Middle aged Swisse, changed the anxiety formula .

Text: New Entropy, Sakuragi.

Edit丨See you in the month.

In 2023, health care products that have not obtained the blue hat qualification have regarded online as a battleground. In the first half of 2023, Douyin's GMV of the nourishing and health care category will increase by 57%, with more than 20 brands selling more than 100 million yuan, and 136 self-broadcast rooms of tens of millions of brands.

But under the outbreak, the traditional leading brands Swisse and Tomson Beijian seem to be a little inadequate. Especially in new channels such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, giants such as Swisse and Tomson Beijian have begun to fall behind.

According to Douyin Daduoduo data, in the November list that includes the Double 11 promotion, Renhe, Nordland, and five female doctors firmly occupy the top three in the sales list, while Tomson Beijian and Swisse were squeezed to the twelfth and thirteenth places. Earlier, in October and September, Swisse and Tomson By-Health ranked even lower.

Looking back at the rise of the top three, each has a clear path, and the five female doctors quickly occupied the market through the segmentation needs of the vertical track, and although they experienced controversial events, they still firmly occupied the top spot in the category. Nordland continues to occupy the mind through strong operation and a huge number of people with goods, and shares the traffic dividend of Douyin.

Looking back at the moment, the brand power and channel power that Swisse and Tomson Beijian are proud of do not seem to have achieved too good results on platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, due to the brand's pursuit of a huge business line layout, women, pets, children, and luxury pets under the multi-line development, but it is not easy to focus on emerging channels, and it is even more difficult to occupy the mind.

From the perspective of operational actions, Swisse seems to be aware of its own problems, the new ultra-light bottle, focusing on the oral beauty track, with the successful experience of five female doctors and other brands, using oral products to benchmark the effect of medical beauty, trying to break the situation with high-tech barriers, but from the perspective of the effect, it is not obvious. If you want to play with emerging channels such as Douyin, it seems that Swisse still has a long way to go.

01, why can't swisse play Douyin?In the battle report released by Swisse on Double 11, the channels that helped it win the top spot were mainly Vipshop, ** and JD.com, while the emerging live streaming platforms Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu were difficult to find.

If we look further at Douyin's sales data, Swisse's backwardness is more intuitive. According to the brand data of Daduoduo's medical and health care category from September to November 2023, Swisse's sales can reach 11th on the list when it is the highest, and the sales volume has always remained in the range of 25 million to 50 million in a single month, which is far from the sales volume of 100 million+ of the head brands in this category.

In the industry, Swisse, which has become the absolute head of the health care brand, why is it experiencing growth difficulties in emerging channels?The reason seems to start with the transformation of the Douyin channel.

Looking back on the development history of Douyin's health care category, 2023 can be said to be an important turning point. In February, Douyin updated the industry management specifications of traditional nourishing and nutritional products, health food and dietary nutritional supplements, and relaxed the entry conditions of the second-level category "health food" brand under the first-level category "health food and dietary nutritional supplementary food" from the policy perspective.

According to the ** report, for the health food category, Douyin e-commerce has been inviting people to settle in the health food category, including only about 20 brands under Correction Pharmaceutical and Renhe Pharmaceutical, and the entry threshold is high.

After the change, health food brands only need to meet several conditions such as "high brand power" and "online channels with a rolling 12-month turnover of more than 50 million yuan to successfully enter Douyin e-commerce."

Subsequently, the explosion of the whole track became a natural result. According to Yicai, entering 2023, the year-on-year growth rate of payment GMV, number of users and number of dynamic goods sold by Douyin e-commerce health food consumption will exceed 200% (July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023).

Underneath the skyrocketing data is the overall prosperity of the overall market. Some emerging brands take the lead during the bonus period and stand out through their own play. Among them, typical representatives are Nordland, five female doctors and other brands.

Taking Nordland as an example, according to Daduoduo data, in November, the number of people associated with Nordland in a single month was as high as 3,798, the number of associated live broadcasts was as high as 10,000+, and the number of product SKUs reached 1,673.

At the same time, the five female doctors who experienced the controversial events at the beginning of the year have gradually recovered the lost market with the prosperity of the track, and through the control of the demand for the oral beauty segment, as well as the rapid increase in volume through cooperation with vertical big V, it has also helped it become a stable Douyin head.

At the same time, overseas brands and overseas bloggers have also taken the opportunity to become another major beneficiary. Brands such as GNC, Jin Caesar, Shuangxin, and Aojiabao have also risen rapidly with their excellent brand power and the fan potential of overseas Chinese bloggers. On the other hand, unlike domestic brands, overseas brands have created a professional image by upgrading traditional products, and established popular models in traditional categories such as fish oil, coenzymes, lutein, etc. Let Aojiabao lutein, Golden Caesar fish oil, double heart coenzyme and chondroitin and other popular products swept the whole network.

