Young people don’t like to drink liquor. How can liquor brands break through the bottleneck by looking at Moutai?

Moutai Group sees youth as the key to the liquor industry, and they are taking a series of innovative measures to attract the attention of young consumers. This article will reveal how Moutai Baijiu has successfully become younger and will continue to meet the needs and expectations of young people.

From the "Soy Sauce Latte" that has gone viral on WeChat Moments, to the just-announced "Mao Xiaoling Chocolate with Wine Filling", Moutai's frequent cross-border collaborations reflect the urgent need for the liquor industry to address the issue of younger consumers.

In recent years, the Chinese liquor industry has been actively seeking a younger development path, but it faces many difficulties. For example, although many liquor brands have tried cross-border, the results are often minimal; the younger generation generally does not like to drink liquor, thinking that strong liquor is hard to drink and harmful to the body; high-end liquor is expensive and young people can't afford it... All of the above constitute challenges for liquor companies in brand rejuvenation.

Recently, Moutai has also accelerated its attempts to make its brand younger. Regardless of whether young people will continue to pay for its products, these actions show that Moutai is trying to embrace young people to resolve their anxiety. In the past period of time, there have been many articles focusing on Luckin Coffee to analyze the cooperation between the two. However, Morketing believes that from the perspective of Moutai, it is more worthy of in-depth consideration to explore the key issue of how liquor brands can deal with the rejuvenation of the Chinese liquor industry.

In fact, as early as the 2022 shareholders' meeting of Moutai Group, Chairman Ding Xiongjun listed " attracting young consumer groups " as one of the five major directions for Moutai's future. This year, Ding Xiongjun once again emphasized that "grasping young people is grasping the future of Moutai", which clearly shows that brand rejuvenation has become the core strategy of Moutai Group.

So, why does Moutai place such an important position on youth? How does Moutai embark on its own path of youth?

1. The liquor industry is exploring the rejuvenation of the industry, and Moutai’s “rejuvenation” is different

According to the "2023 China Liquor Market Mid-term Research Report" released by the China Alcoholic Drinks Association, since the beginning of this year, the liquor industry and market have entered a new round of adjustment, from the era of incremental development to the era of stock competition.

For all industries with stock competition, when the market is saturated and companies start to involute each other, profits will continue to be compressed. Even hard currency brands such as Moutai and Wuliangye, which are not worried about selling at the moment, need to think about how to continue to grow and how to sell more in the next 10 years. But at the same time, we found that brands that can survive the cycle and competition again and again can often find hidden gaps in the saturated market to create new increments. And the new increments in the hidden gaps often need to be excavated from the common pain points of the industry. For example, solving the problem of rejuvenation in the liquor industry.

However, there are also differences between ordinary liquor brands and high-end liquor brands in terms of youth strategies. For ordinary liquor brands, having a good sales volume at present is the guarantee of survival. Therefore, they often launch youthful liquor products to attract young people to buy. For example, they work hard on the taste and packaging of the products, launch fruit wines and low-alcohol wines that young people like, and focus on "easy to drink"; the packaging is more fashionable and concise to meet the aesthetic taste of young people, etc.

Morketing believes that the youth strategy of high-end liquor is not to make young people start drinking liquor immediately, but to cultivate future consumers in advance by building brand memory among young people. The main force of high-end liquor consumption has always been middle-aged men aged 35-45, and now the first batch of post-90s have entered the "thirties", and this group of people will be needed to carry the banner of liquor consumption in the next 5-10 years.

Of course, there is a big difference between talking about the rejuvenation of high-end liquor and actually implementing it. Here we take the rejuvenation of Moutai as an example to discuss.

First, Moutai has a deeper level of thinking on the strategy of brand rejuvenation. Ding Xiongjun has publicly stated many times that in response to the changes in the lifestyle and consumption trends of young people, it is necessary to innovate and create healthy, pleasant and comfortable consumption scenarios, and use new and beautiful experience methods to show consumers the innovative, dynamic and fashionable side of Moutai, so that more young people will pay attention to Moutai, recognize Moutai and fall in love with Moutai.

It can be seen that Moutai's various joint ventures are not simply "grafting" the appearance of products, but establishing multiple touchpoints that are more closely connected with young people. In other words, through derived products and various youth-oriented initiatives, it enters the consumption scene of young people, allowing young groups to "keep their attention" and "keep their interest" in it, and strengthen young people's cognitive memory of the brand.

After determining its youth strategy, Moutai has adopted a diversified approach to "hunt" young people, constantly appearing in the growth process of young people and leaving behind brand memories.

