In the post-epidemic era, domestic demand is sluggish, and many companies have broken channels, single or aging products, and urgently need to solve their difficulties in the strategic direction.
In such an environment, a “retrograde” is particularly eye-catching: With the help of the new positioning theory, Huitou Ke Food Group successfully created 4 single products with sales of over 100 million in only two years. Sales of one single product exceeded 600 million yuan. Why did repeat customers achieve contrarian growth? I think this is mainly due to the following two things done by repeat customers.
Use the two dimensions of commonality and characteristic to complete new product creation and professional sub-brand building
At any time, the product is the foundation of the brand. In the new positioning theory I created, the product ranks the first seven inches out of 13 seven inches.
After establishing a cooperative relationship with repeat customers, I have made precise strategic positioning and landing guidance for the polishing and upgrading of almost all products under the repeat customers.
Dorayaki was once a signature product for repeat customers, and later became a category. I judge that if there is no upgrade and refocusing of the scene and the crowd, the product or brand will tend to age. As a result, Dorayaki repositioned the “children’s breakfast” scene, and its brand image was also fully upgraded. After the above-mentioned transformation, the brand-new Dorayaki set off again, harvesting the “second spring”.
On the cake track, I persuaded the always low-key chairman Huang Fuyang to create a young, sunny, and confident “cake king” and firmly grasp the “founder’s seven inches.”
On the subdivision track of children’s baking, I participated in the planning process of shredded sticks and donuts, and named it Xiaofule. On the toast track, I considered the two dimensions of commonality and specificity, clarified the competitive elements of the product, and named the sub-brand “Heihao”. This is a sub-brand that focuses on toast. Its stuffed toast and nut liba toast form “Black and White Shuangsha”. Currently, Heihao has become an unstoppable rising star in the toast category.
Although the above three items have become large items with sales of over 100 million, up to now, the most dazzling “new star” of repeat customers is still Kanoni.
In 2014, the new category of waffles began to grow rapidly. Initially, square products were popular on the market. Since then, under the general trend of waffle popularity, an important small trend has appeared: after the square waffle, a new generation of round waffles has shown signs of hot sales.
I have a foreboding that the round waffle is a huge strategic opportunity for repeat customers. To this end, I put forward three suggestions: First, the round waffle is very promising to become a hot product. It is recommended that repeat customers invest sufficient resources to increase It is built as a strategic new product. Second, name the product “Kanoni” to create the image of a waffle expert, out of the “×× grid” of homogenization thinking. Third, adopt a gradual transition method, while launching round waffles without giving up the original square waffles.
The repeat customers all accepted the above suggestions and concentrated resources to land the new generation of Cannoni waffles. On March 17, 2019, after the new round waffle was officially launched, it was enthusiastically sought after by dealers at Chengdu Chuntang, Tianjin Qiutang, Jinan Qiutang and other exhibitions. Now its sales revenue has exceeded 600 million yuan. . It is particularly worth mentioning that due to the proper transition measures, the hot sale of round waffles not only did not erode the space of the original square waffles, but also promoted its growth, which can be said to be a joy for everyone.
After gaining control of the waffle market, Chairman Huang Fuyang was willing to choose to take the initiative to increase prices in order to accommodate competition and jointly expand the category. Repeat customers contributed textbook-style competitive operations for Chinese companies. This coincides with the view that “competition is not to eliminate competitors, but to absorb the potential energy of opponents and enhance strategic vision” that the new positioning theory has always advocated.
The old positioning theory usually suggests that companies “cut, cut, cut.” Whether to cut depends on the situation. In many cases, greater success can only be achieved by making full use of the achievements and resources that the company has achieved. The success of Qiaqia Little Yellow Bag and China Lining confirms this point.
Establish a brand model of “industrial brand + professional sub-brand”
In the past two years, the most important phased achievement made by repeat customers is the establishment of an “industrial brand + professional sub-brand” model that is more adaptable to the current and future competitive environment. This brand model has the following significance for repeat customers:
1. Help repeat customers to get out of the confusion period and find the direction of continuous pursuit of strategic competition. The process of category evolution in the baking industry in the past 20 years has shown the following important historical experience: grasping 1-2 new category opportunities and becoming the boss can become a brand enterprise; grasping 3-4 new category opportunities, the enterprise can become an intermediate type Enterprises (the sales scale is distributed between 1 billion yuan and several billion yuan); seizing the opportunities of 5-6 new categories can often become tens of billions of enterprises.
