Formulas, logic and methods of 8 super hit product cases

Chinese companies are facing an inflection point - on one hand, with business changes, traditional companies that have been slow to "go online" have fallen into a slump, and a wave of closures has emerged; on the other hand, in the tide of consumption upgrading, the market prefers valuable, high-quality, cost-effective, and good-looking products, and focuses on experience.

This also means that the competition between companies will change from the traditional battle of channels, prices, and marketing to a battle of products and experience.

Therefore, we can currently see that many unicorn companies driven by explosive products have emerged in the market. They use one product to implement a brand strategy of 1 billion or 10 billion, subvert the industry, and establish word-of-mouth communication. For example, Yuanqi Forest, which is valued at 4 billion yuan, Anmuxi, which has an annual revenue of 17 billion yuan, and Wang Baobao cereal, which ranks No. 1 on Tmall’s cereal market.

As I have mentioned in many public occasions, I have always firmly believed that "product is the company's first strategy" and the most core weapon. Therefore, in a deeply digital communication environment, my favorite marketing method is product-branding, because what consumers are most exposed to is the product. The product is the brand, the product is the medium, and the product is word of mouth. If the 1 of the product is not done well, the 0 behind the marketing will be meaningless.

Because of my work, many people ask me how to launch their own brand by creating a product. Next, I will review with you how to help brand people develop the mindset of creating explosive products. I summarized it into three principles: the target must be accurate, the product must be good, and the detonation must be quick.

01. First, the goal must be accurate

Before shooting, you must first lock the target, find the right track, and avoid traps. I will explain this to you through three viewpoints: first, we must have a deep insight into customer needs; second, we must lock in the target customer group; and third, we must follow the trend of consumer minds and make products content-based, youthful, and symbolic.

First of all, customer pain points are the bullseye of all actions.

The case I shared with you before was the internet celebrity brand in the bird’s nest industry - Xiaoxiandun. Traditional nourishing products, such as bird's nest, usually give people the stereotype that they are for gift giving or can only be afforded by middle-aged and elderly users. However, with the iteration of the main consumer groups, the younger generation's demand for nourishing health is also changing. For many female consumers, bird's nest is a "little happiness" in life. Its development logic is similar to the "lipstick effect". No matter how the economic situation changes, it is always a nourishing and beauty product in the hearts of beauty-loving women in her economic era.

This new scene gave birth to a new space for Xiaoxiandun. To this end, Xiaoxiandun started with the younger generation, digging deep into the pain points of the post-80s and post-90s generations who were busy with work and had upgraded health needs, and attacked the pain points with the four product characteristics of convenience, freshness, nutrition, and sufficient ingredients. Through periodic purchasing services, it quickly captured a group of loyal fans from the middle and high-end levels of the young generation.

Secondly, users often have more than one demand. The best approach is to identify a pain point of target users, and then devote all efforts to research and development to achieve a breakthrough in a single product.

We will find that many department stores have a wide range of brands on display, but in fact, only a few of them sell well. Today's consumers would rather you help them make choices. So when developing a product, what brands need to do is to develop consumers' hidden needs into physical products through research. Don't think about satisfying the preferences of all consumers. It is enough to satisfy your target users.

The case shared was that of a bread brand.

The founder of this bread brand consulted in class about how to create hit products for his bakery. He hopes to break boundaries and create different bread products that are suitable for different life scenarios for different groups of people. My suggestion is: no product can be big and comprehensive, so the target population must be segmented, and the product and brand positioning must be clear. Only in this way can you further find your channel, whether it is a convenience store around the school, the community, or near the office building. First of all, you have to be very clear and definite.

In terms of products, bread corresponds to different groups of people and must meet the needs of different groups of people. For example, low-calorie, low-fat bread cannot be sold to students, and high-calorie products cannot be sold to working people who sit every day but want to lose weight.

Finally, whoever understands consumers best will be able to deliver productized solutions to the right people the fastest.

When we build products, we need to consider:

Are the products you present in line with the real pain points of users? Are they specific to a certain coverage area or matched with a certain demand point and specific products? At the same time, are they following the trend of consumer minds and making the products content-oriented, youthful, and popularly symbolic?

The case I shared with you before was a super skin care product that quickly became popular on Douyin - PROYA Bubble Mask. This mask topped the "Douyin Beauty and Skin Care List" in July and sold 800,000 boxes. PROYA mask sales quickly increased from more than 20 million to 60 million.

