These three brands told me: Don’t compare yourself to others, it’s just a collaboration | Anti-anxiety special

In this age of social media, we are always tempted to compare ourselves to others. In this anti-anxiety feature, we look at three brands that have uniquely guided us away from comparison and towards the uniqueness and value of our own brands.

In 2023, if new consumer brands were on hot searches 100 times, 90% of them would be due to collaborations.

When we talk about co-branding, we are actually talking about brand anxiety - anxiety about hot spots and hot products . In the final analysis, co-branding is often a marketing move that kills two birds with one stone. An excellent co-branding can not only help brands gain traffic and increase their voice on social media, but also gain real financial support from consumers, making the brand business healthier.

Everything has two sides. When brand collaboration enters the stage of chaos, consumers are confused and brand owners have to re-examine the "collaboration" itself:

When did co-branding become an unspoken rule in brand marketing? Is this a must? Not being able to co-brand makes people feel humble, while over-cobranding is said to be worthless. What is just right? Are brands like Luckin Coffee and Heytea, which are particularly good at co-branding, also worried that the results will not meet expectations?

At the beginning of the new year, Daofa invited the brand and marketing managers of "Haowangshui", "Zawada Honke Dorayaki" and "Yihetang" to have a chat. Daofa was interested in the fact that although they were from the bottled beverage, baking and freshly brewed tea beverage tracks, these brands did not feel "rolled in", but had fun playing with each other. For example, Haowangshui always took the lead in co-branding, Sawada Honke was often invited by partners, and Yihetang only played co-branding for one year, but received business feedback that exceeded expectations at the end of the year.

We have also summarized three anti-anxiety principles based on this:

1. If the joint branding goals are too high and too many, you will be at a loss. Think clearly whether to maintain sales or exchange customers.
2. If you can't play together, don't collaborate just for the sake of collaboration.
3. The collaboration is just a means of brand expression. The sense of relaxation is given by yourself.

In this article, you will have a relaxed conversation with these three brands through text, strengthen your starting point for the new year, and become "anti-involution and anti-anxiety experts" together.

01. New consumer collaborations are all about the ability to make things happen. Choose between maintaining sales or exchanging customers.

Nowadays, when brands do a joint venture, there are often many restrictions and the KPI (performance target) is often set high.

The main reason is that the environment is not so relaxed. The enthusiasm of capital for new consumption investment has faded, there are more people than porridge, the competition in the fast-moving consumer goods market has become more intense, and the brand's own room for error has become smaller. In order to survive the winter safely, sales and profits must be put first in everything. In many cases, in order to seek stability, the budget of brand collaboration is very limited, and it is difficult for a single event to make breakthroughs in gameplay and channel placement. In layman's terms, it is impossible to use big moves.

Secondly, doing joint ventures used to be fun at first, but later on, you have to worry about traffic exposure, sales, searches, crowd tags, etc., which makes anyone feel extremely stressed.

Hao Jie, head of the brand department of Hope Water, told Daofa: "Sometimes new consumer brands of medium size have tight budgets. When it comes to joint ventures, it is best not to try everything right away. Either maintain sales or exchange customers."

Why do we emphasize medium-sized brands? Because the reason why freshly brewed tea and coffee brands like Luckin Coffee and Gu Ming have been on the hot list many times is that, in addition to their cooperation with well-known IPs, there is also an important premise that these brands have thousands of offline stores and ready-made communication channels.

"From the perspective of investment, the overall cost of cross-border brand collaboration (brand or artist) is fixed, and these chain brands have their own fixed offline terminals. In theory, this not only spreads the cost, but also does not require a lot of extra money for hard advertising, and the momentum can spread quickly. This is something that many new consumer brands that started online envy." Lin Ai, head of marketing at Haowangshui, told Daofa.

As a bottled beverage, the largest market for Hope Water comes from offline retail channels. Only by truly going deep into offline channels can the team reach a large number of real consumers and lay out the brand strategy. Throughout 2023, we observed that in addition to expanding dealer resources, the Hope Water team has been constantly taking advantage of joint opportunities to "live" with partners.

For example, in July last year, Haowangshui collaborated with artist Gong Linna to adapt the hit song "Gong Lin Spicy". It was not only uploaded to the QQ music platform, but also played in offline media in a loop. It used humorous and brainwashing content to tell users "drink Wangshanzha when eating spicy food", promoted the brand's major product Wangshanzha, and launched related theme packages with the ramen brand "Chen Xianggui".

"Mid-sized brands need to break out of their circle and have a more urgent need for social discussion. We found that the effect of cooperating with Gong Linna's hit song was relatively good, and we also thought about, for example, quickly announcing a top artist, but we can't take the risk of prepaying next year's budget for a single project at hand. In addition, we emphasize steady progress internally, and the overall tone is to maintain profits.

At this stage, the new consumer brands are competing for the ability to "live" when co-branding. So in addition to cost-effectiveness, we will try to find a form or scene to let the brand and the co-branded object "play" and make people remember, and the divine song is one of the forms. "Lin Ai said.

