"Tracing the source marketing" is very popular, I have summarized 5 ways for brands to stand out!

Origin marketing is helping brands gain some new popularity. Check out this article to find out what’s going on.

For a brand, "my product is good" is a very abstract concept. It is a grand narrative, but it is easy to make it seem fake and empty. Quality? Safety? Health? ... How can consumers quickly perceive it?

In recent years, many brands have chosen to take the initiative to have a face-to-face "confession game" with consumers, using traceability marketing methods to stimulate consumers' desire for exploration and participation, and also take this opportunity to launch a frank, open and transparent self-introduction -
We have selected 5 representative brands to see how they perform traceability marketing.

1. Nongfu Spring

In recent years, "seeking the source" has been the main theme throughout the communication of Nongfu Spring topics, making Nongfu Spring the originator of brand traceability marketing.

While other brands are still simply listing their product selling points, Nongfu Spring has done a lot of creative tracing of the source of water around its slogan "We don't produce water, we are just nature's porters."

Since 2014, the brand has released several ecological documentaries, including "A Story You Never Known" and "Every Drop of Water Has Its Source", all of which focus on water sources, bringing the stories of water sources, natural environment, factory processing procedures, etc. to the eyes of consumers, allowing the natural scenery and forest creatures to "represent" the brand themselves.

Whales can be seen in the blue sea and deer can be seen in the deep forest. > Nongfu Spring also invited the BBC documentary team of "Planet Earth" to show the forest, which is endowed with thriving vitality by water, from the perspective of animals in the forest.

At this time, Nongfu Spring has gone from value proposition to value perception. Through the creative perspective of these records, it conveys to consumers that good water can nourish life, aiming to bring the quality of this good water to consumers. >

At the same time, the Changbai Mountain Water Source has become a content IP for Nongfu Spring’s origin tracing. Through continuous content output, the documentary about the water source has become a memory point for the brand.

2. Lin Qingxuan

It takes 3 to 5 years for a red camellia tree to grow, and a red camellia tree of about 10 years can only produce a maximum of 7 small bottles of camellia essential oil, which shows how precious it is.
Last year, I was invited to participate in the camellia base tracing of Sister Mulan’s client Lin Qingxuan, and became Lin Qingxuan’s camellia guardian ambassador.
Lin Qingxuan has been focusing on camellia essential oil for 12 years. Every spring when the camellia blooms, it organizes brand members, beauty experts, and media friends to trace the source of the camellia in the mountains to enjoy the flowers and plant trees together, so that everyone can experience the pure growing environment of the alpine red camellia.

In the past, many brands’ traceability journeys were just a show of strength by the brands themselves, but Lin Qingxuan looks at what the brand has done from the perspective of consumers, rather than just one-way indoctrination by the brand. For this reason, Lin Qingxuan made a special move in the traceability event, allowing users to participate in the activity of “planting 50 million camellia trees for the world.”

This activity starts from caring about nature and humanity, allowing more consumers to see the profound meaning behind it in tracing the source. It also participates in environmental protection charity, enhances the sense of significance, and increases stickiness to the Lin Qingxuan brand.

In autumn, when the camellia fruit is ripe, Lin Qingxuan will start the "Camellia Fruit Ripe Autumn Origin Tracing Tour" and organize everyone to pick fruit and press oil together again.

At the same time, Lin Qingxuan also went deep into the most beautiful village, Wuyuan Camellia Planting Base, and brought the short film "Five Generations".

This short film records the story of Lao Chen, a fifth-generation flower keeper, and five generations of his family who have been guarding flowers. Lao Chen's story is also a microcosm of countless generations of flower keepers. They accompany the camellia from blooming to ripening, and send camellia fruits out of the mountains in bags, continuing the "power of protection" from generation to generation of Chinese flower keepers.

Over the past few years, Lin Qingxuan has created an IP for the traceability of camellia. Many media, experts, and customers have generated a lot of beautiful pictures, texts, and videos for self-propagation in this traceability activity. In the long run, it will be very valuable for the growth of brand assets in order to more closely link the image of Lin Qingxuan and red camellia.
Therefore, a good traceability marketing cannot be limited to talking about the product itself, it is a process, a sense of participation, and a sublimation of the brand core>.

3. Half Acre Flower Field

May is the season when Grasse roses bloom, and it is also the season when Half Acre Flower Field embarks on a journey to trace the origins of its rose garden.

Last year, Half Acre Garden teamed up with Douyin's top beauty blogger Zhang Kaiyi to complete a tracing journey that combined scientific research, exploration and co-creation, and conveyed the brand story and brand concept behind it to consumers through the documentary "A Long-Planned Bloom".

At the same time, Banmu Flower Field also experienced private perfume making and new product co-creation with experts and flower field experience officers. Banmu Flower Field recorded their real experience and improvement ideas after use, and applied them to the adjustment of new product development.

