Why is coffee getting weirder? Octopus coffee, chili coffee, temple coffee...

Introduction: The fast-moving coffee market has become saturated in recent years. The author also points out the "strange" phenomenon that has emerged in the rapid development. Will the various "inventions" that seem to attract people's attention really help them gain a foothold? This article starts from the core of "product innovation" and brings new ideas to major product developers.

When facing new consumer groups, brands need to use new products, new scenarios and new marketing strategies to capture target audiences, that is, stand at the new consumption trend, in order to increase brand competitiveness and extend the brand life cycle.

In order to cater to emerging consumers, the trend of innovation has swept across all industries, and the coffee industry is no exception. Changes in flavors, packaging, marketing themes, and sales locations have injected fresh vitality into the coffee industry.

0 1There are more and more strange coffees, such as octopus coffee, chili coffee, temple coffee...

Dark dishes are everywhere. Amid fierce competition, the coffee industry has also ushered in its own dark dishes, resulting in more and more weird coffee products.

In terms of taste, there is nothing the brand can’t do, except what you can’t imagine.

The first to subvert people's cognition was the traditional brand. Moutai stood out with its cross-border new tea drinks. Feitian Moutai DIYed milk, coffee and liquor to launch Moutai special blend, which made Moutai coffee unexpectedly popular and attracted coffee shops in the streets and alleys to imitate it.

While major brands are competing to innovate and cater to new consumer groups, catering brands are also not idle, hoping to win the hearts of the audience with more exotic flavors. For example, Tai Er Pickled Fish has launched freshly brewed coffee, pickled cabbage latte, tangerine peel cold brew, peppercorn Americano, chrysanthemum lemon coffee, and tangerine peel flavored drip coffee, which have impressed consumers.

If the coffee flavors of Moutai and Tai Er Pickled Fish are not novel enough, then Seesaw Coffee has incorporated preserved eggs from Chinese food culture into its products. The emergence of preserved egg coffee can be said to be the ceiling of product innovation, which is eye-opening.

At the same time, according to the products posted by netizens on Xiaohongshu, there are many strange coffee combinations such as octopus latte, chili coffee, Americano, coriander coffee, tofu pudding coffee, etc. Various types of coffee are attracting young people to buy and try them.

In addition to innovations in flavor, the diversification of coffee sales locations has become another new feature of the coffee industry. For example, the recently popular temple coffee is actually sold in temples instead of large business districts. For example, the "Cibei" coffee of Yongfu Temple and the Deshou Palace coffee of Deshou Palace have unexpectedly become popular. At the same time, temples such as Longxing Temple in Taizhou, Nanputuo Temple in Xiamen, and Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai have also begun to sell coffee products.

Image source: Xiaohongshu user @许益

At the same time, coffee brands also innovate in design by incorporating newer blind box marketing methods into their products, creating cute and salty products, such as Santonban’s small cans of Elf Coffee, to satisfy young people who are willing to try new things. At the same time, novel and unique designs have become the brand’s social currency, bringing traffic growth to the brand and achieving the effect of integrating brand and effect.

0 2Why are there more and more exotic coffees?

It is not difficult to see that coffee products have been innovated in many aspects, such as sales location, extraction method, packaging design, product taste, etc., through various changes to ensure that the products are interesting enough. Why does this phenomenon occur?

From the perspective of the coffee industry, the internal competition in the industry is an indisputable fact, and product/marketing innovation has become the main theme of the market. As the market matures and competition intensifies, brands have to do everything they can to increase their competitiveness and seek a glimmer of hope for the new era of brands.

Whether it is the cross-border Moutai and Tai Er Pickled Fish, or brand innovations in the coffee field such as Seesaw Coffee and Santonban, their essence is to seek more traffic and help the brand stand out in the fiercely competitive market. It can be said that innovation has become the magic weapon for brands to win in the era of traffic.

From the user perspective, on the one hand, the consumption characteristics of the new consumer group determine the direction of brand innovation. Young people have a strong interest in novel products. Brands launch coffee with strange flavors in order to occupy new consumption highs through curiosity and find new growth curves for the brand.

On the other hand, pressure from society has changed the lives and consumption habits of young people. With the intensification of social competition, young people are facing the dual pressure of life and work. Trying new things and going to temples to burn incense have become new ways for them to relieve negative emotions. Where there are young people, there is attention from brands, and it is easier to create a new consumer market. The popularity of temple coffee and the increase in strange coffee have become a natural thing.

0 3 Product innovation is the brand’s competitive barrier

Obviously, the key to popular drinks is popular taste, but popularity is not enough to attract attention. Those strange combinations can indeed attract attention to a certain extent, but can products with random combinations of flavors really impress users to consume multiple times? If Moutai coffee can guarantee that the taste is not inconsistent, how many people can buy chili coffee and Zheergen coffee twice? If product innovation is just a one-time deal, and only traffic is left, then product innovation loses the most fundamental meaning of creativity.

In the era of traffic, if a brand wants to quickly stand out and gain a steady stream of traffic, and stimulate user emotions to achieve purchases or even repeat purchases, it must innovate in products, break user cognition with newer products, obtain incremental information for the brand, and build a brand's competitive barriers.

For example, while Luckin Coffee was expanding rapidly, it launched the Raw Coconut Latte, which became the common choice of the public. According to the brand's official data, sales of this product have exceeded 300 million cups, which shows the product's ability to attract money and attract attention.

Under the healthy lifestyle, the reason why the original fashionable single product of Coco Tree Coconut Juice, Raw Coconut Latte, is so popular is largely due to product innovation. First, it has 0 lactose and 0 non-dairy creamer, allowing milk tea lovers to drink without burden; second, half coffee and half coconut milk, the unique taste experience left a deep impression on people, making Raw Coconut Latte a best-selling single product of Luckin Coffee, thus building a moat for the Luckin Coffee brand and ensuring the brand's sustainable competitive advantage.

Not only coffee products, but any product innovation, in addition to having discussion value and attracting attention by relying on social attention, should also have consumption capacity, so that product sales growth can drive brand development, and let the product become the brand's hard power to serve brand growth, thereby reducing brand communication costs. Only in this way can the brand's market competitiveness be further enhanced and competitive barriers for brands in the new consumption era be established.

It can be seen that the core of brand competition barriers lies in product differentiation innovation based on user needs. By unlocking the brand differentiation mindset through product innovation, we can occupy the user's mind and make innovative products the brand's biggest moat.

Write to the end

Faced with the increasingly diverse choices of Chinese consumers, seeking novelty may only be a magic weapon for brand traffic in the short term, but cannot become a driving force for long-term development and sustained growth, even if the brand has accumulated a group of loyal fans. In the future, how to capture the hearts of target audiences in the long term is still a topic that brands need to study seriously.

Author: Mr. Bingfa

Source: WeChat public account "Marketing Art of War (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"