Oreo, when these three words are mentioned, the black and white cookie that comes to mind must come to mind. This is an intuitive feeling, if you consider it from a professional point of view, whether Oreo is a brand or represents a category, is a question worth studying. Looking at the field of casual snacks, there seems to be no brand that can be as distinct and unique as Oreo to firmly occupy the minds of consumers.
Oreo's irreproducibility is exactly what all brands dream of, creating a category with high barriers to competition with unique products. Oreo is a cookie, the only one, and nothing else resembling it. Some people may think that in fact, every biscuit is unique, and Danone's leisure is that Master Kong's soda sandwich is also the same. However, in contrast, from Master Kong's reach, the clarity, value perception, and relevance of these cookies in the minds of consumers are far less vivid and profound than Oreo.
On the other hand, Oreo, which was born in 1912, has been more than 100 years ago, why has it not withdrawn from the stage of history, has not become a "brand of the fathers", and even its market share is still growing. There are many secrets to Oreo's growth that are worth thinking about and learning from China's casual snack brands.
Microcolando has created the great development of China's cheese industry with a cheese stick, and the cheese stick itself has become the first generation of super hit in China's cheese track. After eight years of development, today's cheese sticks seem to have entered a new stage of slowing growth, and many people even look at the future space of cheese sticks. In fact, from the dimensions of product innovation, breakthrough in consumption scenarios, crowd breaking and reconstructing consumer cognition, the new development of cheese sticks still has huge opportunities. Compare the cheese stick with Oreo, the cheese stick has a lot of strategic planning and strategic moves in the new stage of development, and you can cross the river by feeling the stones of Oreo.
According to Euromonitor International, in the past six years, Oreo's retail sales share has ranked first in China's sweet biscuit market, and its share has increased year by year, from nearly 13% in 2017 to nearly 19% in 2022.
Oreo is a sub-brand of Mondelēz International Food Companies, with a product concept of "Simple, Delicious and Fun". It is aimed at young people aged 4-35 years, with children and women predominantly predominant. Zhu Yijing, vice president of marketing and development of Mondelēz Greater China, told ** that the consumer-centric concept and the unique brand positioning of "playing together" have made important contributions. On top of that, it's important to keep coming up with refreshing innovations to maintain the "sense of wowke".
Oreo's brand identity is distinctive, and it has remained alive for more than 100 years, because of the "emotional experience value" it has always created. "Twist, lick, soak" is ostensibly about the definition of how to eat Oreos, but in fact, there is an emotional value behind it - a simple (even childish, nonsensical) "way of being happy". It is Oreo's definition of this "simple happiness" that makes the Oreo brand full of "childlike" freshness, although many people will not really follow its teaching of these three steps to eat a cookie, but it does not prevent it from this highly childlike happy rendering, and young people in every era, who does not want to keep the innocent and childish happiness forever?
For cheese sticks, what is the emotional value it advocates, and whether such emotional value is clear and easy to accept, it has become the soul core of the cheese stick brand to become plump and flesh-and-blood.
In terms of functional value, the nutritional and calcium content of cheese sticks is generally recognized and accepted by the public, and it is not difficult for such functional value to form a clear distinction from other snack foods in the minds of consumers. However, if the positioning of functional value alone is blunt, it will not really "touch the heart".
What kind of emotional value can form a clear and strongly related cognition between the functional value and the emotional value of cheese sticks, and it is easy to be accepted?In the process of breaking the circle of cheese stick consumers, from children to adults, the emotional value needs to be in line with the functional value, and it must also be able to clearly evoke the picture sense of the consumption scene, such as advocating, let's go together, act together!By participating in or sponsoring some high-end outdoor activities, it enters the adult consumption scene from a highly segmented small market share incision.
In terms of product strategy, Oreo has diversified its products, combined with different consumer preferences, and made product innovations based on the tastes of Chinese consumers. According to statistics, there are about 208 flavors of Oreo, of which 128 are non-repeating sandwich flavors.
Second, Oreo iterates quickly on cookie morphology. On the basis of the original sandwich biscuits, other types of products such as Oreo Crispy, Oreo Mini, and Oreo Wafer have been launched to continue to innovate.
How Oreo innovates its products – how to ensure that products are brought to market quickly and receive the widest possible acceptance, while keeping the "cost of risk" to a minimum.
Zhu Yijing said that successful innovative products must not only truly meet the needs of consumers, but also often have to go through a period of repeated adjustments. "A lot of what you think about in the lab, in the conference room, may not be the same in the market, and it's unlikely that an innovative product will be perfect on the first day of market. But if we wait until a lot of data is collected to analyze, it may be too late to make a perfect product before it is launched, and consumer demand may change again."
In order to balance the speed of innovation with the probability of success, Mondelēz adopts a "pilot-learn-fix" model, which means that after a small market launch, the product is continuously adjusted based on consumer feedback.
