Business growth case: There is no secret in marketing, the brand survives to the end

This article analyzes the reasons for the growth of major brands from the perspective of four major growth types, and also analyzes the marketing methods of these brands, and gives forward-looking speculations on their future strategies for breaking out of the circle. I hope it will bring inspiration to you who are concerned about brand marketing.

Four types of growth

1. Low-price vacancies, price killer: Mixue Ice City-style growth (Helens)
2. Quality iteration, better and more expensive, Zhong Xue high-type growth (Xiao Xian Dun)
3. New generation, new category: Ubras-type growth (Neiwai, Bananain)
4. Discover small categories and take over brands: Micoland type growth

01Low -price vacancies, price killer

Mixue Ice City-type growth

The market pricing of an industry can be simply divided into three levels: high, medium and low.

The milk tea brand market is no exception: new-style tea drinks represented by Heytea and Nayuki are priced at more than 25 yuan per cup; those represented by CoCo and Guming are priced at 10-20 yuan; and those represented by Mixue Bingcheng are priced below 10 yuan.

Heytea and Nayuki adopt high-price strategies to target the core business districts in first- and second-tier cities, CoCo and Guming are positioned in the mid-range, and Mixue Bingcheng sticks to the low-price + "surrounding the city from the countryside" strategy.

Each brand has chosen its own path based on the different factor endowments of the organization. The question is whether you can build a complete set of operational features around brand positioning so that consumers will feel that your products (brands) are cool (HEYTEA, NAYUKI), very worthwhile (MIXUE), and definitely not mediocre.

In the milk tea market, there is never one more cup of milk tea, nor one less cup of milk tea. The question is: how to make consumers choose you. This is true for the milk tea market, as well as other markets.

The reason why low-priced vacancies exist is because of the consumer demand in the sinking market. From drinking bottled water and concentrated beverages to drinking a cup of milk tea, the so-called sinking market in a real consumer motivation may not mean "sinking" but rather "upgrading" of consumption - what really brings value to business is demand and customer choice.

In fact, it is not the case that the higher the price goes, the more valuable it is. A business that looks sexy and that really makes money are two different things. Do you want to run a profitable business or a sexy business?

For 90% of business owners, they may not have thought it through. According to the financial report: Naixue's revenue in three years was 5.7 billion, and it lost 138 million. In 2020, Naixue's net profit was 4.484 million yuan, and the overall net profit margin was only 0.2%.

Another thing to remind you is that simply low prices are not a strategy, but the low cost behind them is a strategy. The low price advantage brought by total cost leadership can enable your organization to form a strategic advantage (total cost leadership, differentiation, and focus: from Porter's competitive strategy).

Different from new tea drinks such as Heytea and Nayuki’s Tea that focus on fresh fruit and fresh milk, Mixue Ice City’s products are mainly prepared with ingredients such as jam and milk tea powder. This also greatly reduces the cost of materials required for the cold chain. With the construction of the supply chain (Misue Ice City was the only one in the industry that built its own logistics), Mixue Ice City has achieved the ultimate cost-effectiveness and has become Xiangpiaopiao Plus+.

In June 2020, Mixue Bingcheng’s official Weibo account announced that the number of its stores worldwide had exceeded 10,000, making it the first tea beverage brand to have over 10,000 stores. The resulting supply chain and upstream and downstream premium capabilities have in turn enhanced the low price of its products. Ice cream and lemonade can be copied, but the prices of Mixue Bingcheng are difficult to imitate.

In the process of quantitative change to qualitative change, Mixue Bingcheng has always accumulated organizational resources and coordinated operations around brand positioning, thus establishing a set of industry-leading low-cost strategies that belong to it. The more stores it has, the more successful its low-cost strategy is, and the more successful its low-cost strategy is, the more stores it has. When Mixue Bingcheng was the first in the industry to break through 10,000 stores, it also successfully cultivated its left-handed fighting skills, and from then on it became a school of its own, the Mixue Bingcheng school.

02Quality iteration, better and more expensive

Zhong Xue high growth

From 2007 to 2013, with the rising costs of raw materials such as milk, sugar, chocolate, as well as labor, transportation, and refrigeration, ice cream officially bid farewell to the era of one yuan pricing.

