With over 78 billion topic views, how did “Guizhou Village Super” go from being an instant hit to long-term success?

Why did "Guizhou Village Supermarket" go from being a hot hit to a long-term success? This article will show you the reasons. This article is also recommended for companies or individual business owners to read.

With Spain defeating England 2-1 in the final on July 15, the quadrennial European Cup officially came to an end, and many fans sighed, "It's finally over."

Since the start of this year's group stage, Group C has tied five of the six games and scored only seven goals. The viewing quality of the European Cup can be described as bland. Many netizens said that "watching this year's European Cup is not as good as watching the Village Super League" , which is more of a joke, but it shows that the "Guizhou Village Super League" has gained a certain degree of popularity among the fan community.

After Brazilian football star Kaka and Italian star Cannavaro recently made frequent appearances at Guizhou Village Super League matches, Morketing discovered that the "Guizhou Village Super League", a folk event that became popular a year ago, is not only not a flash in the pan, but has even become a long-lasting brand.

Therefore, before the final of "Guizhou Village Super League" on July 20, Morketing will use the branding approach to review in detail how "Guizhou Village Super League" became popular and how it evolved into a long-lasting local cultural and tourism brand.

1. Why did a village-level competition in a small county become so popular on the Internet?

Since the village-level football match "Guizhou Village Super League" became popular in May last year, Village Super League has become synonymous with a phenomenal event. According to the latest published data, the "Village Super League" topic has been viewed more than 78 billion times on social platforms and attracted 7.66 million tourists last year, which is 20 times the local permanent population . The resulting tourism revenue of 8.4 billion yuan is almost equal to the local annual GDP.

Before answering the question of why "Guizhou Village Super League" has become so popular, we need to first clarify the definition of village super league. The full name of "Guizhou Village Super League" is "Guizhou Rongjiang (Sanbao Dong Village) Hemei Rural Football Super League" . This league consists of 20 teams based on villages, all of which are spontaneously organized by the public, and the competition lasts for 3 months.

The reason why "Guizhou Village Super League", a village-level football match in Rongjiang County, Guizhou Province, became famous overnight and popular on the Internet, and even fed back traffic to the local tourism industry, is mainly due to two reasons, according to Morketing's observation:

1. Make full preparations and wait for the circle to go out, and use the idea of ​​brand marketing to do village supermarket

Although the "Guizhou Village Super League" folk competition only became widely known last year with the help of short videos, the local love for football has actually been endless. Since the 1990s, football fans in Rongjiang have spontaneously organized a local football association. After 2015, Rongjiang has held three major football events every year, including the Football Association Cup, Spring Festival Cup, and Weekend League . Unfortunately, due to various reasons, the influence of these events is limited to the local area and has become an activity for local people to entertain themselves.

At the same time, in order to let Rongjiang's cultural tourism industry go global and be seen by more people, the local government chose to keep pace with the times and use new media live broadcast as a breakthrough for publicity. To this end, they also proposed a very avant-garde concept of "making mobile phones into new agricultural tools, making data into new agricultural materials, and making live broadcast a new agricultural activity", which shows the importance they attach to live broadcast and short video traffic.

In addition to attaching great importance to it at the strategic level, Rongjiang has also been clear about its specific implementation. It is understood that in order to promote local cultural tourism, Rongjiang has introduced more than 40 new media companies with planning and execution capabilities. In addition, they have also made many attempts in the form of short video competitions around local special activities such as Leli Dongnian and bullfighting, and finally seized the "Village Super" traffic explosion point and made it a phenomenal event that has become popular all over the Internet.

From this perspective, the success path of "Guizhou Village Supermarket" is quite consistent with the logic of brand marketing: first, make sufficient preparations and choose the appropriate breakthrough point, then make multiple attempts at the execution level, and finally seize the explosive point to achieve the brand's full popularity.

In fact, Xu Bo, the internet-famous county magistrate of Rongjiang County, also said that "Village Supermarket is essentially a brand" and that when he first planned the "Village Supermarket", he wanted to form a traffic brand first.

2. Guizhou Village Supermarket has achieved attractive content marketing

As we all know, on today's short video platforms, all kinds of new things emerge in an endless stream. The reason why "Village Super" can stand out is that it is closely related to football and provides a sense of freshness to the audience. Against the backdrop of more than 200 million football fans in China, "Guizhou Village Super" takes the perspective of rural football and village-level super leagues, which naturally gives people a refreshing experience.

Moreover, after the "Guizhou Village Super League" match won the attention of a large number of fans, the local new media team did not limit their focus to the match and the players. They also won a cow and a pig for the champion and runner-up respectively, as well as various folk activities between the matches. They successfully established the concept that the match was particularly "down-to-earth", the local folk activities were interesting, and the people were "hospitable".