If an enterprise wants to continue to succeed, it must continue to pursue the differentiation in the direction of opening up new categories, and win the war between traffic portals and cognitive portals in new categories. After building six sub-brands based on the products, repeat customers will sell in Waffles (Canonni), Shredded Sticks + Donuts (Xiao Fu Le), Croissants (Ann Kiss), Toast (Hei Hao), etc. Continue to chase by category, so that the strategic direction of repeat customers is suddenly clear.
At the same time, the process of iterative upgrading of the Hakka brand has never stopped. The industrial brand positioning and brand-new visual system of “Repeat Customers·Baking Master·Focus on Baking Fresh Manufacturing (MR·HTK)” have greatly enhanced the brand’s sense of big name and internationality, and the industrial image of repeat customers has also been fully upgraded.
Chinese Go pays attention to “potential”, which is that each move is not only related to the present, but also determines the future result. After repeat customers reinvented the brand model, it is like forming a “big picture” on a chessboard. The good development trend has laid a solid foundation for the future “mid-market fight”, making repeat customers one step closer to the 10 billion goal.
2. When entering a new category, the parent brand can empower the sub-brand; turning the product into a large single product can also enhance the potential of the parent brand. Objectively speaking, after the waffles, shredded sticks, cakes and other tracks, repeat customers can quickly gain a foothold and gain a leading edge. The empowerment of the repeat customer mother brand is indispensable. The strong potential of Huitou’s parent brand makes it easier for sub-brands to gain a competitive advantage in the face of some weaker competitors or category-limited brands with certain dimensionality reduction capabilities.
3. The parent brand can seize the trend of new categories by launching new sub-brands, cater to the needs of young consumers, and achieve brand rejuvenation. This model can greatly reduce or avoid cognitive conflict or loss while meeting the diverse and multi-level needs of consumers. For a long time, food companies above designated size have usually adopted a single brand + product brand model. The more extreme case is that there were more than 800 products under Jacques V9. Another example is the peach and plum of the bread industry.
This brand model has two disadvantages: First, in the case of limited consumer cognitive capacity, the parent brand carries too many products, and the brand and the product cannot achieve effective synergy due to “overload”. Second, the parent brand’s direct link to a large number of products often lacks solutions when facing the problem of brand aging. Under the single-brand + product approach, consumers’ perception of a certain brand may remain on one of its signature products. For example, consumers’ impression of Dali may be more based on French bread or egg yolk pie These two categories. When the cognition is anchored, it is difficult for the brand to win the cognition of young consumers in the new sub-categories.
4. Can grasp the rhythm of competition from the perspective of time and space more flexibly, without worrying about causing cognitive conflicts. After adopting the “industrial brand + professional sub-brand” model, the parent brand and the sub-brands can be connected when needed to support and empower each other, or they can set up a “firewall” when they need to be independent to avoid negative influences on each other .
It is very important to grasp the rhythm in market competition. We often need to implement the ultimate cost-effective strategy with the goal of market share in stages. But at the same time, they don’t want to have a negative impact on the existing mental positioning of the parent brand.
Repeated customers have mastered the rhythm well in the two stages of Kanoni (first using the ultimate price-performance ratio to obtain traffic, then increasing the price to accommodate competition, and jointly expanding the category), and at the same time, they do not have to worry about the possibility of excessive downward extension of the brand. Consumers’ cognitive conflicts.
In contrast, Parker, who adopts a single brand model, is not so lucky. A certain CEO is forced to push low-end products under performance pressure, which brings about the downward extension of the brand. Consumers have conflicts with Parker’s original perceptions of “Luxury in Pens”, resulting in a decline in sales of the entire product system. If Parker adopts the industrial brand + professional sub-brand model (not to discuss whether this approach is in line with the “five synergy” principle), it may avoid such problems to a large extent.
