Scenarios create new growth for brands

The author compiled eight previous articles on scenario brands, analyzed the case of the scenario brand 5s growth model, and used a long article of ten thousand words to explain in detail how scenarios achieve brand success.

This is the 8th article of "Scenario Brand", and the 5S growth model of scenario brand can also be used to end the first chapter. For this reason, I sorted out the previous scattered articles and wrote a long article of 10,000 words to tell a core theme: Scenario makes brand.

Contents of this article:

1. Why do we need to look at business growth from a scenario perspective?
2. What is the difference between scene brand/crowd brand/scenario brand?
3. Why do we emphasize the layout of scene brands at this time?
4. Case study of scene brand 0-1: How did Haowangshui avoid the competition of giants and enter the catering industry?
5. From Good Hope Water to Hubang Hot Sauce: 5S growth model of scenario brand.
6. Scenes make brands, but scenes also restrict brands.

1. Why should we look at business growth from the perspective of scenarios?

Let me illustrate the problem with a case study.

In order to increase milkshake sales, McDonald's conducted a large number of user surveys and made many improvements to its milkshake products based on feedback.

But the end result was that the milkshakes became better and better, but sales did not increase.

During the research process, there was a man named Gerald Berstell. Unlike McDonald's general user surveys, his focus was more on user behavior.

For example, he found:

① Nearly half of the milkshakes are sold in the morning; ② Buyers are usually alone; ③ They rarely buy any other food except milkshakes; and they never drink milkshakes in the store.

The Jobs to be Done (JTBD) theory has a core idea:

The fundamental motivation for users to hire your product or service is not for the product itself, but to complete a specific task or solve a specific problem.

Just like what the user needs is not a hammer, but a hole in the wall.

So, what specific task do users hire McDonald's Milkshake to accomplish?

Bostel published a related article in Harvard Business Review in 2007, "Finding the Right Job for Your Product."

The article mentioned that most of these users bought milkshakes for similar reasons:

They face long and boring commutes and need something to keep the extra hand busy and make the commute more interesting.

They are not hungry yet, but know they will be hungry at 10 a.m., so they want to eat something now to postpone their hunger until noon.

They face constraints: they are pressed for time, wear work clothes and have free movement of at most one hand.

In this particular scenario, it seems that only milkshake is more suitable.

Although bagels are the most popular local food, they are relatively dry, and when added with cream cheese or jam, they will get your fingers and steering wheel covered with stuff.

Bananas are nice, but there's no way they'll last long enough to solve a boring commute.

By contrast, sipping a thick smoothie through a thin straw takes 20 minutes, keeping your hands clean and your stomach satisfied until lunch.

In fact, milkshakes are not a particularly healthy food, nor are they suitable for breakfast like ham and eggs. But it doesn't matter because that's not its job.

You will find that users’ general demands for products, such as tastier, healthier, etc., are almost ignored in such scenarios.

So, Bostel and his colleagues asked, how could they better solve the boring commute?

Make the smoothie thicker, make it slurpable for longer, and add small pieces of fruit – this is not to make it healthier, because users don’t buy smoothies to make them healthy.

But adding fruit can make the commute more interesting – drivers occasionally pop fruit chunks into their mouths, adding unpredictability and anticipation to their monotonous morning routine.

Just as important, they could move the vending machine to the counter and sell customers a prepaid card so they could rush in, fill up, and leave without being stuck in the drive-thru lane.

You see, different products correspond to different user needs in different scenarios. It is obviously inefficient or even useless for us to blindly grasp the changing needs of users.

To do this, we need to re-understand the scene. I also proposed "scene brand" in 2022 (of course, I later found out that I was not the first person to propose this concept...)

2. What are the differences between category brands, crowd brands and scenario brands?

1. Category Brand

Category first is the product of positioning theory.

"In order to occupy a category in the minds of consumers with limited capacity, the best way for a brand to differentiate is to become the first, to be a category leader or pioneer, to be far ahead in sales, and then to differentiate the category, to be the only one in the sub-category, that is, to be the first in the sub-category."

This is the most basic thinking logic.

For example, if a person is hungry, he will choose from multiple categories such as hot pot, Chinese food, Western food, fast food and even instant noodles. If he chooses hot pot, he will hesitate whether to eat Haidilao or Banu.

What if there is already a No. 1 in the current category? Then create a category that can become No. 1.

When it comes to edible eggs, people think of Huang Tiane, and when it comes to protein bars, people think of ffit8. These categories were almost invisible in the original Chinese consumer market.

The best way to create new categories is to add adjectives to traditional categories.