After 2013, traditional ice cream brands needed to find a new growth curve. They had always been positioned in the mid-range market, and digging for gold in the high-end market became the only way for traditional ice cream brands to grow. In 2016, domestic brands began to impact prices upwards, taking the high-end route, competing with foreign brands such as Nestle, Baskin-Robbins, and DQ for the market, and ice cream entered the 3-8 yuan stage.

In 2018, internet-famous ice creams flooded the market, and ice cream moved from offline to online, with prices also entering the 10 yuan+ era.

In 2018, there were only more than 60 online ice cream brands, but in 2019, this number has increased to more than 140. With such competition, branding is the only logic and branding is the only survival rule. For new consumer brands, the core is to redefine the value of the category.

From the perspective of physical properties (use value): there is never one more ice cream in the world, nor one less. French sociologist Jean Baudrillard once said: "People never consume things themselves (use value), they always use things as symbols that can highlight themselves.

It is human nature to get tired of the old and love the new: the demand is always there, waiting to be better satisfied. In fact, to better meet the needs of consumers, we must first have better products, breakthroughs in products, and go against common sense to gain greater consensus.

There has never been a so-called logic that marketing is good enough - things that go into your mouth cannot influence you; there has never been a logic that a good product means it cannot be marketed. Products and marketing are two sides of the same coin.

In May 2018, Zhong Xue Gao's first product was launched. From the beginning, Zhong Xue Gao was committed to creating an ice cream that was different from the past. The classic tile-shaped appearance, plus a "proverb" on each ice cream stick that can only be seen after eating, all became the labels that distinguished Zhong Xue Gao from other ice creams on the market.

Zhong Xue Gao has transformed ice cream from a basic category at a relatively low level of Maslow's needs into a self-oriented category, or even a superego category. The brand positioning divides its consumer groups, and consumers form a dramatic "separation" from others in the symbolic consumption of ice cream, realizing symbolic consumption and symbolic consumption, thereby enhancing the product's premium ability and surpassing the physical attributes of ice cream.

Visual difference: Different from traditional ice cream, Zhong Xue Gao has made a breakthrough in product appearance, changing the old visual sense of square, round, strip and stick of traditional ice cream. It combines with traditional Chinese architectural elements and chooses tile shape, breaking everyone's perception of traditional ice products.

Whether a product is good or not depends first on whether consumers are willing to share it with you. Because of the huge difference in appearance recognition, Zhong Xue Gao naturally has the qualifications to be "shared" - if a product is not "Internet celebrity" enough, it is not qualified to become a hit.

What goes into your mouth can't deceive you, and warmth is hidden in the details: Compared with the situation where traditional ice cream brands have dozens of SUKs, Zhong Xue Gao chose a short, few and refined product route from the beginning. The regular products only have about 8 types such as light milk, velvet cocoa and Ghana black gold. The others are mostly some joint models and seasonal limited models. The product structure is arranged by a small number of SKU strategies, which changes the seasonal and random characteristics of ice cream and prolongs the consumption time.

If consumers are happy at the peak and end of an experience, then they will feel happy about the entire experience. The feeling in the mouth is not deceiving, and there is warmth in the details. In addition to the special chocolate flavor ingredients, Zhong Xuegao's other products do not add food additives, stabilizers, etc. Dairy products and cream are repeatedly tested. In order to ensure the peak taste experience, one ingredient must undergo 70 tests.

In addition, in order to make a good popsicle stick, he invested 20 million yuan in the supply chain to support his suppliers to carry out standardized and regular operations in terms of equipment, technology, management, and funding. He was the first to change the popsicle sticks from wood to biodegradable straw that meets the national edible grade.

Group suggestion and group imitation constitute the underlying logic of popularity. Communication is essentially group imitation behavior under group suggestion. That is, it does not use direct persuasion or coercion, but indirect suggestion to make people accept a certain point of view or engage in a certain behavior.

