Analyzing the techniques used by internet celebrity brands to become popular!

If we cite the most representative examples of internet celebrity brands in 2020, most people’s lists will definitely include Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao.

• Genki Forest was founded in 2016. During last year’s Double Eleven, Genki Forest ranked second in online sales, beating Coca-Cola. In 4 years, the valuation has exceeded 4 billion.
• Zhong Xue Gao was founded in 2018 and sold 10 million ice creams in 2019. Its valuation has not been disclosed to the public, but it has become the hottest ice cream brand in the past two years.

Fast-moving consumer goods brands like Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao can quickly gain brand awareness and occupy the market in just 2 or 3 years, which is something traditional brands may not be able to achieve in 5-10 years. It is truly amazing.

Luo Zhenyu said in his New Year’s Eve speech last year that consumer brands have huge opportunities in China, and it seems that this prediction is gradually coming true.

The two internet celebrity brands, Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao, have certain similarities. They were both established not long ago, are both fast-moving consumer goods brands, belong to the cold drink category, and their paths to fame are also very similar.

Therefore, this article takes the two as examples to analyze the reasons for their success in a short period of time:

1. Positioning: Entering the market segment and creating a blue ocean

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.

For example, Nongfu Spring and Yilibao in drinking water, Coca-Cola and Pepsi in cola, Mengniu and Yili in milk, etc.

Directly invading these large categories is often a thankless task, and it is difficult to grab a few points of market share from these leading brands even if you spend a lot of money.

New brands often look for a market segment within a larger category that a larger brand has not yet entered, creating a consumer blue ocean.

For example, around 2016, there was a beverage called Haizhiyan, which was positioned as a light functional beverage. The main feature of the drink is the addition of Mediterranean sea salt, which has a light but not too sweet taste and can replenish salt. As a result, it has created a niche market in fruit-flavored beverages, with annual sales exceeding 2 billion at its peak.

Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao have also opened up their own blue ocean markets in their respective categories. Genki Forest belongs to the soda category in a broad sense. Competition in this category is very fierce. Basically, no brand can compete with Coca-Cola, Pepsi and FamilyMart drinks.

In 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 waters that have the characteristics of both. Therefore, Genki Forest has entered this niche blue ocean market.

In the ice cream category where Zhong Xue Gao is located, the high-end market is dominated by brands such as Haagen-Dazs and Wall's, while the mass market is occupied by Mengniu and Yili. It is difficult to gain an advantage by entering this market directly.

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.

To explain the home storage style, most consumers consume ice cream offline and buy it immediately. However, the development of e-commerce and cold chain logistics has promoted online consumption and home consumption scenarios. At the same time, with the improvement of ice cream processing and the controllability of room temperature in winter, the seasonal attributes of ice cream have gradually faded.

Purchasing online and eating ice cream at home has become a new trend and scenario in ice cream consumption. Here, Zhong Xue Gao has created a niche blue ocean market for home-stored low-sugar ice cream.

In terms of consumer group positioning, Zhong Xue Gao and Genki Forest both target young people.

According to the Baidu Index, the population aged 20-29 accounts for nearly 45% of Zhong Xue Gao’s customers, and the population aged 20-29 accounts for nearly half of Genki Forest’s customers. In this age group, the search population for both is significantly higher than the average distribution across the entire network.

Young people like to try new things and pay attention to low-sugar, healthy food, which is consistent with the concept of sugar-free/low-sugar, no additives and health of the two.

When entering a large product category market, both Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao targeted the needs of young people and chose a niche market, which enabled them to avoid fierce competition and quickly gain a foothold.

2. Trend: Riding on the trend of deepening consumption upgrade

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.

The product planning of Zhong Xue Gao and Genki Forest has been aimed at meeting consumers' upgraded needs from the very beginning.

1. Sugar-free/low sugar, healthy

The taste of Zhong Xuegao and Genki Forest products is outstanding in itself, and the most important thing is that the ingredients used emphasize health. Losing weight has become a goal pursued by almost all young people today, and characteristics such as low sugar and low fat are a kind of "political correctness" in consumption of commodities.

Genki Forest emphasizes 0 sugar, 0 fat, and 0 calories, and these three characteristics occupy the most prominent position in its external publicity and packaging.

Consumers are emotional. They want to drink something sweet but don’t want to gain weight, so when they see such promotions, they can’t help but try it. By strengthening such publicity, over time the "drink that does not make you fat" will occupy the minds of consumers.

Zhong Xue Gao's products also emphasize low sugar, low fat, and zero additives. For example, one ice cream is advertised as follows: "It does not contain a single grain of sucrose or sugar substitutes. Fructose brings a richer aroma. Only premium red grapes from the core grape-growing area of ​​the Turpan Basin are used. It has zero additives and is sweet and not greasy."

Purchasing such low-sugar or sugar-free products reduces consumers' sense of guilt and also caters to consumers' needs for not gaining weight to the greatest extent.

2. Appearance and cultural orientation

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.

Many consumers mistakenly think that this is a Japanese brand. The main colors of the bottle are white, green, blue, pink and other light colors, which looks fresh and comfortable.

Japanese culture and design represent a relatively high level of aesthetics in China, especially among white-collar workers, where they have a large number of fans.

Genki Forest’s Japanese design meets the white-collar workers’ demand for product appearance and also reflects their preference for Japanese-style consumption. Of course, the problem that arises is the question about the "pseudo-Japanese style". I will not interpret this issue in detail here.

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".