Let’s break down its strategy for creating explosive products:

① The brand is in line with the current trend of the public seeking novelty

Bubble masks break the public's impression of ordinary facial masks and provide everyone with a novel and interesting feeling.

② The product is real and effective to stimulate consumption impulse

The saying "the dirtier your face, the more bubbles there are" has made consumers aware of its good effectiveness. It has also created an opportunity for friends and family to apply facial masks together, making it a kind of social currency.

③The product has an attractive price

The price below 100 yuan is within the acceptable comfort range for people. No matter whether they are white-collar workers or students, there will be no pressure to buy the product. This is also an important point for the product to become a hit in the short term. We can find that the logic behind the popularity of PROYA Bubble Mask is nothing more than fully grasping the needs and itchiness of consumers, creating demand through products, whether it is new demand or awakening old demand, pushing it to users with scenario-based content, touching the emotional ignition point in the user's heart, and thus promoting the consumer's "behavior" of placing an order.

02. Second, the product should be good

We often say that products are the core weapon of a brand, and we must never let go of the sword until death. To make a good product, we must explore its core value and avoid black holes. There are three aspects in this area: one is the supply chain, the second is creating new product category value, and the third is the ultimate user experience. My point is that if you can’t do a good job in supply chain, don’t do physical retail easily, because the supply chain is directly related to the lifeblood of the enterprise.

Why can MINISO’s products stand the test of the market? The product price is so cheap and the quality is so good? Because the supply chain behind it is so strong that every product is among the best in the industry. The supplier of Western-style cutlery for MINISO is the brand manufacturer of Zwilling, and two pieces are sold for 15 yuan, while most products on the market are of lower quality and sold at much higher prices. MINISO itself pays special attention to appearance, quality and cost-effectiveness in product development. After the product was developed, more than 200,000 units were sold in one day in the Chinese market alone.

Although the product is cheap, it has 60 processes and is produced on a high-standard assembly line. If there is a problem in any link of the product production process, the product will be made from scratch, and the supply chain quality requirements are very strict. The cosmetics supply chain is Interstellar, one of the cosmetics giants in the international market. They supply 80% of Estee Lauder's cosmetics in China. The cosmetics products developed by MINISO are priced at 15-25 yuan. The fragrance supply chain is Givaudan, which has a history of more than 200 years. They supply major brands such as Dior and Chanel and have 11 factories around the world. MINISO cooperated with them to develop its first perfume, the "Flower Youth Series", priced at 39 yuan. Only when you have the ability to integrate a strong supply chain can you run your business better.

Only when a brand develops good products around user needs, builds product quality through a first-class supply chain, and finally forms a good front-end consumer experience, will consumers become more dependent on your brand. In addition, creating a product cannot be just a simple concept. The product must truly bring core value to users. This is the basis of competition. Create new category value, dare to be creative, and find new ways. All industries are worth starting over.

In recent years, we have discovered completely different needs, unexpected needs, and needs that have not been taken seriously.

The new demands mainly come from two aspects:

One is the demand of the new generation. There is a new generation in every era, but the new generation forms an independent market. For example, those born after 1995 and 2000 have strong purchasing power and strong consumer personality and opinions.

The second is the emergence of new scenarios. If upgrading has a track to follow, then new scenarios may have no reference at all, including foreign or domestic reference.

The above two demands have broken the past industrial structure.

Take the cereal industry as an example.

On Double 11 in 2019, Wang Baobao defeated old cereal brands such as Quaker and Calbee, and took the No. 1 spot on Tmall’s cereal market. However, Wang Baobao is just a new brand that was launched in May 2018 - a cereal food brand specially created for young people.

Before Wang Baobao was born, products in the domestic cereal market could be roughly divided into two categories. One type is Western naked oats represented by Quaker, which is high in fiber and low in starch, but young people don’t like its taste and think it is just a health-preserving meal replacement for middle-aged and elderly people; the other type is puffed oats represented by Japan’s Calbee, whose main ingredients are starch and rice flour. It tastes good but makes you gain weight easily.

Relying on innovations in product research and development and production technology, Wang Baobao has launched a series of cereals that suit the individual tastes of young people, and at the same time, paired them with high-looking, large-grain dried fruits, breaking the conventional taste and form of existing cereals on the market, and achieving a balance between deliciousness and low calories, redefining cereal.

