Text |Li Xinhao
The divergence and contradiction between the mainstream of product marketing and the personality have existed for a long time. The commonality lies in the formation of a basic paradigm and the marketing trend of the same type of products, and the individuality lies in creating a "unique" marketing style and making differentiated expressions. The reason for the contradiction is that the two have completely different business operation logic.
Although the former is a big tide but has no characteristics, whether the product can survive depends entirely on the size of the brand power, the latter is fine but difficult to reproduce, and the cost of trial and error is very high, and a trick will be lost if you are not careful. It seems that it is difficult to coexist between the two.
However, after entering the Z era, the concept of healthy, personalized and diversified liquor consumption has gradually become the new main force of consumption, although it is not yet possible to feel the strong bias of young consumer groups for alcohol consumption, but it can already smell a trace ......of taste from the clues: the main liquor consumption of the Spring Festival stalls has moved down, the number of liquor display cabinets in supermarkets has decreased, and the number of liquor, beer, and blended liquor merchants on the instant retail platform has increased significantly, and Helens issued an announcement that it will turn losses into profits in 2023
All kinds of signs show that there are two different development lines in the liquor industry, one is the mainstream development path of traditional liquor, and the other is the personalized development of liquor. The choice of path in front of each liquor company will set the tone for the development model of liquor in the next five or even ten years.
As a new road, personalized marketing is a road with an unknown future, whether to choose the mainstream road or the personalized road. Channel Nine takes brands such as Yuanming Sauce Wine, Li Du, and Jiang Xiaobai as examples to analyze the trade-offs between the two.
01 "Live Party" - Eat the dividends of the Internet and be your own IP
As soon as this subtitle came out, I believe that the first thing that comes to mind in many people's minds is the soy sauce wine brand "Yuanming Sauce Wine".
After all, many people have swiped the e-commerce advertisements of Yuanming sauce wine on Douyin countless times, and many consumers have bought a box of "high-end sauce wine" with the original price of xxx for a few hundred yuan.
As a soy sauce liquor brand that has become popular purely through online channel promotion, Yuanming Sauce Liquor can be said to be the "first person to eat crabs" in the new liquor company in the Internet dividend era, and the marketing promotion is very flat, that is, the whole process relies on Douyin, Tencent, Kuaishou and other Internet head platforms for omni-channel delivery, and the content of the delivery is carried out around three sections: personalized brand trademark, online tasting activities, and celebrity platforms. The core of the three sections can be summed up in one sentence: "wine is good wine, people are celebrities, and price is low price".
From the current point of view, this sentence is a bit exaggerated, the complex process alone determines that the soy sauce wine can not achieve "low price and high quality", and whether the low-priced soy sauce wine can ensure the quality remains to be discussed, after all, Taiyuan liquor has not yet appeared at that time, and in terms of people, Ren Yuanming's popularity still cannot be compared with Ji Keliang, Lai Gaohuai and other bigwigs in the liquor industry.
But a few years ago, ordinary consumers' awareness of good soy sauce wine was still relatively shallow, especially during the epidemic period when logistics was limited and consumption was blocked, Internet e-commerce was in full swing, people were crazy about purchasing online, hoping to buy the best goods with the least money, Yuanming Sauce Wine successfully built itself into the first brand of "Internet celebrity sauce wine" by grasping this consumer psychology and Internet e-commerce outlet.
Today, we will not discuss the quality and taste here, but only the marketing of Yuanming sauce wine, which is undoubtedly successful. The "live broadcast party" marked by live broadcast e-commerce arose in 2017 when e-commerce platforms were hot, and peaked in the epidemic that began in 2020.
Open Douyin, Kuaishou and other software, enter "liquor", there are still countless stores are live broadcasting, including manufacturers, distributors and individuals, such as the live broadcast room of Chairman Tian Yonglong of Anhui Shahe Liquor, the live broadcast room of Jiuxian.com Lafeige and so on.
