---
title: "2.3 Billion Views on Douyin: This Biscuit Is a Hit!"
description: "In the mobile internet era, miracles are never in short supply, and the FMCG industry is no exception. In December 2018, a young man on Douyin discovered that shaking Meiji Panda biscuits for 15 minutes could turn them into a ball, sparking a viral trend. According to Guo Shulin, Marketing Director of Oriental Express, the operator of Meiji Panda biscuits, the product has garnered over 230 million views to date, and online popularity has boosted offline retail sales by 413% in the first half of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018."
author: "New Distribution"
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published: "2019-06-25"
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# 2.3 Billion Views on Douyin: This Biscuit Is a Hit!

> In the mobile internet era, miracles are never in short supply, and the FMCG industry is no exception. In December 2018, a young man on Douyin discovered that shaking Meiji Panda biscuits for 15 minutes could turn them into a ball, sparking a viral trend. According to Guo Shulin, Marketing Director of Oriental Express, the operator of Meiji Panda biscuits, the product has garnered over 230 million views to date, and online popularity has boosted offline retail sales by 413% in the first half of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018.

In the mobile internet era, miracles are never in short supply, and the FMCG industry is no exception.
In December 2018, a young man on Douyin created a new trend: he discovered that shaking Meiji Panda biscuits for 15 minutes could turn them into a ball! This unintentional act led more and more Douyin users to join in, creating various creative shaking methods.
According to Guo Shulin, Marketing Director of Oriental Express, the operator of Meiji Panda biscuits, **the biscuit has attracted over 230 million views to date. Moreover, its online popularity has also boosted offline retail sales, with Meiji Panda biscuit sales growing 413% in January-June 2019 compared to the same period in 2018.**
At this point, you might question reality. In the FMCG world, to achieve 230 million views and interactions for a product or brand, you would typically need to spend tens of millions in marketing, and even then, sales might not increase much. Yet Meiji Panda biscuits achieved 400% growth with a minimal budget.
How did Meiji Panda biscuits do it? By analyzing the brand's viral success, we can see how a trending food product seized the traffic dividend and monetized it.
**Why Did Meiji Panda Biscuits Become Popular?**
First, look at the external consumer demand environment. Clearly, this is an era of oversupply. Consumers no longer settle for basic functional needs when it comes to food. Products must be attractive, delicious, and fun... **As French philosopher Jean Baudrillard put it: "People buy items not only to use them as tools, but also to play with them as elements of comfort and superiority."**
Meiji Panda biscuits happened to offer consumers a fun point, a "playful" point. For consumers, the product's functional attributes give way to emotional attributes. What does that mean? Shaking for 15 minutes can turn it into a ball, but note that this is the result, not the process. Not everyone can turn it into a ball; it depends on luck and technique, including shaking frequency, force, and time. When a consumer successfully makes a ball, it satisfies their desire to show off, and the shaking action itself is a great memory point for spreading.
Industry expert Wang Jun explained the phenomenon's popularity: **The seemingly simple action of shaking has logic behind it. For example, WeChat's "shake" feature, in Zhang Xiaolong's product philosophy: simple actions, the most symbolic perception, no need to cultivate habits, never forgotten. In food, Oreo's "twist, lick, dunk" and crispy noodles' "squeeze" are very successful examples of action symbolism.**
Whether it's satisfying consumers' desire to show off or the "shake" as a communication point, Meiji Panda biscuits have the potential to become a hit, but that's not enough. In fact, the biscuit's viral spread was not entirely spontaneous.
Guo Shulin told us that before it became popular, even they didn't know that shaking Meiji Panda biscuits for 15 minutes could turn them into a ball. When they noticed more and more people on Douyin playing with it, they saw it as a great opportunity. They invited top 20 Douyin influencers to join, allowing them to freely create videos around the theme of "shaking into a ball." In summary, **follow the trend, and use KOLs to ignite.**
Without influencers, it was just a small circle playing, but to go viral with the masses, top influencers had to join in to guide more consumers to shake along. This is why Meiji Panda biscuits reached 230 million views in just six months.
When a "small" dividend appears, if companies don't follow up promptly with measures, it might just stay "hot" in a small circle. So when the spark appears, it tests a company's ability to grasp and judge traffic. Discover the dividend, seize it promptly, design communication strategies, leverage social influencers, and spread across circles.
Another key reason, often overlooked by many viral products, is that they think once the dividend comes and they follow up, the product will sell well. In fact, viral products never lack good promotion forms, but they often lack the most basic product quality assurance.
Imagine: Meiji Panda biscuits shake into a ball, the action goes viral, consumers buy out of curiosity and shake it, but once they taste it and find it mediocre, they won't have the motivation to repurchase.
Guo Shulin believes that Meiji Panda biscuits' "popularity" leveraged the social platform dividend to help the company establish consumer brand awareness, but ultimately, it must return to the product itself. Meiji brand comes from Meiji Seika, founded in 1906, with a 113-year brand history, and is a leading global snack brand. The Meiji biscuits sold in China are original imports, and their quality has long been recognized by major platforms. Having entered the Chinese market for nearly a decade, Meiji biscuits have a loyal customer base due to their excellent quality and taste, which is the most fundamental foundation.
**With topicality, interactivity, and the ability to satisfy consumers' desire to show off; the company's behind-the-scenes push, coupled with product quality assurance and the characteristics of social communication in the mobile internet era, ultimately allowed the Meiji Panda biscuit brand to spread.**
**After Going Viral, What's Next?**
According to Kantar data, offline still accounts for 86% of the market in the FMCG sector. How to take the online traffic dividend offline and maximize traffic monetization is a key challenge for the Meiji brand.
Guo Shulin analyzed: **Meiji Panda biscuits have gone viral online, essentially completing brand awareness among young consumers. The next step is consumer experience. Considering the characteristics of the food category and traffic monetization channels, we ultimately chose to place the experience offline. In the first phase, we conducted various interactive promotions in KA supermarkets and CVS convenience stores.**
In addition to regular large-scale displays and tasting promotions, Meiji also combined the online "shake" action with street dance flash mobs in major supermarkets. Through differentiated gameplay, they brought the "viral" feature offline, making Meiji Panda appear not only in Douyin videos but also in consumers' lives, continuously igniting in various places.
At this point, it's easy to understand why Meiji Panda biscuits, though popular online, also saw 413% growth in offline sales. Online solved the brand awareness problem, while offline solved the brand-consumer relationship.
According to Guo Shulin: **So far, the first phase of Meiji's offline expansion is complete, with channel building in national KA supermarkets and CVS convenience stores finished. The next step is to fully open up franchise recruitment. We will take the promotion strategies proven successful in supermarkets or CVS, combine them with the characteristics of traditional small stores, and form standardized playbooks to hand over to distributors, ultimately maximizing traffic monetization.**
Meiji Panda biscuits, with their inherent "halo," have found a methodology to continuously build relationships with consumers offline after nearly half a year of experimentation and accumulation. **The final step is to fully open franchise recruitment offline, achieve scaled replication, and monetize the online traffic dividend in traditional offline distribution channels!**


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