This is probably the safest and most efficient set**. There has been a monograph ("How New Consumer Brands Continue to Grow", Chen Taoqi, Ru Jiong, Zhejiang University Press) put forward the A-T-0-M model on the media launch of new products, which has certain reference significance for both the first launch test and the product innovation test.
The first step, assumption: refers to the assumption of the combination of people, goods and yards supported by data. For product innovation, what kind of new products are assumed, and what kind of new consumption scenarios and consumer groups correspond to. Let's say that some innovative products will become the main hit products.
The second step is to test the delivery on a small scale. Set a relatively complete set of test and research indicators, conduct trial and error through refined data, increase and continue if the core key indicators perform well, and adjust them if the indicators are not good. Discover the key points, slots and main needs of consumers.
Step 3: Optimization: Real-time feedback and tuning to find the best combination point.
The last step is magnify: increase the amount of delivery, do a good job of undertaking, and realize multi-level amplification and penetration of the whole link.
The example given by Oreo is that Oreo Crackers, which only focused on "thinner" selling points at the beginning of their launch, but after discovering the preference of Chinese young people for crispy texture, the series has made a round of adjustments from product formula to communication to provide a "thin + crispy" experience.
In order to maintain the dual "non-aging" of brands and products, brands should take the initiative to undertake leapfrog experiments to explore new consumption possibilities and new consumption scenarios. The so-called "leapfrogging" experiment is to break the existing consumption mode and make the product possible in another new scenario.
For example, in addition to eating Oreo as a cookie, over the years, the Oreo brand has continued to teach young people to become a new type of "baking and dessert ingredient".
There are many young people around me who mash Oreos and combine them with mango and yogurt to make a unique "dessert" with a dark culinary nature.
Zhu Yijing said, "In the past, Oreo Cake was mainly a small-scale test, but this year we will officially push it to more stores for sales and marketing. "This year, Oreo will focus on making the two cakes that we already have, rather than rushing to launch more new products. In the future, Mondelēz also intends to replicate Oreo's cross-category success in potential brands such as Taiping Biscuits. Oreo has become a common ingredient in pastry making, which has laid the foundation for consumer awareness in advance of its foray into baking. Secondly, the cake market that Mondelēz wants to leverage is also larger and more potential than biscuits.
For cheese sticks, new consumption may be in the first place, and new and more unique and creative and interesting new scenes are in the first placeFacing the future, cheese sticks must first break through the single setting of "children's snacks" and make cheese sticks a "nutritious and healthy snack food" for adults, including the elderly.
In terms of product innovation and brand marketing strategy, cheese sticks need to redefine new interest appeal points, the rich nutrition of cheese sticks is more suitable for relaxation after work, energy replenishment needs after fitness, and cheese sticks have become a high-quality "functional snack food".
Cheese sticks promote the ability of the body and the positive emotional energy of the heart. Under such a value proposition, more targeted consumption scenarios can be envisaged and become the best match for camping and outing activities. For the elderly, cheese sticks can be a beneficial nutritional supplement after a meal, and become a high-quality tea meal for afternoon tea time. Cheese sticks can also be combined in the form of sets to develop cheese sticks + gift packs, which have become a high-end gift option during the New Year's holidays.
The broader "experimental" breakthrough lies in considering how to teach consumers how to process cheese sticks into new delicacies in the form of DIY, such as how to pair with fruit to become a Q-bomb pudding, and how to combine it with other ingredients such as cream or chocolate to become a more creative and bring more new surprises. And this kind of hands-on process of creating a "sense of participation" and generating new surprises is the process that can best enhance the stickiness between brands and consumers.
From Coca-Cola to Oreo, it's not impossible for a single product to last. So far, the life cycle of cheese sticks has just begun, and facing a broader future space, cheese sticks need to focus on the core of the "cheese" category and start a new round of evolution from the following aspects.
The first is to make cheese sticks a healthier "snack food with more eye-catching functional labels". For young people, healthy, nutritious, but low-fat, eating not fat is an important meal consumption theme. Cheese sticks need to form an extremely clear functional appeal, meet the nutritional and energy needs, and have outstanding functional value, becoming a light food product that young people are keen on.
Second, we should work how to improve consumer stickiness and increase the repurchase rate. On the one hand, it is necessary to build new scenes on the product side, create a sense of participation, and constantly bring "new surprises".On the other hand, on the brand side, it advocates more positive emotional values and lifestyles.
Third, fully construct the differentiated competition of a certain brand of cheese sticks. Branded cheese sticks need to build a highly differentiated perception in the mind, and make unique innovations in terms of product form, value proposition, and all the perceptible symbols of the brand, such as cheese sticks that are eaten with a fork. Under the innovation model of a certain product, the new product becomes a unique and pioneering new category, so as to precipitate its own unique category characteristics.