The word "Internet celebrity" has been very popular in recent years. These two words originally referred to celebrities on the Internet.

But as these two words developed more deeply, they gradually expanded from the human field to the business field. What followed were internet celebrity brands, and a series of products were labeled with the word "internet celebrity" - internet celebrity bookstores, internet celebrity attractions, internet celebrity plates, and internet celebrity ice cream. It seems that once a product is associated with the word "Internet celebrity", it means it will be a big hit, favored by the capital market , and has great money prospects.

For example, Internet celebrity brands such as Zhong Xue Gao, Genki Forest, and Heytea have achieved great success in a short period of time, and their valuations have quickly reached tens of billions or even hundreds of billions.

But one question is, they are very popular now, but can they stand the test of time and go further? Not to mention century-old brands, can they still maintain their current popularity in 10 years? After all, there are many brands in history that became popular in the short term but quickly collapsed.

It’s not easy to judge their future, but we can look for some clues from similar cases in the past.

01. The first generation of Internet celebrity brands: brands packaged with Internet thinking

Around 2012, with the advent of the mobile Internet, the term "Internet thinking" began to become popular. Many traditional products born in this era began to claim to have Internet thinking, or to use Internet thinking to build traditional brands.

From today's perspective, those traditional brands with Internet thinking back then were extremely similar to today's Internet celebrity brands in terms of popularity, hot topics discussed by the public, and the path to becoming famous. Representative brands include Huang Taiji Pancake, which was established in 2012, Paofou Technology, an adult products company founded by Ma Jiajia in 2012, Diaoye Beef Brisket, which started operations in 2013, Jiaoge Duck, which was founded by Qu Bo in 2014, and so on.

They were typical representative brands of that era that used Internet thinking to make traditional products. I summarize their characteristics as follows:

• Upgrading existing products

Around 2012-2014, although the concept of consumption upgrading was not as deeply rooted in people's minds as it is today, more and more white-collar workers were willing to spend more money to buy better products and get a better shopping experience. These internet-minded brands have followed this trend and have made certain upgrades in terms of raw materials, packaging, dining environment, and consumer experience compared to similar products on the market.

For example, Huang Taiji Pancakes claims to "insist on using organic lettuce, pure mung bean flour, and freshly fried dough sticks without alum", and the dining environment in the store is much better than that on the street. The dining environment of Diaoye Beef Brisket is elegant, and waiters wearing black veils are always there to serve you. You can call a duck using WeChat and have it deliver the goods to your door.

This also makes their selling price more than twice that of similar products.

• Social Topic Marketing

These brands with Internet thinking were basically born in the era when Weibo and WeChat marketing were the hottest. They are very good at conducting topic marketing on these social networks and are actually catching up with the dividends of Weibo and WeChat marketing.

For example, Huang Taiji Pancakes, the topic of "driving a Mercedes to deliver pancakes" has been hyped countless times. Diaoye Beef Brisket used various strategies to invite celebrities before its opening, becoming the restaurant in Beijing where it is easiest to bump into celebrities. Ms. Cang's visit to the restaurant also became one of the hottest topics on Weibo that year.

• User internet thinking packaging concept

Around 2012 to 2014, the mobile Internet began to take off. When these brands are promoted, as long as they have the slightest connection with the Internet, they are packaged as brands transformed using Internet thinking. This is extremely evident in Ma Jiajia, the founder of Paofou Technology.

In 2014, the PPT "The Internet Thinking of a Post-90s Beauty Sex Shop Owner" shared by Ma Jiajia at China Europe International Business School became a hit online. Judging from today's thinking, Ma Jiajia's marketing thinking in 2014 was cutting-edge. Although many of her tactics have now become routine operations, they were indeed shocking at the time.

For example, she positioned adult products as a fashion brand.

She magnified her labels and positioned herself as an actress + goddess + female loser.

In fact, for Paofou Technology, the only connection between it and the Internet is the popularity of topic marketing on the Internet. As for what the product has to do with the Internet? I really didn't notice.

Some netizens summarized Ma Jiajia’s Internet thinking as: no upper limit, no lower limit, it will touch your tear glands and boost your adrenaline glands.

Relying on the above elements, these brands with Internet thinking have quickly become Internet celebrity brands and occupied the pinnacle of public opinion. But this does not address the core problem of these brands - the product.

Huang Taiji is often criticized for not tasting as good as the 5-yuan pancakes sold on the street, and Diaoye Beef Brisket is also considered to have poor value for money. Many people go there once and never go a second time, and Paofou Technology has never seen any unique products from beginning to end.

Therefore, most of them could not escape the fate of "being popular for no more than 3 years".

