Why do we say that Zibo BBQ understands traffic better than 90% of brands?

Zibo barbecue is very popular, and another Internet celebrity city is born. So can Zibo city have the ability to take on the traffic and do a good job in brand marketing? The author of this article intends to analyze it for you from the perspective of brand marketing. If you are interested, come and have a look.

"It is said that the last time Zibo was so lively was in Qi State."

"Mutton skewers, pork belly, and grilled clams are all delicious. I ate three of them in one night. I'm like a pig."

"There is no shortage of weight or rotten meat. The people of Shandong are very generous!"

Because of the popularity of barbecue, Zibo has seen a surge in passenger traffic recently, even busier than during the Spring Festival travel rush in previous years. According to the Workers' Daily, on April 15 alone, more than 83,000 passengers arrived and departed from Zibo Railway Station, setting a new record for the station's single-day passenger arrival and departure volume.

Lu Ken, a senior investment manager who has been paying close attention to areas such as fast-moving consumer goods, told Daofa that he personally went to Zibo to experience the local atmosphere and found that there were long queues at local barbecue restaurants almost every night, regardless of whether they were famous Internet celebrity restaurants or not.

In the past week, there have been endless analyses of Zibo's traffic secrets. However, Daofa Research Institute believes that Zibo's popularity is essentially a victory for long-termism. Behind this carnival, there are things that are more worthy of brands' deep consideration than the hot product methodology and traffic secrets.

In this article, I intend to view the city of Zibo as a brand from the perspective of brand marketing, and share with you the following three points:

1. How does Zibo, a small city with limited resources, use its own advantages to penetrate the crowd and build potential energy?
2. Taking Chengdu, Changsha and other old internet celebrity cities as examples, what is the key methodology from becoming an internet celebrity to becoming a long-term celebrity?
3. After becoming a top traffic star, what practical methods does Zibo have to extend user lifetime value (LTV)?

Next, let’s start with the fact that Zibo barbecue has become popular.

01 Barbecue is available everywhere, why is it so popular in Zibo?

Do you remember how Zibo barbecue first became popular?

The story of the quarantined college students and the local municipal government "running in both directions" has been widely circulated online. However, if the supplier Zibo is regarded as a "brand", it is a clue in another sense.

First, let’s look at the product barriers, which is the origin of Zibo BBQ’s popularity this time.

Lu Ken, who personally went to Zibo to experience it, learned from local barbecue merchants that Zibo barbecue has a history of at least several decades. As the food and humanities documentary "A String of Life 3" said, it is "the only smoke-filled barbecue in the country that still has independent small stoves and is purely charcoal-grilled." Whether it is the stove, small pancakes and green onion set, or the accompanying sweet noodle sauce, they are all local "standard products." To some extent, these single products and their combinations have become SOP-ized.

Even the signature action of eating skewers and the smell of smoky air that everyone feels when eating barbecue around the stove, it is difficult for tourists to find "substitutes" elsewhere.

The second is price positioning. "Merchants are generous and real" has become one of the labels of Zibo barbecue. In other words, it is "value for money".

Lu Ken told Daofa that there were 7 people in total who went to Zibo. They ordered a barbecue meal for 416 yuan, which they could not finish. According to the actual amount of food, the average cost per person was only 50 yuan. "I couldn't help but post three messages in a row on WeChat Moments to fill up the screen. It was delicious and substantial."

This "value for money" gives many tourists who come here an experience beyond their expectations, especially college students. They have a stronger desire to explore and share. After discovering the treasure of Zibo barbecue, they are more likely to spread word of mouth on social media.

Facts have proved that college students are also the core group that first promoted the popularity of Zibo barbecue. As early as early March, the single topic search volume of "College students go to Zibo to eat barbecue" had reached 5.253 million, ranking first on the Douyin local search list.

By early April, this real cost-effectiveness was more intuitively demonstrated on social media platforms. For example, the B station up master "superB太" took an electronic scale to 10 barbecue stalls in Zibo and found that none of them was short of weight. The relevant video content was also quoted by CCTV and other official media.

As the discussion heats up, popular star Zhao Xiaotang recently live-streamed herself eating Zibo barbecue during the May Day movie roadshow, and the topic was read more than 75 million times in less than a day.

Whether it is central media or entertainment stars, they have further promoted the exposure of Zibo barbecue to the general public.

