Disassembling the three major marketing strategies of Genki Forest

How good is Genki Forest ? There are three pieces of information:

• During Tmall 618 in 2019, Genki Forest sold a total of 2.26 million bottles of beverages, taking the top spot in the water beverage category;
• On Singles’ Day in 2019, Yuanqi Forest ranked second in online sales, beating Coca-Cola and Pepsi;
• Only four years after its establishment, Genki Forest’s valuation has reportedly reached 4 billion yuan.

Putting aside the data, in the eyes of ordinary people, it is also a beverage dark horse that dominates chain convenience store brands such as 711 and is crazy about it on Xiaohongshu. However, this is indeed not a "good" topic for self-media, because it has been reported many times before, but the success of Genki Forest seems to have something beyond the traditional marketing perspective.

What is the traditional marketing perspective? This perspective is usually stronger in summary than in attribution. I can give you a paragraph:

Because the most distinctive label of Genki Forest is ( ), it matches ( ) lifestyle, conforms to ( ) aesthetics, is positioned at the post-( ) trendsetters/females/white-collar workers, and has innovated and upgraded the taste/ingredients/packaging of the products, so they succeeded. Just fill in the brand's slogan and the name of the group, such as "young people" or "post-00s", in the above brackets. Of course this is not wrong, but why do they make these decisions and what is the basis for their decisions? Is there anything special about the execution process? What is the reason and confidence for Genki Forest to be called an "Internet company"?

This article will start with the background of its founder and try to explain:

• How does Genki Forest identify market trends and catch up with the fast development of the industry?
• How does Genki Forest plan its product design to accurately impress its target users?
• What MarTech tools can help with decision-making and product digitization?

1. Mysterious founder

Few people care about and report this matter, but according to public information, Genki Forest, which was established in April 2016, has a registered capital of only 1 million, and its main investor and controlling shareholder is Tang Binsen. Who is Tang Binsen? People outside the circle may not know that this person is a legend on the Internet. When the Internet was emerging, Tang Binsen, who started a business in college, led his team to develop Internet psychological testing products. The team was once ranked first in the field, but its revenue was mediocre. In a speech, he mentioned this experience and quoted Bayesian probability statistics theory to make an annotation:

“No matter how awesome you are, if you’re not in the right industry and your base probability is not good, you’re just an idiot. Remember this.” (The original words were very direct, so I won’t blur them out.)

"We are in a big trend and can only go with the trend. No one can change this trend. You have to think about one thing: is the situation stronger than people, or are people stronger than the situation? What is the situation? Is this industry good? If no one has made money in this industry before, or the most powerful company only makes a little money, and you say that I have emerged and can transform this industry and increase its income tenfold? Do you think it is possible? This is a real mistake. It is impossible to think that our emergence can transform this industry."

So he switched to the industry he was optimistic about: video games.

In 2008, Tang Binsen founded Zhixingtong and soon developed the web page that once dominated the rise and fall of the Internet, the earliest national game, which attracted both the elderly and children and even many overseas countries - Happy Farm!

You would never believe it, but the Genki Forest you drink now actually comes from the forest where you stole vegetables many years ago. The so-called burning tea and corn silk tea (light bodybuilding tea) might be "grown" by yourself.

After that, Tang Binsen continued to cheat:

In 2012, ELEX recorded a revenue of 600 million yuan and a net profit of 76 million yuan thanks to its hit game Empire Wars, and received investments from Tencent and Sinovation Ventures.

In 2014, Nintendo's mobile game Clash of Kings ranked first in the list of Chinese mobile games' overseas revenue.

In 2015, "Clash of Kings" recorded revenue of 2.4 billion yuan.

In 2016, Elex ranked 16th in App Annie's 2015 list of the world's top 50 publishers, and ranked third among Chinese companies, only after Tencent and NetEase.

Here comes the point: A comment from a former employee revealed that Tang Binsen is actually not a person who plays games.

Then let’s guess, does he like drinking beverages? In fact, Tang Binsen had no funds, talents, or supply chain background in the packaged beverage field before. Even now, he relies on Changshu Dongyang and Uni-President's Tongshi factory for production (there are also rumors that he is preparing to build his own factory). But a sad fact for the beverage industry is that Tang Binsen, who crossed over in 2016, can still make a big splash in this industry.

We usually think that "explosive products" are accidental, but in his case, chance becomes inevitability. What is the wealth code behind Genki Forest? This is actually a very typical example, which embodies the struggle between the old and new marketing thinking in the digital age. This is not only the glory of Yuanqi Forest, but also reveals that the new generation of marketers will eventually seize the entire market with overwhelming force. The following article will be divided into three parts: "Taking advantage of the momentum", "Precise products" and "Operation methods", breaking down the growth trilogy of Genki Forest. People will eventually understand that the so-called industry barriers cannot stop these supernovas.

