Lao Xiang Ji’s brand growth methodology has become so popular that it has gone viral!

Which is the hottest catering brand in 2020? The answer must be Lao Xiang Ji . From the "hand-torn joint letter" at the beginning of the year, to the subsequent "200 yuan press conference", and the interaction with Yue Yunpeng later, a series of marketing operations have made Lao Xiang Ji, a remote Chinese fast food brand, quickly become popular. With the attitude of seeing the essence through the phenomenon, we conducted in-depth research on the Lao Xiang Ji brand. Today, let us reveal to you how Lao Xiang Ji broke the circle and what its brand growth methodology is.

Before the formal investigation, we first took a quick look at the Lao Xiang Ji encyclopedia. When we saw that Lao Xiang Ji was founded in 2003 and spent 50 million yuan to change its name to "Lao Xiang Ji" in 2012, we understood why Lao Xiang Ji has achieved today's success. As the saying goes, you can tell a person's future from the age of three and his future from the age of seven. Everything that Lao Xiang Ji has today was foreshadowed more than ten years ago. If we simply look at how they shot the hit video of "hand-tearing the joint letter" or how they made a personalized official Weibo like "chicken feet", it would be a bit too one-sided when analyzing Lao Xiang Ji's brand growth method.

Therefore, regarding Lao Xiang Ji’s brand growth methodology, we will use a macro perspective, over a time span of nearly 20 years, to restore how Lao Xiang Ji grew from one store to a leading Chinese fast food brand with more than 800 stores.

Looking at the development history of Lao Xiang Ji over the past decade, its development path is almost the same as that of all the big brands or big IPs that have broken through the circle. Even the globally popular McDonald's and KFC, or the domestically famous Haidilao, have followed similar development paths.

This path has five stages:

01. Stable production and traffic

02. Create events to break the circle

03. Build a long-lasting platform

04. Sediment users to create stickiness

05. Expand your territory and become a giant

The time required to complete these five stages is measured in units of 10 years. We put Lao Xiang Ji into this model and found that it is currently between the third and fourth stages. Judging from the operating model of its first store in South China in December 2020, its fifth stage has already started. This happens to provide us with a good template. Newly established catering brands are not analyzable, and brands that are too mature are not referenceable. Brands like Lao Xiang Ji that are on the road are exactly what all of us in the catering industry can refer to and learn from.

01. Stable production and traffic

This stage is an essential stage for all well-known catering brands. We define this stage of Lao Xiang Ji as the period from its establishment in 2003 to its name change in 2012. It took 9 years to polish a product, namely fast food service.

A report on China.com in April 2012 mentioned that the name Lao Xiang Ji was the result of research by the brand owner at a cost of 5 million yuan. The previous name was Feixi Old Hen, which had too strong a regional flavor and was not easy to break out of the circle. At the time of the name change, Lao Xiang Ji had already become a chain fast food company of a certain scale in Anhui Province. The fact that they spent 5 million to research and change their name showed their determination, which shows that they had the intention of nationwide expansion as early as 2012. Because of this long-term plan, the subsequent marketing and promotion work has a direction and a handle, and breaking the circle is inevitable.

Just talking about the name change event, more than 100 media outlets reported on it after the name change, and one media even reported it on the front page with the title "There are No More Old Hens in Hefei", which became an influential news event in 2012. Those of us who do brand marketing and promotion should understand that all reporting behaviors seen by users are essentially brand promotion actions. When changing its name, Lao Xiang Ji also offered a reward of 50,000 yuan to change its logo, which became a hot topic.

It can also be seen here that Lao Xiang Ji’s marketing genes existed more than ten years ago. The result of the name change was that the profit in the following year was 2.5 times that of the year before the name change, which can be said to be a double gain of fame and fortune.

