for Yuanqi Forest's growth.

In the innovation process of our industry, the biggest difficulty is not so much technical as it is value-based.

In the traditional beverage market, some companies often spend part of the product sales price on channels, part on marketing, part as profit, and the rest on research and development and production.

However, Yuanqi Forest’s approach is completely subversive, considering what users need first. This year, Yuanqi Forest spent 500 million yuan to put into operation its first factory in Chuzhou, Anhui. The factory has three high-speed production lines with an annual production capacity of 450 million bottles. Next year, the Chuzhou Phase II factory, Guangzhou Zhaoqing factory and Tianjin factory will be put into production one after another.

We chose to build our own factory, and a big part of that is to enhance our product innovation capabilities. It will allow Yuanqi Forest to improve its control over its core products and achieve a higher response speed than the OEM model, which is conducive to new product testing and process optimization, and can improve the subsequent research and development and market competitiveness of new products.

Changes in the beverage industry have been happening all the time. After having its own factory, Yuanqi Forest will definitely change the production and manufacturing process to give its products a new and different experience.

At the same time, we deeply understand that if the quality of the product itself is not good enough and cannot truly meet the diverse needs of consumers, then you may be able to make consumers take the first sip, but you cannot make consumers want to take a second sip after the first sip.

There is no point in selling fast-moving consumer goods that cannot be repurchased. Marketing may bring temporary sales, but only the quality and value of the product itself can truly precipitate brand potential.

On the one hand, we are continuously investing in product research and development and enterprise construction, including the construction of new production bases and strengthening the research and development and innovation of new product categories.

On the other hand, we also adhere to the strategic idea of ​​"global serving the world", apply global new technologies and new resources to serve local consumers, and strive to provide consumers with more high-quality and delicious products.

Brand: HEYTEA

@Relevant person in charge

" Shaping a brand culture that resonates with young consumers and becoming a brand loved by consumers is what HEYTEA is constantly working on."

In November, the China Chain Store & Franchise Association (CCFA) and Heytea jointly initiated the establishment of the New Tea Beverage Committee, and invited peers to join the committee to jointly promote the standardized development of the industry.

As the pioneer of new tea drinks, Heytea's definition of "new tea drinks" has become a reference standard in the new tea drink industry. "New tea drinks" must meet two major conditions:

First, we must use natural raw materials to create good products. Product quality is the first thing that users recognize;

Second, we must be committed to shaping and delivering a certain brand culture.

According to statistics, the major categories of products with sales data from 2020 to date include beverages, hot wheat bread, HEYTEA ice cream, desserts, CELATO, HEYTEA Food Laboratory, Tea Geeks, etc.

As of November 2020, HEYTEA has more than 660 stores in over 50 cities in mainland China, Hong Kong, China and Singapore, and its online mini program serves more than 30 million customers.

For HEYTEA, products, stores, mini-programs, self-media platforms, etc., all places that can come into contact with consumers are scenes for HEYTEA to shape its brand. Heytea is constantly working to shape a brand culture that resonates with young consumers and become a brand loved by consumers.

This year, Heytea opened its first pet-friendly theme store, creating a modern urban "pet social scene" - starting from the current lifestyle of young people raising pets, using pets as an emotional link, and providing consumers with a new tea drinking place, a pet information exchange platform and a pet social circle.

In addition, HEYTEA is not only a young tea beverage brand. While it is committed to the inheritance and development of tea culture, it also maintains awe for other traditional Chinese cultures. We try to let traditional culture collide with new tea drinks to build a modern consumption scene that integrates the old and the new.

In mid-December, Heytea opened two Chinese-themed stores in Shenzhen and Chengdu, which were inspired by traditional Chinese colors and restored the structure of classical Chinese architecture. The new store in Chengdu's Kuanzhai Alley is themed on "camel" color, while the 100-store store in Shenzhen uses "ochre" color to create a classical courtyard atmosphere.

HEYTEA combines antique space with new tea drinks to bring consumers a new immersive experience.

Since the birth of the first cup of original cheese tea, HEYTEA has formed a rich product matrix including the succulent fruit tea family series, the bubble milk tea family series, the pure tea series, and the seasonal limited series.

In terms of store formats, HEYTEA has continuously broken through into various store types including main stores, GO stores, and Lab stores. For HEYTEA, every product has gone through repeated trials and iterations. No product is the "final version", and repeated attempts have enabled us to achieve the best.

