From Jay Chou's Magic Body to T97's Chong Chong Chong, is it selling coffee or hyping up concepts?

"Do you want coffee? Do you want welfare? Do you want it? Do you want it?" I'm sure everyone has heard this brainwashing song. This article mainly analyzes the ways and methods of the two brands, Modo Coffee and T97, in the coffee market, and provides new ideas for coffee brand marketing. It is recommended for people with brand marketing needs.

Luckin Coffee, which was initially seen as a "spoiler", encountered many problems in its early development, but it is undeniable that it did spark entrepreneurial enthusiasm in the domestic coffee industry.

As a result, more and more new players have entered the coffee market. Many brands have created their own unique technologies and models, but there are also some brands that have taken strange paths or even purely hyped concepts.

There are two typical examples, one is the superstar legend that has submitted its IPO prospectus many times, and the other is T97 that is very active on the short video platform. Interestingly, both companies seem to still hold on to the declining channel of WeChat business and have no intention of giving up.

1. One trick to win everything: selling IP or selling personality

Superstar Legend and T97, these two companies started from the starting point of micro-business, after a period of development, finally took two paths that look similar but are actually completely different.

The similarity is that both started from WeChat business, and the earliest concept was to reduce fat and lose weight. But the difference is that Superstar Legend is as its name suggests, it is highly dependent on the IP of "Jay Chou". If we look back at the main brand of Superstar Legend, Magic Body Coffee, it is not difficult to find that from the launch of April 2019 to the end of the year, the sales of the brand directly rushed to 71.92 million.

In the second year, this figure increased by nearly 3.6 times, with annual sales of nearly 333 million yuan in 2020. Of course, many practitioners believe that behind this "wild" growth is a star variety show called "Zhou You Ji".

In this variety show, Magic Coffee has been productized almost crazily. Jay Chou, a regular guest of the show, has mentioned Magic Coffee many times in his conversations with his friends, and even carried out long-term "heartfelt" soft product productization. The advertising terms frequently used weight-loss-oriented descriptions such as "enhanced satiety", and it is still the main advertising material used by dealers to expand their customer base.

Of course, regardless of whether the coffee became a hit because of Jay Chou, it is undeniable that the revenue curve of Modo Coffee did experience an extremely steep growth curve that year.

In the first quarter of 2020, before the broadcast of "Zhou You Ji 1", the average monthly sales of Magic Keto Coffee was 140,000 boxes per quarter. Within a year and a half after the broadcast of the program, the average monthly sales were between 134,000 and 223,000 boxes. In 2020, the total sales of Magic Keto Coffee reached 3.31 million boxes, with a revenue of 333 million yuan.

Moreover, in the brand's prospectus, which totals 791 pages, Jay Chou is mentioned 369 times in total. I think no one can deny the strong potential that Jay Chou brings to the brand.

If Superstar Legend takes the high-end celebrity route, T97's approach is relatively down-to-earth. When it comes to the most popular and most magically brainwashing internet celebrity on Tik Tok recently, T97's "big mouth" female anchor must be among them.

A magical segment of "Do you want to make coffee? Do you want to make welfare? Do you want to make welfare? Do you want to make welfare?", accompanied by a female anchor wearing a doll on her head, waving her arms and twisting her body to the rhythm of the music in front of the screen. The most eye-catching thing is her big red and thick mouth. The previous segment of magical rap, the double impact of vision and hearing, is very brainwashing...

This brainwashing viral spread brought great popularity to T97, and its founder also used another type of "big mouth" to complete his own propaganda. He vowed that he did not take Luckin Coffee seriously at all, and T97 would open 1,001 stores within a year. In the future, T97 will rank first, Luckin Coffee second, and Starbucks third in the Chinese coffee market. With such a bold statement, perhaps Li Xiao is ready to be pushed to the forefront.

Obviously, compared with Jay Chou, although "Big Mouth Girl" brought huge traffic to T97, it seemed a bit dwarfed in the actual conversion link. Except for the increase in the sales of raw coconut latte, the other sales can only be said to be mediocre. According to the data from Xinbang, the average sales of each live broadcast of T97 Coffee Flagship Store in recent period of time is between 2,500 and 5,000 pieces, and the average sales are only between 75,000 and 100,000 yuan.

But according to what T97 founder Li Xiao revealed in a recent interview, although the final conversion was not ideal, the anchor's salary still increased rapidly from the initial 4,000 to 40,000 per month, and T97 currently has only 52 stores, which is indeed a key factor limiting T97's order volume.