Huang Taiji’s founder He Chang was included in the list of dishonest executors last year, and the number of its stores was drastically reduced. Diaoye admitted at the beginning of this year that he had transferred the store. The beautiful boss Ma Jiajia, who was born in the 1990s and was at the center of the storm at that time, has now become the old wave, being washed up on the beach by the back wave.

The first generation of internet celebrity brands caught up with the early dividends of consumption upgrading and mobile Internet, took advantage of the trend, quickly established extremely high popularity and reached its peak, but also declined rapidly due to product problems, which is regrettable.

It can be best explained by a very common saying: I watched him build a tall building, I watched him entertain guests, and I watched his building collapse.

With the deepening of mobile Internet, the second generation of Internet celebrity brands began to rise.

02. The second generation of Internet celebrity brands: new products, new channels, new marketing

Most of the second-generation Internet celebrity brands became famous around 2018, and they emerged along with the rise of video media such as Tik Tok and live streaming. The reason why it is called an Internet celebrity brand is because the word Internet celebrity comes closely after the word Internet celebrity. Although the term "Internet celebrity" has existed for a long time, the rise of short videos and live streaming has made this term more popular.

Internet celebrity is a word with two sides in the popular sense. On the one hand, they quickly established their popularity through video media, and some even became famous overnight, gaining huge popularity in a short period of time. On the other hand, they are also seen as those people who look alike, are good at hype, rise quickly and are forgotten quickly.

The reason why brands want to become Internet celebrity brands is mainly to replicate the popularity and speed of fame of Internet celebrities.

Typical representatives of Internet celebrity brands include: Heytea, Zhong Xuegao, Genki Forest, Perfect Diary, HFP, Santonban, Liziqi Snail Noodles, etc. I have written about their characteristics in the article "Unlocking the Marketing Routines of Internet Celebrity Brands Zhong Xuegao and Genki Forest". Here I will briefly talk about the key points.

• New Products: Choosing a Blue Ocean Segment

In today's increasingly fierce competition, it is basically difficult to find blue ocean markets in large categories. The main market share is firmly occupied by leading brands and is difficult to shake, such as Nongfu Spring and Yili in drinking water, Coca-Cola and Pepsi in cola, Mengniu and Yili in milk, etc.

Internet celebrity brands often find a market segment within a large category that a big brand has not yet entered, creating a consumer blue ocean.

For example, Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao have opened up their own blue ocean markets in their respective categories.

Within the large category of soda, Genki Forest has entered two relatively niche categories: sparkling water and sugar-free soda. There are many sparkling water products on the market, and there are also many sugar-free soda products. However, there are not many competing sugar-free sparkling water products on the market that have the characteristics of both.

Zhong Xue Gao is positioned as a healthy ice cream, with low sugar and low fat as its characteristics, which is similar to the sugar-free product of Genki Forest. Secondly, unlike most ice creams that are bought and eaten immediately, Zhong Xue Gao started by entering the family-style warehouse consumption market.

This has made purchasing ice cream online and eating it at home a new trend and scenario for ice cream consumption.

Here, Zhong Xue Gao created a niche blue ocean market for home-stored low-sugar ice cream.

• Riding on the trend of consumption upgrade: appearance, experience and emotion

Consumption upgrading, as a trend, is irreversible. Today, consumption upgrades have progressed and deepened. Any brand that wants to operate for a long time can no longer design products only based on the rigid demands of consumers. In addition to the high quality of the products themselves, they must also meet consumers' demands for beautiful design, nutrition and health, consumer experience, and emotional resonance.

Genki Forest’s 0 sugar, 0 fat, and 0 calories, and Zhong Xue Gao’s low sugar, low fat, and zero additives meet consumers’ needs for health and weight loss.

These brands have also put a lot of effort into design and packaging.

The design of Genki Forest adopts Japanese style. The name of Genki Forest uses "気" instead of "气", and the word "気" is the most conspicuous on the packaging bottle. This is to create a Japanese style for consumers. The main colors of the bottle are white, green, blue, pink and other light colors, which looks fresh and comfortable.

The design style of Zhong Xue Gao is original. The tile-like design represents the classical Chinese aesthetic. The three words Zhong Xue Gao itself is a homonym of "Chinese ice cream".

There is only a simple little man pattern on the Heytea cup, which is in line with the minimalist design style. The store's decoration style also has unique characteristics. For example, the newly opened store in Sanlitun, Beijing is known as the "Black Gold Store" and has a very unique recognition. All the tables and chairs in the store are exclusively customized by HEYTEA, and even the lighting is a dark gold color specially designed for this store. Therefore, the consumer experience of drinking a cup of milk tea at HEYTEA may be the best among all milk tea brands.

In terms of emotional communication, the videos and stories behind Li Ziqi's snail noodles, Zhong Xuegao's family portrait, I like you, and not one less product segments all attempt to establish emotional connections with consumers.

