The cultural friction of sauce-flavored latte…

Brand value is made up of two forces:

Cultural power + product power

Product strength includes R&D capability, quality capability, supply chain capability, channel capability, cost control capability, etc. Cultural strength includes the brand’s cultural history, social influence, storytelling ability, image charm, ability to integrate with new cultural trends, etc.

As cultural power and product power continue to grow and converge, they can continuously expand the brand's influence and even create an explosion.

The Maotai + Luckin Coffee sauce-flavored latte that has become popular across the country these days fully demonstrates the power of the combination of these two forces...

The day before yesterday morning, I saw someone post a photo of a sauce-flavored latte on WeChat Moments for the first time, and I immediately had a feeling it was going to be a hit. By the afternoon, people in all groups were saying that the lines were too long and they couldn’t buy one. Then I looked at the published data yesterday, and it showed that 5.42 million cups were sold in one day, with sales exceeding 100 million yuan.

Among them, the cultural power of Chinese sauce-flavored liquor and Moutai brand combined with the new consumer culture power of Luckin Coffee, and the friction and heat generated by the two cultures played a decisive role in the outbreak.

Maotai and Maotai are the most representative of Chinese culture, coffee is the representative of Western culture, and Luckin is a new consumer brand, and a new consumer brand that has survived a disaster. Such an intersection naturally generates huge cultural friction.

This explosion can be based on the practical product - Soy Sauce Latte, because asking people to actively spread the brand is far less convenient than spreading the product.

With products, people can easily buy, taste and test them, thus forming wide and diversified dissemination.

Therefore, in this storm, even the traffic police units also came out to conduct alcohol tests, forming the most natural and interesting communication effect -

In comparison, just a few days ago, there was actually another brand collaboration that looked similar, but it caused very little stir.

This is the joint release of Luzhou Laojiao and Nayuki's Tea, which attracted almost no attention.

The reason is very simple. First, the cultural power of Luzhou Laoyao is slightly inferior to that of Moutai, but the gap is not too big. The second reason is more important, that is, this cooperation did not really fall into product innovation, but more like a pure marketing activity of the two brands.

As can be seen from the poster above, the two products, Luzhou Laoyao and Nayuki Sparkling Lemon Tea, are directly listed on it and have not been combined into new products, so this is just a brand co-branding promotion.

Different from the sauce-flavored latte which is really a combination of sauce-flavored liquor + coffee = new product, Luzhou Laojiao and Nayuki's Tea only made a shallow combination of their respective brands and products. The product power is very insufficient, which makes it difficult to arouse people's interest and makes people unwilling to promote the two brands.

Therefore, it is not enough to just rely on the collaboration of two brands, especially when it is impossible to achieve the "sense of strangeness" and "make people interested in and invested in unfamiliar things", the effect will hardly make a splash.

Next, we will continue to analyze in depth the cultural friction of Maotai Latte.

Cultural friction comes from unfamiliarity, consensus, cultural and historical genes, friction experience, etc.

1. Strangeness

Let’s continue talking about “strangeness”, which is a creative term from the field of culture and creativity.

"Defamiliarization effect" Verfremdungseffekt, abbreviated as V-Effekt, has more than one translation in China, it is also called "alienation effect", "alienation method", etc. However, the most widely used and most appropriate translation is "defamiliarization effect".

"Strangeness" means that through creative and innovative combinations, something new is created that the audience and consumers have never seen before, making everyone interested in watching or trying it.

The "estrangement effect" is a theatrical effect that presents familiar events on stage in a different way to the audience, thereby making the audience feel surprised and inducing excitement and new experiences.

When selecting topics for film, television, and animation, "strangeness" is often the first factor considered, because it can create huge room for imagination and give new content huge potential.

The sauce-flavored latte is a new thing that is full of "strangeness", which can make many people interested and willing to try to buy it. Even if they don't buy it, they are willing to watch and pay attention. This creates an opportunity to form a topic, which will grow bigger and bigger as new people continue to join.

The collaboration between Luzhou Laoyao and Nayuki Tea did not create a new thing with a sense of unfamiliarity ; on the contrary, the collaboration between Moutai and Luckin Coffee created a new product or thing with a sense of unfamiliarity and a strong impact .

2. Consensus

It is not enough to have a sense of strangeness alone. It is also necessary that the new things with a sense of strangeness contain old things that are very familiar to everyone and have a broad "consensus", and it is best if these old things are classics.

Maotai latte is a combination of Chinese Maotai liquor and Western coffee, both of which are old things with very high consensus value.

There is a strong consensus on Chinese Maotai liquor and its taste is highly recognizable, and the same is true for coffee.