Even when the number of stores is completely unable to match the traffic, T97 still appears to be very "utilitarian". Instead of trying more new routines, its live broadcast room tries to replicate the success of "Big Mouth Girl" by constantly changing different anchors.

2. Magic Body and T97, brand promotion or traffic leeks

However, although Modou Coffee, which achieved a large sales volume through Jay Chou, inevitably mentioned Jay Chou hundreds of times in its prospectus, it kept emphasizing in subsequent content that the correlation between its brand and Jay Chou's IP was very weak. It submitted its listing prospectus three times in 13 months, and its sales volume was more and more amazing, but its anxiety level did not seem to decrease at all.

At the same time, after Liu Genghong became popular, although the superstar said that he wanted to get rid of his dependence on celebrity IP, in actual actions, he once again started a new deep binding with the popular Liu Genghong.

In fact, the time when Modou Coffee submitted its prospectus for three consecutive times in 13 months was after its sales soared due to its cooperation with IP. Rather than being in a hurry to go public, it seems more like it hopes to use the listing and prospectus issuance as a way to strengthen the proof of its rapid sales growth, to create a new capital story, and to attract the attention of more franchisees.

The same is true for T97, who is even anxious enough to copy a dissemination path that suddenly becomes popular without any basis, and constantly builds momentum on the Internet.

As a result, T97, which has only 47 stores in total, keeps selling products through live streaming, anxious to replicate its successful formula.

Although the founder repeatedly emphasized during the interview that live streaming is not for sales growth, but for brand awareness, from the brand's perspective, if Jay Chou's IP can still bring enough potential to the brand, it is still a question of how much potential the brainwashing magic of "coffee should I drink or not" can bring to the brand. After all, the last company that relied on the magic brainwashing ballad advertisement, Meiji Landou, has been on the verge of a huge dilemma in revenue growth.

Obviously, both the Modo Coffee under the superstar and the recently popular T97 are brands that rely on the popularity of an IP. Modo Coffee is even a bit like an enhanced version of T97, but it is undeniable that the degree of dependence of both parties on their own IPs is unprecedented, and it can almost be said that a heavy burden is tied to their hair.

Both parties obviously understand how highly dependent they are on IP. In its prospectus, Modou Coffee repeatedly emphasizes that it is not entirely dependent on Jay Chou's IP and that it is constantly trying to make new changes. However, from actual actions, Modou Coffee's solution seems to be to bind itself to a new popular IP, Liu Genghong.

As for T97, who has just become popular not long ago, seems to have no anxiety in this regard. The "magic shouting" in the live broadcast room is as grand as ever. It even feels vaguely that her live broadcast room is intentionally or unintentionally strengthening, copying and imitating the characteristic of "big mouth girl", to the point that almost every anchor intentionally or unintentionally makes their mouth bigger when putting on makeup.

Overall, it is difficult to determine whether both parties are really selling coffee, but it is almost certain that both parties are eager to recruit more franchisees.

If Superstar Legend was relatively obscure, T97 was quite straightforward. Its founder Li Xiao posted very straightforward short videos of "Exploring T97 Franchise Stores" on Douyin many times, constantly using the cases of successful franchisees to spread the advantages of joining T97 to the outside world.

What’s interesting is that both parties chose to hide their WeChat business attributes while promoting online, as if they were really ready to transform and make a big move. Modo Coffee packaged it as “online social new retail” and wrote it in its prospectus. However, T97 chose not to mention its online WeChat sales channel at all during the live broadcast.

It seems that these two companies are also ready to promote their own brands, expand the C-end market, and recruit more franchisees, rather than relying on the WeChat business distribution network to complete sales as in the past.

But is this really the case?

The answer is no. A careful study of the listing prospectus of Superstar Legend reveals that the main uses of the funds raised from the listing include developing new products, increasing brand exposure, and creating unique celebrity IPs. However, when describing future plans, it still mentioned several times that the star matrix would be expanded to better feed back the new retail business, which shows that the overall path has not changed.

When it comes to T97, it is still as straightforward as above. Although live streaming has brought huge traffic and popularity to T97, part of this traffic and popularity has made it famous as the "Magic Big Mouth Girl", and the other half has been consumed by the founder Li Xiao through the massive sale of courses and recruitment of franchisees. As for how much popularity and memory the brand itself has gained, it is hard to say.

When recruiting dealers, a senior agent of T97 even said very bluntly, "T97 is just one of the brands of Xirou (T97's parent company). The company is using it to open up the market and increase its visibility. If the heat is over one day, we still have other brands that are strong enough to do business in the market."

