Scene brand: I can’t eat without Haowangshui

How did Hope Water break through in the beverage industry through scene branding strategy? This article deeply analyzes how Hope Water achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 1 by leveraging the advantages of catering scenes, product innovation and social marketing, providing valuable practical experience for brand marketing and entrepreneurs.

The scene brand Haowangshui first entered the barbecue hotpot scene, and then overflowed to scenes such as camping, parties, wedding banquets, and team building. Today, let’s talk about how Haowangshui uses the logic of scene brands to achieve 0-1.

1. When entering any industry, you must study the current industry landscape

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, Yuanqi Forest, has set off a wave of health with 0 sugar and 0 calories, catering to the punk health needs of the younger generation. But fortunately, whether it is Coca-Cola, Pepsi or Yuanqi Forest, the mainstream consumption scenes of these similar sparkling drinks are in supermarkets/shelves.

What new entrants need is to find a niche scene where they can compete in a different way. Looking back from now, the first niche scene that Haowangshui found was actually the catering industry.

2. Haowangshui has its 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 skewers. She found that the common drinks in this scene were Coke, Wanglaoji, Beibingyang or some local sea buckthorn juice. Sun once said that she could not find a drink that satisfied her 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 earns 3 billion yuan a year is mainly due to its entry into single catering stores. They do not need admission fees, barcode fees, display fees, or promotion fees. As long as the salesperson runs more, it will be fine.

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 drink should be sold for 33 yuan. But at that time, Sun Mengge only priced it at 18 yuan - despite this, 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 earliest days, the mass production of Wangshanzha came from orders from some catering merchants. 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, Wangshanzha had sold nearly 10 million yuan.

3. Product service scenarios are the key to brand penetration

For example, Hubang hot sauce occupies the takeaway scene, that is, it uses a 15g package that can be eaten in a single serving, and the packaging method is similar to the ketchup bags of fast food. At that time, the hot sauce on the market was generally in half-pound glass bottles like Lao Gan Ma. Returning 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 aerated herbal drink, Good Hope Water just meets this requirement.

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 Wang Shanzha was initially recognized as a successful research and development because it was accidentally aerated, resulting in a sandy taste, "very pleasant after drinking it".

Because of its taste that is so suitable for dining, Wangshanzha later became the number one recommended dish for the store on Dianping.com. After 2020, Hope Water has carried out a lot of product optimization on the social level of the dining scene. For example, the packaging of the beverage was very common transparent glass bottles at the beginning. That year, a third-party mold factory was found and spent 20,000 yuan to make a special-shaped bottle. For example, in terms of packaging design, Sun Mengge specially commissioned a friend to design a VI vision of "Chinese style painting + ink brushwork". After many VI iterations, and the release of products with homophonic names such as Hope Peach Blossom and Hope Apricot Blessing, Hope Water has become a topic of discussion at the dining table and a check-in picture shared on WeChat Moments.

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

4. Scenario branding means that users should think of you first in a specific scenario.

At the beginning, Wangshanzha focused on health, appetizing and relieving greasiness in dining scenes, but now it focuses more on the single point of "relieving spiciness". Not long ago, Haowangshui invited artist Gong Linna to co-create the song "Gong Lin Spicy", which was not only launched on the QQ music platform, but also played in offline media. For a time, "Drink Wangshanzha when eating spicy food" began to resound throughout the region. The most popular thing is that Haowangshui launched a challenge to drink Wangshanzha when eating spicy food on Douyin. Among them, handsome bloggers, who accounted for less than 15% of the advertising, showed a picture of a muscular man holding Wangshanzha in his hand, which once helped to push the topic to more than 550 million views. In addition, after the Internet questioned that Haowangshui was skirting the "male color marketing", Wangshanzha and the scene of relieving spiciness were quickly strongly bound.

Overall, the spread of Good Hope Water is more concentrated in online channels. In early 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, Bilibili UP host @Director Xiaoce cooperated with Good Hope Water to shoot "Late Night Hot Pot" and "The Finale of Wujian Square", etc., and the hawthorn tree appeared in the hot pot scenes in the play. Data shows that the playback volume of "The Finale 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 play 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.

5. “Brand spillover” and “crowd spillover”

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 17 or 18 want to be mature and look up to their older sisters' consumption; women in their 30s and 40s want to stay young forever and look down on young women's consumption; and women aged 25 start to start a family, so they will spill over to 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 scenes, people also brought it to other scenes, such as camping and parties. In order to make the product suitable for these scenes, Good Hope Water began to expand its product line, such as launching Wang Taohua, which is suitable for leisure scenes such as afternoon tea; Wang Meihao and Wang Xingfu, which serve scenes such as wedding banquets and reunions.

Especially in the extension of other scenarios, Good Hope Water's actions on the market are particularly sharp. Some media reported that the brand has a large profit margin for distributors and store terminals, and even assisted distributors in tasting and terminal sales rewards. It is said that distributors can earn 30% for a bottle of Good Hope Water, while in catering businesses, selling a bottle of Good Hope Water is equivalent to selling 2 bottles of other beverages. With strong channel support, Good Hope Water currently has more than 30,000 terminals, and has entered more than 10,000 catering channels such as Yu Niu Dao, Da Long Yan, Nan Hot Pot, and Liang Liang Steamed Shrimp, as well as more than 25,000 offline retail stores such as RT-Mart, Hema, Convenience Bee, and 7-11.

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