• New channels and new marketing: e-commerce channels - online marketing - offline advertising

Compared with traditional brands that have established offline channels on a large scale, most internet celebrity brands have become popular in recent years with the explosion of mobile e-commerce and short video media. Most internet celebrity brands initially chose e-commerce channels because of their low cost and fast conversion rates.

In terms of marketing methods, they often do not invest heavily in advertising in the early stages, but instead conduct grass-roots marketing on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and live streaming. If you search for keywords of internet celebrity brands such as Zhong Xue Gao, Perfect Diary, and Heytea on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, you will find endless content, with various reviews and showing-off videos emerging one after another.

Live broadcasts by internet celebrities such as Luo Yonghao and Li Jiaqi have made them products that young people on these platforms aspire to have.

On March 8, Li Jiaqi sold 150,000 units of Yuanqi Forest’s new product during a live broadcast. On April 1, Luo Yonghao held his first live broadcast to sell goods, selling 22,000 pieces of Xuegao Fresh Series ice cream, with sales of 227.51w. Luo Yonghao ate five and a half ice creams in one go during the live broadcast.

For these internet celebrity brands, conducting marketing online and directly converting through e-commerce is more efficient than the traditional method of spending money on offline advertising and laying out channels. Once an internet celebrity brand establishes a certain degree of popularity within a small circle, it will inevitably face the problem of increasing brand awareness and expanding consumer base. So after new brands become Internet celebrity brands, they will usually spend more money on advertising and channels like traditional brands.

For example, after becoming somewhat famous, brands such as Zhong Xue Gao and Genki Forest have invested a lot of money in advertising on Focus Media, found spokespersons, and gradually sponsored some programs, etc., in order to expand their influence and popularity.

03. The difference between Internet celebrity brands and traditional brands

Most of the second-generation Internet celebrity brands were born in the context of mobile e-commerce + video media. Under the new consumer and market backgrounds, they have taken a path that is somewhat different from traditional brands.

The main differences between Internet celebrity brands and traditional well-known brands are as follows. Most of them have been explained in the previous content. Here we mainly talk about the advantages and disadvantages of Internet celebrity brands compared with traditional well-known brands.

The advantage of internet celebrity brands is that they were born in the era of mobile Internet, so they are the fastest to adapt to and embrace mobile Internet. They can use new media such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and live streaming for marketing at the fastest speed.

And because it dares to try, it can often create some effective new ways of playing. For example, Perfect Diary has created a strategy of indiscriminately placing ads on Xiaohongshu and Douyin influencers to gain sales. Luckin Coffee has used offline advertising and online operations to create a traffic pool strategy.

This new marketing method is more attractive to young people.

This is precisely a disadvantage for traditional well-known media, because they have tasted the sweetness of traditional media and are therefore not very willing to innovate in this area. The marketing methods of new media are relatively less innovative.

The disadvantage of internet celebrity brands compared to traditional well-known brands is that their products and channels are not strong. The product research and development and creation capabilities are basically far behind those of brands that have been around for decades or even hundreds of years. In terms of channels, traditional brands have been laying the foundation for decades, and no matter how fast internet celebrity brands move, it will be difficult for them to catch up in the short term.

Just like the market has been predicting the decline of Procter & Gamble in the past few years, but if you look at P&G’s annual sales revenue and its products spread across every corner of the world, you will know where the gap lies. At the same time, Internet celebrity brands are initially popular in small circles. Since they initially enter a niche market, when they expand the market, they may find that many people are not interested in their products, and ultimately find it difficult to make their products famous beyond the circle.

04. Can internet celebrity brands go far?

Internet celebrity brands have not been around for long, and although they have become famous much faster than traditional brands, they have not yet been tested in a larger market or for a longer period of time.

Although Internet celebrity brands are very popular now, it is worth pondering whether they can go further and become well-known brands. After all, most of the first-generation Internet celebrity brands could not escape the fate of “not being popular for more than 3 years”.

The biggest challenge facing influencer brands is that as their brands gradually expand their markets and target populations, can their products and supply chains keep up with the pace of brand expansion, and can their products meet the needs of a wider range of people rather than a niche group of people.

• Can product and supply chain capabilities keep up with the pace of brand expansion?

As mentioned above, the R&D and supply chain capabilities of Internet celebrity brand products are completely different from those of traditional well-known brands. As your brand awareness gradually increases and more and more consumers know about it and try to consume it, whether your product can stand the test becomes a very important question.

Xiaomi adopted the hunger marketing method in its early days because its supply chain capabilities were far inferior to those of well-known brands, and the word "monkey show" became a sword hanging over its head. When Luo Yonghao was making the Hammer phone, the product yield rate was lower than that of some big brands, which caused many consumers to turn from fans to haters.