2. Yuanqi Forest's "taking advantage of the momentum"

If you understand the "industry base probability" concept of the founder of Genki Forest, you will understand why he chose the fast-moving consumer goods beverage industry. Working backwards from the current situation, it is reported that Genki Forest's offline sales have covered 53 chain convenience store systems, and online it has opened the Genki Forest Tmall flagship store, the Genki Forest JD flagship store, and the Genki Forest Xiaohongshu official store. In addition to Tmall and JD.com, which are basic e-commerce operations (and were launched later), here are two points worth noting:

1. The rapid rise of convenience stores

On May 9, the China Chain Store & Franchise Association released the list of “Top 100 Chinese Chain Stores in 2018”. Among the various formats of the top 100 chain stores, convenience stores are far ahead in growth rate: the sales volume of the top 100 convenience store companies increased by 21.1% year-on-year, the number of stores increased by 18.0%, and 11,944 new stores were added, accounting for 62.5% of the total number of new stores of the top 100. In comparison, the top 100 companies that mainly operate large supermarkets saw an average sales growth of 2.5% and an average store number growth of 3.6%, both significantly lower than the average growth rate of the top 100.

What is the difference between convenience stores and traditional grocery stores? Taking the 711 downstairs as an example, they have special milk cabinets, hot cabinets, coffee machines, microwave ovens, deli cabinets and other equipment, as well as a complete cold chain logistics and warehousing system. Therefore, in addition to providing a better dining environment, they can also offer products that are not available in convenience stores, such as bread with a shorter shelf life, freshly ground coffee, cooked food such as fish balls and cart noodles, dairy products that require cold chain transportation (please note, this will be mentioned below), etc. In short, a convenience store is essentially an exquisite living station and a haven for office workers who have nowhere else to go.

From the perspective of win-win cooperation, how can we take advantage of the rise of convenience stores? What are the unmet needs for exquisite convenience stores? First, look at the customer base. Statistics from 7-Eleven show that consumers aged 20 to 40 account for 88% of convenience store consumers. In terms of customer composition, company employees are the main consumer group. Therefore, what convenience stores need are high-quality catering products that are different from other channels, precisely positioned at young white-collar workers, and have higher average customer spending and gross profit margins.

There will be three directions of cooperation:

Beverages and foods that need to be freshly prepared or lightly processed, such as freshly ground coffee and cart noodles. This business relies on the catering supply chain to provide high-quality and low-cost raw materials. Currently, Meituan Kuaidi, Meicai.com, Haidilao's Shuhai and other companies are rising rapidly in this field. However, judging from the composition of competitors, this is a field that requires a lot of accumulation in the catering industry (such as Meituan and Haidilao).

Premium packaged snacks. In addition to traditional potato chip brands such as Lays and Suyishao, there are new entrants such as Langligelang and Danles Dog Food. Judging from the names, these brands are particularly young, open-minded, and relatively expensive. What is particularly noteworthy is that Genki Forest has been developing cheese products that are between beverages and snacks and rely on cold chain transportation. Boutique packaged beverages. This is the entry point of Genki Forest. For example, soda and tea drinks (Genki Forest, Ran Tea) cost 5-6 yuan per bottle, functional drinks (Alien) cost 7-8 yuan per bottle, and milk tea (Genki Forest Milk Tea) costs 10 yuan per bottle. Compared with brands such as Coca-Cola, Red Bull, and Uni-President, you will find that Genki Forest is generally 50% or even 100% more expensive than similar products, and is more particular about its raw materials. For example, milk tea uses milk powder instead of cheaper non-dairy creamer (commonly known as creamer).

2. Xiaohongshu, which dominates young women’s mobile phones

There are many reports about Xiaohongshu, but a fact that is often overlooked is that Xiaohongshu is a platform that is extremely highly dependent on mobile devices. Unlike social platforms such as Weibo, Douban, and Bilibili, Xiaohongshu actually does not have PC services. If you open the official website of Xiaohongshu on your computer, you will find that the cover is a guide to download the APP. Even the "Community Selections" section only displays 20 pieces of content. When you scroll to the bottom of the selection and find a "View More" button, don't click it, because it will still ask you to download the APP.

