How did boiled water become so successful that it sells 3 billion yuan a year through marketing?

In recent years, a new product has emerged in the bottled water market: boiled water. It has sold 3 billion yuan a year through marketing, but the reason for its success is not product innovation but marketing innovation. This article analyzes its marketing strategy, let's take a deeper look.

When summer comes, the bottled water market is booming again. In recent years, an outlier has suddenly appeared in the bottled water market - boiled water. The reason why boiled water is an outlier is that it is completely different from the existing pure water and natural water in bottled water. Instead, it has created a new category of so-called "cooked water" and quickly achieved great success.

In 2016, Jinmailang launched boiled water bottled water, and sold 5 million boxes that year. Sales reached 250 million in 2017, 1.25 billion in 2018, and exceeded 2 billion in 2019. In 2022, sales of boiled water exceeded 3 billion, creating a huge new bottled water market out of thin air.

1. Create a new category of cooked water and create a new concept

The history of Chinese brand bottled water has exceeded 30 years. After years of competition and development, the market has gradually stabilized.

According to Guanyan Tianxia's data in 2021, my country's bottled water market is currently dominated by natural water and purified water. Six brands have a market share of 80%. Among them, Nongfu Spring has a market share of 26.5%, ranking first; followed by China Resources Yilibao, with a market share of 21.3%; then Master Kong, accounting for 10.1%; Wahaha, Baishuishan, and Ice Dew have market shares of 9.9%, 7.4%, and 5.3% respectively.

In this case, it is difficult to re-create a natural water or purified water brand, so developing a new category becomes a reliable idea.

In 2016, Jinmailang launched a brand of bottled water called "Liangbaikai", claiming that it uses clean and good water, filters it through reverse osmosis membranes, pressurizes it to 125 degrees to complete the sterilization process, and uses a fully closed process with a high temperature of 80°C for filling.

This description sounds quite high-energy. Let me explain it briefly. If you have a reverse osmosis water purifier at home, take a pot of water, boil it and let it cool, the effect will be not much different from Jinmailang boiled water.

But the beauty of boiled water lies in its positioning and naming. It basically repeats the path of marketing innovation of Nongfu Spring natural water.

In the 1990s, the main bottled water on the market was purified water, and major brands such as Yilibao and Wahaha had already occupied a large market share.

In this environment, Nongfu Spring created the concept of "natural water" and continued to "bombard" purified water on this basis, claiming that purified water does not contain trace elements and that long-term drinking of purified water is harmful to health.

In fact, drinking purified water is not harmful to health. The source of trace elements has never been water, and the beneficial substances in water are minimal. However, Nongfu Spring’s massive condemnation has given consumers the impression that “natural water” is healthier than “purified water”, and Nongfu Spring is synonymous with “natural water”, so Nongfu Spring has benefited greatly from this incident.

Liangbaikai used a similar trick to Nongfu Spring. First, it defined itself as "cooked water", which distinguished itself from all other bottled water brands - all other bottled water brands are raw water. Chinese people have always been averse to raw things, so they were immediately attracted to this concept.

Based on the positioning of cooked water, Jinmailang named its cooked water "Liangbaikai". Liangbaikai has always been the habit of Chinese people to drink water at home. This name evokes consumers' memory and intuition. At the same time, this name brings traffic - we can actually buy Liangbaikai, and "Liangbaikai" has really become a traffic "tap water".

In terms of packaging, boiled water is mainly designed and packaged in a simple way, which makes consumers feel that the water is natural, pure and clean. This is just like the vitamin water that was popular for a while. Its outer packaging looks like a medicine with instructions written on it, which makes people naturally think that the water is a vitamin supplement.

The positioning of cooked water and the name of boiled water grasp the market psychology and meet the needs of a large number of consumers.

2. Cool boiled water meets the three major needs of consumers

First of all, boiled water meets the cultural needs of consumers. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, people had the habit of boiling water before drinking it. The main purpose was to sterilize and prevent the spread of waterborne infectious diseases, which was reasonable given the water source at the time. Today, although China's water quality has long been improved, this habit still continues today. Many people like to boil purified water to drink even if they have a water purifier at home. Once they catch a cold, diarrhea, etc., drinking hot water is considered a "natural medicine" by many Chinese people. It is for this reason that many advertisements for boiled water deliberately emphasize this point.