Just like many people don't know who Amelia Earhart was, who was the third person to fly across the Atlantic alone? But when it comes to the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, quite a few people suddenly realize it.

The problem is that many new consumer forces have played this game too well. They add two or three more adjectives before the category words and mark the relevant data with *.

In other words, being the number one in a sufficiently segmented category may not be enough to support the development of the entire company. Then, the extension of the category quadrant becomes a problem.

There are many ways to extend the category quadrant.

Dyson started with vacuum cleaners and then expanded to hair dryers and electric fans. But why didn’t Dyson make rice cookers and wall breakers? Because the center of Dyson’s product quadrant extension is his core technology - high-speed digital motors.

Dyson will make any product that can use high-speed digital motors.

Dali Foods, a hidden champion in Fujian, launched its first product, the "Meili" biscuits, but later expanded its product categories to include puffed foods, cakes, beverages, health foods, and more.

The center of the circle of Dali's food category quadrant extension is actually the channel. In theory, he can expand whatever his more than 2 million distribution outlets can sell.

As for more new consumer forces, they do not have strong offline channels, and their main battlefield is online. Then, their core asset is user data, that is, the crowd.

2. Crowd Branding

As the category quadrant of this group of brands extends, they will gradually transition into crowd brands.

Judging from the actual operation of a consumer brand from 0 to 1, there is no strict definition between category brands and population brands. In fact, they are all innovating or differentiating on the coordinate axis of "strategic population + single category".

By just doing business around the group of people, the brand will have a focus - products and marketing will focus on the most valuable people, making it easier to make good products and content.

Meituan Dianping was actually the first to set an example by creating products based on the needs of a group of people.

Group buying, take-out, hotel and travel, power banks, taxis... Wang Xing said that one of the logics behind Meituan's taxi business is based on user demand. Users need to travel to go to restaurants and need to take a taxi.

But there will be a problem with the people-centered quadrant extension: blind extension - people have too many needs, do you want to do them all?

Just like Amazon once made mobile phones, they also made search and Prime. Caijing also asked Wang Xing, users may also need to look at Taobao, why don’t you do Taobao?

For an Internet giant like Meituan, it is not impossible, otherwise there would be no Meituan e-commerce now.

But Wang Xing believes that the extension of business quadrants is actually based on capabilities, just like the capabilities of online car-hailing and food delivery are very similar - they are more offline-oriented, with locations in various cities, using the Internet to improve experience and reduce costs.

Like Dyson, we use the same core capabilities to do different things.

From another perspective, when you find that your user base has too many demands, it may be that the granularity of your user profile is not detailed enough.

If you are not a brand with a strong network effect, then refine your brand population.

The maternal and infant brand Babycare targets new mothers as its target audience and provides complete childcare solutions for this group of people.

Focusing on this group of people, Babycare has become the "South Pole of the maternal and infant industry", with more than 30,000 SKUs. But you will find that new mothers also need to use Taobao and take taxis, but Babycare does not do so because they are not just the needs of new mothers.

Crowd brands were once favored by capital.

Wei Zhe of Jiayu Fund mentioned that whoever wins the market will win the world if they win the market of 25-year-old women. When discussing Pop Mart, he said that 25-year-old women like fun and easy-to-use products, which are specifically reflected in the fact that they can be shared and can be photographed and posted on WeChat Moments.

Therefore, it is very suitable for trendy toys to be a crowd brand. The proportion of female users of trendy toys is very high, and even for e-cigarettes, the proportion of female users is nearly 40%.

The greatest power of 25-year-old women is that they can help brands achieve crowd overflow.

Because young girls want to feel more mature, they will look up to see what 25-year-old women are consuming; women aged 35+ may want to make themselves look younger, so they will also look down to see what 25-year-old women are consuming.

In addition, women aged 25 may get married soon, and they will influence the consumption of their male partners, even future children, and dominate the consumption of the entire family.

Many people say that women will also age at 25, so what should we do? But there are also many 24-year-old women who become 25.

When we talk about women getting old at 25, we are actually talking about the life cycle of a user. In response to this, capital will also design a crowd brand matrix based on the life cycle as the business logic.

Fosun Group has previously built a consumption matrix:

When a family is formed, there are rings, gold, etc., and representative brands include Lao Miao Gold; when pregnant, there are pregnancy care and infant products, and representative brands include BabyTree Pregnancy; in the parent-child stage, there are baby supplies and early education courses, and representative brands include Qinbaobao; in the thirty-year-old age, there are also workplace dressing, family travel and other services, and representative brands include Thomas Cook; when you are in your twenties, there are nursing care services, regular health checks, etc., and representative brands include Fosun Star Castle.