In addition, Half Acre Flower Field also uses portraits to record the flower farmers who planted the flowers, capturing their beautiful smiles. From the presentation of individual stories to the recording of the image of the group of flower farmers, the brand's warmth is further demonstrated.

Last year, I was fortunate enough to participate in the tracing of the rose planting base of Half Acre Flower Field. As an eyewitness, the sea of ​​Grasse roses blooming in May really made me see the "poetic" side of Half Acre Flower Field.

The so-called "poeticization" is to polish products with the spirit of "seeking truth", so that products can return to truth (leading user needs), goodness (good experience), and beauty (style and taste), and satisfy consumers' yearning for a better life.

What impressed me most was that the local flower farmers were all villagers from the same village as the founder. I admire their spirit of improving the local quality of life, helping the development of raw material production areas, and rediscovering and spreading local cultural values ​​in one fell swoop!

4. Adopt a Cow

When adopting a cow, we always communicate to users that if the cow is well raised, the milk will be good.

"Raising cows well" is the core competitiveness of adopting a cow, so how can we convey this to consumers?

Different from the shouting-style "recommendation by force", Adopt a Cow has transformed the abstract "raising good cows for users" into a story through traceability activities over the years, allowing the core of corporate culture to run through it, driving user emotions and outputting brand attitudes.

For example, we joined hands with Daddy's Review to conduct an on-site traceability visit to the ranch; for example, we invited CCTV.com to conduct a live visit to the Adopt a Cow factory, witnessing the entire process from dairy cow breeding and farming to milking and raw milk processing, and through the live broadcast camera, we took consumers on a cloud traceability tour.

When I was interviewing Adopt a Cow, Sun Shijun, vice president of Adopt a Cow Group, mentioned to me that Adopt a Cow had been inviting users to visit the ranch very early on. Everyone was drinking milk, but few users had seen cattle being raised.

Just like some restaurants have transparent kitchens and some roast duck restaurants show consumers how to roast and cut ducks, Adopt a Cow also hopes to show users the upstream of the industry and the process of raising cows and producing milk in a more intuitive way.

Users themselves also have this need. For example, many children of parent users come to the ranch to learn about how cows become pregnant and give birth to calves, how to produce milk, and how to harvest grass. This is also a good experience for urban children, which is called extracurricular education.

Moreover, the traceability of the ranch where a cow is adopted is carried out in various forms. For example, users can view the ranch's 24-hour live broadcast through the brand's WeChat official account, which has promoted the "transparency" of China's dairy industry on its own.

"Good cows produce good milk", although this is the brand concept of adopting a cow, it cannot be recognized by users by just shouting slogans. In the end, it still depends on the product itself, letting laymen take a look first to see if it is clean and healthy.

Every live broadcast, every traceability event, and every ranch tour activity is an answer sheet given to users by Adopt a Cow.

5. Yili

Different from other brands, Yili has elevated the traceability to the level of cultural traceability, telling consumers a grand brand story - "Milk Silk Road".

Yili launched the "Global Quality Tracking" event on World Milk Day, using AI technology to revive the protagonist of the Silk Road, "Zhang Qian", and used the voice of "Zhang Qian" to open the story, restoring the route of the "Milk Silk Road". It broke the common brand marketing paradigm with a cultural confidence perspective that penetrates space and time. When tracing the source of the ranch factory, Yili upgraded the ranch factory visit to a "cultural tourism" experience of grassland milk culture.

For example, by collaborating with art expert Yi Gongzi, Yili will conduct an "industrial tour" of visiting smart ranches and the Silicon Valley of the world's dairy industry. Starting from historical poems and literati stories about milk, the tour will allow students to feel the ancients' love for milk and experience the culture of the grassland dairy capital, turning the boring industrial tour into a "cultural tourism" and adding a sense of ritual to the offline tour route. Interactive comments such as "learn more" and "the kids like it very much" frequently appear under the case content.

Yili has given its brand vitality through high-quality cultural traceability content and scenario-based and story-based traceability activities, successfully breaking the bottleneck of traceability marketing, transforming the abstract "global quality" into cultural content that consumers can perceive, and providing multiple solutions to the brand proposition. From the above cases, I have summarized several ideas for traceability marketing:

1. Build content IP. Either don’t do traceability marketing or do it continuously. Only by continuously “seeing is believing” can we continuously build trust.
2. Make good use of the soul figures. Tracing back to the origin is about the place of production and the materials; it is the people who give the place of production and materials warmth and soul, and we should pay more attention to the importance of "people".
3. Improve user participation. Tracing activities are a good opportunity to build trust with consumers. It is necessary to encourage users to participate in the activities and see what the brand has done from the perspective of consumers, rather than just one-way indoctrination by the brand.
4. Cultural origin tracing should be concrete and storytelling. The brand's concept expression and product story should be naturally integrated into it, and new ideas for tracing should be opened up with the advantage of content power.

Author: Sister Mulan talks about brands

Source public account: Sister Mulan (ID: 958702)