Secondly, boiled water meets consumers' psychological needs for health. As mentioned above, in the early days of the People's Republic of China, drinking boiled water helped prevent infectious diseases. But today, whether it is purified tap water or bottled water, it has been fully disinfected and there is no problem of bacterial contamination. It is unnecessary to pour it out, boil it, and let it cool before drinking it. This is also the reason why foreigners do not drink boiled water.

Despite this, consumers still believe that boiled water is healthier. Although there is no scientific basis for this, consumers do not care about the scientific basis. They believe that the habit of decades has its own reasons. The emergence of boiled water meets consumers' psychological needs for health. Note that it is a psychological need. Boiling purified water is healthier than pure water itself. This is essentially a placebo, but after taking this placebo, consumers will feel much more comfortable. Third, boiled water meets consumers' convenience needs.

In the past, boiled water could only be made at home, but now boiled water can be taken with you in the form of bottled water, without having to boil it yourself, which undoubtedly meets consumers' demand for convenience. By positioning boiled water as cooked water, boiled water has formed a differentiated advantage over competing products. Next, boiled water will occupy consumers' minds about this category with huge advertising investment.

3. Advertising expression and marketing strategy of boiled water

If you have seen the advertisements for boiled water shortly after it came out, you will find that its expression is very simple. The main picture is a person picking up boiled water and drinking it in big gulps, and the text repeats a few limited words: "Cooked water, boiled water, really quenches thirst."

Although this advertisement is simple, it fully reflects consumers' demand for bottled water culture, health, and convenience. Later, Liangbai Kai made an even more amazing advertisement with the slogan "More in line with the Chinese people's physique". "More in line with the Chinese people's XX" is very easy for Chinese people to buy it. There was a milk powder that was advertised for many years, called "More in line with the Chinese baby's physique". When I saw it, I thought Chinese babies were alien species, but it was this slogan that made a large number of Chinese parents buy it.

The same line applies to the “better suitability of Chinese people’s physique” of boiled water. No one has investigated why boiled water is more suited to Chinese people’s physique, but consumers will think it is. The advertisement of boiled water is closely centered around positioning, allowing consumers to engrave the concept of “cooked water” in their minds, and then establish itself—boiled water—as the only representative of cooked water, thus influencing consumers’ decisions.

4. The marketing strategy of Liangbaikai for young people

Chinese people have been drinking boiled water on a large scale for decades, but the younger generation may not have this habit. Therefore, the problem facing boiled water is how to get young people to drink boiled water. In this regard, boiled water has also taken great pains.

During the 2020 college entrance examination, Liangbaikai went to many middle schools in Xingtai, Jingxian and other places in Hebei Province to provide free water to college entrance examination students. This strategy is to let college entrance examination students and their parents remember that Liangbaikai is the best water for children. Since 2017, Liangbaikai has sponsored CBA and become the official drinking water of CBA. The largest audience of CBA events is naturally young people. By appearing in every corner of the stadium, Liangbaikai's popularity has also quickly increased. Liangbaikai has also cooperated with IPs or brands such as "Ace vs. Ace", "King of Glory", and Luckin Coffee to influence young consumers.

Boiled water has an advantage in marketing to young people, which is that it meets the health needs of contemporary young people. Boiled water is naturally considered to be more beneficial to health in China, and using health to drive consumer purchases is obviously a good youth strategy.

V. Conclusion

Just as Nongfu Spring created a new category of natural water out of thin air in addition to purified water, and quickly occupied the market to become the leader in natural water, Jinmailang's boiled water created a new category of cooked water in addition to natural and purified water, and occupied this category under the name of "boiled water", creating a market with annual sales of billions.

Boiled water is not a product innovation. After all, boiled water is drinking water that everyone can make. It is a marketing innovation that has created a new market by creating a new concept. Such marketing innovations have happened more than once in China.

Author: Xunkong

WeChat public account: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation (ID: xunkong2005)