DaoFa learned that the cooperation between Wang Shanzha and Chen Xianggui can be traced back to a distributor who has crab roe noodle restaurants in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. He reported to the brand that "Wang Shanzha has good sales in his own noodle restaurant with a customer unit price of 30 or 40 yuan. More than 400 bottles were sold in a week, which is higher than other noodle restaurants." After the Haowangshui team caught this signal, they contacted Chen Xianggui, and both parties thought they could try to cooperate based on products. After the official joint venture, the terminal sales data confirmed the conjecture of the Haowangshui team, and the joint package provided users with specific consumption scenarios, reducing the difficulty of decision-making when ordering.

In fact, last year, Hope Water not only did these business-driven collaborations, but also joined hands with the skincare brand "Eastern Beast" to launch a joint gift box. But the problem is that the two brands seem to have very different styles, and their core audiences and even consumption scenarios are different, so why do they need to collaborate?

Good Hope Water x The Beast from the East

Haojie believes that the cooperation with East Beast is based on the consideration of exchanging people . Compared with direct sales, East Beast users have sufficient purchasing power, and the joint gift box can make this part of people understand and pay attention to Good Hope Water. Moreover, the products of Good Hope Water and East Beast both emphasize the concept of "herbal", and users' understanding of skin care can also be smoothly transferred to beverages. The only problem is that Good Hope Water's existing channels cannot sell skin care products. If the scale effect of the joint action is to be magnified, "the gameplay still needs to be rethought."

When asked why he could clearly distinguish between quality and efficiency, Haojie said, "Sometimes we ask dealers, 'What do people drink most when they come into the store?' The boss will say, 'This year, more people bring their own milk tea.' Think about it, in the offline market, bottled drinks and freshly brewed tea drinks are even competitors to some extent. At this time, would you want to compete with countless competitors through a joint venture? When doing a joint venture, the key is to implement the event well. There is no need to worry so much in advance."

02. Brand collaboration also depends on “equal status”. A forced melon is not sweet.

Collaboration is not something that a brand decides on alone. It also takes a lot of time and energy to communicate with the outside world. Many people in brands are anxious about: should we humbly "lick" the other party in order to achieve some good vision?

An example of anti-friction knife skills that left a deep impression on me was the Dorayaki brand "Sawada Honke".

Six years ago, Sawada Honka officially opened its first store on Fumin Road, a popular street in Shanghai. At that time, the team probably didn't expect that the street-side store that the founder bought out of sentiment and aesthetics would become an important business card for spreading the brand's tone in the future.

"At that time, there were only about 10 stores on Fumin Road, and most of them were new consumer entrepreneurs. Gradually, the new consumer entrepreneurship trend emerged, and the Fumin Road commercial district became prosperous. For a while, it was more lively than Anfu Road and Julu Road. These stores became more and more well-known, and many new consumer brands that wanted to do joint ventures in Shanghai would think of us first." Sammie, head of the marketing department of Sawada Honke, recalled.

Sawada Honke's first store

It should be added here that, from our past observations, we have found that many niche brands often collaborate with each other, and this is indeed due to the limitations of their own size.

To give an extreme example, some new brands have only opened less than 10 stores in Shanghai. If they insist on collaborating with nationally renowned chain brands, it is not certain whether they can reach a cooperation agreement. As a relatively niche party, it is difficult to handle the overwhelming traffic. If they spend a lot of effort on the collaboration and there is no retention after the event, the result is not "equitable", so it is better not to do it.

In the early days of Sawada Honke's store expansion, the team would consider such investment-output ratios and also went through a stage of self-cultivation. The difference is that Sawada Honke is not the "chosen" party in most cases, but often declines joint invitations initiated by others.

Sammie explained: "It's not that we want to be 'Versailles', but after talking to some brands, you will clearly feel that it is difficult to bring them together. This difference may not be in the product tone or brand mission of both parties. Sometimes, the working styles of the two teams are not very suitable for 'playing' together. In that case, don't force each other. In plain words, if you rely on compromise, the melon will not be sweet if it is forced."

This is not difficult to understand. The earliest brand store was opened on the "Internet celebrity" Fumin. In order to keep the brand always in line with popular trends, the Sawada Honke team usually pays attention to relatively niche and avant-garde trendy shoes/trendy toy brands, and through various forms of offline flash collaborations, they can truly and accurately reach high-stickiness users in some circles, but they don't have to be users who can immediately convert into brand buyers.

Over time, the brand tone has been established. Others' perception of Sawada Honke is that he knows how to have fun, understands trends, and has a certain aesthetic sense. The team itself does not want to easily destroy this cognitive label.

Accordingly, the Sawada family has retained the ability to judge whether the two parties are compatible.

Last spring, Sawada Honka and Hema jointly launched a limited new product, avocado Dorayaki. Sammie revealed that throughout 2023, Sawada Honka promoted dozens of joint ventures around the seasonal new product Dorayaki. Only this cooperation with Hema was discussed intermittently as early as October 2022. Due to the seasonality of fresh fruits and other issues, it was finally implemented in March of the following year, which took a lot of effort.