On November 8, Heytea’s original and new tea industry’s first drink made from frozen extracted milk – the Super Thick Milk Bobo – landed in Shanghai and sold nearly 50,000 cups in Shanghai on the same day.

This year, in addition to offline stores, Heytea also launched online retail business. This is an extension of HEYTEA's brand potential online, and also a new business launched by HEYTEA in response to changes in customer needs and consumption trends.

Currently, Heytea’s main online retail products include fast-moving consumer goods, tea and peripheral products. Online retail is mainly distributed in the "HEYTEA GO" mini program's "HEYTEA Department Store" section, HEYTEA's Tmall flagship store and HEYTEA's JD self-operated flagship store. Heytea’s brand potential is being released through e-commerce channels.

Taking this year's Double Eleven as an example, as of 24:00 on November 11, Heytea's GMV during the Double Eleven period exceeded 10 million yuan, many products ranked among the top 5 best-selling lists, and the number of fans of the Tmall flagship store increased by more than 200,000. Among them, the annual new product Heytea small bottle sparkling water sold over 40,000 boxes and 500,000 bottles, and Heytea's weekly tea gift box sold nearly 130,000 boxes.

Brand: Nayuki's Tea

@Public Relations Senior Manager Chen Shi

"In the future, Nayuki will continue to cultivate online channels."

In 2020, Nayuki continued its brand marketing with art marketing represented by "Nayuki CUP Art Museum", content marketing represented by "2020 New Tea Drink White Paper" and "Nayuki National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival Big Data Report", and brand collaborations represented by "Nayuki×QQ Star" and "Nayuki×Ling".

In terms of freshly made beverages in our stores, we pioneered the launch of "Fresh Fruit Bubble Tea" and "Fruit Milk Tea". In November 2020, it also launched a new store type "Nayuki's Tea PRO Store", introducing 7 boutique coffees including "Iced Bock Latte" and "Oatmeal Coffee", as well as 30 new roasts.

In terms of new retail products, this year we launched "Good Tea of ​​the Week", snacks, sparkling water, nutritious meal replacement shakes, etc.

During the Double Eleven period in 2020, Nayuki’s online channel sales exceeded 10 million, with more than 150,000 boxes of Haocha gift boxes sold in one week.

This year, "post-epidemic recovery" is a common topic for all consumer brands. Thanks to the team's early digital layout, during the epidemic, Naixue launched a series of combined punches including mini-program ordering, third-party food delivery platforms, WeChat Mall, live broadcast, Tmall flagship store, etc., which accelerated the integration of online and offline consumption scenarios. So far, it has attracted 30 million members.

Regarding product innovation, its dimensions are very multifaceted. Experience, quality, and design are all product innovations, but innovation is actually different at different stages. In the early stages, it may be more about what customers can directly perceive and be more front-end, but later on you will find that it will be closer to the back end and will be related to the supply chain and technology, so there will be considerations at different stages. Of course, it is not necessary to do a lot of things across stages.

Naixue has the following considerations when making products:

1. Products that can become classics. 80% of our current menu sales are generated by classic products. Naixue’s insistence on making products is that the products themselves have continuous and strong customer demand. The demand created by marketing is of course very important, but the classic products will slowly become everyone’s habit even if you don’t market them, and their repurchase rate is very high.

2. The direction of sustained health. We make zero-calorie sugar products and promote probiotics. Based on the idea that young people want to drink sweet drinks but are afraid of getting fat, we cooperated with DuPont to develop a probiotic called "Burning Bacteria", which can reduce calorie absorption. Since its launch, this product has become the number one ingredient in our products.

3. Products that capture hot spots. Our industry is still a fashion and fast-moving consumer goods industry, and the ability of brands to seize hot spots is very important. Every year there are some popular products. We don’t know whether they are sustainable, but they must be able to capture the hot spots.

According to the data from the "2020 New-Style Tea Drinks White Paper", new-style tea drinks have entered the 3.0 era, and online orders have increased significantly. In 2020, 54% of consumers chose online channels to purchase new-style tea drinks. Compared with 2019, the proportion of online orders for new-style tea drinks increased by nearly 20%.