From the perspective of advertising communication, heterogeneity is an amplifier of advertising communication effects, and the vivid images of the champion and runner-up teams of the "Guizhou Village Super" competition leading cows and pigs and the masses singing and dancing in ethnic minority costumes have brought unprecedented freshness to the audience in the city. In this way, the popularity of "Guizhou Village Super" can be regarded as another new model for brands to do content marketing in the era of short videos.

2. Keep the brand evergreen and let the “Village Supermarket” tell more stories

The "15-minute rule" that is popular on the Internet is the most appropriate way to describe the speed at which hot topics change in the Internet era. It means that everyone has the possibility of becoming famous for 15 minutes. In the case of Guizhou Village Super League, some people are also worried that the popularity brought by football matches is just a flash in the pan.

However , from the actual situation, one year after its debut, Guizhou Village Super League is rapidly evolving into a long-lasting brand. In addition to the arrival of the two Brazilian and Italian stars, the Guizhou Village Super League matches themselves are also very popular. The live broadcast replay in 2024 shows that there are crowds of people on holidays and weekends. Basically, it can be said that it has gone from being a hot topic to a long-lasting one.

It is obviously more difficult to become an evergreen brand than to break through the circle temporarily. In the process of "Guizhou Village Super" continuing to evolve towards an evergreen brand, we believe that the "one horizontal and one vertical" development strategy adopted by Village Super after it became famous is particularly worthy of attention.

Horizontal refers to taking over the traffic and making the "Village Super League" label cover more areas. For example, the "Guizhou Village Super League" was expanded from a simple football match to a "Food Football Friendly Match", inviting football teams from regions with special food all over the country to participate in Rongjiang, such as the Liuzhou snail noodle team, the Zibo barbecue team, the Nanchang mixed noodle team and the Sichuan Rongcheng hot pot team. Fans can not only watch football in Rongjiang but also taste special food from all over the country, thus further building the "Guizhou Village Super League" into a comprehensive entertainment festival event.

In addition, this horizontal line also refers to combining the brand influence of "Guizhou Village Super League" with local industrial brands. It is understood that after the Village Super League became popular, in order to make full use of the influence of the "Village Super League" brand, the local government specially established a "Village Super League" brand management company and formed an operation team.

In the beverage industry alone, the local area has cooperated with large beverage companies such as Huiyuan Juice, Wanglaoji, Mengniu, and Yili to develop "Village Super Juice Electrolyte Water", "Village Super Cola", "Lo Han Guo Cola" and other Village Super co-branded beverages. While making full use of local agricultural products such as monk fruit, it also promoted the popularity of "Village Super" co-branded products. Data shows that the first batch of 3 million bottles of "Village Super Cola" were sold out as soon as they were launched, and the sales volume and hot-selling index on the Douyin platform once rushed to the top of the platform, which shows the brand value brought by "Guizhou Village Super".

On the other hand, while the "Village Super League" brand continues to develop horizontally and expand its business territory, the "Guizhou Village Super League" has not forgotten its old business of football matches. According to the local "Village Super League Three-Step Action" strategy, the "Village Super League" International Exchange Competition will be launched in 2024, the Village Super League Mini World Cup will be held in 2026, and the first Village Super League World Cup will be held in 2028, promoting the "Village Super League" to gradually move towards internationalization.

It is understood that the Chinese team of the world's top football league, the Premier League, took the initiative to find the "Guizhou Village Super League" last year and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the "Village Super League", which kicked off its internationalization. This means that it will not be a new thing for foreign stars to come to the "Guizhou Village Super League" game scene. In the future, there will be more stars and more teams coming to the "Guizhou Village Super League" platform. The "Guizhou Village Super League" will surely take advantage of the opportunity of the international exchange competition to become a hot topic again.

In Morketing's opinion, the positioning of product brands needs to find the most "sharp" and strongest points of difference, and the same is true for cultural tourism brands. City brand positioning does not have to be comprehensive, but to present the most attractive aspects to people. From this perspective, "Guizhou Village Super League" and football have become Rongjiang's distinctive business cards and labels to attract tourists.

From the perspective of branding, Guizhou Village Super League has already solved the two major problems of "how to create niche marketing" and "how to create a long-lasting brand". If Guizhou Village Super League's "one horizontal and one vertical" strategy can develop smoothly, just like the close connection between Jingdezhen and porcelain, Village Super League may make Rongjiang a "football city" in the minds of fans in the future.

Author: Lumens

Source: WeChat public account: "Morketing (ID: Morketing)"