Sawada Honke x Hema

“During the process, even the founder advised me several times that we could promote the new avocado product without co-branding. I think that although it took a long time, the HEMA team has been very active in communicating with us. From the communication process, you can feel that both parties are looking forward to cooperation. The biggest difficulty may be finding opportunities.” Sammie said.

The Sawada Honke team realized that Hema not only represents a quality of life, but also serves as a channel to stand with new consumer brands, helping brands better reach target users . If there is a chance for cooperation, they will try their best. Later, as the avocado season approached, the joint venture was finally put on the agenda. The resources provided by Hema are also very powerful, including public account push, APP homepage banner, etc., which brought Sawada Honke several times more new customers and conversion revenue than expected. "So, when you feel that the person and the situation are suitable, be more patient and seize the opportunity immediately."

03. Relaxation is something you give yourself. Building a brand is about making some people happy first.

After talking about beverages and baking, it’s finally time to talk about freshly brewed tea drinks.

In yesterday’s anti-anxiety feature article , we cited a statistic:

According to DT Finance statistics, as of December 23, 2023, the 10 mainstream milk tea brands have collaborated a total of 161 times, which means that on average one milk tea brand launches a collaboration every 2 days.

Regarding this extreme phenomenon, Yihetang Brand Director Chen Yingjie told Daofa that behind the high-frequency collaborations, it is not just about business and short-term exposure, but fundamentally represents the timely response of many brands to consumer needs.

Today, Yihetang has come to its 12th year. In the long first ten years, Yihetang had basically no "marketing". Relying on relatively stable product quality and cost-effectiveness of 8-12 yuan per customer, it mainly penetrated second- to fourth-tier cities and signed contracts with 7,000 stores nationwide. In June 2021, after Yihetang released version 6.0 and officially announced the brand upgrade, it spent more than a year learning and transforming new marketing.

"We will definitely feel anxious. After all, when the brand reaches this stage, everyone in the top echelon is doing a great job. But in fact, all the powerful moves of others are completed under the guidance of their own brand values. Just analyzing the ideas of joint ventures can only provide superficial information. The most important thing is to think clearly about the top-level design of the brand." Chen Yingjie believes.

In the process of continuous brand upgrading, the Yihetang team is well aware that co-branding is only one of the means to express brand concepts and persistence, not the ultimate goal. The motivation for brand marketing must come from its own consumers. Only by realizing what is the right thing to do can the next action be carried out in a general direction.

Simply put, because of its affordable average order value and its ubiquitous stores, Yihetang has attracted young users mainly aged 15-25 . This group is younger than many tea brands. Even if it cooperates with some IP joint names, it cannot copy the experience of some of its peers.

Take the collaboration between Christmas and the emoji IP "Siam Lip" as an example. Based on the preliminary research, the Yihetang team sorted out several key words for target users: the second dimension, the cute pet economy, "the mental state of contemporary young people", as well as holiday rituals and holiday social interaction.

Yihetang x Siam Lip

"The labels of ACG and cute pet economy are easy to understand. I want to talk about why we chose 'mental state'. People usually use this word to mock themselves, but we also found that this is a self-regulation process for young people to fight stress and anxiety. If we want to communicate with these young people, we have to find IPs with the same theme. We also considered the theme of reunion during Christmas and New Year's Day, and finally chose 'Siam Lip', an IP group with animals and vegetables. The result was beyond our expectations, with sales of one million cups in the first week."

Chen Yingjie revealed that they reviewed and found that during the hot-selling period after the joint launch (the first 10 days), the proportion of new customers who were directed from the event to the official mini-program and third-party channels and placed orders for the first time was greater than 10%, which is a very positive signal.

"People will want to visit the store to learn more about the brand because they like the IP or the surrounding materials. If users like the brand, it will bring active exposure to the brand in addition to passive exposure (hard advertising). Active exposure must be what the brand should pursue in the long run. By continuing to deduce the reasons from this "like", we can break down the user's behavioral logic in different scenarios and accumulate inspiration for future brand actions. In particular, the team's "like" is also very important. If the brand team itself is not happy and does not like this thing, it is difficult to pass on happy emotions and value to your users."

In Chen Yingjie's view, having no anxiety is a very dangerous thing, which means "not respecting the market and falling into a false comfort zone", while excessive anxiety will damage execution. Keeping a happy soul between anxiety and relaxation is destined to be the practice of every brand person.

04. Analyst Comments

On January 5, coffee brand "Kudy" officially announced its brand spokesperson Wang Yibo, but the top trending search was for its rival, #瑞幸機機頭姊妹#.

We can't help but sigh, is this what real business war is like?

It is not difficult to find that even if some brands are at the top of the industry, they still have anxiety about hot spots and hot products , worrying that consumers' attention will be snatched away by competitors because of a certain event.

Only by placing a single event on a longer timeline can we clearly see that being clever may gain temporary traffic, but once it deviates from the brand's established direction, be prepared to be backlashed at any moment.

In this ever-changing world, it doesn’t matter if a collaboration goes viral or doesn’t meet expectations. There is still a long way to go. What’s important is where does the brand want to go? Where does it want to go with its users?

Author: Chu Qing

Source: Knife Skills Research Institute (ID: DigipontClub)