Therefore, even if you have never tasted it, I believe that most people will naturally have a conditioned reflex taste and smell reaction just by looking at the name, and will be very interested in trying it.

This is like the movie series "The Wandering Earth", which combines the most sci-fi, futuristic space adventure imagination with the most Chinese, traditional "fleeing with family and moving south".

Moreover, according to psychology, "consensus" is not only individual consciousness, but also collective subconsciousness. It is not the cognition and action of one person, but the cognition and action of a group of people. Therefore, it is very easy to form a group action effect and the aura of social public opinion.

3. Cultural and historical genes

Behind the sauce-flavored latte is the collision of the two major cultural genes of the East and the West, and the two major cultural tastes of traditional liquor and new coffee milk, and it is expressed through a well-known representative brand.

Therefore, the cultural friction that can be generated here is definitely not an ordinary spark, but the equivalent of a super bomb.

Because the cultural and historical genes of Maotai and Maotai are so strong, especially in today's China.

Of course, the new cultural gene represented by Luckin Coffee should not be underestimated. After all, a chain store that has survived a catastrophe and has numerous offline outlets and strong user relationships online does have cultural charm and driving force.

But at the same time, the effect of this brand collaboration is difficult to replicate, because if it weren’t Chinese sauce-flavored liquor, not Moutai, and if it weren’t the first time it was combined with coffee, it wouldn’t have such a huge effect.

Being difficult to replicate does not mean it cannot be repeated at all. As long as the powerful historical and cultural genes can be used to create new experiences with new alienation effects, everything is possible.

4. Cultural friction experience

I have imagined what would happen if the joint partner this time was Starbucks instead of Luckin Coffee?

The conclusion is that although the sensational effect will not be much different, the hot spots of cultural friction will be different, and will be more inclined to the contradictions between Eastern and Western cultures.

If this trend is adopted, it may not be a good thing for the Moutai brand. After all, for a benchmark leading brand, the risk must be minimized.

Because the Western cultural recognition behind the Starbucks brand is too strong, it would be like a battle between gods and Maotai. In comparison, Luckin Coffee has a much lower sense of Western cultural label, and is more of a label for a domestic brand that is striving to move forward and get out of trouble, so it is not easy to pose risks.

Therefore, in the joint cooperation between Moutai and Luckin Coffee, it is obvious that Moutai’s culture is the dominant and leading role. It is a sense of cultural expression rather than a strong conflict.

It can be seen from the materials of the product that the overall design is based on the red visual effect of Moutai, and Luckin's blue is ignored here, which can continue to strengthen the symbolic status of Moutai brand as a domestic product.

Of course, there are many forms of cultural friction, including conflicting, harmonious, trend-following, and counter-trend types, which are suitable for different brand/IP joint collaborations.

For Moutai and Luckin Coffee, this cooperation is a win-win situation with Moutai taking the lead in culture and Luckin Coffee taking the lead in channels. One has achieved cultural expansion without losing its dominant position, and the other has achieved cultural improvement while strengthening its product strength.

In short, cultural friction is the basis for the effectiveness of all brand/IP joint marketing. The greater the cultural friction, the stronger the effect.

Co-branded marketing is quite different from traditional brand marketing. Traditional brand marketing emphasizes the consistent expression of brand voice. However, co-branded marketing focuses on conflicting expression . The consistent image characteristics of the brand form conflicts and contrasts in cooperation with heterogeneous or even opposite brands/IPs, thus creating a sense of strangeness and surprise similar to cultural creation.

The cultural friction generated by this co-branding is the basis of co-branded marketing.

This also requires that brands that wish to engage in successful co-branded marketing must have very strong cultural energy of their own . If their own cultural power is not strong, co-branded marketing will either be ineffective or counterproductive, and may even weaken their own weak brand characteristics.

Therefore, Moutai is not afraid to be bold in its joint marketing because it is strong enough.

Therefore, among the many tea brands, Heytea, Nayuki Tea, Chayan Yuese, and Mixue Bingcheng will have better effects because they have established their own strong cultural characteristics.

Before the launch of its Maotai-flavor latte, Luckin Coffee also developed its own characteristics through a series of unique and innovative products and joint collaborations, which made it possible to achieve this super hit effect.

In contrast, the decline of traditional coffee chains such as Pacific Coffee is also closely related to the fact that the unchanging product experience has made consumers feel bored and cannot form a new cultural experience.

Finally, as mentioned at the beginning of this article -

Brand value = the continuous innovation and convergence of cultural power + product power ...

Author: Chen Gelei (Lao Xiaoge) team author of "Super IP Incubation Principles", brand IP incubator