2024 Spring Festival Homecoming, Xiaohongshu Sponsoring Spring Festival Gala, Competition in the Milk Tea Industry

The Spring Festival has passed. During your return to your hometown, you must have had some different experiences. The author summarizes his experiences during the past half month and shares them with you.

Today I will write about my experiences at home during the nearly half month during the Spring Festival.

1. The milk tea industry is becoming saturated

If you step into any street in a county town, the most popular shop is undoubtedly the milk tea shop. If Heytea, Lelecha and Nayuki Tea are the top three in first-tier cities, then Bawang Chaji, Guming and Mixue Bingcheng are the top three in counties.

Especially the Bawang Chaji is really popular! You have to queue for nearly half an hour to buy it.

Bawang is not only strong in offline channels, but also does a lot of online marketing. Take Xiaohongshu as an example. The amount of money reported by influencers in the past year exceeded 10 million. If non-reported and advertising investment are included, the investment amount also makes it a leader in the milk tea industry.

Figure: Bawangchaji Xiaohongshu advertising data (Gray Pig)

2. Rise of fireworks and firecrackers consumption

In the past, the ban on burning and setting off fireworks was mandatory, but this year the regulations are quietly changing.

The government even set up places for setting off fireworks and protected them with special fire-fighting measures. The long-suppressed demand for fireworks was finally released. After many years, the scene of every household setting off fireworks reappeared.

Fireworks and firecrackers have a strong cultural matrix. If you don’t set off firecrackers during the Spring Festival, it won’t feel like the Spring Festival.

Branding and marketing are also about finding a cultural matrix. The problems that users have not yet solved and the problems that need to be solved, your products and services are implanted in that cultural matrix.

3. Comparison of New Year atmosphere in the north and south

This year I experienced the difference between celebrating the New Year in the north and south. The New Year atmosphere in the north is getting weaker and weaker, and is limited to playing cards and the Spring Festival Gala. I haven't watched the Spring Festival Gala for many years.

On the contrary, the South adheres to the New Year customs, such as killing the New Year pig, pickling bacon, making glutinous rice cakes, New Year's Eve dinner, and dragon parade. This series of rituals and symbols push the New Year atmosphere to its peak.

4. We live with a huge gap

I spent the New Year in northern Anhui and went to Yichun, Jiangxi after the New Year. In terms of environment, the environmental governance in northern Anhui is still in the crawling stage. Whether it is the streets or homes, there is still a lot of room for environmental improvement.

Secondly, in terms of cultural differences, the ancestor worship and ancestral halls in the south are full of culture, but in many villages in the north, it is difficult to trace back three generations, and there are not even road signs in the villages. Everything is nameless and shows that it is still in a chaotic world.

Finally, in terms of economy, the South really took intensive farming to the extreme, achieving complete self-sufficiency in vegetables and meat, while the North relied more on division of labor.

The reason for this is closely related to geographical culture. When we are confused about other cultures, we should consider them from a geographical perspective.

5. Actively expand outdoor sales channels

When I got home, some people asked me how to sell goods on Douyin and Xiaohongshu?

How to make use of the goods at hand to realize cash is indeed a good phenomenon. For county Internet media, the question is not whether to do it or not, but how to do it?

In my opinion, third- and fourth-tier cities are more suitable for Internet projects, with low labor costs and low trial and error costs. Some of Xiaohongshu's individual projects are launched in non-first-tier cities.

In the county courier store, I saw a lot of Dewu packaging boxes, which also reflects the gradual change in young people's purchasing channels.

6. Snack discounts start to roll in

Zhao Yiming snacks can be seen everywhere in Yichun city, Jiangxi Province. In addition to similar Zhao Yiming stores, some discount snack shops have also appeared on the streets.

There are already many snack discount stores in the town, and in the future, there will be more and more snack discount stores. There will be not only snack discount stores, but also various Internet celebrity restaurants. First-tier cities are experiencing consumption downgrades, while county towns are experiencing consumption upgrades.

7. Xiaohongshu sponsors the Spring Festival Gala

For any platform to break out of the circle, it needs an event explosion, such as Boss Direct Recruitment, Zhihu sponsoring the World Cup, B Station’s Houlang Youth World, and Xiaohongshu sponsoring the Spring Festival Gala.

Instead, it is sending out a signal, a signal of breaking the circle and having a powerful platform. As for whether Xiaohongshu will be used by merchants and users after 2024, it is still unknown.

The above are my experiences of returning home in 2024. What are your experiences during the Spring Festival? Please feel free to leave a message.

Author: Jiang He, WeChat public account: Jiang He Talks Marketing