At this point, Zibo barbecue has its own "brand moat" - for tourists, the unique street BBQ atmosphere cannot be experienced outside Zibo; for other businesses, it is difficult to restore local products while providing better value for money.

Based on the above, during the process of dissemination, Zibo barbecue quickly formed the mentality of "special barbecue that can only be experienced in Zibo".

In addition to attracting tourists, it is also necessary to create opportunities for them to contact and consume, which involves thinking at the channel level. Daofa noted that in the question of "how can Zibo barbecue reach tourists", the following prerequisites need to be met:

The first step is to use our own resources to facilitate tourists from other places to travel to Zibo.

Zibo is very close to many cities in Shandong Province, and Shandong and its surrounding areas such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang are all populous provinces. Under the general trend of economic recovery, the enthusiasm for going out that has been suppressed for a long time is constantly being released. Among them, short-distance trips such as travel within the province and surrounding areas are easier to achieve.

According to the "Luzhong Morning News", on March 10, the Information Office of the Zibo Municipal Government held a press conference, proposing March to November as the "Zibo Barbecue Season", and planned to hold the "Zibo Barbecue Festival" around May 1, establish the "Golden Furnace Award" for famous Zibo barbecue restaurants, establish a barbecue association, and directly distribute 250,000 barbecue consumption coupons. At the same time, a barbecue high-speed rail train was set up to further facilitate tourists' travel and consumption.

The second step is to sort out the barbecue spots in Zibo to allow tourists to better access the "terminals" and ensure the consumer experience.

This includes supporting measures such as the barbecue bus line announced by the local government, half-price youth hostels, free shuttle buses, armed police to maintain night market safety, and a series of measures released by the local cultural tourism industry. Tourists can enjoy a one-stop service of eating, drinking and having fun in Zibo. The phenomenon of boosting local cultural tourism has also attracted the attention of blue Vs such as CCTV News, People's Daily, and Metropolis Times. As of April 24, the cumulative number of readings of the Weibo entry #梓博烤鸭# has reached 460 million.

Looking back at the whole incident, we found that although college students, online celebrities visiting the store, and the celebrity effect played a very important role in the dissemination process, the popularity of Zibo barbecue cannot be simply attributed to finding the right customer base. On the contrary, by fully utilizing its own resources to build infrastructure, making the product experience keep up with the marketing enthusiasm, and making more and more consumers feel that the trip is worthwhile, we can finally achieve a carnival that is appreciated by both the elite and the masses, and truly improve the city's own potential energy through multiple hot searches.

From the combination of local cultural and tourism activities, we can also see that they do not want "Zibo BBQ" to remain at the level of Internet celebrities, but insist on long-termism. All these ideas also apply to us brand people.

02 Stories about those Internet-famous city church brands

The legendary artist Andy Warhol predicted in the last century that in the future, everyone could become famous within 15 minutes.

Today, it may only take 15 seconds for a city to become an Internet celebrity. The tumbler in the Tang Dynasty City that never sleeps in Xi'an, the light rail that passes through the wall in Liziba, Chongqing, the meat skewers, wraps, and spring onions three-piece set in Zibo... these short videos, timed in seconds, bring people to their respective cities along the Internet.

Internet celebrity cities emerge one after another. Do they look like the crazy new consumer brands in the past few years? Everyone has the opportunity to become famous overnight, but some are short-lived and some remain popular forever. City marketing and brand marketing have many similarities. The Daofa Research Institute attempts to separate the essence of marketing from the appearance of Internet celebrity cities.

In addition to the recently popular Zibo, looking back at the "old internet celebrity cities" such as Chengdu and Changsha, we found that it is easy to attract traffic, but it is difficult to retain it.

When it comes to Chengdu, many people know about Chengdu hotpot, mahjong, pandas, and teahouses. But few people know that Chengdu's road to becoming an Internet celebrity originated from a "crisis public relations".

After the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, Chengdu’s economy and tourism industry stagnated. In order to reshape the city’s image, the Chengdu government took a different approach and chose to use cultural strategies to create a new city name card. To this end, Chengdu established a “Chengdu City Image Promotion Coordination Group” composed of professionals from self-media, media companies, tourism groups, and investment departments.

The team first established the publicity theme of "Chengdu is a better place because of you", and expressed Chengdu's gratitude to other cities across the country through various online and offline channels such as news, billboards, exhibitions, and social networks. At the same time, it showed the various details of Chengdu's reconstruction process, allowing people to see that Chengdu people have tenacity and optimism despite their casual and comfortable lifestyle.

