** Industrial technology.
In September this year, after the cross-border co-branded "Sauce Latte" between Moutai and Luckin came out of the circle, many liquor companies have joined the cross-border bureau, setting off a wave of cross-border boom in the liquor industry.
Recently, Luzhou Laojiao held a new product launch conference in Beijing and launched the "Baituo" wine meal beauty series, including three new products, namely **, shower gel and shampoo. Accustomed to the combination of liquor, food and beverages, the novel combination of liquor and beauty has once again aroused heated discussions.
In fact, this is not the first time that Luzhou Laojiao has set foot in non-food fields such as beauty. In 2016, Luzhou Laojiao cooperated with the Smell Library to launch a customized perfumeIn 2019, it launched Hanfu cultural and creative fruit wine with the Hanfu brand "Tingyue Xiaozhu";In 2020, we will develop "Sake Lees Sobering and Repairing" with Cangnan Old Chinese Medicine Cosmetics, but the cross-border has not become a climate, and it is just a matter of everyone.
Even if cross-border is like walking on a single-plank bridge, liquor companies are still happy to do it, why?There are no more than two reasons, one is that the sales of liquor are sluggish, and the industry has entered an adjustment cycle;One is that young people are gradually becoming the main consumer force, and failing to grasp Generation Z is equivalent to not being able to grasp the future.
Therefore, in order to create a younger brand image, liquor companies are actively working with partners in different fields to develop and strive to achieve a win-win situation of 1+1 2. Especially in recent years, cross-border co-branding has almost become a mandatory question for liquor companies, but there are very few people who answer correctly.
It is difficult to bear fruit only when it blooms
Taking stock of the recent cross-border cooperation cases of major liquor companies, there are no more than three main forms.
The first is to cooperate with popular brands in the food and beverage industry to launch co-branded products.
In the past year or so, Moutai has co-branded with Mengniu, Luckin and Dove to launch Moutai ice cream, sauce latte, and wine chocolateWuliangye joined hands with Yongpu to create a "Five Two One Coffee Tavern";Fenjiu cooperated with Danish chocolate brand Aidenberg to launch Baijiu Jiuxin Chocolate;Luzhou Laojiao and Chabaidao launched the "Drunken Walking Road", and jointly launched the "Broken Ice Cream" with Zhong Xuegao;During the Mid-Autumn Festival, Luzhou Laojiao, Moutai, Shuijingfang and other wine companies also launched Mid-Autumn Festival cross-border co-branded mooncakes.
With the help of the brand awareness and market share of popular food and beverage brands that already have a certain scale, liquor companies can further expand their brand influence, attract more young consumers, and effectively increase the added value of their products.
The second is to co-brand with other industries other than food to launch integrated products with a stronger sense of contrast and easier to trigger discussions. Luzhou Laojiao's second attempt in the field of beauty belongs to this category.
In addition, liquor companies also actively cooperate with international brands or institutions to enhance the level of brand internationalization, enhance brand image, and expand overseas markets. For example, in 2017, Wuliangye and Swarovski also jointly launched the "Wuliangye Yuanding Jingsheng" productIn 2019, Moutai and the French Louis Vuitton Group cooperated to launch a limited edition Moutai gift box.
The third is to cooperate with culture, tourism, sports and other fields, or inherit and promote Chinese culture, or build cultural tourism brands to increase consumer experience.
Among the various forms of cooperation, the combination of liquor and ice cream has become a mandatory item for major liquor brands. In September this year, the ice cream products of liquor companies were even more listed, first Shuijingfang and Häagen-Dazs cross-border cooperation to launch Häagen-Dazs Shuijingfang ice cream gift box;Luzhou Laojiao joins hands with Guangming Cold Drink to create "Wine Aroma Ice Moon Ceremony" ice cream moon cakes;Gujing Gongjiu and Baxi Ice Cream jointly launched ice cream products.
Ice cream, like chocolate, has formed a highly adaptable taste and technical foundation with liquor. Compared with ice cream, chocolate is too simple in the application scenario, and it is difficult to add value to the liquor brand.
With the introduction of ice cream brands such as Häagen-Dazs and DQ, Chinese people have gradually accepted the special taste of rum ice cream, which has laid a high market acceptance for domestic liquor brands to develop ice cream products. At the same time, the high gross profit space of 40%-60% has also become an important factor for liquor companies to favor the ice cream category.
According to data from the Prospective Industry Research Institute, from 2015 to 2021, the market size of China's ice cream and ice cream industry has increased from less than 90 billion yuan to 160 billion yuan, with a cumulative increase of more than 90% in 6 years, and it is expected that the market size of the industry will exceed 200 billion yuan in 2027.
However, although there are many liquor companies participating in the cross-border carnival, it seems that only Moutai has really gone out of the circle frequently through cross-border and obtained certain benefits. According to Luckin's announcement, the sales volume of "Sauce Latte" exceeded 5.42 million cups on the first day of listing, and the single-day sales exceeded 100 million yuan.
The performance of Moutai ice cream is even more impressive. According to the data, all three Moutai ice creams were sold out within 51 minutes of being launched on the "i Moutai" app, with more than 40,000 sales and a sales amount of more than 2.5 million yuan. Due to the ice cream business**, Moutai's other business revenue will achieve 32.8 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 200 million yuan year-on-year.