3. Scene brand

But we also see that many brands do not conduct marketing in the "category-population" dimension, but directly jump to the scene level.

For example, there is a brand similar to chicken soup pot in Chongqing, and its slogan is "If you don’t want to eat hot pot, eat Liziba Liangshan Chicken."

For users, if they don’t want to eat hot pot, they have many other options, such as dry pot, grilled fish, and small noodles.

The marketing of Liziba Liangshan Chicken focuses on one scenario - the scenario where people are discussing what to eat when they don't want to eat the hot pot category that is the locals' first choice.

At this time, Liziba Liangshan Chicken became the first brand that came to mind. Later, in Chengdu, the spread of "If you don't eat hot pot, eat grilled fish" also promoted the rise of a grilled fish brand.

Marketing competition begins to focus on scenarios.

Of course, this is not a new thing. Classic advertising campaigns such as "Only Melatonin for gifts", "Drink Red Bull when you are tired and sleepy", and "Chew Extra after eating and drinking" have all transcended categories and entered the scene.

But they have one thing in common, that is, they are within the scene. The construction of scene brand actually has two advantages:

First of all, by expanding the scene, it can raise the growth ceiling of the brand.

Melatonin is used as a gift. Although there are other health brands, tea, tobacco, alcohol and other categories in the gift market, Melatonin has become the number one brand in the gift-giving scene. This is also the reason why it achieved sales of 1.2 billion in just two years after its establishment (2000).

You know, the health care product market, which was dominated by Sun God, Sanzhu Oral Liquid, Red Heart K, and Anli, was already a red ocean. Melatonin reconstructed the product scene and directly found a blue ocean market for itself.

Similarly, domestic tea brands have never been able to grow big, but Xiaoguan Tea has directly entered the gift-giving scene and set a benchmark. When you buy Xiaoguan Tea as a gift, are you giving tea? What you are giving is the thought of the person with a clear price tag.

In the past, if you gave a cake of Laobanzhang to a customer and told him it was worth 20,000 yuan, he might think you bought it on Pinduoduo for 9.9 yuan.

Secondly, by focusing on scenarios, it can form a staggered competition with category giants.

The coffee drinking scene, led by Starbucks, is almost always the third space. In the years since then, COSTA's black leather double sofas, Mancafe's old-fashioned and similar handmade chairs have all competed with it in the third space.

Unfortunately, Starbucks has already occupied the third space’s mental positioning. The homogeneous following of latecomers such as COSTA is, after all, just to make themselves familiar and help Starbucks accelerate the education of market consumption habits.

How to compete with such coffee giants? Focus on other scenarios.

For example, Luckin Coffee, a coffee brand that started out as a takeout company, does not provide a third space solution like Starbucks, but more of a commuter coffee solution.

In order to quickly seize the brand share in this scenario mindset, Luckin Coffee immediately switched from direct operation to franchising after the financial fraud incident was exposed, using 5,000+ stores to occupy office buildings and using scale to declare its scenario competitiveness.

In addition, there are large-scale scene implantations, such as in the hit TV series "Please Call Me Director", in which managers and directors of capital companies drink Luckin Coffee during their commute.

In this scenario, what kind of products do users need?

The first should be the requirement for fast commuting.

Therefore, Luckin Coffee has set a rule for its stores: "Complete an order within two minutes", whether the order is for one cup or more than ten cups.

This is not necessary in Starbucks. People come here to enjoy a slow life.

The second one should taste better.

In Starbucks, people’s demand for the third space is far greater than coffee itself. But the real demand for commuter coffee is to drink a real cup of coffee, otherwise it would be faster to buy a bottle of Nongfu Spring.

At this time, it is necessary to set off the professional blending of Luckin's WBC World Barista Champion team, the preferred Ethiopian sun-dried Sidamo beans, and the premium Arabica seasonal green beans.

If Luckin's mind capture is a high-profile approach and not suitable for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, then you should learn the scene design of Jiang Xiaobai's expression bottle.

There are at least five sub-scenarios for the liquor industry: business reception, banquets, family banquets, leisure drinking, gifts, etc.

Traditional brands such as Moutai and Wuliangye mainly occupy the business, banquet and even gift markets, but Jiang Xiaobai chose the smallest leisure drinking market.

In the early days of their business, their main focus was “small gatherings, small drinks, small moments, and small moods”, and they focused on the scene of a few good friends eating barbecue at a small square table at a roadside stall.

Whether or not they are young people is not important. So when people say that Jiang Xiaobai is a young wine brand, it is actually not appropriate.

In such a scenario, what are the user needs?

Do they need a status symbol and the taste of aged wine like Moutai? Obviously not. What they may need is a carrier to express emotions or an entry point to create topics.

