Zhong Xuegao: Not understanding brands

Zhong Xue Gao has made a lot of moves since the crisis broke out last year. For Zhong Xue Gao, rebuilding consumer trust and returning to the essence of the brand is a top priority. Brand building requires a long-term vision and cannot be driven by short-term interests. This is a wake-up call for any brand.

Recently, I have been a little skeptical as to whether Zhong Xue Gao is still the new consumer dark horse with vicious products and good branding.

Here is a brief summary of Zhong Xue Gao’s actions from the outbreak of the crisis last year to the recent ones:

• After the crises of ice cream burning and ice cream assassins, Zhong Xue Gao reduced prices to calm public opinion. Many supermarkets and convenience stores launched discount promotions, such as the second stick at 1 yuan 9.9, and finally even reduced to 6.5 yuan per stick.
• It launched its own affordable product line Sa'saa, claiming that it was created by AI and is intended to please young people. The product line has four flavors: red bean, mung bean, milk, and cocoa. The product is priced at 3.5 yuan per stick

Are these actions good or not? In fact, the feedback from consumers has already said it all:

So what exactly is the problem?

1. Zhong Xuegao’s Panic

First of all, we see that when faced with controversy, Zhong Xuegao’s first reaction was to take a stance to calm the controversy.

I don’t know if it has something to do with the special business environment, but from a purely business perspective, a successful high-end brand should coexist with controversy, and even enjoy controversy rather than escape from it.

If they can have this understanding, their business behavior will be more relaxed and reasonable.

Luxury brands also often launch high-priced peripheral products in a planned manner to enhance their brand value through public opinion: Burberry's ice cream at 1,800 yuan per stick, LV's canvas bag peripherals at 700 yuan, are precisely to continuously consolidate their positioning and clearly tell everyone that my brand is the consensus of "noble".

I have explained this in detail in my “Standing Matrix”. The biggest task of the luxury category is to create consensus.

Moreover, if we want to ease the pressure of public opinion, there are many options, such as cultivating internal strength, improving products, telling good stories, emphasizing Zhong Xue Gao's contribution to social responsibility, protecting milk sources, protecting the ecology, etc. This article does not focus on this, so it will not be expanded for the time being.

These are often cards that low-price brands cannot play. For example, Jindian Milk has continuously emphasized its continued efforts to protect the natural environment through in-depth cooperation with WWF and UNESCO.

2. New product lines full of loopholes

I admit that Zhong Xue Gao should indeed develop its new product line and use this opportunity to enrich its brand architecture.

A high-end brand is bound to lack control over the mainstream price range. Through new product lines, it can gain more market share, consumer awareness and cash flow, and further improve its financial situation.

In the context of consumption downgrade, all high-end brands should think about this.

Tesla and Apple both have market strategies to capture mass-market prices, but their approaches must be careful enough, otherwise the high-quality brand assets that they have worked so hard to build will be irreversibly affected.

Looking at Zhong Xue Gao again, there are three problems with the new product:

First of all, at the product level, I don’t see any differentiation. If you only want to rely on the brand effect of Zhong Xue Gao rather than the product, you are overdrawing the brand, and consumers will not buy it in the long run because no differentiated value is created.

As for the gimmick of "AI creation" and the name that is incomprehensible at first glance, it makes me feel incomprehensible and naive.

It is right to target young people because they are the mainstream population in that price range. Youthful operations and communications can also bring positive brand assets to Zhong Xue Gao, but where is the youth reflected?

The packaging, raw materials, shape, texture and taste are all unremarkable. The product features are not even as good as many popular ice cream brands. Of course, this is also related to the fact that the pricing is too low to support differentiation.

In terms of brand structure , the Zhong Xue Gao parent brand + sub-brand were directly used. Generally, this kind of design must be a very closely connected product line, such as Tesla model S and model Y.

Sub-brands can feed back to the parent brand while enjoying the supply from the parent brand.

Because of the close connection, the sub-brand cannot bring any negative impact to the parent brand, otherwise consumers will think that this is what your parent brand does.

This is the case now. Consumers will think that the original Zhong Xue Gao has started selling low-priced ice cream instead of incubating an affordable product line.

Due to the huge price gap, Sa'saa products neither have the product strength to match the parent brand's positioning, nor do they inherit any effective brand assets from the parent brand.

At this time, you should choose independent sub-brands with certain relevance, such as Zhong Xiaogao and Zhong Ji, which have more brand differentiation but still retain implicit connections.

I have to say that although the Xiaomi brand faces many problems, in terms of brand architecture, the combination of Xiaomi and Redmi is actually very delicate. This is a more astute brand architecture strategy, and I highly recommend it.

The brand architecture must be delicate because consumers are very delicate.

Finally, the pricing . I think even if it is a low-priced product line, it should be slightly higher than the mainstream. 4-6 yuan should be a reasonable price. First, the gross profit can support differentiation, second, it can protect Zhong Xue Gao's positioning, and third, it still covers the mainstream price range.

If the price is any lower, it should be completely separated from the parent brand and operated independently, and there should be no further association, such as simply calling it Sa'saa.

However, at present, the lackluster products are not enough to support its independent operation, so it can be concluded that Zhong Xue Gao Sasaa is overdrawing the Zhong Xue Gao brand.

Pricing is an important brand element, and low-price strategies should be used with great caution in certain categories with explicit attributes.

This is also related to the choice of brand architecture. Blindly using the parent brand and selling at a low price is tantamount to suicide.

I guess consumers who originally loved the brand (including me) would think, "WC, you played with mine before, right?"

Author: Xu Dada

Source: WeChat public account "Xu Dada" (ID: gh_c3c1c8f03a16)