It's just that judging from the presentation situation, the current liquor live broadcast e-commerce has basically been taken over by the head liquor companies, and it has also changed from the original "outrageous" to "reasonable".
This further illustrates the rationality and potential of the live broadcast e-commerce model, and for the liquor industry, which has relied on traditional dealer channels for a long time, a new innovative channel marketing will bring great profit growth space to the industry. As the "representative" of personalized marketing, the "live broadcast party" climbs the fastest, succeeds the earliest, and earns the most.
But when more and more wine companies join in, the track becomes narrower and narrower, and more and more crowded, such personalized marketing will also transform into mainstream marketing. But at least judging from the current situation, there should not be much meat left.
02 "Aesthetic Family" - an aesthetic lone wanderer who focuses on differentiation
The beauty of Chinese liquor", "creating a characteristic winery", "combining food and wine, promoting traditional Chinese culture", and "exploring the beauty of poetry and wine" ......
In the industry, it can be said that almost seventy percent of the brand marketing battles are started with such gimmicks.
Among them, the more representative ones are Langjiu's Langjiu Manor, Jiannanchun's court culture, Wuliangye's "harmony" and so on. And this kind of marketing with "aesthetics and culture" as the entry point is more because its own brand power is high enough, and "aesthetics and culture" are just auxiliaries, which should be called "aesthetic everyone".
The "aesthetic family" is different, they did not have a strong brand power at first, and they lacked enough cultural precipitation and consumption cultivation, but more through the concept of "beauty", first created their own "differentiated" development path, and then gradually achieved the brand concept.
In this camp, the one that can be intuitively felt and the most representative is "Jiang Xiaobai" in Chongqing and "Li Du Wine" in Jiangxi.
As the first young person in China's liquor industry to successfully shake hands, and relying on "fruity liquor" to occupy a place in the female consumer group, Jiang Xiaobai, who was born in 2012, can be said to have become a phenomenal product in that time period.
And Jiang Xiaobai's initial starting point was not to appear on TV or city advertising booths like traditional liquor, but on Weibo.
The rise of Weibo only began in 2010. A new communication carrier, plus a new liquor brand, these seem to be not enough, but also need a "fire" that can ignite the psychology of young people.
So Jiang Xiaobai chose bottle copywriting. In Tao Shiquan's own words, it is "to use direct copywriting to express the hearts of the people, so that the brand can return to simplicity, and the brand sincerely communicates with consumers".
Talk about life with important people".
The drinking party between brothers should have nothing to do with socializing and blending."
I'm going to drink everyone down just to whisper to you."
Drinking alone is not lonely, drinking alcohol, thinking alone is lonely".
Classic copywriting such as these emerges in endlessly, using young people's views and attitudes to implicitly express "friendship, romance, love, and attitude towards life", how can such Jiang Xiaobai not please young people?
Coupled with Jiang Xiaobai's insistence on creating the "Wine Conference", "Expression Bottle", "Yolo Hip Hop Festival", etc., Jiang Xiaobai can be said to have understood "young beauty" to the extreme, and linked the target consumer group with emotional appeal as the anchor, thus forming a "young people-exclusive" liquor brand concept.
If Jiang Xiaobai is the representative of "young people", then Li Du wine is the representative of "high-end light bottle". The bare bottle wine produced by Li Du is even more than 1,000 yuan of boxed wine, and even the star products of the head wine companies are not far behind.
Behind the phenomenon of high-end light bottles, it is the result of Li Du's "immersive" experience and "small but beautiful winery".
From the marketing level, Li Du has created an "open winery" under the new Internet format by trying the Internet interactive marketing model, and by gradually cultivating and deepening consumer brand awareness, occupying the minds of consumers, so that consumers are willing to pay for the "light bottle wine" of 1,000 yuan.