Such a strategy is not without basis. This generation of young people prefers watching mobile phones rather than watching TV or computers. According to statistics, they spend about 5 hours on their mobile phones every day. Secondly, Xiaohongshu, which is dominated by women, seems to be a platform that has a grudge against sugar. Searching for keywords such as "sugar control", "sugar quitting", and "sugar cutting" has a total of over 100,000 notes. In addition, the word "calories" has more than 360,000 notes, and the word "calories" also has more than 100,000 notes. But what's interesting is that if you search for sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy separately:

There are over 390,000 notes for "bitter", over 890,000 for "sour", over 1.18 million for "spicy", and over 2.62 million for "sweet". Even searching for "sugar" has over 1.5 million notes. Young women are a huge contradictory group. They are afraid of sugar, but at the same time they extremely prefer sweetness. It is no wonder why Genki Forest, which implements the policy of "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories", is so popular.

3. Genki Forest's "precision products"

As mentioned above, Genki Forest’s goal is to reach the group of young white-collar workers (especially women) who are afraid of death and love health through precise channels such as mobile phones and convenience stores. Inspired by Tang Binsen’s background in Internet games, we realized that the best way to investigate the aesthetic tendencies of this group was to look at the design trends of mobile games. After all, when asked verbally, they all say they like high-end and elegant things, but they can't lie about what kind of games they like behind the scenes. So what are the mobile games that women have been keen on in recent years?

The "Travel Frog" by the son of the national frog, the krypton gold dress-up mobile game "Miracle Nikki" by the daughter of the national frog, "Onmyoji" which once competed with the King of Glory, and the popular "Love and Producer"... Don't say anything, look at the picture, you will find a secret:

Complete! yes! and! wind!

Regardless of whether this is the truth behind Genki Forest's design decision, its founder, as a science man, is likely to have completely abandoned his own subjective aesthetics and solely designed the brand based on research results. It's so ruthless. Secondly, the overall design plan of Genki Forest is very consistent with the insights of some data reports.

People who often read data reports will understand that for the same thing, different reports are based on different data sources and research methods, and there will definitely be differences in specific values, but the overall data trends are usually consistent. Taking the "Ipsos: 2019 China Food and Beverage Industry Packaging Trend Insight Report" as an example, the report shows that 83% of consumers are very willing or relatively willing to buy products with novel and unique packaging. So what kind of packaging is more likely to attract attention? The number one packaging factor that attracts consumers is:

The product name of the package is novel (63%). This may be one of the reasons why Genki Forest uses the obscure word "気" instead of "气". In addition, the report shows that consumers are particularly concerned about nutrition and health-related information on packaging, and people aged 24 and above and consumers in first-tier cities have a stronger awareness of health and nutrition. 89% of people pay attention to the birth date/shelf life, 76% pay attention to health/nutrition related claims, such as sugar-free, no additives, etc., and 73% pay attention to the nutritional ingredient list.

Looking back at Genki Forest’s products now, slogans such as "0 sugar, 0 calories, low fat, 0 trans fatty acids" are always highlighted. Do you understand what they mean? Of course, we might as well summarize the pros and cons of its "Japanese style" and "marketing-oriented" design based on our marketing intuition. Let’s talk about the advantages first. For new competitors, focusing highly on a relatively niche aesthetic style actually has certain asymmetric competitive advantages: for example, big brands such as Coca-Cola, Master Kong, and Wanglaoji are unlikely to AII IN such a small style just to attack someone, as this does not conform to the aesthetic tastes of their large audience and is likely to damage their original brand strategy.

But new brands targeting niche audiences won’t have these concerns. Secondly, a small boat is easier to turn around. As Tang Binsen, CEO of Zhixingtong, said during his sharing session, "In a world without rules, the most effective method is rapid trial and error." Genki Forest soda not only has flavors such as sour plum soup and cucumber, but also has a presence in sub-sectors such as cold chain yogurt and healthy functional drinks.

But of course there are also disadvantages. When marketing and data orientation are too "rational", they often lack real "feelings", thus attracting accusations of plagiarism and pseudo-Japanese style. Recently, several negative articles about Genki Forest have quietly appeared on the Internet. These are potential risks that need to be paid attention to and avoided. However, when it comes to the "pseudo-X series", Jordan Sports, Peak Sports, Meisterbonwe, Baleno, Giordano, Mark Fairwhale, Dicos, Oudian Flooring, Marco Polo Tile, Shine Milk Powder, French Biostime, Sofia Wardrobe, Da Vinci Home...

A number of domestic brands were hesitant to speak. Even Jordan himself has come to the door, so brands like Van Gogh, Marco Polo, and Leonardo da Vinci should be thankful that they are no longer in the world. It is true that our domestic brands need more cultural confidence, but business is about making money. Commercial design actually depends to a large extent on the aesthetic tendencies of consumers. To put it in a higher level, this essentially depends on the level of development of my country's cultural industry. There is no need to focus on Genki Forest alone to criticize it, we should also appreciate the valuable brands such as Li Ning and Hua Xizi that have set off a national trend.