According to data released by Moutai in May this year, Moutai ice cream sold more than 100 million in three months and more than 200 million in seven months, with a total of nearly 10 million cups sold in a year. In contrast, the topic and actual sales of cross-border products of other liquor brands are not high, and even the old famous liquor Luzhou Laojiao and Wuliangye have not set off any waves in this track.
The two sides of the crossover
Although liquor has been crossover for a long time, the vast majority of products are short-lived. The major liquor companies are still "forcibly" marketing in this form, behind which is the invasion of foreign wine and red wine culture, seizing the consumption minds of young people, reducing the recognition of liquor products by young people, and bringing great anxiety to time-honored brands.
According to iiMedia Consulting statistics, the 18-30-year-old group will become the second largest consumer group of alcohol in China in 2023, accounting for 3913%。However, according to the "Young People's Wine - Research Report on China's Alcohol Category Innovation" released by Reese Strategic Positioning Consulting, when asked "what alcohol was most often drunk in the past year", 16% and 16% of respondents chose beer, wine and fruit wine, respectively, and only 9% chose liquor. Among the "favorite alcohol consumption choices" of young people, baijiu also ranks last.
How to cater to the consumption Xi of young people, meet the consumption needs of young people, enhance the emotional connection with young people, and strengthen brand rejuvenation have become important research topics for liquor companies in recent years.
This year, the success of Moutai's "Sauce Latte" has greatly encouraged the cross-border marketing of other liquor companies. As a result, the cross-border model has become a breakthrough for the current liquor brand to break the predicament, leverage the purchase interest of young consumer groups, and expand the brand's mass base.
By cooperating with brands that already have a good reputation foundation among consumer groups, liquor brands can form high-efficiency and low-cost brand promotion, thereby expanding the brand's popularity among young customers, enhancing brand image, promoting brand rejuvenation transformation, and empowering sales.
The anxiety of the liquor industry about the rejuvenation of the brand is, in the final analysis, the pressure brought by the downturn of the liquor industry.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the national liquor output increased slightly from 13.13 million tons in 2015 to 13.58 million tons in 2016. From 2017 to 2022, these 6 years are ** to 119810,000 kiloliters, 87120,000 kiloliters, 78590,000 kiloliters, 74070,000 kiloliters, 71560,000 kiloliters, 67120,000 kiloliters.
Therefore, in addition to adjusting product structure and increasing marketing expenses, liquor companies also want to jointly develop innovative products or services through cross-border cooperation with different industries, explore the needs of consumers in different scenarios, seek the possibility of entering new markets, and reduce the risk of market access through early exploration.
However, seeking a younger brand transformation with a first-class cross-border marketing method may be a double-edged sword for time-honored liquor companies that originally have a strong historical and cultural accumulation.
Since partners come from different industries, it is difficult to maintain consistency in brand tonality and market positioning, which will inevitably cause confusion among consumers. The injection of elements into younger brand partners will also cause a certain degree of dilution to the high-end cognition of time-honored brands.
Out of the protection of the high-end brand, most of the cross-border products of liquor companies are high-end limited editions, and the prices are quite high. However, in order to catch up with the popular outlet, cross-border products usually need to be launched quickly, and the R&D investment and level are not high, and the product quality is naturally not strongly guaranteed. This makes consumers' acceptance of the product generally not high, and even reduces the favorability of the brand to a certain extent.
For example, the "high-end fragrant wine heart ice cream" moon cake gift box jointly launched by Shuijingfang and Häagen-Dazs contains seven pieces and three flavors, priced at 498 yuan box, or 70 yuan a piece. Luzhou Laojiao and Guangming Cold Drink co-branded wine heart ice cream moon cake gift box, a box of six, priced at 318 yuan box, more than 50 yuan a piece.
Moutai and Dove co-branded Mao Xiaoling wine heart chocolate, priced at 39 yuan for two;The limited edition Moutai gift box launched in cooperation with Louis Vuitton Group is priced at as high as 680,000 yuan.
The "sake lees sobering and repairing**" developed by Luzhou Laojiao and Cangnan Old Chinese Medicine Cosmetics is priced at 160 yuan for 5 pieces on Tmall Old Chinese Medicine Cosmetics, and the sales are miserable. Among the three new products of the "Baijiao" wine meal beauty series launched by Luzhou Laojiao, the price is 198 yuan for a box, and the price of shampoo and shower gel is 298 yuan for a bottle. From this point of view, its future sales may not be optimistic.
At present, the liquor industry is facing a new development situation of "reshaping the new order, forming a new pattern, and upgrading new consumption", and the stock market has been saturated, and exploring incremental breakthroughs has become a common problem faced by liquor companies.
According to the official WeChat disclosure of Luzhou Laojiao, in recent years, the R&D team of Luzhou Laojiao has continued to study "Chinese wine meal derivatives" with Chinese, natural and healthy as the direction of category upgrading, and deeply excavated its skin care, skin beautification and skin nourishment value. It is worth noting that Moutai, the only winner in this cross-border boom, has quietly faded out of the cross-border track, and only the players in the back row are still wantonly breaking through the boundaries and continuing to dream of getting out of the circle.