Niche behaviors in the rise of new consumer brands

 　　Recently, I often see my friends in the company after lunch, taking out colorful pills from a few exquisite bottles and cans and swallowing them, and carefully asked these young colleagues who advertised "punk health". These pills turned out to be bowling capsules. , Grape seeds, milk thistle, anti-sugar pills, etc., in response to the Internet buzzword "young people stay the latest night, put on the most expensive mask", and now there is another line of "the most expensive health care product." ".

　　In recent years, a number of emerging consumer brands have quickly been favored and sought after by consumers. The reason is that they have formed products in terms of product positioning, brand marketing, and channel integration after fully insight and research on target groups, media platforms, and sales paths. With a novel and unique style of play, it occupied the minds of young users in a shorter period of time, and created a set of niche behaviors for a new consumer brand.

Trend genes in the middle age

　　The leap in the consumption era must be due to changes in the consumer population. Today, a large number of post-90s and post-95s have become the backbone of new consumption with consumption upgrades, among which post-95s have huge consumption potential. They have different consumption concepts from other people, and they are more concerned about the product's appearance, quality, consumption experience, cost-effectiveness and other factors, pursuing individuality and trends, such as staying up late to maintain health and sustaining life, and advanced consumption is only for the pleasure of interest and find new curiosities. Become a psychological normal...These characteristics of the population have injected new opportunities into the entire consumer market.

　　The primary goal of new consumer brands is to match the young people’s focus on trends, anchor sub-categories from major categories, combine product functions with crowd interests, and use this as a breakthrough in the market of major brands It tears a hole in the middle and builds it into a trendy brand for a specific niche. I call this strategy trend positioning.

　　"Health" is undoubtedly a big pain point for this generation of young people, and it will drive many subdivision consumption tracks such as health preservation and meal replacement into a trend. The up-and-coming brand WonderLab entered the track with the "Little Fat Bottle" meal replacement milkshake, and quickly became a hot product that swept the entire network through the flavor and taste of milk tea it created.

　　Different from past meal replacement products, WonderLab uses a small bottle packaging that combines fashion and sportiness, which is more in line with the personality and avant-garde psychological needs of users; at the same time, chewable particles are added to various flavors of milkshakes to make "meal replacement" The ingredients are real and visible; based on solid product strength, WonderLab has put the concept of milk tea to the end, and co-branded with HeyTea to launch the "drinking milk tea" meal replacement milkshake. Low-fat milkshake and high-calorie milk tea "play" in contrast. Together, they captured the hearts of a large number of post-95 consumer groups on social media.

　　With the triple blessing of appearance, taste, and creativity, WonderLab accurately matched the trendy genes among the young people of the era in the public opinion field. In the first year of its establishment, it sold 30 million bottles of meal replacement milkshakes, creating a young consumer The new consumer health brand of the creator.

Break the game from point to line and then face

　　Benefiting from the traffic dividends brought by the post-90s and post-95s generations, the consumer goods sector has already formed an outlet for new local consumer brands, and this is all closely related to the changes in the brand communication environment.

　　In today's increasingly fragmented and diversified media, consumer groups have been reclassified and gathered to form social circles and consumer circles with common hobbies, attitudes and values. Therefore, no matter what brand, it is very difficult for a set of advertisements to penetrate all markets and groups. Instead, try to cater to the needs of their potential user groups and customize the content they care about and love.

　　Under this circumstance, social media with multiple groups of people has become a platform that connects brands and users. Brands have long output high-quality content on such platforms to communicate and interact with users, and shape brand image through precision marketing and scene marketing. , Let the "ripples" aroused by the brand in the social public opinion field converge into a line, and finally form a joint force to spread across the platform and achieve a breakthrough.

　　For example, on the main line of the hot "national style" in recent years, many national style brands that focus on Chinese culture and fashion trends have emerged. But the Chinese style is not a stacking of Chinese elements. Only the integration of the national style and the brand cultural heritage can make the people of the national style circle have a value resonance.

　　In this regard, Huaxizi, a cutting-edge cosmetics brand, has been recognized by the industry as a leader who has risen by the momentum of the country through a series of marketing actions.

　　Huaxizi places great emphasis on national style in product design. It reproduces the traditional craftsmanship of the East, inherits various exquisite techniques such as micro-carving and relief sculpture, and successfully grafts the national style art to the product, showing the magnificence of beautiful rivers and mountains between square inches. Magnificent beauty.