The sentimental copy on the bottle is actually the key to Jiang Xiaobai's seizing this scene. By constantly providing corresponding scene guidance on Weibo, Douyin and now Xiaohongshu, Jiang Xiaobai has almost become the only choice for users in this scene.

When I was having a barbecue with friends on the roadside, the first thing he asked was "Do you want Jiang Xiaobai or beer?" instead of "Do you want Baijiu or beer?"

This means that, at least in the minds of some people, if they want to drink liquor in this scenario, they should choose Jiang Xiaobai. The segmentation of scenarios has allowed this brand to grow in the stagnant liquor industry.

3. Why is it time to lay out scene brands?

First of all, most brands around the "category-population" axis follow the search logic that uses category keywords as the entry point.

In the past 10 years, e-commerce has basically become the growth point of all businesses. Traditional e-commerce is based on the search logic of people looking for goods. For example, if I want to buy a mop, I will search for the category keyword "mop" on the e-commerce platform and then choose the corresponding brand.

At this time, once a brand is regarded as the first in the category in the minds of users, it can become a synonym for the category, such as mop expert David.

When a large number of people buy mops, they fill in the keyword "David" in the search box. As a result, other mop brands have no chance to meet users.

There are many such cases, like Weilong for spicy strips, Zulijian for elderly shoes, Meiji Landou for cheese sticks... Based on the logic of "search" of the category keyword, it is still the way for most brands to grow.

In 2023, I visited a pillow brand called AshlerChina in Qingdao. Its previous pillow products were mostly in the ins style.

But by chance, the team saw a piece of data through Tmall Business Advisor. The search volume for "national tide" on the platform's e-commerce was growing rapidly, but there were almost no related products in the pillow category.

AshlerChina soon launched a pillow with a traditional lion pattern. On the 10th day after the product was launched, the e-commerce store suddenly saw a surge in orders, with sales of a single item increasing 4-5 times per day.

However, such search logic is subject to two constraints:

The first constraint is that users need solutions to their problems rather than specific products.

Let’s go back to the Jobs to be Done theory we talked about earlier: the fundamental motivation for users to hire your product or service is not for the product itself, but to complete a specific task or solve a specific problem.

For example, when my desk is messy, I will search for "file rack" on the e-commerce platform because I know such a category.

But one time when we went camping, I wanted a water bottle that could hold a lot of water, but I didn’t know there was a new category called “ton barrels”. So the search box received some commands such as “outdoor travel water bottle”, “super large capacity water bottle”…

The products brought up by these keywords include small foldable cups and large ugly but rather solid kettles, and there is no desire to place an order at all on the page.

I first learned about ton-ton buckets on Douyin. In the short video, several people were camping on a lawn, and a ton-ton bucket was placed on a folding table. The appropriate interest scenes and accurate product recommendations directly stimulated users to place orders.

This is also the second constraint on search logic, and the trend of "goods finding people + scene consumption" is coming.

Pinduoduo’s logic is “goods find people”.

In 2018, Huang Zheng mentioned, "Pinduoduo is based on human logic. We understand people through group buying and recommend products through people. Later, we will transition to machine recommendations. There is almost no search in the Pinduoduo App, and there is no shopping cart. You can imagine that replacing the information flow under Toutiao with the product flow is the future of Pinduoduo."

With big data, the platform knows you better than you know yourself.

Later, the rise of a series of social media such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu added interest to the logic of "goods finding people". Social content builds an interest-based scenario for you, and the goods are quietly buried in it.

The dissemination of content on social media must first be based on the scenario.

Many people may refute this view. After all, over the years, whether it is traditional media or social media, when we are doing content dissemination, the first thing we determine is the target audience.

Douyin, Xiaohongshu and other platforms have even proposed a matrix strategy of "people + goods + venue". How should we create content for the opportunity group, and how should we create content for the A3 interest group...

There is nothing wrong with making content innovation based on users.

But I still want to emphasize that content innovation should be based on specific scenarios rather than groups of people. Creating content based on interest scenarios can first quickly achieve general cognition among the scene population and filter out the precise group of people who are really interested in you.

First, you need to have a scenario, then create in-depth and valuable content. It must either have information gaps, or have a complete logic to explain its own novel ideas, or propose a methodology.

Finally, we need to think about how to embed emotional expressions into valuable content to encourage users to place orders.

This is the difference between scenario brands and other brands’ scenario marketing:

The content of scenario brands is centered on scenarios, with brand building as the main focus and conversion promotion as the secondary focus; other brands use scenarios as tools to release emotional content and eye-catching effects, implant selling points, and ultimately guide orders.

