Spending the budget of a top star to sign an IP, what is the purpose of Juewei Duck Neck collaborating with The Legend of Zhen Huan?

This article will take the collaboration with "The Legend of Zhen Huan" as a starting point for a layer-by-layer analysis: What does Juewei want by collaborating with "The Legend of Zhen Huan"? Why does Juewei dare to invest heavily in media, and how does it use the same manipulation techniques as top-tier endorsements to collaborate? How does an established company that relies on its supply chain advantages achieve brand transformation?

"Ba Wang Cha Ji? Buddha? The Legend of Zhen Huan?" There were many speculations under a brand collaboration trailer.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

At the beginning of the month, Juewei officially announced that the protagonist of the joint venture was "The Legend of Zhen Huan", which attracted the attention of the entire network. Compared with the previous routine operations, this joint venture not only launched limited joint peripherals such as blind draw cards and paper bag packaging, but also invited Tao Xinran and Lan Yingying, two highly popular queens, to open the box and draw cards on Weibo and interact with fans online. Offline media such as outdoor large screens, elevators, subways, and bus stops were also simultaneously launched.

\This high-profile investment of top-tier endorsement-level publicity and promotional resources into a joint venture is completely different from the industry's lightweight and normalized IP joint venture practices in recent years.

Juewei, which has made high-profile efforts in marketing, has also seen a significant recovery in performance. Last year, the performance and profit growth of Juewei Duck Neck's parent company Juewei Foods fell short of expectations due to the duck cycle, but this year it has recovered significantly.

According to the company's semi-annual performance forecast, the estimated net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company in the first half of 2023 is 228 million to 243 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 131.25% to 146.47%.

Why did Juewei Duck Neck choose "The Legend of Zhen Huan" as its first co-branded work? What will the co-branding bring to the brand? Where does the resilience of the rapid recovery of performance come from?

1. What does Juewei want to achieve by collaborating with "The Legend of Zhen Huan"?

"The Legend of Zhen Huan", which has been on the air for 12 years, still ranks among the top 3 of the major "electronic pickles" lists. According to Caijing.com data, the number of views of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" has exceeded 12.7 billion times as of 2021. In addition to the original work, there are also a number of up masters who are active on video platforms such as bilibili who have created secondary works for "The Legend of Zhen Huan", making "The Legend of Zhen Huan" "electronically patina".

Watching TV series is an important consumption scenario for Juewei Duck Neck. In the brand TVC "If your mouth is tasteless, try Juewei" launched by Juewei last year, the first slogan is "If watching TV series is tasteless, try Juewei". "Electronic pickled mustard tuber" just matches the consumption scenario of Juewei Duck Neck. "The Legend of Zhen Huan" is not only a classic drama, but also the king of Internet memes that live in emoticons and jokes. It is natural to co-brand with it.

Image source: Juewei Duck Neck

This time, the co-branded peripherals are designed with 13 exclusive role cards based on the prototypes of Empress Zhen Huan, and the probability of winning the hidden "SSR" card of Concubine Xi is set to 2%. For young consumers who have been educated by mobile games and blind boxes, this very familiar gameplay can be quickly mastered and even addicted.

Less than a week after the card was launched, many rare cards appeared for resale on Xianyu, and the price of an SSR card with a 2% probability has reached 99 yuan.

Image source: Xianyu, Xiaohongshu

In addition to the cards themselves, the instruction manuals and paper bags that come as accessories have also become secondary creation materials for netizens . Netizens who couldn't draw a Zhen Huan card on Xiaohongshu directly DIYed one using the instruction manual; and a skillful Xiaohongshu blogger used the co-branded paper bags to manually recreate a Zhen Huan version of the Juewei Duck Neck store.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

According to conventional operations, such a wide fan base and high stickiness of the co-branded peripherals can easily boost sales. But what's interesting is that unlike many tea and fast food brands that sell peripherals as products, this co-branded peripheral is only included with the ruby ​​shrimp ball set meal priced at 28.8 yuan, and there is no need to pay for it separately, nor is it sold separately. This time, Juewei Duck Neck's intention in co-branding with "The Legend of Zhen Huan" seems not to be sales, but to establish connections with young people in the way they play.

2. Use the method of top-tier endorsements to collaborate?

In addition to being a novel way of interaction that is well aware of young people's preferences, the huge investment in media exposure for this collaboration also goes against the current norm of "short, flat and fast" collaborations.

For this collaboration, Juewei deployed online and offline platforms. In addition to the regular online platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, it also invited actors Lan Yingying and Tao Xinran to share the entire process of drawing cards, and the related topics once became a hot search on Weibo. For the takeaway side, it collaborated with Meituan Waimai, and airdropped Ada Choi and Lan Xi to the Meituan Shenquan Festival live broadcast room.

Offline, we have also deployed outdoor large screens, elevators, subways, bus stops and other media resources in multiple cities, and set up joint pop-up stores.

According to the media company that undertook the placement, the total media costs of the entire joint venture are comparable to the publicity and promotion resources of top-tier endorsements.

Five or six years ago, joint marketing was still a relatively new technique, and most of them could attract high-profile exposure in an interesting interactive form. In contrast, nowadays, according to statistics from netizens, there were more than 70 joint announcements in July this year alone . Such a high frequency and density not only makes consumers aesthetically fatigued, but also makes brands feel tired. It is difficult to "roll out" despite a large investment.