　　First of all, the most easily sparked spark with Huaxizi is the national style IP "Hanfu circle". The model of cooperation is to actively cooperate with Xitang Hanfu Culture Week and other "national style feasts" in 2020, and create it as a designated makeup brand. "Huaxizi Creative Makeup Competition". At the same time, Huaxizi has established the official Weibo as a social interaction position with fans, recommending makeup strategies suitable for Hanfu style, actively discussing makeup techniques with fans in the comment area, recreating oriental beauties between eyebrows and lips, traditional costume Hanfu and Huaxizi Oriental Make-up has also formed a strong binding.

　　Based on the national style, Huaxizi also spread to pan-national styles such as music, fashion, games, and two-dimensional through cross-border cooperation, reaching more types of potential users and deepening the overall brand awareness. For example, musician Zhou Shen X Fang Wenshan customized the branded song "Hua Xizi" for Huaxizi, and jointly launched the Qixi Festival custom carved lipstick with the popular game "Jianwang 3", and created Huaxizi's virtual image with fans, all of which are helping the brand Fission breaking circle. Huaxizi has created a unique oriental aesthetic in the national style beauty industry, and has played a more advanced level of Chinese style marketing.

　　Guofeng’s interest groups are all generation Z young people in their 20s and their users are very sticky. Huaxizi uses Guofeng as the main line of brand marketing, so that users of different types of Guofeng have a high degree of favorability and loyalty to the brand, establishes the core competitiveness of the brand, and then spreads the brand information to more people in the circle. , Won the blank market share of "National Style No. 1 Beauty".

Synergy of quality and efficiency achieves a "popular heart"

　　Niche brands want to upgrade to the mainstream. After finding the right person and talking to them, the most important thing is to promote conversion through suitable channels.

　　With the sharp increase in marketing expenses and traffic costs, the e-commerce platform has reached a high degree of saturation. It is not that there is less traffic, but more businesses. In particular, the homogeneity of businesses has serious internal volume. Offline stores have penetrated the vast sinking market and still have nowhere to go.

　　Brands that have studied channels have gradually developed a sales model that combines “online detonation + offline coverage”: the brand uses celebrity endorsements and KOL planting grass on social platforms to create and promote popular and popular products. Fire up, quickly seize consumer awareness, and at the same time, based on comprehensive offline channels, carry out large-scale distribution, so that online information can reach target consumers twice, deepen consumers’ impression of the brand, and in such long-term and lasting interactions Continuing to promote sales conversion.

　　Ozark, the leading domestic oatmeal brand, can be regarded as a representative of the successful integration of online and offline channel resources. At the beginning of its establishment, Ozark based on product research and development, on the one hand, built a fully automated production line to create a diversified product matrix, on the other hand, it has proactively expanded offline channels. As of the first half of 2021, Ozark will enter the line There are more than 100,000 offline supermarkets, covering 95% of the offline supermarkets in the country, and the brand market share exceeds 98%.

　　The finishing touch took place in April 2021. Ozark announced on Weibo that the top star Xiao Zhan was the brand spokesperson and became a hot marketing event on the Internet, leveraging the strong social influence and circle of the Weibo platform. Penetration and huge user base have fully detonated the attention and interest of young people and fan groups in Ozark. The 330,000 copies of the Xiao Zhan’s same gift box embedded in the Xiao Zhan’s endorsement blog post were sold out within one hour, and the online GMV was nearly 100 million yuan on that day.

　　Products and materials related to Xiao Zhan have also entered Ozark's offline channels simultaneously, direct contact with the upstart of consumption reaching the "small town youth" in third- and fourth-tier cities. Not only allows consumers who follow Xiao Zhandai's incident online to buy the same model offline, it deepens the brand association between Xiao Zhan and Ozark, and stimulates the emotional resonance of the target population.

　　Through high-gloss online detonation and complete offline deepening, Ozark not only effectively established the brand image, quickly realized the brand transition, but also handed over a dazzling report card, successively boarding the Tmall cutting-edge food sales list and Weibo A number of new consumer brands, such as the pin-not-to-explosive product list, have led the rise of new domestic brands with synergy of product efficiency, and have gradually become the mainstream of consumer recognition.

　　Trend observer James Harkin pointed out in his book Niche Behavior: “The Internet age defines themselves as unique individuals, but they are looking for a sense of belonging all the time. Through surface appeals, deep insights into consumers’ hearts The label pursued is the key to shaping the brand culture of the new era and capturing the trust of consumers’ brands.” In the

　　mobile Internet era, new consumer brands have gradually developed a set of “trend positioning, circle penetration, Channel integration" niche marketing methodology. For most new consumer brands that want to enter the market, aim at a subdivision track that the giants have not yet laid out, and take the lead on this track. Once this strategy works, the new consumer brand will even take a step forward. A solid step for the mainstream.