But in short, the daily consumption of the new generation of young people is immersed in interest-based e-commerce, and scene brands and brand scene-based marketing have begun to be invested heavily in interest-based e-commerce.

Especially for high-frequency, low-priced goods, if you are still waiting for users to actively search and buy, you have probably been intercepted by your competitors long ago.

It’s not just online e-commerce. In fact, consumers are in specific scenarios all the time. So, when users have needs, how can brands remind them of themselves? It’s best to become the first brand in the scenario where the needs arise in advance.

This is not just for brands that are all in on interest e-commerce, but for all.

Just like when we go to the beach to play beach volleyball in the summer and sweat profusely and want to drink something, who will you think of? Will you still choose one from mineral water, juice, soda water, sparkling water, cola, etc.?

Most people’s answer would probably be Coca-Cola.

In previous advertisements, Coca-Cola has shown such scenes many times and left a cognitive anchor for a generation. Yes, Coca-Cola has been doing brand penetration based on scenes.

Liu Bin, founder of the BOP brand, once introduced a case in which a research institute compared the mind share of Coca-Cola and another local brand, Cola-Turka, in eight segmented scenarios in the Turkish soft drink market.

The result was that 67% of people could actively associate Coca-Cola with more than 3 scenarios, while only 15% could actively associate Cola-Turka with it.

You can explain that Coca-Cola is the first in the category, but it is not necessary. On the contrary, it makes more sense to say that it is the first in the scene.

4. Scenario Brand 0-1 Case Study: Haowangshui

The scene brand Haowangshui first entered the barbecue and hot pot scene, and then overflowed to camping, parties, wedding banquets, team building and other scenes.

How does Haowangshui achieve 0-1 using the logic of scene branding?

When entering any industry, you must study the existing landscape of the industry.

Data from the China Research Institute of Industry shows that in the sub-sectors of China's beverage industry, carbonated beverages ranked first, accounting for 40%, and fruit juice ranked second, accounting for 22%. In addition, the development of low-sugar and sugar-free sub-sectors is positive, and the market size is expected to exceed 30 billion yuan in 2023.

Among them, the two giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi stand in front of all emerging brands. The new breakthrough brand Yuanqi Forest, with its 0 sugar and 0 calories, has set off a wave of health and catered to the punk health needs of the younger generation.

Fortunately, whether it is Coca-Cola, Pepsi or Yuanqi Forest, the mainstream consumption scenarios of these similar carbonated drinks are in supermarkets/shelves. What new entrants need is to find a niche scenario where they can compete in a different way.

Looking back from the present, the first niche scenario that Haowangshui found was actually catering.

Haowangshui has natural advantages in the catering scene.

First of all, there are not many competitors. In 2015, Sun Mengge, a model, started a catering business selling barbecued skewers. She found that the common drinks in this scene were Coke, Wanglaoji, Beibingyang or some local sea buckthorn juice.

Sun once said that he could not find a beverage that satisfied him in terms of content, appearance, value, taste, etc.

Secondly, the entry threshold is low. Most of the catering channels are small stores. The reason why Dayao Soda has an annual revenue of 3 billion yuan is that it mainly relies on entering single catering stores. They do not need admission fees, barcode fees, display fees, or promotion fees. All they need is for the salesperson to run around more.

There is no barrier for Haowangshui to enter this channel. The first product of this brand, Wangshanzha, was developed by the team because Sun Mengge couldn't find a good drink.

At that time, the cost of a bottle of Wangshanzha reached 11 yuan. According to the 3x pricing rate of the beverage industry, this beverage should be sold for 33 yuan. But at that time, Sun Mengge only priced it at 18 yuan - even so, it was several times more expensive than Wanglaoji and Beibingyang.

Finally, there is room for growth. The growth of the catering channel is actually visible. According to data before the epidemic, there were 3.39 million catering stores in China in 2014, 6.02 million in 2016, and 9.06 million in 2019.

In the early days, the mass production of Wangshan Hawthorn came from orders from some catering businesses. It is said that the payment was made before the goods were delivered, and the first payment was less than 200,000 yuan. This snowballed, and by 2019, Wangshan Hawthorn had sold nearly 10 million yuan.

Product service scenarios are the key to a brand’s penetration into the scenarios.

For example, Hubang hot sauce was sold as a takeaway product, which was packaged in 15g bottles that could be eaten in one sitting, similar to the ketchup bags used in Western fast food. At the time, most hot sauces on the market were sold in half-pound glass bottles like Lao Gan Ma.

Back to the dining scene, the taste of the bubbling sour drink is actually very extreme. But during the meal, it is difficult to satisfy the pleasure and take into account health. After all, the taste of herbal tea and juice is far inferior to that of cola.