In recent years, Moutai has been continuously lowering the threshold for consumers to experience Maotai-flavor liquor, and actively approaching young people with categories and methods that young people like. For example, Moutai has developed products that meet the consumption needs of young people in the form of "+ Maotai Liquor", and launched a number of products including Moutai ice cream, Maotai-flavor latte, and Mao Xiaoling liquor chocolate. In Moutai's words, it is to cultivate young people's taste for Maotai Maotai-flavor liquor and promote the rejuvenation and fashion of the Moutai brand.

But we can also see that the youth-oriented products launched by Moutai are co-branded products with ice cream, coffee, and chocolate brands, and they did not directly make a wine that young people like. The fundamental purpose is that Moutai needs some kind of medium to reach the brand concept, not just the product.

For Moutai, "+ Moutai" may seem to be packaging bottled Moutai into Moutai ice cream, Maotai coffee, and chocolate with liquor filling, but the logic behind it is to lower the threshold for purchase and experience through the new form of "Maotai by the drop", so that young people can complete the whole process of understanding, recognizing and recognizing the Moutai brand and brand value through a little bit of trial. At the same time, Moutai's scenes have been expanded from traditional banquets and gift giving to daily consumption scenes such as ice cream and coffee that young people like, greatly increasing the opportunities for young people to experience the Maotai flavor and understand the Moutai brand.

But the other side of the coin is that young people who have tasted the flavor of Moutai have a certain chance of losing their curiosity about Moutai. One netizen said, "I used to think Moutai was very high-end, but recently I have tried the sauce-flavored latte and chocolate with liquor. It's not that the taste is bad, but I won't buy Moutai worth thousands of yuan just for this taste." Therefore, in the process of brand rejuvenation, Moutai needs to continue to communicate with consumers and constantly accept the public's judgment, so that consumers can better understand the brand.

In general, Moutai's youth strategy is to "accompany" young people in their growth process for a long time, encourage them to "try" little by little, gradually infiltrate young people's understanding of the brand, and ultimately achieve the goal of "growing together" with young people. When these young people enter middle age and can accept liquor and have a certain economic strength, they will naturally transition to become the main consumer group of high-end liquor. At that time, long-term brand building and value delivery will make consumers more inclined to choose brands that appear around them and are familiar to them.

2. Continue to “stay present”, how does Moutai make its presence felt among young people?

Precisely because Moutai’s brand rejuvenation is not the rejuvenation of its products, the real core behind it is the transmission of its brand concept. This determines that Moutai’s brand marketing strategy is to establish multiple touchpoints that are more closely and solidly connected with young people, so that young people’s understanding of the brand can gradually penetrate into their hearts and become a part of their memory as they grow up.

However, in the actual brand communication process, we found that Moutai’s multi-touchpoint approach to youth is different from the various ways of reaching young people mentioned in the past.

The state-owned enterprise and leading position in the liquor industry give Moutai strong brand potential. But on the other hand, this height and position also make Moutai's every move closely watched by the outside world, and it is easy to cause huge controversy if it is not careful. Therefore, the core of Moutai's brand marketing is to maintain its "presence" among young people without eroding the brand potential, thereby conveying the brand value.

But in the face of fragmented media and the pulverized attention of users, how should brands "maintain a sense of presence"? Looking back at Moutai's youth marketing strategy, we have come to the following conclusion: to use the national memory brought about by hot events to arouse public resonance, empathy and resonance.

First of all, Moutai’s cross-border joint products, ice cream, sauce-flavored latte, and Mou Xiaoling chocolate with liquor filling, became an instant hit upon their launch and became a marketing event that was hotly discussed by the whole nation.

Take the Moutai and Luckin Coffee incident as an example. A centralized hot topic #Moutai Luckin Coffee Sauce Flavor Latte# quickly ranked second on Weibo's hot search list, and led to multiple related topics being on the hot search list one after another, forming a hot topic effect and a common discussion atmosphere on Weibo, allowing users to extend their attention to the incident to in-depth discussions on the brand and become fans of the brand. According to Weibo data, during the Moutai x Luckin Coffee joint event period, 67% of Moutai brand interest users were brought by the event. In addition, more than 50% of the fans attracted by Moutai in this event were born after 1995, which has indeed accumulated a lot of potential young users for Moutai.