According to a survey conducted by Clour Research, 67.8% of users believe that content that promotes good products has a great influence on product selection and eventual purchasing behavior, 74% of users have purchased products that have been promoted, and 80.7% of users will complete the purchase within a week after being promoted.

Avoiding the crowded offline market and going online symbolically: In the past, ice cream was purchased in supermarkets, hypermarkets and convenience stores, which have long been occupied by brands such as Yili, Mengniu and Lu Mengxue, making it difficult to break through. Zhong Xuegao avoided the offline battlefield in the early days and adopted online sales, and made ice cream a symbolic phenomenon and phenomenon symbol with social attributes.

Focusing on in-depth penetration, seeding, and recommendation on Xiaohongshu, a positive cycle has been formed in the chain of posting orders-paying attention-purchasing. During the Double Eleven period in 2020, Zhong Xue Gao ranked first in sales in the ice category on Tmall, and the number of fans of its Tmall flagship store has reached more than 1.8 million. In 2020, 34 million ice creams were shipped out of the warehouse throughout the year.

Currently, there are more than 20,000 notes about Zhong Xue Gao on Xiaohongshu, most of which are from mid-level KOLs, and the others are mostly evaluation notes from ordinary people.

On April 1, 2020, Luo Yonghao's first live broadcast of selling goods attracted more than 48 million viewers and a transaction volume of over 100 million yuan, among which Zhong Xuegao was one of them.

Brand co-branding, topic tags: cross-border cooperation with well-known brands. Such as Wahaha, Luzhou Laojiao, Three Squirrels, Fiyta Watch, Roewe Automobile, Nayuki Tea, Xiaoxiandun. Through co-branding with Luzhou Laojiao to launch "White Wine Blackout Ice Cream", co-branding with Fresh Bird's Nest Xiaoxiandun to launch "Bird's Nest Lava Ice Cream", etc., ice cream products with different flavors can meet the needs of different users.

Cross-border collaboration is not about putting two logos together, but about using and binding customers together. Through brand collaboration, new scenes are created to stimulate new interests, generate new topics, and attach new labels.

Celebrity endorsement, customized products: Signed Tong Liya, Zhou Yiwei, and Ao Ziyi as brand spokespersons. Through the influence of celebrities, we can cover a wider range of people, step out of the "niche" circle, and quickly expand brand awareness and influence, as well as the reach of brand information.

There are no secrets in marketing, and the brand survives to the end.

03New generation, creating new categories

Ubras-type growth

Nothing has greater potential for growth than a new category. If this category also happens to come with its own dividends, it is likely to produce a "hot commodity".

In 2010, Liu Xiaolu, who was on maternity leave, opened her closet and couldn't find a comfortable bra. 40% of the European underwear market is wire-free, and the proportion in Japan is even higher, almost 50%, while in China, wire-free underwear accounts for only 10%.

She quit her high-paying job at a consulting firm, rented a small office on Wuding Road in Shanghai for 5,500 yuan, founded the brand "Neiwai", and launched its first underwire-free bra in 2014.

Two years later, in 2016, Ubras was founded, and launched size-free bras based on the innovation of underwire-free bras. Size-free bras are an upgrade of underwire-free bras. The feature of "no need to try on" solves the pain points of traditional bras being difficult to try on and women having to re-buy bras due to changes in their body shape.

And established the "size-free" standard (PR), Ubras and the industry association established a set of "size-free" series product enterprise standards, promoting "size-free" products to become more Chinese women's "barrier-free" underwear choices. From this point of view, Ubras is obviously a step ahead, and knows how to build a brand and lead the new category.

• Building a high-end brand should be like religion, compassion for the world and people, I think therefore I am
• Mid-range brands should be like the Godfather, teach the middle class, and pretend to be moderate
• Low-end brands should be like clowns, coaxing the public to be happy and giggling
• The entry-level brand should be like Haonan, who looks like he can conquer the world.

Product side: Upgraded no steel ring, innovative one size

Upgraded to no steel ring, innovative one size. The "one size" bra was launched in August 2018. In the Ubras Taobao flagship store, the sales of underwear endorsed by Ouyang Nana reached more than 400,000, and 50,000 pieces were sold in 30 minutes during the Double Eleven period alone. Through the one size, the brand mindset was built on the consumer side, and the hot sales helped to strengthen its brand positioning.