The "migration of users to online" has also made new tea beverage brands pay more attention to the refined operation of members, deepening the connection with consumers through pre-ordering, points mall, exclusive evaluation channels, etc., and cultivating the membership system has become an important measure to improve user stickiness and repurchase rate.

The "White Paper" data shows that as of December 2020, the number of Nayuki's Tea members exceeded 30 million, and Nayuki will continue to cultivate online channels in the future.

In the future, in addition to investing in product innovation, scene space, digital construction, etc., we will also participate in the establishment of new tea beverage industry standards under the leadership of industry associations and assume the responsibility of a leading brand.

At present, our largest investments are in product research and development, space creation, supply chain construction and digital construction, while the proportion of marketing investment in the overall investment is very healthy and restrained.

We believe that with the rise of domestic brands, leading brands will become more and more trusted, and building brand assets remains a top priority.

2. In the era of appearance economy, domestic beauty products are rising rapidly

Brand: Huaxizi

@Relevant person in charge

"Huaxizi has always adhered to the brand concept of 'Oriental cosmetics, using flowers to nourish makeup', and has ingeniously created exquisite cosmetics that are both beautiful inside and out."

In 2020, Hua Xizi launched several cosmetics products with strong oriental cultural characteristics, such as "Heart-Lock Lipstick", "Miao Impression" series of products, "Ceramic Lipstick", etc. Among the many new products, the Miao Impression series has attracted much attention.

Hua Xizi innovatively combines engraving techniques with oriental micro-carving technology to reproduce the Miao silver-making process on its products. This move makes intangible cultural heritage more popular, fashionable and youthful.

According to the list of domestic beauty products exported overseas released by Tmall during the Double Eleven period, Huaxizi ranked first on the list, setting off a "reverse" purchasing trend.

Product innovation is one of the reasons why Huaxizi is popular among users.

Hua Xizi has always been adhering to the brand concept of "Oriental cosmetics, using flowers to nourish makeup", and every cosmetic product is added with flower and herbal essences.

In terms of product technology, Hua Xizi also dares to innovate, and pioneered "carved lipstick", "embossed makeup palette", "carved honey powder", etc. The craftsmanship has evolved from "micro-carving" to "relief" and then to "holographing".

In the future, Huaxizi's brand strategy direction will not change much. For Hua Xizi, "Oriental cosmetics, using flowers to nourish makeup" is a brand concept that must be adhered to for a hundred years, and it is also a concept that needs to be exported to the world.

Therefore, continuously consolidating Huaxizi’s brand assets of “Oriental culture, fashionable cosmetics, and using flowers to nourish makeup” is the strategic direction for the next three years.

In terms of specific layout, we will focus on product quality, user experience, brand culture and social responsibility.

1. Build multiple product R&D laboratories around the world, work closely with international and domestic research institutions, academic organizations and universities, and establish an internationally leading quality system to make product R&D more internationally competitive.

2. Expand the scope of user co-creation and user evaluation to improve product development, reduce the error rate, and provide more in-depth and extensive ultimate user services.

3. Comprehensively launch brand image upgrade and establish an oriental aesthetic system that belongs to the Huaxizi brand attributes.

4. Fulfill corporate social responsibility and continue to practice social welfare, especially public welfare projects for women.

5. Establish an intellectual property rights system and strengthen anti-counterfeiting efforts.

In the cosmetics industry, there is more than one local cosmetics brand in the top ten list of Tmall Double Eleven cosmetics. This may prove from the side that the rapid development of local cosmetics brands has changed the situation where international brands have dominated the local cosmetics market for many years. In fact, it can reflect that more and more consumers are willing to accept local products.

As China's manufacturing environment becomes increasingly favorable, higher requirements are also placed on local beauty brands. The core competitiveness of local beauty brands is mainly reflected in the following three points:

1. To create innovation while inheriting, and to give fashion to tradition, it is not difficult to integrate traditional culture into products. What is rare is to ensure the "original flavor" of traditional culture in the process of inheriting traditional culture, and to make traditional culture popular and fashionable.

2. Develop products with ingenuity. For cosmetics brands, the core competitiveness of product strength and whether the product is easy to use is the key. Only products that are both "good inside and out" can continue to gain recognition from consumers.