The most unique thing about Juewei Duck Neck’s collaboration this time is that it breaks the “short, flat and fast” style of IP collaboration and applies the celebrity endorsement approach to IP collaboration.

When signing a celebrity endorsement contract, the contract terms usually stipulate how much media resources the brand must match, and the amount of resources is directly related to the celebrity's status. However, brands that co-brand with IPs often only conduct a small amount of pre-promotion on online channels such as Xiaohongshu, hoping that the appeal of the IP itself will bring traffic to the brand.

Juewei's "abnormal" high-standard treatment with high online and offline investment first attracted the attention of the industry. According to the copyright agency of the case, after the official announcement of the Juewei Duck Neck x Zhen Huan Zhuan joint on July 15, film and television companies, IP copyright holders and video websites have been consulting it for details of the cooperation. Interestingly, consumers who do not understand how the marketing industry operates are also attracted by the joint advertisement.

Daofa noticed that some of the netizens who actively shared the story online did not go to the store to buy the co-branded meal . They just saw the co-branded advertisement on the roadside and took photos to share on Weibo or Xiaohongshu, and exclaimed in surprise that "Juewei Duck Neck can be connected to Zhen Huan."

3. Consolidate supply chain advantages with the left hand and accelerate brand transformation with the right hand

The joint venture with "The Legend of Zhen Huan" can be said to be a microcosm of Juewei's brand transformation. This "traditional" brand is communicating with young users through more and more frequent marketing activities. Daofa found that as early as 2021, Juewei began a series of small brand explorations. Such as peripheral marketing.

In the past three years, Juewei has launched a variety of peripheral products in different forms, combined with various marketing methods such as set meals, gifts for purchases over a certain amount, and gifts for recharges. Some of these peripheral products have received a good response on Xiaohongshu.

Another example is a pop-up store.

Last year, Juewei launched the first product of the innovative product series Infinite Duck Neck Plan, turkey-flavored duck neck. One of the marketing methods was to open a pop-up store called Infinite Paradise in the core business district of the city. In terms of media , Juewei has also made extensive placements in the form of elevator media, community media, bus stop media, etc. in commercial and apartment scenes where young people frequently appear.

It is not difficult to see the close connection between these attempts and the joint project of "Empresses in the Palace". If Juewei has been conducting single-item training in the past few years, this year Juewei has integrated the training results into the joint project of "Empresses in the Palace".

This working method of first trial and error on a small scale, then large-scale promotion and steady progress is also in line with Juewei's consistent style.

As a brand relying on its supply chain and channel advantages, the reason why Juewei was able to turn around smoothly is inseparable from the continuous consolidation of its moat and stabilization of the basic foundation of transformation during the brand transformation process.

According to Juewei's 2022 performance report, Juewei currently has more than 15,000 stores nationwide. To become a 10,000-store catering brand, a standardized model is a prerequisite. However, it is difficult for Chinese restaurants to standardize the production process at the store level. In order to solve this problem, Juewei has adopted a "small front-end and large back-end" strategy from the beginning, and began to build its own supply chain system in the early stages of development.

As early as 2009, Juewei cooperated with Ingersoll Rand to build a cold chain distribution system, and then in 2018, it built Shanghai Juepei Flexible Supply Chain Service Co., Ltd. to further improve logistics stability. At present, all Juewei stores are located within a radius of 300-500 kilometers centered on the production base. With its own cold chain + self-built factories, it can achieve same-day orders, same-day production, and same-day delivery, and start selling within 24 hours to ensure that consumers get the freshest products.

An efficient supply chain lays the foundation for lightweighting at the front end. Wide distribution of consumption scenarios, highly standardized in-store operation procedures, and low initial investment threshold are the commonalities of Wandian brands, and Juewei also follows this.

Juewei stores are generally around 10-30 square meters; refrigerators and other fresh-keeping equipment are uniformly distributed by the headquarters; the smallest store only needs 1-2 employees to weigh and distribute goods for customers on a daily basis, and there is no processing link in the store. After comprehensive calculation, excluding the cost of rent, the initial investment for opening a Juewei Duck Neck store is less than 200,000 yuan.

A strong supply chain not only reduces store operating costs, but also brings cost advantages.

On the one hand, thanks to the scale of 10,000 stores and the direct purchase model, Juewei has greater bargaining power with the upstream supply chain. At present, more than 95% of Juewei duck neck raw materials are purchased by the headquarters, and some spices, vegetables, and aquatic products are directly purchased from the base to obtain the price advantage of raw materials.

On the other hand, Juewei has also established its own cold storage with a capacity of 60,000 tons in Shandong and Wuhan. When upstream prices fluctuate greatly, strategic stockpiling can be used to cope with price changes.

4. Analyst Comments

Marketing actions are often the most visible part of brand management.

The high-profile collaboration with "The Legend of Zhen Huan" is just the tip of the iceberg of Juewei.

At a time when systemic risks are emerging in the industry, Juewei was able to recover quickly because it has taken solid steps in every link of "supply chain - channel - marketing".

The saturated distribution of tens of thousands of stores at the front end, like capillaries, can actually occupy the minds of consumers for the brand; the powerful supply chain at the back end can not only maintain sufficient ammunition supply for the front-end charge, but also achieve large-scale cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and maintain strong risk resistance.

Brand marketing is to use brand driving force to explore new business value and opportunities based on the solid foundation that has been built.

Brand building is the only way to achieve sustainable growth and will go on steadily and far.

This article was originally published by @刀法研究院 on Operation Party. Any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 agreement