Innovation of one size, size-free underwear. Ubras extends its product line to focus on women's underwear, of which bras account for as much as 55%, and basically can be classified as size-free underwear. In this way, it is easy to form a perception among consumers. When Ubras is mentioned, it is easier to associate it with Ubras size-free underwear.

For new categories, consumers understand and recognize brands more through products, and complete their initial brand recognition experience through specific experiences of product functions and benefits. Therefore, for a new category startup brand, the product is the brand and the brand is the product.

Pricing: Low-price strategy

Pricing is not just a strategy. For a company that creates a new product category, pricing is more about occupying a position and controlling the price segment.

An industry will eventually form its own unique price band, which is formed by the competition between consumers and brand companies. Through the industry price band, we can see the overall brand price ecology of the industry and find market gaps. That is: the price band is relatively less competitive than the brand, and there are opportunities to enter the market through high-price and low-price flanks.

The price range of mid-to-high-end wire-free bras is 200-300 yuan, while Ubras chose a relatively affordable low-price strategy with an initial price range of 120-190 yuan. In addition, with promotional activities such as live broadcasts, it provides consumers with a higher cost-effective experience, which is crucial for its initial sales.

For new categories, low prices can indeed attract a large number of potential consumers in the early stages of the brand. However, as consumers’ understanding of the categories becomes clearer (that is, their needs become clearer through product experience), high-end vacancies will gradually emerge, leaving new opportunities for latecomers - essentially, the stratification of user demand preferences.

There are three vacancies in any emerging category: leader, expert, and new generation.

Traffic side: Category bonus x live broadcast bonus

Ubras' sales on Tmall in 2020 totaled 1.553 billion yuan, of which from May to July 2020, Ubras grew by 625% and sold 345 million. In fact, it's not just Ubras that's selling well. Many underwear brands have achieved huge growth rates, including Clarkarida's growth of 2212% and Huxi's growth of 1907%. During this period, the underwire-free underwear category has achieved a big explosion, and category bonus coupons have been distributed.

If Huaxizi is the child raised by Li Jiaqi, then Ubras is Wei Ya's biological daughter. Wei Ya brought goods for Ubras in a total of 17 events from March to October 2020, including 4 events per month from September to October before the Double 11 promotion. During the Double 11 pre-sale period alone, Wei Ya's live broadcast room generated 34% of the pre-sale revenue for Ubras. Wei Ya was the main factor that made Ubras jump directly from Tmall Top 10 to Top 1.

• When category dividends and live broadcast dividends arrive
• An excellent entrepreneur must have a sense of dividends
• And you have to have the gambling nature to make a fortune

Media side: two Weibo, one Douyin and one Focus Media

Celebrity follow-up endorsement: Cooperate with many female stars (Zhang Hanyun, Meng Jia, Kan Qingzi, Xu Lu, etc.) to promote Ubras product videos on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Douyin.

Signed Ouyang Nana, Focus Advertising occupied the mind. The day before the 2019 Double 11 pre-sale, Ouyang Nana officially became the first brand spokesperson for Ubras. Cooperated with many female stars (Zhang Hanyun, Meng Jia, Kan Qingzi, Xu Lu, etc.) to promote Ubras product videos on Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Douyin platforms.

• Weibo, mid-level influencer, mainly to cooperate with the brand's new product launches
• Xiaohongshu, a mid-level influencer, focuses on daily recommendations
• Douyin, placing information flow ads related to spokesperson Ouyang Nana
• Station B, mid-level clothing and beauty UP

The essence of private domain is repurchase

In the traffic structure of Ubras’ Tmall flagship store in 2020, free traffic from Taobao accounted for more than 50%, and the transaction volume from independent visits accounted for more than 46%, which was due to its content seeding + private domain conversion.

Private domain conversion: order in the live broadcast room - scan the code after receiving the goods - private domain conversion - post the order on Xiaohongshu - content conversion. The brand IP "U喵" was created, using the image of cats to narrow the distance with young consumers, and the personal account in the private domain also continued the brand's cartoon IP.