Wang Baobao’s success is due to its multi-level innovation in categories, products, marketing, etc., which has redefined consumers’ perception and imagination of cereal and brought the wonderful things of “good-looking, delicious, healthy, and filling” to more consumers.

Let’s summarize through Wang Baobao’s case, what are the impacts of redoing an industry? Or what is the dominant factor? I think it is about gaining new insights into consumers and re-understanding them. The huge changes in consumers are the force that drives huge changes in the industry.

Of course, there is one more point, which is also the most important point: the product must create unique value for users in order to make users scream and win their trust.

Today, consumers are no longer buying a basic product. What they are buying is the IP, appearance, style and experience that make them feel good. It is an all-round perception.

It’s not that what you give me is good, but that what you give me meets my psychological expectations.

For many people working in brand marketing, product design and service experience, understanding “consumer intent” is more scarce than the attention economy. So brands need to think about: How to seize a larger market share in a limited time?

Through big data, Mao Wang discovered that 75% of his users are girls. He knows what girls like and what young people like. In principle, small and mini products are definitely cute. This is actually the default view in everyone's mind, so young people will definitely like such products.

Elvis' Little Prince OTR product series has a single element maximization principle, which is to do the best in the points that users are concerned about. The first is that it must look good, the second is that it must have good sound quality, the third is that it must have good craftsmanship and exquisite workmanship, and the fourth is that it must be able to have gift attributes.

Experience is more than three times the value of the product. Brands need to create unforgettable peak moments for users and learn to bring surprises to give users extraordinary experiences.

03. Third, detonate quickly

After any new product comes out, how can the brand quickly and accurately push the product to consumers? The most important thing is to build social barriers among specific groups of people, that is, everyone around the consumer uses it and says it is good. People tend to follow the crowd and are not willing to try new things or challenge new things because people naturally avoid choosing risks and thus build social barriers.

Especially with the rise of new media channels such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao Live, and Bilibili, brands can use these platforms to transform users into "promoters" of products through the connection of social scenarios, inspire users to spread the product in circles, recommend products to more users, achieve more interesting user interactions and fission-like communication power, and thus establish brand reputation.

In terms of detonating, I advocate three viewpoints: first, choose the right promotion channel, second, create word-of-mouth content, third, detonate the market layer by layer, and fourth, enhance user participation. First of all, good communication must be accurate, have high conversion rate, and high communication efficiency, and it must be done like a killer. Therefore, the first step is to accurately target the channels where the target users are located and empower social media.

How to do it? Where are the target users? New media social platforms are right there!

In this section, the case I want to share with you is Perfect Diary.

Perfect Diary's target audience is young women aged 18-28. These new generations born after 1995 and 2000 have more diversified channels of access, so Perfect Diary has invested heavily in all platforms where young people gather: Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Bilibili... Different platforms have different characteristics, so Perfect Diary will also choose the most suitable delivery method on different channels.

On Xiaohongshu, Perfect Diary not only values ​​the influence of top KOLs, but also pays more attention to small and medium-sized KOLs to create an overwhelming screen-sweeping effect. We can organize Perfect Diary’s strategies in this regard into: official notes, celebrity recommendations, KOL promotion, and ordinary people sharing their experience.

After exploring experience on one platform, it is replicated in the same way on another platform. Perfect Diary has started its layout on Douyin again, and the content mainly focuses on real-person color testing. Perfect Diary’s advertising strategy on Douyin is not to advertise through influencer attributes, but to find influencers through fan portraits. Taking Perfect Diary’s "Matte Lip Glaze" as an example, the number of fans of bloggers for advertising ranges from 10,000 to more than 1 million, including large non-vertical accounts and some small vertical accounts. This advertising strategy has actually broken away from the inertia of beauty brands that only cooperate with beauty bloggers.

On Bilibili, it mainly combines its own characteristics to recommend Perfect Diary through color testing, evaluation, and makeup tutorials, and deeply integrates Perfect Diary products into the content. Moreover, for young people who are tired of traditional embedded advertising, Bilibili's barrage interaction can continue to create a guiding atmosphere, resulting in a high marketing input-output ratio for Bilibili.

The emphasis on other channels does not mean that Perfect Diary has given up relatively "traditional" channels such as Weibo and WeChat. Weibo has a large number of users and a loud voice, making it particularly suitable for image building. Perfect Diary will officially announce its spokespersons, cross-border collaborations, etc. on Weibo. WeChat’s strategy is mainly based on WeChat private account marketing + official account + mini program.