Zhong Xuegao attaches great importance to design. The price of traditional ice cream molds is generally between 30,000 and 80,000 yuan, while Zhong Xuegao's tile-type molds cost hundreds of thousands. They have applied for a patent for their unique design.

Compared with the Japanese aesthetics of Genki Forest, Zhong Xue Gao adopts a purely Chinese style design, representing Chinese culture and in line with the trend of new economy and national tide in recent years.

Consumers who eat Zhong Xue Gao not only think that it tastes good and looks good, but also that it reflects their cultural confidence in domestic brands.

3. Emotional resonance

Good products can create emotional resonance with consumers. This is especially important in the context of consumption upgrading.

Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao meet consumers' psychological needs for weight loss, while their good looks and cultural attributes resonate emotionally with consumers.

Series such as Zhong Xue Gao’s naming such as Family Portrait, I Like You, and Not One Less have created consumer demands in different scenarios, such as buying for couples, buying for oneself, and buying for family, and further subdividing the emotional resonance with consumers.

3. Marketing methods: laying channels - online promotion - offline advertising

As mentioned above, Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao have similar marketing methods. Their marketing paths are generally: convenience stores + e-commerce channels - online marketing - offline segmentation to expand influence.

1. Channel: convenience store + e-commerce

First of all, after the product is completed, they all choose to occupy the channels first, and convenience stores are one of the important choices.

Because convenience stores are characterized by high density, high frequency, and high display, they inherently have some advertising functions. High density, high frequency and high display mean that there is a high probability that consumers will see the product.

Suppose a consumer goes to a convenience store twice a day to buy drinks, and sees Genki Forest next to it each time. This is equivalent to seeing the Genki Forest advertisement twice a day.

At the same time, Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao entered the e-commerce platform at a relatively early stage, which made it easier for them to directly promote sales through online marketing. In the past, you might not have imagined that ice cream could be sold through e-commerce.

2. Online: seed marketing

If you observe the marketing of Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao, you will find that their characteristics are that they did not launch large-scale advertising at the beginning, but instead attracted attention by posting a large amount of grass-planting content on new social content platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and live streaming.

If you search for keywords of the two on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, you will find endless content, with all kinds of reviews and videos showing off and recommending products 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.

Young people consume the videos they see on these platforms. When consuming, they also post the videos they made themselves on the platforms to show off their consumption, thus forming secondary content, which ensures that their related content continues to flow.

Through grass-roots marketing on these media, Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao first formed a small circle of influence among young people and became Internet celebrity brands in the small circle.

3. Offline: Focused media expands influence

Regarding Internet celebrity brands, I have always had a point of view - it is not difficult for a well-known brand to become an Internet celebrity brand, but it is difficult for an Internet celebrity brand to become a well-known brand.

Since well-known brands have already established their own brand awareness and mass base, as long as they are willing to innovate in products, designs, marketing channels, etc., they are very likely to become Internet celebrity brands.

For example: Wangzai’s 56 ethnic milks, Wuling Hongguang’s street stall carts and snail noodles.

Most internet celebrity brands establish a relatively high degree of popularity within a circle through new media in a short period of time, but the next problem they face is how to break the circle and expand their audience.

Internet celebrity brands cannot avoid the same path that traditional brands have taken. Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao chose to advertise on Focus Media, which is a reasonable choice.

3.1 The effects of seeding video marketing and advertising are different

Grass planting is fragmented content and its impact on consumers is also point-like. That is to say, consumers see certain points in the grass-planting content, so they are influenced by these points, but their overall impression of the brand is lacking.

Advertising is holistic content. It can inform consumers of the integrity of the brand, including product features, brand concept, brand slogan, etc., allowing consumers to form an overall impression of the brand.

By leveraging its differentiated positioning and using advertising to occupy the minds of consumers, Focus Media still plays an irreplaceable role in this regard.

3.2 The two also affect different groups of people

Marketing on new social content platforms affects a limited group of young people, and the platform's algorithms dictate that these contents cannot reach everyone.

Sooner or later, Internet celebrity brands will need to expand these limited young groups to a wider population, and at this time, more concentrated segmentation is a good choice.

Focus Elevator Media covers more than 300 million mainstream urban people. More importantly, almost everyone who takes an elevator can see their advertisements multiple times a day.

Therefore, by placing targeted advertisements offline and coordinating them with online content, we can cover the widest range of young people and connect the fragmented perception of the product with the overall impression of the brand.

The most perfect way to influence is that consumers see the promotional videos of Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao online, and then see their advertisements when taking the elevator. The promotional videos and elevator advertisements form a combined influence, promoting their consumption.

This is also the reason why Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao, after becoming Internet celebrity brands, still invest heavily in targeted advertising.

So to sum up, if these internet celebrity brands want to become well-known brands, they must have the following three transformations:

1. From pure e-commerce to offline channel occupation;
2. From pure online marketing to online and offline simultaneous marketing;
3. From decentralized UGC media to centralized focused media.

IV. Conclusion

As two very young brands, Genki Forest and Zhong Xue Gao have entered into niche markets to create products with unique materials, designs, and cultural connotations, and have expanded their influence through online promotion and offline segmentation.

They have become internet celebrity brands in a short period of time, and the experience and logic behind them are worth learning for many brands.

But as internet celebrity brands, starting to advertise means that they are gradually entering the field of vision of more people, so the market's test of them has just begun.

Author: Xunkong's Marketing Revelation

Source: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation (ID: xunkong2005)