Back to the product, many people in the catering industry put the cart before the horse, thinking that good marketing can create a well-known catering brand. This is impossible. The reason why Lao Xiang Ji was able to gain a foothold in Hefei is due to its solid products. In order to develop delicious hen soup, Shu Congxuan sacrificed more than 1,000 chickens. There are 24 store management manuals, which record details such as how employees wash their hands. Such attention to detail and the good taste of the dishes laid the foundation for future expansion. From a global perspective, this stage is the cold start period for Lao Xiang Ji. Only with a solid foundation can the subsequent marketing and promotion be unstoppable.

02. Create events to break the circle

Do you think Lao Xiangji’s breakthrough marketing started in 2020? No, in fact, they started preparing for cross-circle marketing after changing their name in 2012.

There are several time points. During the bird flu epidemic in 2004, an event was planned for thousands of people to eat safe chicken. In 2013, the company participated in the entrepreneurial reality show "Only by Working Hard Can You Win" and won the championship. In October 2013, the company planned the "Ten Years of Free Bills" event on Weibo. The prototype of the CCTV drama "Bashang Street" released in 2013 was Shu Congxuan, chairman of Lao Xiang Ji. In 2017, the company fully upgraded its third-generation store, and the fully transparent kitchen became the biggest highlight. In the same year, the Chicken Soup Festival was launched, and 120,000 servings of chicken soup were sold out in an instant. The company also obtained a certificate from the World Record Certification Agency (WRCA). The following year, the Chicken Soup Festival was upgraded to a large-scale carnival event, with more than 50,000 people participating in the event. In 2019, we launched a monthly new product campaign, and new dishes will be released on the 1st of every month for consumers to taste. There is no need to say much about the marketing events in 2020, everyone should know about them.

From the above, we can see that the marketing gene has accompanied Lao Xiangji throughout its life. The out-of-circle marketing event in 2020 is just one of many marketing events, but its scope and degree of dissemination are wider. The inspiration for all of us catering marketers is that we should not pin our hopes for catering company brand building on just one or two marketing events, but should treat marketing as a daily routine in catering operations, doing it every now and then. Maybe at some point it will suddenly break through the circle, and suddenly, like a spring breeze, the whole country will know about it.

After the hand-torn joint letter became popular, it can be seen from Shu Congxuan's response to an interview with China Business News that he was also caught off guard by the popularity of the incident. Mr. Shu always answered like this: We were beyond our expectations and overjoyed to achieve such a communication effect. People outside are saying that we must have hired some big planning company, but in fact we didn’t. It was our own team that arranged it according to the content we wanted to show.

It is precisely because of the accumulation of so many marketing event planning before 2020 that there was an explosion of hand-torn joint letters in 2020. If the first explosion was due to luck, then the second explosion depended on experience. It’s like when a person wins 5 million in the lottery for the first time, it’s luck; if he wins the second time, it’s probably because he has mastered some trick; if he wins the third time, he must have found a way.

The 200-yuan press conference, which was held while the iron was hot, also had the same purpose. The core point of the video was to capture the public's emotions. I speculate that the explosion of the hand-torn joint letter gave the Lao Xiangji marketing planning team an idea. Just like the various planning proposals we have made for enterprises, after making more and more of them, we will gradually get a feel for what kind of plans users will be happy to accept. This feeling can only be felt but not expressed in words, and it is cultivated through years of marketing cases.

Later, when crosstalk artist Yue Yunpeng was signed as the brand spokesperson, the process became even clearer and visible. By pulling out the timeline, you can see the work progress like a Gantt chart, that is, who posted what content and when, and everything is performed according to the script. The most difficult part is controlling the effect. Judging from the reposts, comments and hot search data on Weibo, the entire event was implemented in full accordance with the plan of the Lao Xiangji marketing team. This is strength.

We all know that the purpose of marketing events is to increase brand exposure. Lao Xiang Ji has conducted research in Beijing before and found that not many people know about the Lao Xiang Ji brand, so the need to break the circle is imminent. These two hit videos and spokesperson marketing events have put Lao Xiang Ji's national expansion plan on the agenda. On February 26 this year, its official website released an article titled "Lao Xiang Ji accelerates national layout strategy to create a "family kitchen" loved by Chinese people." To describe it in one word, it can be described as: going with the flow.