• Goal: Invite ordinary consumers to post their orders on Xiaohongshu, and open up the private domain to form a closed loop of traffic, users, and content
• Personality: WeChat personal account “U的喵”, continuously reaching users
• Tips: After receiving the product, scan the QR code to add your personal account, you will receive an invitation to post your order on Xiaohongshu. After posting product photos and content with specified keywords on Xiaohongshu, you can get a free piece of underwear at your own expense after successful review.
• Operation: Post trial activities and other benefits in Moments, with a series of event previews to attract traffic back to the live broadcast room

Product line coverage, omni-channel layout

From size-free bras to underwear, from sports to body shaping, from Tmall to social e-commerce, the brand's first offline flagship store was opened in Shanghai in 2019. Currently, there are about 10 offline stores in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Chongqing.

Summarize the three stages of Ubras:

• Cold start stage: category innovation, live streaming, celebrity endorsement, and hot sales
• The stage of integrating brand, effect and sales: Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Zhihu and other platforms strengthen online traffic and consolidate conversion
• Seizing the mind stage: large-scale deployment of targeted elevator media to build brands and seize the mind space

Ubras' marketing model uses (positioning + traffic + content) X (two Weibo, one Douyin, and one Focus Media) to combine traffic + advertising, content + brand, social network + strong media, KOL/KOC/KOS and celebrities. This is the increasingly popular two Weibo, one Douyin, and one Focus Media paradigm for new consumer brands.

04: Discover small categories and brands occupy them

Micoland multi-type growth

Consumers have no knowledge of product categories, and there are categories but no brands: Once any product category market enters the oligopoly competition stage, it means that the entry cost is very high. It is not only the production cost of the post-supply chain, but more importantly, the cost of consumer knowledge education on the market side.

Because once the mind is established, it is difficult to change. Competition is not about shelves or competitors, but about occupying the cognitive space of consumers.

——If you know the place and day of battle, you can fight a battle thousands of miles away.

• Milk brands include Mengniu, Yili, and Bright
• Room temperature yogurt includes Amul, Pure, and Mosilian
• However, in the minds of consumers, there is no number one brand in the cheese category.

What you can see, your opponent can see as well, and your opponent must want to win as much as you do. This is indeed the case. In 2020, more than 150 new companies were registered whose business scope or products included "cheese". In 2021, there are more than 49 cheese stick brands on the market, which is very lively for a while.

Cheese newcomer: Miaofei, founded in 2018, successfully won two rounds of financing in 2020 after its products were launched in 2019. Its founder Chen Yun has served as general manager of Yili Cheese Division and vice president of Meike Landou. Dr. Cheese, founded in 2019, completed equity financing in 2020 and 2021, including well-known investment institutions such as Challenger Capital and Sequoia China Seed Fund.

Old brands are coming: Junlebao Group held a new product launch conference in Tianjin, officially launching the cheese sticks with the recipe of Zeng Cheese La Zengcong and the newly upgraded Sikeqi cheese sticks. Sanyuan, the 2020-2021 Sanyuan Cheese Development Sharing Conference, also officially included the cheese business into the company's "strategic level" project, and specially established the Cheese Academy of the Special Channel Division.

Facing the attack from new and old competitors, the problem is not how to defeat the competitors, but how to quickly create the cognitive advantage of the Meiji Landou brand. Meiji Landou knows that competition only takes place in the consumer's cognition, and the method to seize the cognitive vacancy is to launch a saturation attack in the blank mind by "sea, land and air".

Two Tigers and Meiji Landou have been launched by land, sea and air to capture the minds of consumers: relying on the elevator advertising bombardment of Focus Media and the brainwashing advertising songs of Two Tigers and Meiji Landou, Meiji Landou has captured the minds of consumers.

When we first launched the Focus Media, we thought that the four words "Miacole" were difficult to remember, so how could we make them memorable? We decided to use songs to spread the word and make people remember Miacole. We found the French nursery rhyme "Two Tigers" and adapted it into "Miacole, Miacole, cheese sticks, cheese sticks..." It is very familiar to everyone - Chai Xiu, Chairman of Miacole.

