How will Harbin Beer respond to the “huge wealth” created by the city’s tourism boom?

Harbin has become very popular this winter, and the tourism industry has seen a significant increase in turnover compared to previous years. How can the local Harbin Beer catch up to the booming tourism industry?

The winter in Harbin has never been as warm as this year.

The rising smell of fireworks is intertwined with the enthusiasm of tourists. In the ice and snow, the word "warmth" is reflected in the warmth and coldness of human nature. It is an abstract temperature, but a real physical feeling.

According to the Harbin Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, Harbin received a total of 3.0479 million tourists during the New Year's Day this year, a year-on-year increase of 441.4%; the total tourism revenue reached 5.914 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 791.92%. Ctrip's "2024 Spring Festival Tourism Market Forecast Report" also shows that Harbin's tourism popularity will continue from New Year's Day to the Spring Festival holiday. During the Spring Festival, Harbin's tourism booking orders increased by more than 14 times year-on-year, twice the national growth rate.

In the past analysis of Harbin’s popularity, it was pointed out that from the perspective of branding, Harbin’s experience in the past winter can be regarded as a successful counterattack by an old brand to become a top brand again.

Similarly, when we break down the details that support this wave of traffic in Harbin, each part is like a "sub-brand" of the city's big brand. Each part uses its own unique approach to turn Harbin into a large-scale Northeastern ice and snow theme pop-up store. People, traffic, and emotions gather instantly, opening up unlimited space for brands in the marketing field.

Among the many city "sub-brands", Harbin Beer, which is named after Harbin, has both the hard traffic dividend and the pressure of "the whole class is watching your performance" brought by the name because of its strong correlation with the city.

Internally, as a century-old brand originating from the Northeast, Harbin Beer must not fall behind. Externally, it is competing for attention due to the traffic dividend. How can Harbin Beer take on the traffic and transform Harbin's cultural and tourism hotspots into brand potential to keep pace with the city's popularity? In view of the series of brand marketing that Harbin Beer has done this winter, we will dismantle its problem-solving methodology in detail.

1. Internalize climate characteristics. You don’t have them, but I do.

In the context of thousands of cities in China that look the same, a city's distinctive character is a natural tourist attraction. Harbin's connection with ice and snow is a representative example. Whether it is the marketing of the city's IP from the government level or the brand's localized marketing ideas, they all have something to do with ice and snow.

After reviewing Harbin Beer’s series of marketing actions during this wave of urban enthusiasm, we found that the brand has made good use of Harbin’s urban characteristics. While using the viewing experience of ice and snow to convey brand information, it also outputs emotional value, giving full play to the advantage of “I have what you don’t have”.

1. Snow as blank paper

The first application of “What I have but you don’t” falls on “a lot of snow”.

Harbin Beer creatively combined its brand slogan with tire anti-skid chains, which are commonly used in the Northeast in winter. It innovatively designed anti-skid chains that "write" on the snow and installed them on the tires of electric vehicles. As the wheels turn, the brand's welcome greetings to tourists from all over the country are engraved on the vast snow.

Generally, our imagination of snow is often about whiteness and purity. Therefore, in movies and TV dramas, drawing and writing on the snow is a symbol of romance. However, for people in Northeast China who live in the snow for a long time every winter, snow is more of a way of life and an "inconvenience" that they will inevitably encounter in their daily travel. Therefore, in the streets of Harbin, anti-skid chains are commonly used items during the snow season.

The "writing" anti-skid chain, which is unique to Harbin Beer, cleverly integrates romance and practicality into marketing materials. Wherever the wheels pass, the welcome message "Let's drink Harbin Beer together in Erbin" will be printed there. It can be called a walking "text printing machine".

In fact, this creative idea also turned Harbin's inexhaustible snow into an advertising space for Harbin Beer. In a sense, it also made the priceless nature of creativity play a concrete value. Thanks to this, this wave of marketing won the bronze award at Spikes Asia, the prestigious top advertising festival in the Asia-Pacific region.

Another characteristic of snow is that it melts easily, which also amplifies the spreadability of the "writing" anti-skid chains. In the consumer field, people naturally have a desire to pursue limited-time and limited-limit products. Whether it is the easy melting of snow itself, or the fact that the snow is printed with Harbin Beer's welcome message and then quickly covered by other tire tracks, it gives this creative limited-time significance.

Once it is linked to "limited", there is a greater urgency to check in and take pictures, which is a good starting point for marketing communication. So we can see that the photos taken by tourists have also triggered secondary dissemination on social networks, and the words that melted on the snow have been left on the Internet for a long time.

2. Ice sculptures tell stories

After "A lot of snow", Harbin Beer's idea of ​​"I have what you don't" continued with "A lot of ice". After all, when it comes to ice sculptures, Harbin is the well-deserved "top tier".

At the "Ice and Snow World", a must-see location, Harbin Beer presented an artistic ice sculpture installation that combined classic elements such as wine carriages, wine barrels, and Art Nouveau arches, using the language of ice and snow to tell the brand's century-old story, allowing visitors to appreciate the elegance and romance of China's beer capital.

While many brands have their own exclusive ice sculptures in the "Ice and Snow World", Harbin Beer has obviously found a way to break through, which is to focus on people's demand for ice sculptures, that is, "beauty", and a vivid, story-telling beauty.

For consumers south of Harbin, ice sculptures are a kind of beauty that they have rarely seen. Even though they will disappear quickly on a physical level due to seasonal reasons, the memory and emotional value left by novelty will leave a good long-tail effect once established.

The action seems light, but in fact it sets up social communication topics everywhere, stimulates discussion, creates a sense of yearning for the brand among the public, and enhances brand potential.