According to information found on Baidu Encyclopedia, it held a strategic launch conference in 2020 and officially announced its entry into first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou. The Shenzhen store in December has been opened, and we have been there to check in. I have to say, having money means you can be "willful".

03. Build a long-lasting platform

What is a long-lasting restaurant? It is a restaurant brand that will still exist after a hundred years. Large and enduring restaurants like KFC and McDonald's are long-lasting brands. If any aspiring restaurant owner wants to build a century-old brand, then the platform is the place to maintain the brand and user stickiness.

The mainstream domestic platforms include: WeChat Official Accounts, Weibo, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. Other platforms are also very large, but they are not must-haves. We investigated Lao Xiang Ji's voice platforms, which are mainly public platforms and Weibo. For example, Douyin has 350,000 followers, which feels asymmetrical with its size. Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu don’t have many fans, probably because they are not maintained much.

The value of the platform lies in the fact that catering companies have a carrier for users to understand corporate information. If there were no public platform, the incident of tearing up the joint letter would not have been possible. Lao Xiang Ji is better known for their Weibo, cluck cluck cluck! Do you have some impression of it? If you want to be a well-known brand, you must have a platform. A catering company without a content platform is seen as cold by users. Or, like the leading companies, you have to spend huge amounts of money on advertising and frequently use facial recognition, but the cost is really high and is not advisable.

Let’s take a look at how Lao Xiang Ji’s Weibo and official accounts perform. Let’s first look at Weibo. If we move the time to the content in 2018, the interaction data of a single Weibo post is surprisingly not low. Weibo posts with thousands of comments are very common, which shows that Lao Xiang Ji had done a great job in content marketing before it became popular this year. I looked at the public platform again and found that all the content before 2020 had over 100,000 views. This further proves that Lao Xiangji’s popularity is not accidental, but an inevitable result.

Every brand has its own tone, and the tone of Lao Xiangji’s Weibo and official account is the tone of their brand. Lao Xiang Ji’s Weibo gives people the feeling of a mumbling chicken paw. It talks about all the big and small things in life on Weibo. The first time we saw Lao Xiang Ji’s Weibo was when the chairman of Lao Xiang Ji “questioned” the Weibo operation: Is this how you fool around at work every day? It refers to the five-word Weibo post by Lao Xiang Ji: Cluck, cluck, cluck. The Weibo operator complained and replied: I swear to God, this is the one that users like to see the most.

If this kind of interaction was posted on the Weibo of other brands, the editor would most likely be fired. A few days ago, the CEO of an Internet giant questioned employees for slacking off in a game group during working hours, which was really scary. But it’s different here at Lao Xiang Ji. It has successfully created a character that is close to everyone’s life with down-to-earth content. It’s not condescending, but just like a friend around you. This is precisely the highest level of content platform operation. It may seem careless on the surface, but it is actually very serious.

The tone of Lao Xiang Ji's Weibo can be used as a reference, but it does not necessarily have to be copied, because the persona created by Lao Xiang Ji's Shu Congxuan is the image of a very friendly founder. If Haidilao copied it and posted a Weibo about Lululu Shabu-shabu tripe, the editor would most likely be fired. The conventional approach is in line with the catering companies' demand for stability, but if they want to differentiate themselves, it is also necessary to incorporate personality into the account. Tai Er Pickled Fish, a catering company, has also done a good job in this regard.

Let’s take a look at Lao Xiang Ji’s public platform, which is a service account. Due to the limit on the number of posts, they maintain a frequency of 2 updates a month. The content is mainly new product promotion, welfare, and marketing activities. With such a platform, users can establish connections with the brand outside the store. First, it can increase stickiness, and second, it can become a booster for brand expansion. When we help brands to expand, we will definitely require the brands to have a basic quantity, that is, seed users. Without seed users, no matter how good the content is, it cannot be promoted. Therefore, do not underestimate the value of content platforms. The benefits they bring will far exceed everyone’s current understanding.