At this time, as an inflated herbal drink, Good Hope Water just meets this need.

When Wang Shanzha was being developed, the team was also making a craft beer called "Lang Beer". Therefore, Wang Shanzha adopted the fermentation process of craft beer, not only extracting the hawthorn flavor, herbal flavor and fruit juice flavor in sections, but also adding aeration.

Sun Mengge recalled that Wangshanzha was initially recognized as a successful research and development because it was inflated by chance and had a sandy taste, and "it was very pleasant after drinking it."

Because of its taste that is so suitable for dining, Wangshanzha later became the store’s number one recommended dish on Dianping.com.

After 2020, Haowangshui has carried out a lot of product optimization on the social aspect of catering scenarios.

For example, the packaging of the beverages was originally a very common transparent glass bottle. At that time, a third-party mold factory was found and spent 20,000 yuan to make a special-shaped bottle. For another example, in terms of packaging design, Sun Mengge specially commissioned a friend to design a VI visual of "Chinese style painting + ink painting".

After several VI iterations and the release of products with homophonic names such as Peach Blossom and Hope Apricot Blessing, Hope Water has become a topic of discussion at the dinner table and a check-in picture shared on WeChat Moments.

This is similar to Jiang Xiaobai's sentimental copywriting back then.

A scenario brand is one that makes users think of you first in a specific scenario.

In the beginning, Wang Shanzha focused on being healthy, appetizing and relieving greasiness as a side dish, but now it is more focused on the single point of "resolving spiciness".

Not long ago, Haowangshui invited artist Gong Linna to co-create the song "Gong Lin Spicy", which was not only released on the QQ music platform, but also played on offline media. For a time, "Drink Wangshanzha when eating spicy food" began to resound throughout the region.

The most popular one was that Haowangshui launched the #吃辣就喝王山楂# joint photo challenge on Douyin. Among them, handsome bloggers, who accounted for less than 15% of the posts, showed a muscular man holding a Wangshan hawthorn, which once helped push the topic to more than 550 million views.

In addition, people later questioned whether Haowangshui was "male sex marketing" online, and Wangzha was quickly strongly associated with the spicy relief scene.

Overall, the dissemination of Good Hope Water is more concentrated in online channels.

At the beginning of 2020, it landed on Douyin live broadcast for the first time and achieved sales of 160,000 yuan at a cost of less than 3,000 yuan. After that, the brand began to focus on Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Bilibili, co-creating with KOLs and even letting employees make guest appearances.

Among them, B station UP host @导师小策 has cooperated with Haowangshui to shoot "Late Night Hot Pot" and "The End of Wujian Square", and Wangshan hawthorn appeared in the hot pot scenes in the drama. Data shows that the playback volume of "The End of Wujian Square" has exceeded 2.7 million, and it has received 259,000 likes and 51,000 collections; and the overall playback volume of the drama has exceeded 30 million.

Haowangshui CMO Xia Mingsheng once mentioned that the brand's dissemination on various platforms generally examines CPM (Cost Per Mille), among which Douyin controls are below 10, Xiaohongshu controls are below 100, and Bilibili controls are below 150.

Wei Zhe of Jiayu Fund once mentioned "brand spillover" and "crowd spillover". He said that if you penetrate 25-year-old women, your brand will naturally spill over to other groups.

Specifically, girls aged seventeen or eighteen want to be mature and will look up to their older sisters' consumption; women in their thirties and forties want to stay young forever and will look down on the consumption of younger women; and women at the age of 25 start to start a family and will overflow with their boyfriends or husbands, and when they have children they will also influence the next generation.

Scene overflow is similar to this. When you form a brand effect in a certain scene, your users will also bring you to other scenes.

For example, after Good Hope Water first penetrated into hot pot, barbecue and other dining scenarios, people also brought it to other scenarios, such as camping and gatherings. In order to make the product suitable for these scenarios, Good Hope Water began to expand its product line, such as launching Wang Taohua, which is suitable for leisure scenarios such as afternoon tea; Wang Meihao and Wang Xingfu, which serve wedding banquets, reunions and other scenarios.

Especially in the extension of other scenarios, Good Hope Water's actions on the market are particularly sharp. Some media reported that the brand gave dealers and store terminals a large margin of profit, and even assisted dealers in tasting and terminal sales rewards. It is said that dealers can earn 30% for a bottle of Good Hope Water, and in catering businesses, selling a bottle of Good Hope Water is equivalent to selling 2 bottles of other beverages.

