After Huiyuan entered the Coca-Cola territory, local beverage enterprises were ambushed by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Master Kong and Uni-President. This is a typical case of local enterprises relying on differentiation to break through. The practice of its category strategy is that each new product can create a new market segment ...
There are more than 20 unfixed bottles scattered on the table of GM Wen Kui. In the empty office on the second floor of Yangshengtang Building, the young design director has been working for eight years, including the design of Scream, Farmer Orchard and Water Soluble C 100. All from his team.
In Nongfu Spring, the position of design director is not easy to do. In this company that always hopes that every new product can create a new market segment, differentiation strategy is regarded as a classic. The bottle design of water-soluble C 100 has been hammered for more than half a year, until a bottle design inspired by GUCCI and CHANEL08 transparent handbags was put on the table, and this summer's dark horse drink just played an important role.
Anyone familiar with the beverage market knows that if you want to launch an influential beverage in summer, major manufacturers will often start intensive advertising before the Spring Festival. However, the water-soluble C 100 was officially launched in May 2008, and it was not until the Olympic Games that the first round of harmless advertisements was put on. Even so, its sales in five months far exceeded 1 100 million. In many stores in first-tier cities in China, this little-known product is frequently sold out of stock. In Hangzhou, water-soluble C 100 occupied 10% of the whole juice market overnight.
A veteran in the beverage industry told reporters that although the overall market performance of water-soluble C 100 is still in the observation period, from the current sales situation, it can be regarded as a prominent case of Nongfu Spring's differentiation strategy in recent years. This summer, the beverage industry is in turmoil, and major brands rarely make big moves. The water-soluble C 100 can mature naturally, and its whole marketing process is full of fun, and the design mentioned above is just one of the small "pull rings". ...
Choose some lemon juice for product differentiation.
It is true that Yangshengtang is an enterprise that can "have children" in China at present. From the early Jiayuwan and Nongfu Spring to buccal tablets, vitamin chewable tablets, screaming and so on, the whole product sequence of Yangshengtang is as complicated as a maze. But after careful observation, all kinds of products follow a main line: instead of seeking new brands in mature markets, they focus on developing a new category without competitors. Creating categories is the proud corporate strategy of Yangshengtang.
-This is in line with the theory put forward by Reese trout in his famous book Positioning: When you can't rank among the first echelon in a mature industry, the best way to seize the market is to subdivide a new category with differentiation strategy and become the first brand of this category in people's memory as a "crab eater".
The farmer's green tea in those days was a failure case that violated the "positioning" theory. At that time, Yangshengtang tried to grab a slice of the tea beverage market with many masters, but too many similar products had made the market "full" and "diminishing marginal utility". No matter how bitter it is, farm tea can only follow the ass of others, and the sales volume is average. This year, the reason why water-soluble C 100 jumped out of the flavors of orange juice, apple juice and grape juice in the existing mainstream market and focused on the lemon juice category that is still blank in China is precisely because of this painful lesson and took the road of product differentiation positioning.
First of all, in terms of taste, the unique sour and sweet taste of lemon is originally the most popular beverage taste; At the same time, the sour taste proves that its demand for vitamin C function is real (taste of vitamin C tablets: acid), which is the biggest selling point of this beverage. For all people, especially fashionable women, appropriate vitamin C supplementation is an important means to maintain youthful vitality, beauty beauty and enhance immunity. At the same time, the strong sweet and sour taste adapts to the exciting living habits of young people in this era. This also includes a vicious trick: when people are used to drinking water-soluble C 100, drinking other drinks will feel tasteless. ...
Moreover, in the eyes of consumers in China, lemon juice, which symbolizes fashion and high-grade (western food and high-grade places appear), has the irreplaceable characteristics of mainstream products at present, avoiding the fierce competition of homogenization.
At the same time, compared with orange juice products promoted by many beverage brands, lemon juice not only has strong functional demands, but also pulls consumers out of the two selling points of "freshness" and "pulp" dominated by orange juice enterprises. If you study it carefully, you will find that the general capacity of juice drinks is 450ml and 500ml, the juice content is greater than or equal to 10%, and the water-soluble C 100 is expressed in different precise ways: the juice content of 445 ml is 12%. Each bottle contains vitamin C equivalent to five and a half fresh lemons. No one will go into how to calculate half a lemon, but emphasizing "more than half" just strengthens people's understanding of the product. It is these seemingly insignificant details that distinguish water-soluble C 100 from similar products.
Considering that the upstream lemon juice industry has not yet formed in China, the water-soluble C 100 must be imported to achieve mass production. The high cost fundamentally determines that its main consumers are urban white-collar workers, students and other fashion people, thus positioning the whole product strategy at middle and high-end consumers. In order to catch the eye of these people, water-soluble C 100 jumped out of the packaging form of mainstream products in the existing market and chose a completely transparent and distinctive "alternative" plastic bottle type, which looks like a big bottleneck and a thick bottle body, as if it had a large capacity. In fact, the capacity is slightly smaller, because the bottle is relatively small, saving costs. Compared with the colorful juice drinks on the market at present, the transparent packaging design combined with light milky lemon juice can better reflect the natural sense of health and fashion without adding.