3. “Pear Book” flower arrangement

Food is an unavoidable topic in a city’s cultural tourism. The advantages of Northeastern cuisine are, first, cost-effectiveness and, second, it is “unprecedented”.

Frozen pears are a specialty that most foreign tourists have never seen. It is no surprise that we also see frozen pears in Harbin Beer's brand marketing.

The combination of drinks and local specialties is something we often see in the milk tea industry. It can be said that it has become a conventional approach. Although changing it to beer is a little novel, it also requires creative planning to have a chance to stand out.

The regional limitation of frozen pears first makes it a very correct choice. Only by coming here can you taste it because of its scarcity, and scarcity means difference and attention.

In terms of copywriting, Harbin Beer is quite good at "making things happen". First, it named the entire marketing plan "Pear Book", laying the tone of homophonic puns, and then matched the copywriting for the four special frozen pears, namely "Frozen pears filled with Harbin Beer, I will spoil you", "Frozen pears dripping with Harbin Beer, sweet with a sound of clamps", "Frozen pears soaked in Harbin Beer, the north and the south are inseparable", and "Frozen pears with Harbin Beer, Erbin spoils you". The public's consistent love for parallelism and rhyme in Northeastern dialect is incorporated into the copywriting of "Pear Book".

This is what good copywriting is like. With just a few sentences, brand attributes, marketing content, and emotional resonance are connected together, and there is matching, memorable points, and communication power.

Moreover, Harbin Beer's planning of this frozen pear special cocktail also features a mix-and-match approach. Whether it's hollowing out the frozen pears and pouring beer into them, "hand-squeezing" pear juice into beer, or cutting frozen pears into glass bottles, they are all designs that involve hands-on operations. Compared with directly giving a finished product, it is obviously more interesting and interactive, and has a greater sense of ritual. Videos of the making of the special cocktail are also more disseminable on social networks and can better achieve consumption conversion.

According to Harbin Beer’s sales statistics, this winter’s O2O sales increased by 70% compared to last year. This data is a good proof of the marketing effect of “Li Pu Special Blend”, which has achieved “product and effect integration”.

2. Externalize the city personality and become a guest when you walk through the door

If the above marketing ideas have strengthened the public's perception that Harbin Beer is rich in Northeastern genes, then the following brand actions that we will discuss will show Harbin Beer's determination to gain an advantage among a number of Northeastern brands.

1. In the name of "Erbin"

Building a moon for the Hagia Sophia, leading flying horses, slicing frozen pears, adding sugar to tofu pudding... this year's Harbin has shown a "giving personality" in terms of service, and its hospitality has earned it the nickname "Erbin" from tourists.

How to catch up with this wave of popularity? Harbin Beer cleverly chose to follow directly. Our name is Harbin, so if you change it, I will change it too, keeping pace with the top hot spots. It seems "simple and crude", but it actually strengthens the mind. Sometimes, direct methods are more effective.

However, Erbin Beer is not satisfied with just a superficial "name change", but goes deeper to strengthen the correlation between the city's personality and brand temperament. Taking advantage of the hospitable character of Northeastern people, Erbin Beer generously invites tourists to drink as a "host". From January 10 to January 24, Erbin Beer 1900 Collection will be given away free of charge to tourists in Daowai Baroque Street.

The same idea is also used in the brand's outdoor advertising at the Harbin Airport entrance and the Ice and Snow World subway station in the core scenic area. The slogan "'Harbin' Beer Welcomes You" makes it easy for tourists to visualize a city's welcome to them through a brand. The character of the city is the character of the brand.

3. Invite guests to "row boats from the south to the north"

The competition in brand marketing is fierce. You must always be on the path of seeking differentiation. If you don’t advance, you will retreat.

On January 14, on the Songhua River in Harbin, members of the Shunde Dragon Boat Team in Guangdong, wearing large flowered jackets from the Northeast, joined hands with the Harbin Electric Motor Factory Dragon Boat Team to bring an ice dragon boat show to Harbin citizens and tourists, presenting an entertaining "Southern Boats Rowing North" event.

This novel way of playing is a unique idea for both foreign tourists and Harbin locals, capturing the commonalities in the traditional customs of the two cities.

In fact, it is not difficult to see from the handover of tourism popularity between Zibo and Harbin that traffic is always flowing, and instead of hiding it, it is better to be "open and honest", just like the character of the people in the Northeast.

The communication and exchanges with the southern city of Shunde, using dragon boats as a medium, have allowed Harbin to present a richer tourism experience and also allowed Shunde to promote its city IP to Harbin and other cities.

Data shows that this "Dragon Boat on Ice" competition was broadcast and reported by more than 150 central media, mainstream media and self-media accounts, including People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, CCTV News Live, CCTV Video, etc., with a total exposure of more than 65 million. As one of the partners of this exhibition game, Harbin Beer has also received sufficient exposure while building a bridge for urban cultural exchanges.

In the battlefield of traffic, "handing it over" may also be a way of "taking it back".

3. Analyst Comments

Every city has the opportunity to become a three-minute "top stream". This winter, Harbin seized the opportunity. Based on its hospitable cultural genes and warm user thinking, it has become a "new hometown" in the eyes of locals by constantly refining its products and services, and has also fulfilled the "old feelings" in the hearts of foreign tourists.

While enjoying the popularity, Harbin Beer is also moving in sync with the city where it grew up. The reason why Harbin Beer has become popular this time is that it not only breaks down and markets itself as a brand, but also assimilates itself into the city of Harbin. How Harbin is introduced is how Harbin is introduced. Correspondingly, how people get to know Harbin again is also how they will get to know Harbin again.

Author: Jifei WeChat public account: Knife Skills Research Institute