What is the difference between starting a consumer brand now and ten years ago?

Nowadays, everyone is building brands. How are consumer brands different from those ten years ago? The author summarizes a few thoughts and shares them with you.

A few days ago, I talked with a friend who is an investor about current consumer brands. I have a few thoughts to share with you.

1. What kind of brand can stand out?

The first is the category. This category must have rigid demand and repurchase from users. It is not something that users can choose to have, but something that users must buy when they want to solve a problem. For example, if they want to lose weight, they may need to eat meal replacements, or eat zero-sugar, low-fat, and low-calorie foods. This is a rigid demand.

The second is the turning point. Because of changes in consumption habits and technology, for example, the emergence of sugar substitutes has changed many beverages from fructose or sucrose to so-called zero-sugar beverages. This is called a technological turning point. For example, the turning point of consumer psychology. The psychology of young people in this era who recognize domestic products has undergone a huge change. This is also a turning point.

The third is the team. The capability model should not have obvious shortcomings. It must be a team with comprehensive design capabilities, supply chain capabilities, marketing capabilities, and channel development capabilities. Even if there is a shortcoming, it must be a team with strong learning ability.

2. What’s new about this generation of consumer brands?

New brands have higher requirements for CEOs. They must understand products, R&D, marketing, brands, and supply chains. Only if you understand these things can you attract such talented people. If you don’t understand these things, you may not know how to communicate with the experts. The comprehensive requirements for a CEO are still very high.

What’s new about new brands is their new strategies. They may not follow the beaten path, do not run a lot of advertising, and may not have big celebrity endorsements at the beginning. Many new brands’ main sales front also comes from online in the beginning, and they will rush to offline after accumulating a large number of people online.

In addition, the brand growth time has been greatly shortened. An old brand used to take a long time to develop, but now it has been compressed to one or two years. This is the millet plus rifle that defeated some old brands with the support of new aircraft and artillery.

New brands are short-lived. If a brand wants to become a century-old store, it must get rid of the stages of online seller-Internet celebrity brand-star brand-category brand. Coca-Cola is a category brand.

Today's new brands have a very deep understanding of the traffic on platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu. They are particularly sensitive to numbers and know the meaning behind each piece of data, as well as where there are value gaps and where there are investment dividends. They have calculated these accounts very clearly.

3. There is no so-called Dou brand, only full brand

In fact, the rise of new brands, such as live streaming and short videos, have provided new sources of traffic. Live streaming provides a better channel for interacting with consumers and integrating product and sales.

For new brands, paying attention to and making good use of short videos and live broadcasts is a must. A large number of new brands attach great importance to using short videos to generate traffic and seed the market, or using live broadcasts to drive sales and build scale. This is an essential ability.

We used to talk about Taobao brands and Douyin brands, but now a brand is limited to one platform, and it will definitely not become a big brand.

A brand with growth potential should break free from the constraints of the platform and become a brand across the entire network.

The growth of new brands relies on the use of comprehensive capabilities, not just one trick.

Take offline Heytea for example, it is a combination of online and offline, starting from offline, and takeaway is a very important boost. Now we see some old brands being renewed, such as Beibingyang and Wufangzhai, and another kind is cross-border brands, the integration brought by brands.

As for what specific path can lead to the birth of a big brand, we need to analyze specific issues specifically.

4. Is buying traffic a poison to quench thirst?

Traffic costs will only get higher and higher, especially for small brands, their bargaining power will only get smaller and smaller, which will correspondingly increase customer acquisition costs and further squeeze profit margins.

Traffic can be divided into purchased traffic users and natural traffic.

For a brand, it will definitely need to have purchased traffic in the early stage. If you only buy traffic and don’t build a brand, there will never be growth and no brand premium.

How do you define good traffic? I think that as long as you can calculate the traffic, it is good traffic. Only the traffic that you can't calculate is your traffic poison.

Now we need to do a good job in advertising, attracting new customers, and purchasing traffic. The founder himself should be sensitive to numbers and understand traffic very well. He should be active in these traffic circles.

There are a lot of community and industry exchanges in this area in China now, and many talents and teams are constantly emerging. I believe that if a brand lacks this, it can be greatly improved through supplementation, introduction and self-cultivation.

5. About brand and price

This generation of consumers has also changed a lot. From the original main consumer groups of those born in the 1970s and 1980s, Generation Z has now become the big stage for consumption. Next, this group of consumers will reshape the market for new brands.

Consumers are also more picky and demanding, their channels are more diversified, and their loyalty is not as strong.

The biggest contradiction in consumption now is the contradiction between people's increasingly demanding consumption demands and the good products manufactured by brand companies.

Consumers are always in a state of comparison. If I buy product A, and suddenly product B is 1% better and 10% cheaper, then product A will no longer be attractive. If product C is 10% better in quality and 20% better in experience than product A, and the price is the same, product B will no longer be attractive.

Consumers are always in the process of making choices. If a brand enterprise wants to remain evergreen, it needs to provide consumers with relatively better experience, better prices, and better-looking products in the market. You may have been a good product last year, but this year you will be outdated when compared with other products. Consumption is always a dynamic process.

Luxury goods are the last frontier. Luxury goods have too many other premiums. China will occupy these fronts faster in categories below light luxury.

above.

Author: Swordsman

Source: WeChat public account: "Daoke (ID: jianshishijie)"