From this point of view, the two large single bottles of Li Du Sorghum 1955 and 1975 cannot be regarded as bare-bottle wine, but "boxed wine", and the "dead heart" of consumers is the "box" of Lidu bare-bottle wine.
From the perspective of the specific immersive experience mode, the participation experience of the "Seven Ones" and the cultural cultivation of the "Three Ones" are the core of Lidu Liquor's differentiated marketing.
In addition, Lidu Liquor has also adopted the ** experience of "Cultural Box Lidu Sorghum Cooperative + Zhiweixuan + Distillery", and the sense of experience obtained at each level gradually increases, and the continuous increase in the sense of experience will arouse consumers' desire for curiosity, and then gradually "march" towards the distillery.
As a representative of differentiated regional liquor enterprises, Lidu Liquor uses this way of "experiencing beauty" to take consumers as the center, all-round, multi-dimensional, and hierarchical layout and soak in "marketing" and "sales", so that consumers can fully accept the best cognition, recognize the brand value, and finally realize the sale of wine, brand and culture.
As the two phenomenal brands of "aesthetic home", Jiang Xiaobai and Li Dujiu are both "leaders" in personalized marketing, focusing on tapping their core customers and potential customers, one stands in the emotional perspective of "hooking" the soul of consumers, and the other stands in the perspective of experience "leading" consumers' hands, although each has its own advantages and disadvantages, but it is undeniable that they are indeed the pioneers of personalized marketing.
03 Grasp with both hands, and be strong with both hands
Personalized marketing seems to be an independent topic, and previous industry research has focused on more subdivided scenarios such as "personalized customization", "personalized products" and "personalized services".
However, the current liquor industry has become an examination room to test comprehensive ability, just like the postgraduate examination, which is attended by thousands of candidates.
In other words, the current liquor industry is entering a stage of pursuing the balanced development of individual soldiers and the extreme development of the collective.
The so-called balanced development of individual soldiers refers to the need for liquor enterprises to start from the organizational structure, business system, product quality, marketing model and other aspects to achieve internal development balance, which requires liquor companies to form their own independent value system, rather than blindly following the crowd, which includes the demand for personalized marketing of enterprises, personalized marketing is no longer simply synonymous with a certain product and an activity, but the overall requirements of the entire enterprise, to form their own characteristics.
The collective extreme development is also in line with the current development trend of the liquor industry, and the general direction of moving closer to the famous and high-quality production areas and head liquor companies remains unchanged, and all enterprises are working in this direction, such a general trend is slightly extreme, and the Matthew effect of the industry will be further amplified in the future, and the friendliness of small and medium-sized and regional liquor companies will inevitably decline.
However, from a relatively point of view, such a centralized situation will inevitably become the mainstream, and how to find a suitable personality expression in such a development mainstream is the core problem that liquor companies need to think about and solve.
This requires enterprises to grasp both hands, both hands must be strong, not only to compromise with the mainstream, but also to develop to the individual, not to step on one hand.
As mentioned above, Yuanming Sauce Wine, after strong traffic advertising, Yuanming Sauce Wine, which has been labeled as an Internet celebrity sauce wine, chose to join forces with first-class dealers and distributors to prepare to return to offline channels from online sales; After a short period of consumption calmness and pain, Jiang Xiaobai started the road of offline revival around "Meijian"; Li Du also strengthened the control of products, and began to lay out different products such as cellar age, vintage, and collection.
Facts have proved that the short-term consumption stimulation brought by personalized marketing will eventually be integrated with the mainstream channels of liquor, one is the strength of new things, the other is the strength of traditional channels, and only by complementing each other can we bring long-term brand vitality to enterprises.
If it is just personalization for the sake of personalization, or for the sake of laying channels, it is possible to lose the market initiative and become someone else's "meal on the plate" at the moment full of infinite development and changes.
Personality is the special symbol of the brand, and the brand character is the core of supporting the development of the brand, and further the quality of the product is the core, which is the foundation of personalized marketing, and cannot put the cart before the horse.