Through the above cases, we can find that Perfect Diary’s brand marketing strategy on social platforms is very clear: it goes wherever young people are.

Second, create social currency and find topics that attract users. Even good wine needs no bush. No matter how good your product is, it will only be better if there is good content output. Content is the core, and only when users applaud can there be continuous applause.

So what kind of content is good? I have summarized a 4-have rule: be emotional, interesting, useful and tasteful.

【Emotional】: Have equal dialogue with users and stimulate their emotional resonance.

【Fun】: Make users feel involved, interesting, happy and relaxed.

【Useful】: Make users feel valuable and rewarding.

【Quality】: The content should be of high quality and taste, which can demonstrate the character of the company.

Also, we need to detonate each circle one by one. In the era of mobile Internet, we have formed different communities and circles with different symbols. The detonation of a brand requires the gradual detonation of multiple circles, connecting each point to form a line, and finally covering a surface.

This is also the reason why I put circles first among the three "golden rules" of user operations (circles, emotions, and participation). Because it is the cognitive basis of user operations, only with circle awareness can we effectively mobilize emotions and sense of participation and achieve word-of-mouth explosion. Previously, I analyzed the case of Jiang Xiaobai with you. Jiang Xiaobai has carved out a niche for itself in the young market by leveraging niche culture, and has also broken the stereotype that liquor is only consumed by middle-aged and elderly people.

Jiang Xiaobai has been working hard for 3 years, from "music live" to "youth culture festival", from simple rap performances to graffiti, skateboarding, street basketball, etc. It is a youth culture festival that integrates the niche culture loved by young people. It truly focuses on niche young culture, explores the connection with young people from the level of brand culture and product personality, and salutes young people based on young people.

The main force of niche circles has entered the era of participatory consumption, which is a comprehensive revolution in consumption concepts. In addition to Jiang Xiaobai mentioned above, many brands have achieved initial success through circle positioning and operation, such as Xiaomi, Pop Mart, and the wave of online variety shows and film and television dramas that have emerged in the niche market.

Like the sinking market, circle culture provides more possibilities for brand building. If you cannot invest billions of dollars in advertising fees a year like those wealthy large companies, then starting a niche market and causing circle vibrations can also be a way to leverage the big market.

Finally, emphasize participation. Be user-centric, know users, understand users, and have fun with users. Touch the hearts of young people and hit their itch points. Where there is heat, there is marketing.

Let’s take Jiang Xiaobai as an example.

Jiang Xiaobai is not only fun, but more importantly, it can hurt your heart! Using "alcohol" to go unconventional time and time again interprets the attitude and inner expression of the youth born in the 80s and 90s - they are not rebellious, they just don't like to follow the rules.

In the Internet age, products are the starting point of marketing. To attract heated discussions, products must have two major characteristics:

1. Products must have communication capabilities and generate interactions based on consumption scenarios and consumer products;

2. The product must have its own social attributes, be able to create topics, and trigger autonomous dissemination!

"I am a young literary man eating hot pot, singing songs, drinking Jiang Xiaobai and playing finger-guessing games. 1 bottle of Green Tickets = 2 bottles of Jiang Xiaobai, which makes it convenient for brothers to have friendly conversations. Sometimes, we say the wrong things and do the wrong things because we are tempted by Jiang Xiaobai." Such a humorous slogan makes people unable to hate it at all, but instead resonates more.

Therefore, in terms of communication, Jiang Xiaobai is also very good at leveraging marketing and paying attention to things that young people care about. For example, when the TV series "My Love from the Star" was very popular, Jiang Xiaobai borrowed the "momentum" of "Du Jiaoshou" and Lawyer Zhang and implanted a quote: Two pairs of chopsticks and two bottles of wine, two people facing each other are good friends.

This seemingly casual remark reveals Jiang Xiaobai's vision to achieve wide-scale exposure at the lowest cost.

The reason why Jiang Xiaobai can be actively spread on social media is due to these quotations, which speak to the hearts of young people and express their joys, sorrows, anger, happiness, sorrows, separations and reunions. Instead of entertaining itself, it ignites consumers, makes them happy, helps them get happy, and creates social currency for them to get happy.

In fact, through these cases we will find that there is no shortcut to creating a product. We need to constantly polish the product, polish the details, make the product to the extreme, and then push it to users with scenario-based content, touch the user's inner emotional ignition point, and thus promote the next step of "behavior".

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)

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