After Luo Yonghao switched to live streaming to sell goods, he sold Xinliangji and Huadianshijian on live streaming. Both brands can be regarded as internet celebrity brands in their own categories. However, due to product and supply chain issues, both have been criticized and complained by many consumers. It was revealed by netizens that Xinliangji's products were produced in June last year, and that the product packaging had problems such as bloating and leakage. It was also revealed by an internet celebrity that the flowers received were not fresh and were wilted.

Expanding brand awareness through live streaming was originally an opportunity for the brand, but due to product and supply chain issues, the opportunity turned into a crisis.

A big problem with influencer brands is that many people think they are more about marketing than the product itself.

Because they are over-marketed, consumers have high expectations of them, but when the products cannot keep up with such expectations, their reputation will decline. The reputation of Huang Taiji declined rapidly in the early days, and now many people think that Li Ziqi's products are not up to their reputation.

Therefore, the product strength of Internet celebrity brands is the biggest factor restricting their development.

• Can the product meet the needs of the general public?

When Internet celebrity brands first entered the market, they chose to enter the niche market and use new media marketing. Although they became famous quickly, one of the embarrassments they faced was that it was difficult to break the circle and attract more people to become consumers.

Coca-Cola sells well because it appeals to people's natural craving for sugar.

Evolutionary psychologists believe that humans like to eat sugar because the preference for nutritious, high-energy foods allows our ancestors to better adapt to the environment and reproduce, while those ancestors who did not have such preferences would find it difficult to survive. Products with high sugar and high energy levels meet universal human needs, and this has not changed for thousands of years, so their potential market is theoretically the largest. So even though Lao Gan Ma is high in oil and salt and has a lot of calories, this doesn’t stop people from buying it can by can. McDonald's hamburgers are unhealthy, and people have been saying this for years, but there are still more and more McDonald's restaurants and the number of people eating hamburgers never decreases.

Internet celebrity brands like Genki Forest focus on 0 sugar, 0 fat, and 0 calories, which meets the needs of a small number of people for weight loss, but does not satisfy human nature - the pursuit of sugar and fat. So when their market expands, is anyone willing to pay for it? It's hard to say.

Comparing Coca-Cola and Genki Forest, I think the former is a rigid demand that satisfies human nature, while the latter is just a rigid demand for some people at this stage. Therefore, the market capacity of the latter is destined to be incomparable to the former.

• Can the product adapt to changes in consumption trends?

The popularity of Internet celebrity brands is largely due to the fact that they have adapted to the current trend of consumption upgrading. As mentioned earlier, they meet consumers' demands for beautiful design, nutrition and health, consumer experience, emotional resonance, etc.

But consumption trends are always changing. I talked about the changes in Japan’s consumption trends in “Japan’s Consumption Upgrade”.

In the era of rapid economic development, Japan also engages in conspicuous consumption and is willing to spend more money on design, experience, etc.

But in the fourth consumer era (starting around 200 AD), Japan's economy continued to be sluggish, and the Japanese consumption habits changed from pursuing famous brands to pursuing simplicity and leisure. They did not have much enthusiasm for owning things, and the hot sales of basic clothes without logos became a reflection of this . It is also for this reason that Uniqlo and MUJI are very popular in Japan.

The characteristics of Uniqlo and MUJI are high cost-effectiveness and sufficient functionality. In other words, they are no longer willing to spend money on fancy products. This is also a characteristic of the so-called "low-desire society".

In the past two years, the term "consumption downgrade" has been mentioned repeatedly in China. It is possible that the consumption habit of "enough is enough" like Japan will appear in China. Therefore, when a product’s premium is too high due to factors such as design, packaging, and experience, it may be unpopular in the market.

For example, a product like Zhong Xue Gao is 5-6 times more expensive than ordinary ice cream due to factors such as design and experience. At this stage, there are quite a few consumers, but it is hard to say what the future will be like.

When consumption downgrade comes, questions like the following will be mentioned repeatedly.

05
It’s easy for traditional brands to become internet celebrities, but it’s hard for internet celebrity brands to become well-known.

It is not easy for internet celebrity brands to compete with traditional well-known brands. Due to their advantages in product research and development, design, and brand awareness, it is not difficult for traditional well-known brands to come up with an internet celebrity model. For example, Wangzai’s 56 ethnic milks, Wuling Hongguang’s street stalls and snail noodles.

However, it is very difficult for an internet celebrity brand to become a well-known brand. If you look at today’s internet celebrity brands five years later and see which ones are still as well-known and have the same sales as today, it means that they have basically established a firm foothold. Otherwise, they will just be one of the countless examples of brand failures that were popular for a while but quickly fell.

Author: Xunkong

Source: Xunkong