4. How new marketers operate

According to a CompleteSpectrum report, half of senior leaders (50%) said digital transformation is about adjusting the digital presence to better deliver on the brand promise and brand experience. Nearly a quarter (24%) said it involves orchestrating a cohesive online strategy to better generate and capitalize on leads, while 14% called it automating digital marketing through customer-facing technology. Even 2% said that digitization is about improving the aesthetic appeal of the website. Only 9% said digital transformation meant more effectively measuring the ROI of digital channels.

But here’s the interesting thing: while definitions vary, 94% of senior leaders still say digital transformation is at the top of their list of priorities for 2019. This made us realize that in addition to analyzing the Genki Forest case, we need to show more case details, even down to the work content of digital marketers.

This time, we take data research and product development as examples.

"Please note that the following does not refer to the technical tools used within Genki Forest, but rather to the cutting-edge applications that Wangong Digital has learned about in its areas of expertise." As we all know, the authenticity of traditional user questionnaire surveys has a certain upper limit. In addition to the limited scale, the first is that the audience of the questionnaire is often not random enough, and the second is that there is often a certain discrepancy between the user's actual behavior and the answer. For example, even a seemingly random approach like “standing on the street and stopping people to ask” is actually affected by the address (for example, is it a residential area or a commercial area?) and the time period (for example, rush hour), so the audience is not completely “random”.

For example, when users are asked face to face, "Which facial cleanser brands do you like?", whether male users answer "L'Oreal Men" or "Mentholatum Men", they are often not sincere because they usually look at what the women in their family buy and use.

Seeing "them" carrying boxes of burning tea, milk tea, and Genki Forest sparkling water home, in fact, "they" placed orders based on Xiaohongshu and Li Jiaqi. But marketing technology (MarTech) can break the concerns of traditional methods. For example, through programmatic advertising channels, weights of various times, channels, and populations can be allocated, and real-person answers can be identified through a variety of means to automatically remove duplicates, thus achieving truly controllable random surveys.

Secondly, while breaking through manpower limitations, the "Smart Questionnaire" can also intelligently and in real time adjust the content of the next conversation based on the different answers of different users, using artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve large-scale "human" intelligence. It is difficult for ordinary people to imagine how powerful MarTech is in helping product development.

“Small steps, fast progress, rapid iteration” is already a well-known effective strategy, but product development, market launch, and seeing results take time. How can we make it “faster”? When you have 10 packaging design plans, each with 10 different controversial details (such as whether to put the spokesperson's photo or the fruit photo on the main screen), do you really want to produce all 100 of them and sell them? If you really do this, you will be almost bankrupt before you even start to make rapid progress.

A feasible MarTech approach is to directly create product advertisements for these ten design schemes, put them on e-commerce platforms, test users’ click-through rates and browsing completion rates, and collect user reviews. Secondly, for different groups of people and models, different colors, themes, layouts and other detailed elements are automatically changed to obtain comparisons and feedback.

Not to mention 100 possibilities, the pros and cons of 1,000 different possible combinations can be accurately calculated and formed into a concise and visual data report and placed on the decision maker's desk. This allows decision makers to quickly and cost-effectively learn which platforms, for which people, and which design solutions are most effective, and maximize ROI through intelligent delivery.

But then again, don’t traditional marketers want to conduct truly random questionnaire surveys and understand the value of small-scale, multi-combination, and rapid testing? No, Wangong Digital has always believed that the logic of marketing has never changed, and marketing technology is only helping people better realize the "ideal original intention of the plan." We don't drive to replace our legs, we just drive faster.

Conclusion

Someone once asked why among game manufacturers, Nintendo always makes the most money. Tang Binsen said: when others were still in China, he went to Russia; when others went to Russia, he went to Brazil; when others followed him to Brazil, he had already been to sixteen countries. When Tang Binsen, who came from the Internet industry, founded Genki Forest, his secret of "speed is invincible" remained unchanged: riding on the fast track of the rise of convenience stores, attacking market segments that big brands cannot reach, identifying emerging social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu, planning products based on the data portraits of this segmented user group, and impressing him/her cleanly and neatly.

And behind it, there is likely to be a "special forces" that is good at using advanced marketing techniques and tactics. This high level of speed, or "agility", is the real code to wealth. It is said that Tang Binsen often mentioned to others the "geopolitical arbitrage" theory of Alexander Tamas, a former partner of DST, namely: the world has never been and will never be able to reach the so-called "flat state", and the so-called successful businessmen are those who can be the first to exploit information gaps to gain benefits.

Author: Swallowtail

Source: Private Domain Traffic Observation (ID: gh_8a0eb58fba1a)