Under this marketing strategy, what Chengdu created was not some hit short video, but a true transmission of values. People who like Chengdu like Chengdu's lifestyle and philosophy.

The inspiration that Chengdu provides for brand marketing is, first, to let professionals do professional things, and second, to establish a stable value system that resonates with users' emotions in order to build a deep connection.

In addition, Chengdu is also very good at capturing hot spots. For example, after Kung Fu Panda became popular, Chengdu immediately invited the film's creative team to visit. As a result, Chengdu elements such as mahjong appeared in Kung Fu Panda 2. When the trend of short videos rose in 2018, 39 government agencies in Chengdu entered Douyin. This accelerated Chengdu's Internet celebrity status and made it known to more people.

Another city that has become an internet celebrity by taking advantage of the short video trend is Changsha. The difference is that Changsha has maximized its two major characteristics - nightlife and food - through high-quality content.

Changsha's road to becoming an internet celebrity almost rose together with the new consumption boom. Cha Yan Yue Se, Wen He You, San Dun Ban... Changsha has become a breeding ground for new consumer brands and a "pilgrimage site" for users. Some people take a three-hour high-speed train just to drink a cup of Cha Yan Yue Se, while the queue at the Wen He You restaurant next door is 20,000 people in one day.

If Changsha is regarded as a brand, Cha Yan Yue Se and Wen He You are both its products. To create a phenomenal spread, the marketing department is naturally indispensable. Changsha may be one of the cities that is best at shooting city promotional videos. Other cities shoot promotional videos: beautiful mountains, beautiful waters, and beautiful scenery, but Changsha is unique, and it has a story about the police station.

The documentary "Guarding Jiefang West" made Changsha Pozi Street Police Station a popular check-in spot, and also made Changsha's image as a "city that never sleeps" deeply rooted in people's hearts. In the upcoming movie "Changsha Nightlife", Changsha even overshadowed all the leading actors and became the protagonist.

03 “Traffic” becomes “retention”, can Zibo maintain stability?

Many people forget that the second half of Andy Warhol's 15 Minutes of Fame is: Everyone can only be famous for 15 minutes. Just half an hour is enough for an ordinary person to experience the whole process from becoming famous to falling.

The question is, how long can the current top-tier Zibo remain popular? The Daofa Research Institute believes that whether Zibo is an Internet celebrity or a long-term celebrity depends on whether it has the ability to take over the traffic and provide a continuous high-quality experience after attracting huge traffic in the short term.

After becoming an Internet celebrity, Zibo has also faced huge pressure from passenger flow. Taxis can’t handle the passengers, bath centers are crowded with tourists overflowing from hotels, and barbecue stalls are set up in front of hospitals... Some people have begun to worry that Zibo will suffer a backlash from traffic due to the decline in tourist experience.

But so far, Zibo's performance has not disappointed. On April 22, the Zibo Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued a notice that hotel prices should not increase by more than 50% before and after May Day. This has brought Zibo a wave of goodwill when hotel prices across the country have increased several times.

On the social platform, a blogger deliberately tested whether Zibo took the opportunity to "cut leeks". When taking a taxi, he deliberately said that he was from another place and asked the driver to recommend a nearby barbecue restaurant. Unexpectedly, the driver did not take a detour at all. The owner of the barbecue restaurant heard that he was from another place and gave him a drink instead.

In order to ensure the tourists' experience, every penny should be spent. You know, there are huge benefits behind the traffic. Zibo did not choose to reap in the short term, but focused on long-term development. It is this investment that makes everyone see Zibo's sincerity and turns the traffic into "retention".

Similarly, brand marketing also needs to consider the issue of traffic retention. Many of the emerging brands that have emerged in the past two years have fallen into trouble due to blind expansion. More important than attracting traffic is the ability to receive traffic.

The marketing methods of Internet celebrity cities do have many things that are worth learning from, but behind the appearance of being popular, long-term refined operations are the fundamental driving force for long-term success. This is something that brands should learn more about than the methodology of popular products.

Author: Jingmin, Chu Qing

Source public account: Knife Skills Research Institute (ID: DigipontClub), insight into new consumption, empowerment of new brands, analysis of new marketing, and creation of good Chinese brands.