3. Be able to listen to users’ voices, co-create with users, and provide users with the ultimate service. Listen to user demands before the product is launched, and accept user inspection and feedback after it is launched. Respect users, explore their real demands, communicate with them attentively, continuously iterate products, better solve their pain points and meet their needs.

Brand: Amino Mason

@ Liu Sisi, Marketing and Brand Director of China

“Our brand philosophy is to ‘give life a fresh and wonderful bonus’.”

Amino Mason entered the Chinese market in 2017. Our brand philosophy is “to give life a fresh and beautiful bonus”.

In 2020, in terms of brand marketing and communication, Amino Mason will pay more attention to the transmission of cognition and image. Through regular cross-border IP cooperation, it will link different brands to tap into the consumer market of young groups and inject new vitality and momentum into the brand.

This summer, Amino Mason teamed up with a boutique coffee brand popular among young people to open 12 offline stores in five cities, including Nanjing, Jinan, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. Online, it also launched a joint campaign with Tmall, Xiaohongshu and Weibo with more than 100 bloggers.

Amino Mason fully understands the needs of the local hair care market and the vertical fields that have grown rapidly in recent years. We have jointly launched products for deep scalp care and hair loss relief with Japanese laboratories. They were launched in July this year and their monthly sales on the entire network exceeded 10,000 in the single month of their launch.

Brand building is a continuous accumulation process that requires a deep and full understanding of brand values ​​and unwavering output. This is also the foundation for every brand's long-term prosperity.

Facing such a situation this year, Amino Mason is also faced with the conflict between reality and ideals, but we have not stopped our output in brand building. What tests the team is how to obtain traffic in the most cost-effective way, spread brand awareness and benefit from sales results. This is a big challenge for the team.

In terms of product innovation, I think there are two levels: one is the innovation of product form, and the other is the innovation of product technology. We are currently experimenting on both levels, and next year we will have a series of new products on the market that are fun and interesting and in line with the Amino Mason brand genes.

In 2021, Amino Mason's main battlefield will still be its self-operated system, such as Tmall and JD.com online, and it will deeply bind with the platform to achieve on-site growth.

At the same time, we are also planning media traffic e-commerce platforms. This year, we have once again seen the explosion of video and live streaming traffic dividends. This brand marketing channel has been verified by the market. We will work harder next year to achieve more in-depth breakthrough growth based on this established model.

In terms of brand strategy planning and overall layout, we will have the following arrangements:

1. Breakthrough in product innovation. As a consumer brand, good products speak for themselves. Products are the foundation of everything we do.

Second, use data technology to drive brand growth, so that every delivery of brand information can be accurately labeled with distribution channels and user groups.

3. Fun and interesting marketing creative communication points. When facing the post-90s/95s consumer group, it is necessary to fully understand their high points.

4. Offline physical flagship stores and experience spaces.

At present, we pay more attention to the conversion of investment. This year's investment channels are mainly on Weibo and Xiaohongshu, as well as live broadcasts by internet celebrities. Next year we will conduct in-depth research on the delivery of short videos and information streams.

In addition, the glory of domestic products has reached a climax in recent years. Whether it is platform policies or traffic trends, it has supported many giant brands in each industry. At the same time, Generation Z consumers have a demand for fashion trends, appearance, and rapid changes. They also pursue higher cost-effectiveness and celebrity endorsements. The rise of domestic products has gradually become a trend.

3. Healthy food is in the spotlight, using innovation to create brand differentiation

Brand: Bestore

@Relevant person in charge

"In the future, Bestore will continue to adhere to the "high-end snacks" strategy."

In May, Bestore launched its first sub-brand "Best Snacks" focusing specifically on children's snacks, and introduced a number of children's snack product segments.

The semi-annual report of Bestore shows that "Best Snacks Fairy" has performed well, and currently has 50 children's snack products online. Among them, "Bear Hug Biscuits" was nominated for the "Best Snack Innovation Award" at the 2020 World Food Innovation Award for its unique creativity and rich nutrition. In the first half of this year, the operating revenue of children's snacks reached 187 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34%.

In addition, Liangpin Puzi also worked with the China Non-staple Food Circulation Association to formulate and release the "General Requirements for Children's Snacks" group standard, which covers aspects such as improving the nutritional value of children's snacks and ensuring the safety of children's snacks.

Health and nutrition are the current trends in the development of casual snacks, and this trend coincides with the "high-end snacks" route that Bestore has always adhered to.