A distributor of Nongfu Spring told reporters that if the marketing of water-soluble C 100 is successful, it should be largely attributed to the product itself. This is also one of the few sub-products with obvious category characteristics since the birth of farmers in recent years. According to Michael Porter's competitive strategy, when a company can provide its customers with a unique product that is not only cheap for its customers, it already has the basic characteristics of differentiated marketing.
Accordingly, the positioning of high-end fashion and dynamic crowd of water-soluble C 100 determines different advertising demands.
Slow spread
In fact, it is very important for Nongfu Spring to develop products that are obviously different from competitors. At the same time, it is more important to widely publicize this difference and let consumers agree. The beverage industry has always liked to fight its way out through overwhelming advertisements, but only a few models can really break through every year, and the popularity and reputation are not proportional.
The popularization of water-soluble C 100 seems a bit dull. It does not adopt the traditional advertising principles. This sour beverage from 4.5 yuan was tentatively put into some big city markets by Nongfu Spring. Its specific distribution path is another story, but the effect of this practice is beyond many people's expectations.
"On average, there are 50 boxes of sales a day. I have specially observed that in less than half an hour in the supermarket, the retail shelves will be empty and need to be replenished constantly. " A salesperson at a supermarket in Hangzhou said. Whether a drink can sell well is obvious. You just need to observe the time from when the customer sees the drink to when it is put into the shopping basket. "Activation and pulsation in previous years have been selling well for some time. Last year, there were no outstanding drinks. Juice drinks have not been particularly popular, but this year's water-soluble C 100 is really unexpected. "
A beverage targeted at young people aged 15 ~ 35 when it was launched can quickly occupy the market and be accepted by consumers of all ages, which is really hard to get.
The advertisement of water-soluble C 100 was launched during the Olympic Games three months after the product was launched, mainly through CCTV and provincial TV stations. The elements of the advertisement are conventional and nothing special. It is nothing more than a common model of children and beautiful women. Obviously, the advertisement is intended to guide children from five or six years old to white-collar workers with higher incomes under 40 years old to become interested in this drink. At the same time, the bold retail price of 4.5 yuan/bottle also shows that its value far exceeds that of other brands' 3 ~ 3.5 yuan/bottle juice drinks, which means "value for money" and makes people who pursue value life and like novelty want to drink it first.
An interesting phenomenon appeared on the Internet. At present, there are few media reports about water-soluble C 100, but there are many scattered comments from netizens, such as a family of three who went to the supermarket separately, but in the end they all carried the same three boxes of drinks. The results are all water-soluble c100; For example, water-soluble C 100 tastes exactly like lemon-flavored fruit, but I don't know how to sell it so hot. ...
Hunger distribution
"This is a product that is not suitable for publicity in a noisy atmosphere." Nongfu Spring told reporters that the original target customers of water-soluble C 100 were young people with certain spending power. The consumption characteristic of this group is fashion, which is easily influenced by friends around. It is difficult to get practical results from these people simply by advertising.
The water-soluble C 100 finally chose the hungry distribution method to ignite the market.
The specific steps are as follows: through the control channel (suspension of supply to wholesale channels), first distribute goods around schools, near office buildings and various entertainment places in first-tier cities. During this period, the unique packaging of water-soluble C 100 can often catch some people's eyes. Considering that young people have a strong ability to accept new things, when the consumption potential energy has accumulated to a certain stage, they will distribute goods on a large scale through dealers.
One detail is that when Shuisoluble C 100 just delivered goods at the newsstand near the West Lake, it chose to deliver goods in another place, that is, only one of the two adjacent newsstands often chose to deliver goods.
In addition, the water-soluble C 100 relies on the production base and channels of Nongfu Spring. Compared with other beverage giants, Yangshengtang's weakest products, promotion, distribution and price are the channels. Because the water source base of Nongfu Spring is far away from the urban area, except the normal cost of a bottle of beverage (including bottle cap, label, water, marketing and other expenses), Nongfu Spring has to pay 20% of its total cost every year, and the freight is three times that of Coca-Cola. Its price positioning determines that its channels can only be strong cities and weak secondary and tertiary markets. This is also a prerequisite for hungry water-soluble C 100.
In fact, from the concept of natural water in Nongfu Spring to the concept of mixed juice in Nongfu Orchard to water-soluble C 100, it is the way to take root in keeping healthy. These brands are independent and have no extended relationship with each other, which to some extent avoids the risk of adverse effects on other products after the failure of one product. The reason why water-soluble C 100 can become a dark horse is precisely because it differentiates in every detail of marketing. When these details are combined into huge product features, it will inevitably arouse market ripples of a single spark. ...