At the same time, the Moutai and Dove collaboration on chocolate with liquor fillings has been fermenting on Weibo recently, with the topic #Moutai I and Dove officially announced# becoming the top trending topic on Weibo. As the event progresses, the public's focus has expanded from the collaboration itself to discussions on the price of the collaboration, gift box packaging, availability, and whether the hot topic of sauce-flavored latte can be replicated. People even started to use memes on Weibo such as #Moutai is almost turning itself into cooking wine# and #Moutai scumbag#. As a result, Moutai's cross-border promotion of new products has become a topic of public concern and discussion on Weibo, and will eventually become a memory for the public.

Whether it is coffee or chocolate, it is essentially event marketing, which requires an interactive social media platform like Weibo to "add fuel to the flames" so that an explosive event can be completely amplified and detonated at a certain point in time, and finally 1 (event) + 1 (platform) > 2 (final communication effect). However, we also found that whether it is sauce-flavored latte or chocolate with liquor, the public's attention will continue to decrease after the heat of the event gradually cools down. This is because the current consumer's attention is scattered and short-lived. If there is no new topic or an event is repeated many times, they will lose interest. From this perspective, Moutai still needs to increase the frequency of appearing in the public eye and continue to bring new topics and freshness.

Secondly, we can see Moutai in various large-scale events and festivals.

The 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games currently being held is a good example. During the Asian Games, "Moutai Red" became the official cooperative supplier of the Asian Games, welcoming the Asian Games with the people of the country. On September 15, "Moutai Red" participated in the Asian Games torch relay, supporting the Asian Games with practical actions. At the same time, Moutai Wine's official Weibo not only launched a countdown to the Hangzhou Asian Games, but also released a short video "Searching for the Beauty of the East, Searching for the Hangzhou Asian Games", further deeply binding "Moutai Red" with the Asian Games, allowing the public to continue to pay attention to Moutai while paying attention to the Asian Games, a large-scale event.

In addition, Moutai always "remains present" at some festivals that contain special emotions of the Chinese people. For example, in the Year of the Rabbit, Moutai launched a "warm marketing" campaign around the Spring Festival. Not only did it launch the "In 2023, Let's Go Back to Hometown Together" poster in offline multi-channel linkage, but it also sent New Year's greetings to the people across the country on Weibo, and continued to update the theme of "accompany" from New Year's Eve to the seventh day of the first lunar month. At a time when everyone is paying more and more attention to the value of women, during the International Women's Day, Moutai visited female workers in different positions to convey the "her power" and "her brilliance" of contemporary women.

All of the above major events that involve the participation and attention of the whole nation will be recorded in Weibo topics and become "social memories" that resonate between Moutai and its users.

In addition to hot topics and major events, Moutai continues to deepen its public welfare efforts and reach young people with the correct value orientation.

You know, young people today are very concerned about the values ​​of brands and have strong patriotic sentiments. Therefore, creating value recognition has become a necessary way for brands to stand out among young people. For brands that convey positive values, young people will not only vote with their hands, but also support them with practical actions. In this context, we see young people rushing into the live broadcast rooms of Hongxing Erke and Fenghua for wild consumption; Huawei’s low-key release of mate60 was sold out and became a hot topic. These are all external manifestations of young people’s recognition of brand value.

Moutai has been constantly building contacts with young people in public welfare activities, creating cultural symbols and public welfare brand images with influence and social responsibility, and conveying correct values. For example, Moutai's "China Moutai·National Pillar" Hope Project has helped 230,000 young people across the country realize their college dreams in the past 12 years. Moutai established the "Moutai 1935 National Great Doctor" public welfare fund to promote the dissemination of traditional Chinese medicine culture and help the development of traditional Chinese medicine. Moutai has joined hands with the China Aerospace Foundation to launch the "Wangmao Starry Project" to provide science and technology education services for children.

In these public welfare activities, Moutai has continuously established a brand image that stands with users, step by step building relationships and trust with users, and then through the operation of social media such as Weibo, it has increased the public's sense of belonging to the brand and driven the sustainable growth of the brand's leading trends.

3. Conclusion

From Moutai's layout of targeting young people, we can see that Moutai is striving to break through the circle and establish a closer connection with young groups through innovative strategies, diversified methods and multiple touchpoints of communication on social media platforms such as Weibo, so as to cultivate the next generation of main consumer forces. However, the effect of its targeting of young people still needs to be tested in long-term practice.

However, brand rejuvenation is a long-term and repetitive process, especially in the current era of scarce and short attention span. Brands need to continue to "stay present" in order to keep the public "paying attention".

Author: Jennie Gao

Source: WeChat public account "Morketing (ID: Morketing)"