Taking children's snacks and fitness snacks as examples, international food giants have been actively innovating in these categories in recent years. Faced with international competition, domestic brands should use high-quality products to enhance brand reputation and value, thereby improving core competitiveness.

At the third China International Import Expo in 2020, Bestore signed strategic agreements with Chr. Hansen, Andrew, Lesaffre, Cargill, Theland, and Fonterra, four multinational dairy and yeast raw material companies, to deepen the partnership in raw material supply and R&D, and further create healthy snacks.

By cooperating with multinational companies, Liangpin Puzi not only locks in healthy and high-quality raw materials, but also achieves deep integration in R&D, production lines, packaging materials and other links.

Bestore is not satisfied with innovating only on the intrinsic properties of food, but also thinks from the product perspective, providing corresponding services for different groups of people and different scenarios. Deepening the supply chain will be the direction of Bestore's development.

Looking at the snack industry as a whole, homogeneous competition is severe. Based on this, Liangpin Puzi has developed a new approach to solve upstream and downstream problems from the R&D end.

On July 9, 2020, Bestore Nutritional Food Co., Ltd. was established. Bestore has established a professional laboratory in its Wuhan headquarters building to study what kind of high-end snacks each market segment needs and what kind of high-end snacks can be produced to meet functional needs.

By increasing digital precision marketing, Liangpin Puzi activated fans through full links and multiple touchpoints, reaching 19 million people through multiple channels in the three days of the Double 11 "opening day" in 2020.

Based on the platform's gameplay, Bestore will strengthen content marketing in 2020. The 400 carefully arranged short videos conveyed the "thousands of flavors" in a vivid and interesting way, achieving deep promotion; hundreds of experts and celebrities such as Li Jiaqi, Li Jing, Lieer Baby, Liu Tao, Xiao Xiaofeng, etc. were invited to conduct online live broadcasts to deeply evaluate delicious and selected ingredients, attracting about 63.52 million viewers.

In addition, Liangpin Puzi creatively remixed the materials implanted by IP in this year's film and television dramas, with a group of stars performing "delicious and happy moments". The same style of popular dramas such as "Twenty Do Not Understand", "Happiness Is Within Reach", "Fox Hunting" and "Ruyi Fangfei" attracted more than 8.26 million fans to check in.

In the future, Bestore will continue to adhere to its "high-end snacks" strategy. In order to implement the "high-end strategy", in the future, Bestore will customize healthy and nutritious functional snacks to meet the different needs of different groups of people.

In terms of market segmentation, we mainly focus on the product side, consumer insights, and innovation in product research and development, and solve the deep-seated needs of consumers in the market segment through in-depth and open research and development. In the future, we will gradually establish a research and development system platform for Bestore to coordinate and drive the development of the overall supply chain.

Snack food is a very broad market. According to the "Snack Industry Development Report under Consumption Upgrading" released by the Ministry of Commerce, the annual market size in 2020 is expected to be close to 3 trillion yuan.

The core strategy of Liangpin Puzi's high-end strategy is to seize the demand for consumption upgrading. However, consumption upgrading cannot simply satisfy user needs with iterations in taste, but must use technology to drive innovation and truly create nutritious and healthy quality products that meet the needs of segmented users.

In addition to product quality, product appearance and cultural expression are also characteristics of the rise of new domestic consumption.

In this regard, in 2020, Bestore jointly launched the Spring Festival thank-you series and Mid-Autumn Festival joint gift boxes with the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, integrating local cultural IP into high-end snacks, echoing the young people's growing love for traditional culture, "national trend" and authentic domestic products.

Brand: Wang Baobao

@Marketing Director Li Jie

“ In the future, the Wang Bao Bao brand will focus on providing consumers with “delicious, trendy, and guilt-free” food. ”

The actions that Wang Baobao has taken in brand marketing this year are essentially aimed at solving the challenges that Wang Baobao has encountered in its third year of development.

Expanding brand awareness is the strength of Wang Baobao’s team. However, after expanding the brand’s popularity, how to further effectively improve consumers’ conversion from awareness to purchase is a long-term challenge facing Wang Baobao’s team.

Product innovation based on consumer insights can leverage innovative consumers and early trial consumers through the product’s own capabilities. By building initial brand awareness and establishing brand-category relevance, it can also attract the attention and purchase of a certain scale of early mass consumers.