Among the top 10 popular slogans selected by the "2020 China Advertising Slogan Review", "Choose Mio for Cheese" by Mio became one of the top three slogans with the highest recognition of the year. The results of a nationwide consumer survey from November 7, 2020 to December 4, 2020 showed that Mio's sales accounted for about 33.8% of the cheese consumption of urban permanent households.

While launching a large number of outdoor advertisements, Meiji Landou began to advertise on provincial satellite TV channels in January. The satellite TV channels currently covered include Anhui Satellite TV, Jilin Satellite TV and Shandong Satellite TV. Meiji Landou mainly promotes its cheese stick products.

In 2019, under the saturation attack of "sea, land and air" in the blank mind, the brand awareness of Meiji Landou increased rapidly, and won the double crown of sales on JD.com and Tmall during the "618" shopping festival, with sales growth exceeding 300%. After obtaining the letter of trust, Meiji Landou concentrated on the secondary advertising of the "double crown" through targeted media.

Among the numerous companies, brands and product information, identifying effective sales signals (sales signals: those that can influence consumers’ minds and become a strong reason for consumers to choose products) is the core value of advertising.

Meiji Landou will continue to expand its operational advantages and brand store matrix, increase the market share of its top products, attract and acquire new customers with new products, and increase its overall market share. In 2020, Sun Li officially signed a contract to become the brand spokesperson for Meiji Landou, and through celebrity endorsements + targeted advertising + online breakthroughs, Meiji Landou has achieved the integration of brand, effect and sales. In 2020, its online sales exceeded 220 million, with more than 3 million fans, and it has entered the Tmall 100 million yuan club, successfully becoming the cheese sales champion in the e-commerce channel.

Category expansion, product line extension, channel deepening:

1. Product category expansion: covering dozens of nutritious and delicious cheese products including instant nutrition series, household cheese series and catering industry series. While maintaining the leading edge of core products, its cheese slices, cream cheese, light cream, butter and other products are also gradually entering the market, further enriching the company's product matrix.

2. Product line extension: We are constantly promoting the quality upgrade of cheese sticks, launching new cheese sticks, gold-packaged cheese sticks with a higher-end market positioning, and innovative baked cheese products, which are packaged in independent small bags for greater convenience.

3. Channel deepening: In 2020, Meiji Landou opened up new large terminal users, such as Subway, Mr. Pizza, Hormel, etc. At the same time, it launched the "Winning the Terminal, Leading Chinese Food" project, started product application development for Chinese food companies, built a market development team, quickly laid out the Chinese food market, and continuously filled the blank market.

As of the end of 2020, Meiji Landou’s retail terminals have exceeded 290,000, covering more than 90% of prefecture-level cities and more than 70% of county-level cities across the country, basically completing its nationwide channel layout.

In 2020, the CR5 were France's Bel (25.0%), Biogra (19.8%), Le Chiu (5.2%), Anchor (5.2%), and Kraft (4.5%), and the CR5 further increased to 59.7%.

Currently, according to the latest data from Kantar, Yili Group has jumped to the first place in the industry and become the leader of domestic cheese brands. It is expected to continue to occupy the leading position in the cheese industry in the future. The industry structure has been roughly formed.

• The first echelon, composed of foreign-funded cheese brands and leading cheese brands, including Bel, Yili Group, Lezhiniu, Anchor, Kraft, etc., has firmly established itself in the national market.
• The second echelon is mainly composed of giant dairy brands, such as Mengniu and Yili, which are ready to go through mergers and acquisitions or adopt new brand strategies.
• The third echelon is composed of regional dairy brands, such as Bright Dairy (Shanghai), Sanyuan (Beijing), Huishan (Liaoning), Tara Eji (Inner Mongolia), etc., which operate in the region.
• The fourth echelon is mainly OEM brands. As most cheese products are priced relatively high, these brands rely on low-price strategies to seize market share in the cheese market and compete on low prices.

Author: Houshan Keju; Source public account: New Consumer Brand Research Society (ID: PPD6977)