As for the current situation, is it still hard to say whether it is brand expansion or a sickle to harvest franchisees? And now, it seems that it is difficult for both Modo Coffee and T97 to achieve rapid growth.

3. The coffee market is involuted, but we must guard against arrogance and impatience

With the crazy involution in the coffee industry, T97 and Modo Coffee seem to be sprinting continuously, but this "sprint" is to some extent used in the wrong place and turns into impatience.

As mentioned above, there is a lot written in the prospectus of Modo Coffee, but the focus is almost all on the deep binding of the star matrix and new stars, which seems to be a copy of the old successful path. The same is true for T97. Even if we ignore the question of how much value this kind of magical brainwashing video can bring to the brand, the boss hastily began to try to copy and fission the next "Big Mouth Girl", and even the impatience of being eager to realize the value through selling live courses has also cast a shadow on its brand.

Different from the anxiety to realize and the impatience to write new stories, both sides seem to be neither arrogant nor impatient when it comes to honing their internal skills.

First of all, at the marketing level, the investments of both parties are almost the same old stuff. The coffee industry is so severely involuted that brands such as Luckin Coffee were almost burning money in various ways during the early market education period. It is obvious that it is not easy for new brands to enter the market, or even to educate the market.

On the other hand, although the marketing budget of Magic Coffee and T97 has been increasing every year, it has never exceeded 30% of total revenue. According to the description in the prospectus, they seem to be preparing to repeat the routines of many years ago. The other one, apart from relying on its own popular Internet celebrity "Big Mouth Girl" and its founder's "Big Mouth" propaganda such as defeating Luckin Coffee within a year, has almost no other communication points about the brand.

Especially at a time when WeChat business channels are gradually declining and urgently need transformation, catching the last train of social e-commerce to complete the transformation is almost the best option. However, at present, the two most important things in switching from WeChat business brands to directly facing consumers - brand power and product power - may not be enough.

Although it sounds good, brand power has always been an important moat in the beverage industry. As many practitioners have told Morketing, the reason why Coca-Cola has its current status is not because of its formula, but because it owns the Coca-Cola brand. Now the brand power of both companies is almost entirely dependent on a certain IP and is too dependent on a single channel and idea.

The second is the back-end supply chain capabilities. In addition to the brand, Coca-Cola has been able to maintain its long-lasting position over the past many years precisely because of its extremely strong back-end capabilities. It can make a profit at a price of 2.5 yuan and increase profits through large-scale shipments. Apart from Coca-Cola, very few beverage companies can do this. Therefore, the thin profit margin has killed many competitors for Coca-Cola.

Finally, the products seem to be a bit inadequate. Although both T97 and Modo Coffee claim to have invested a lot in the research and development of new products, whether from the content of live sales or WeChat business channels, the products of both parties are a bit "too classic". For example, the raw coconut latte, durian fruit tea, or various basic models have the shadow of many popular products in the past few years.

At the same time, the publicity of both parties is surprisingly consistent, with a bit of old-fashioned color from a few years ago. Both brands still hold on to the two product characteristics of "fat loss and weight loss" which are very easy to cause controversy and are basically difficult to publicize in public. Magic Coffee is more cautious in marketing in public channels, often packaging its products with concepts such as "health management" and "meal replacement", but the rhetoric of distributors on social media is more straightforward about the weight loss effect.

Similarly, when many media outlets consulted T97 dealers about the products, they were told that "each product can help you lose weight, and the effect will be better when used together." The internal brand introduction document was also filled with the word "weight management."

Even if we ignore whether coffee can achieve such a magical effect, the fact that both parties rely almost entirely on OEM production model is enough to cast doubt on the reliability of the formula.

It can be seen that compared with the difficulties of switching to direct sales and building a brand image, the long-established micro-business empire has tens of thousands of distributors, and it is naturally more tempting to make money by using this network, and it is more difficult to give up. To put it more bluntly, it is easier and faster to package yourself as the next Luckin Coffee and directly cut the leeks of consumers than to work hard to sell products and make money.

IV. Conclusion

Even if we put aside the past experiences of the founders, the flaws of the two brands are obvious, especially in the context of fierce competition in the coffee industry. The shortcomings of the brands will almost certainly pose a hidden danger to the long-term and stable survival of the brands. However, how they will develop in the future can only be left to time to prove.

But one thing will not change in this process. Whether it is franchisees or consumers, some people may believe it temporarily due to short-term hype, but it may not be easy to make them believe it forever.

Author: New Consumer Daily

Source: WeChat public account "New Consumer Daily (ID: NewConsumerDaily)"