However, if you want to further ignite the early majority and effectively penetrate the late majority consumers, you must face the challenges of the short establishment time of emerging brands and the resulting depth of brand awareness. To meet this challenge, Wang Baobao’s core brand building action is to focus on integrated marketing to accumulate brand assets.

In terms of products, on the one hand, we have further enriched the rich and crispy cereal line based on the original fragrant and chewy cereal line. The launch of a series of products including coffee nut baked oatmeal, taro milk tea baked oatmeal, chia seed cheese strawberry baked oatmeal, etc., have obvious differences in taste and flavor. At the same time, it also retains Wang Baobao’s product concept of maintaining health.

On the other hand, in addition to dry oatmeal, the instant oatmeal series, such as the development of Bebe Pumpkin Instant Oatmeal, the formula optimization of Matcha Konjac Instant Oatmeal, and the launch of the pure wheat series, have further enriched Wang Baobao's product line. Consumers can fully recognize Wang Baobao's professionalism in the field of healthy cereals.

In terms of channels, online, offline and O2O channels are simultaneously developed. By meeting consumers' diverse purchasing scenario needs, we accumulate brand assets in the purchasing channel image.

In terms of brand building, as the scale gradually expands, Wang Baobao continues to invest in the field of consumer insight research. We set up a consumer strategy department internally to carry out refined consumer operations and delivery, and regularly work closely with external research and consulting agencies to conduct research on different topics. Constantly explore consumers' real needs for product categories, and use quantitative data and qualitative perceptions to provide direction for future business development.

This series of actions in terms of products, channels and brand promotion will effectively help the brand achieve a breakthrough.

We believe that products are the foundation of everything. The foundation that can truly help products innovate effectively is a deep insight into consumer needs.

In fact, the challenges we encounter in the process of promoting product innovation mainly come from our need to truly understand what consumers’ real needs are. What is the real pain point? What kind of real problems need to be solved in what kind of scenarios, rather than subjective speculation.

The way to deal with this challenge is that our product team and consumer insight team put themselves in an empty cup mentality, put aside their own subjective wishes, and analyze the actual needs of consumers through in-depth research and observation.

At the same time, because the innovation in cereal product form led by Wang Baobao has strengthened the snack attributes of cereal, the marketing team also needs to pay attention to the current trendy and vital flavors, product forms, packaging forms, etc. on the market as the direction of product innovation.

The choice of a brand marketing channel is essentially based on communication efficiency. In addition to the conventional cost scale and exposure scale, communication efficiency also needs to consider the efficiency of the target population in receiving effective information.

This year, Wang Baobao has begun to test the waters in multiple strong brand advertising fields and test the effects. Therefore, the channel selection for brand marketing in 2021 will be more targeted.

On the one hand, the overall landscape of online communication platforms will not change much at present, and platforms with a large user base are still needed to ensure the brand’s voice. At the same time, some highly sticky communication platforms will also have periodic brand voices.

On the other hand, traditional marketing channels such as entertainment marketing and offline communication channels are also being deployed.

In the future, the Wang Baobao brand will focus on providing consumers with "delicious, trendy, and guilt-free" food.

In the large category of healthy cereals, we continuously innovate products based on insights into consumer demand to meet consumers’ needs for “delicious food without gaining weight”; we continuously cover channels with real consumption scenarios for target consumers to meet the rich needs of families for stockpiling and instant enjoyment; we continuously improve brand building and establish cognitive barriers in the minds of consumers.

Ultimately, there are two purposes of marketing. One is to build and enrich brand assets, which is often called brand advertising; the other is to directly lead to sales transactions, which is often called performance advertising.

As of the first half of this year, Wang Baobao has been pursuing a model that focuses on "brand and effect integration" marketing, supplemented by a small amount of defensive performance advertising. Since the second half of this year, Wang Baobao has begun to slowly adjust its marketing focus and increased the proportion of brand-oriented actions. At the same time, we are also testing the waters in multiple traditional brand advertising channels.

As category competition continues to deepen, brand assets will increasingly become the most effective moat for brands. Wang Baobao’s marketing focus will continue to focus on this direction.

In 2021, how can new consumer brands seize trends and grow in the future?

Author: Kitty Luo

Source: Blue Whale Muddy Waters