04. Sediment users to create stickiness

In terms of retaining users, we can see that Lao Xiang Ji’s public platform has a membership center where users can recharge, pay, package and pick up, etc. This is a common membership practice. It is not the current popular way to retain users. The current way is WeChat for Business. Internet companies are already doing this, and Luckin Coffee has done a good job in this regard.

It was mentioned above that Lao Xiang Ji is now in the middle of the third and fourth stages. Since Lao Xiang Ji has not yet entered the private domain traffic operation, it is not possible to analyze it for the time being. Based on the gameplay of other companies, we estimate how Lao Xiang Ji will retain users?

It is much easier to retain users in catering stores than in fast-moving consumer goods stores. By placing a QR code on the desktop for scanning and ordering food, all users can be attracted to the public platform, and then the users of the public platform can be directed to the corporate WeChat, and finally a group can be created for group maintenance. Considering that Lao Xiang Ji is a fast food brand, whether it is suitable for community building remains to be evaluated. However, one thing is certain: catering brands with a customer unit price of more than 50 yuan all need to operate private domain traffic.

Once a restaurant brand has a group of loyal fans, say several million, it will be much easier for such a brand to grow into a nationally renowned brand. This is how Xiaomi grew. Regarding the issue of retaining users, I just want to mention it briefly to stimulate discussion. All restaurant owners just need to remember that this matter is very important.

05. Expand your territory and become a giant

After the first Lao Xiang Ji store in South China opened, several people from our team immediately went there to clock in. Fortunately, Mr. Shu was there at noon that day, and we took a group photo. While we were happy, we certainly did not forget the purpose of clocking in, which was to see how the Lao Xiang Ji store in Shenzhen operated. After some exploration, we discovered a different business idea.

This store is completely different from the one in Hefei. It operates around the clock, from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Just imagine, would there still be people eating fast food at 2 a.m.? Of course not, but there are bars. The Lao Xiang Ji stores in Shenzhen have incorporated breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and bar scenes. We speculate that this may be a new attempt. After all, in first-tier cities, land is extremely expensive, and it is difficult to cover the cost with just lunch and dinner time periods. Lao Xiang Ji's expansion here is firstly geographical expansion, and it is said that a store in Beijing will open soon. Another thing is the expansion of dining scenes.

If this store is successfully managed, it means that Lao Xiang Ji is not just a fast food brand, but also a consumption scenario brand that meets consumers' all-day satiety and entertainment needs. In this way, the brand imagination space will be even greater. Taking the leading companies as an example, the way to expand the territory is either to expand globally or to support sub-brands and adopt a multi-brand strategy.

Lao Xiang Ji is taking the approach of expanding consumption scenarios. It can be sensed from the iteration of Lao Xiang Ji stores that innovation has always accompanied Lao Xiang Ji, from the first generation of stores to the current fifth generation of stores. If the Shenzhen store is successful, it will become its sixth generation store. There is no end to innovation, and we are also looking forward to the birth of the seventh and eighth generation of Lao Xiangji stores.

06. Last

Reviewing the content of this article, the brand growth of Lao Xiang Ji was not achieved overnight, but was the result of more than ten years of continuous exploration. They make products with ingenuity, use chicken soup made from 180-day-old free-range chickens to ensure quality, and carry out marketing events continuously. After looking at the marketing events of Lao Xiang Ji over the past ten years, it is found that most of them revolve around the feelings of family and country, which is closely related to the original intention of the founder.

Just like Mr. Shu said: "We have built this company into a social demand-oriented enterprise. I think this reflects this responsibility more and the company will last longer." Everyone is good at talking, but not many people can do it like Mr. Shu. If it weren’t for the original intention, there would definitely not be the videos that went viral in 2020.

Then, through the content platform, the brand’s values ​​are continuously output, and the brand plays with users and gets close to users, just like the aunt next door invites you to her home for dinner. Such Lao Xiang Ji is full of human touch, and this is the sense of value created by the content platform. As for the last two stages of brand growth, I hope Lao Xiang Ji can successfully cross them, get better and better, become bigger and stronger, and add luster to the national brand.

Author: Da Lao Wang

Source: Da Lao Wang