With strong channel support, Haowangshui currently has more than 30,000 terminals and has entered more than 10,000 catering channels such as Yuniudao, Dalongyan, Nan Hotpot, and Liangliang Steamed Shrimp, as well as more than 25,000 offline retail stores such as RT-Mart, Hema, Convenience Bee, and 7-11.

5. 5S Growth Model of the Scene Brand from Haowangshui to Hubang Hot Sauce

By reviewing the growth history of these brands, we can roughly summarize a 5S growth model for scenario brands.

• Situation: Research the industry competition situation
• Scene: Analyze the target scene
• Seller: Product service scenario
• Spread: Spread through the scene
• Spillover: Scene overflow

Put these 5 S's into the case of Good Hope Water,

Situation: Study the competition situation in the industry - Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Yuanqi Forest are competing for the shelf.

Scene: Analyze the target scene - Haowangshui thinks about the catering scene.

There are several points for the analysis of the target scenario:

First, the target scenario has a large growth space. Second, there are few competing products in the target scenario. Third, the entry threshold of the target scenario is low. Finally, the target scenario can bring incremental users rather than competing for the original users of the giants.

Seller: Product service scenario - Sandy taste

Spread: Spread through the scene - the song "Gong Lin Spicy" and the Douyin topic #吃辣就喝望山楂#

Spillover: Scene overflow - Wangmeihao and Wangxingfu began to focus on scenes such as wedding banquets

This is not a special case for Haowangshui. The 0-1 of another scenario brand, Hubang Hot Sauce, can also be explained by the 5S model.

According to data, Hubang Hot Sauce was founded in 2015 and achieved an annual revenue of 200 million in just 4 years. It has also established a network of over 100,000 terminals, making it the fastest growing hot sauce brand.

During this period, Hubang Hot Sauce entered Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room in 2019 and sold 1.6 million cans in 2 minutes, setting a new sales record in the fast-moving consumer goods industry.

So, how did Hubang hot sauce grow under the market blockade of Lao Gan Ma? Many people answered "takeout".

In 2015, when Meituan Waimai, Baidu Waimai, and Ele.me were fighting fiercely, Hubang Hot Sauce quietly penetrated into the takeaway scene. To date, the most common scene where people see Hubang Hot Sauce is still takeaway. It has developed more than 100,000 catering terminals through the takeaway scene, with an average annual growth rate of 200%.

The cultural review media "Highway Store" once mentioned that "the takeaway of the poor has been kidnapped by Hubang hot sauce... No matter whether the takeaway I ordered at noon is braised chicken, pickled fish or scrambled eggs, this lunch will lead to the same destination - Hubang hot sauce bibimbap."

How does Hubang Hot Sauce use the scenario brand 5S growth model to penetrate the takeaway scenario?

1. Situation: Study the industry competition situation

When entering any industry, you must study the current competitive situation in the industry.

The most obvious pattern in the hot sauce industry is one super company and many weak ones. Lao Gan Ma has built an insurmountable moat by solidifying its price range and monopolizing supermarkets.

In view of these two characteristics, the entry point for new entrants into the industry is very obvious.

The first entry point is to extend the price range, either cheaper than Lao Gan Ma or more expensive. The second entry point is to change the scene. When people go shopping in supermarkets to buy hot sauce, they will think of Lao Gan Ma. What about other scenes?

2. Scene: Analyze the target scene

As a new brand, Hubang Hot Sauce has tried many scenarios and even opened 20,000 offline terminals in half a year, but without exception, all have had little effect.

At this time, an employee of Hubang Jinan Office tried to sell the hot sauce in take-out restaurants. Unexpectedly, the product was sold out in a few days.

After summarizing, Hubang has at least four characteristics in terms of food delivery:

First of all, there is a lot of room for growth in the target scenarios.

According to Zhiyan Consulting, the market size of China's online food delivery industry was 125.03 billion yuan in 2015, and exceeded 660 billion yuan in 2020. Big fishes grow in big waters, and the rapid growth of the food delivery market has made Hubang Hot Sauce grow from 0 to 1.

Secondly, there were few competitors in the target scenario. As an emerging industry, takeout was considered a "pseudo-demand" by many experts and scholars at the time, and the only hot sauce brand that really entered the market was Hubang Hot Sauce.

Another reason is that the target scenario has a low entry threshold. Adding hot sauce to takeout meals to enhance the flavor is a real demand from users, which can push merchants to accept the entry of Hubang Hot Sauce.

Finally, the target scenario can bring incremental users rather than compete for the original users of the giant. Most of the people who consume in the takeaway industry are young people who are willing to try new products and have low price sensitivity. This overlaps with the users covered by Lao Ganma in the traditional supermarket scenario, but has a big difference.