However, the B-side of the market boom also means that the competition is fierce, and behind the rise of emerging Internet celebrity health care product brands and overseas niche brands is the gradual backwardness of traditional brands.

Taking Swisse as an example, although he also participated in the live broadcast room of making a friend and the Internet celebrity Northeast Sauce with tens of millions of fans, because the anchor is not the head of the vertical category and the investment is relatively low, the sales have always been tepid. On the other hand, in the official live broadcast room, the popular items that the company tried to create, such as liver protection tablets, multivitamins, etc., are not obvious in the face of competitive differentiation, and the advantages are insufficient, and it seems that they have never been able to occupy the category mind.

On the other hand, Swisse, which has Australian genes, has become the object of active avoidance in the eyes of Australian bloggers due to channels and other reasons. Among the many Australian bloggers surveyed by New Entropy, "Australian Sister Yang" has 298 fans80,000, "March in Australia" fans 6960,000, 40 fans of "Rabbit Teeth in Australia".60,000, the main brands of its health care products are also mainly concentrated in Aojiabao, Beisen Mu, and goods health.

The celebrity endorsement products that Swisse has invested heavily in are of limited help to emerging channels such as Douyin, whether it is in slicing or live broadcasting, it seems that it is difficult to significantly drive sales, and the number of people in the official live broadcast room has been less than 100 for a long time.

Under multiple pressures, in channels such as Douyin, the traditional brand Swisse seems to need a deeper change, so what is the direction of change?

02. Can the new anxiety formula make Swisse win back a city?In October, Swisse released a new ultra-light bottle, which focuses on oral beauty products for women, and seems to have become the main product of the official stage in the next stage. not only invited all celebrity spokespersons such as Di Lieba and Qin Lan to the scene, but also launched marketing actions on multiple channels.

The potential of the oral beauty market, which Swisse has increased, is also outstanding. According to Mojing's insight "2023H1 New Consumption Potential***", from the sales of health food subcategories in the first half of the year, the sales of protein powder, amino acids and collagen in H1 in 23 years were the highest at 87100 million yuan, of which collagen-related products and protein powder-related products for oral beauty occupy a large share of this category. In October this year, Mojing Insight released data that from the perspective of China's nutrition and health food market segment, the oral beauty market is the largest, with sales of 130 in 2023800 million yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 220%。

The fundamental logic behind the gradual popularity of the oral beauty market lies in the growing demand of consumers for non-invasive anti-aging. iResearch's survey shows that in the past 1 year, seventy percent of the people who have done medical beauty have chosen the best beauty projects, and compared with the 2020 survey data, consumers' awareness of anti-aging has increased, and firming and anti-aging have surpassed whitening and brightening, becoming the most popular project.

Swisse said in the product promotion that in the 14-day real test of the new product, the subject's firmness increased by 127%, redness relief 78%, *The water light perception has been improved by 347%, the texture faded by 315%。

Precise numbers, scarce formulas, and the ability to achieve medical-grade results with oral products alone seem to have become the new beauty magic that Swisse wants to convey to people.

But similar marketing words, from niacinamide, collagen, hyaluronic acid, to proanthocyanidins and grape seeds, consumers have actually heard it over and over again. The difference is that each time the dose of "magic" is increased. In the promotion of Swisse, there are even ** direct benchmarks for medical beauty products, claiming that Swisse ultra-light bottles help consumers achieve a lifting, firming and moisturizing effect similar to "ultrasound gun + water booster" through oral administration.

For Swisse, from the water light sheet to the water light bottle, and then to today's super light bottle, while the product iteration is accelerating, the marketing direction is also constantly increasing. Snowball investors pointed out that Swisse is becoming more and more like a new medical aesthetic company.

Can Swisse find its own growth curve by betting on the tuyere track?

In fact, in the oral beauty explosion period, it has also triggered the pursuit of brands, according to the report of Jumei, with the gradual development of the oral industry, the giants in the consumer field have also been laid out, and Shiseido Group has also established a global oral beauty division this year;Bloomage Biotech once again launched its fourth functional food brand, WPLUS+Bethany conducts research and development projects for functional foods. In addition, local cutting-edge brands such as Minayo, WonderLab, and Unomi are also emerging.

With so many competitors, it seems that it remains to be seen how Swisse stands out and whether it will work with the experience alone. Further, from a macro point of view, it is more important whether the new "magic" formula can occupy the minds of consumers for a long time. After all, if you carefully look at Tmall complaints, or read Zhihu literature, the efficacy of health care products is more like a metaphysics.

From South Korea's "anti-sudden death" health care products** to today's oral medical aesthetics that Swisse has begun to focus on, how much value can be brought to consumers outside of marketing seems to be a question that health care products should think about.