It is also true that Hubang Hot Sauce can quickly reach cooperation with the TOP 200 takeaway chain brands. In just 2 years, this brand has become the "No. 1 hot sauce for Internet celebrities".

3. Seller: Product Service Scenario

When you really enter the target scenario, what the brand needs to do is to create a product that suits this scenario.

For example, Lao Ganma usually packs half a pound of products, and the packaging material is a glass bottle. This is obviously not suitable for takeaway scenarios. Hubang hot sauce needs to make the product specifications 15g that can be eaten in a single time, and avoid glass packaging that is easy to break, but uses the tomato sauce packaging method of foreign fast food.

Of course, for young people in takeaway scenarios, Hubang Hot Sauce is more trendy and cooler in packaging design. All of these are serving the scene and the user experience under scene consumption.

4. Spread: Spread through the scene

Scene branding is to let users think of you first in a specific scenario.

In order to understand the takeaway scenario, Hubang Hot Sauce first influenced key takeaway groups, such as students and white-collar workers. Through the joint efforts of Pepsi, Zhilian Recruitment, BOSS Direct Recruitment and other brands, as well as NetEase Game Implantation, they began to familiarize themselves with this group of people.

Later, it cooperated with well-known fast food brands such as Xiangcunji, Xiao Yang Shengjian, and Lao Niangjiu to form a unique brand impression in the takeaway scenario.

Fundamentally speaking, when Hubang hot sauce entered takeaway, there were no other hot sauce in this field. When it arrived at the user's hands with bags of takeaway, it was already ready to penetrate the scene.

First-mover advantage began to become a competitive barrier.

5. Spillover: Scene Overflow

You may have heard of "brand spillover". When you form a brand effect in a certain group, the people around them will follow you to understand your brand.

Scene overflow is similar. When you form a brand effect in one scenario, your users will also bring you to other scenarios.

For example, young people find that Hubang hot sauce is not only for takeout, but can also appear in business trips, eating alone at home, etc. - Through this, the scene has a spillover effect.

In order to adapt to these scenarios, Hubang Hot Sauce only needs to make some small changes in the product to cope with the needs of the scenario. For example, Hubang Hot Sauce has created the first 30g yogurt cup design. This small can is designed with a simpler and more fashionable design, and is closer to the consumption scenario of young people eating alone.

6. Scenarios make brand scenes shackle the brand

By seizing the first place in the scene, Lenovo seems to have found a third way of playing between categories and people.

However, there is an inevitable shackle for scene brands, that is, premiums are difficult to break through people's habitual understanding of scene consumption.

What does it mean? Hubang hot sauce is put into takeaway. The main benefits in this scenario are bibimbap and ordering. This requires that the hot sauce is small enough and the unit price is low enough.

So much so that the maximum price of Hubang hot sauce in the takeaway scenario is only 2-3 yuan. What if he raises the price to 5 yuan? It may be the "hot sauce assassin".

It's like a group of young people gather in front of the freezer of convenience stores in summer to choose ice cream. The inertial cognition in this scenario is something that can be solved by three or five yuan.

But what if you get a Zhong Xue Gao? This is how the "Ice Cream Assassin" that has been on the hot searches many times back then.

As for the lower, Zhong Xuegao, whose unit price once reached 66 yuan, and his founder Lin Sheng were restricted, and received a financial report that the capital chain was about to break as early as March 2023.

The same problem exists for good hope water. People may mainly consume 3 yuan of Coke for beverages in catering scenarios. But if someone takes the Hawthorn when he sees the bottle looks good and has a good meaning, he will be called a "drink assassin" once he pays 12 yuan.

In fact, such discussions have become popular at the moment. On social platforms, in the comments about Good Hope Water, there are usually "price refusal", "drink assassin" and "probably a flash in the pan". Some netizens said that they once bought a small bottle in a convenience store, but they spent 16 yuan, which was ridiculously expensive.

Regarding the issue of the price band, Xia Mingsheng once said, "For consumers entering the store, their consumption capacity is not exactly the same", "different value demands are directed towards different consumer groups", and "every price band will have consumer choices."

Will consumers really pay? This will take time to verify.

In fact, some people drink Niulanshan for more than 10 yuan, some people drink Wuliangye for hundreds of yuan; they also eat ice cream, some people buy Qiaolezi for 3 yuan, and some people eat Menglong for 10 or 20 yuan. How have these brands broken through people's inertial perception of categories and scenarios?

It’s not just the difference between high-end brands and low-end brands, but it is closely related to pricing, channels, marketing content and other aspects... We will break it down next time.

Author: Huang Xiaojun; Source public account: Jingyan Brand Laboratory (ID: 1085865)