Wu Xiaobo predicted at this year's "Wu Xiaobo Year-End Show": "When a country's GDP per capita exceeds $10,000, the new middle class will become the main consumer force, and the local consciousness of this consumer group will rise massively." This gives birth to the "national goods movement". In this current "national goods movement," traditional Chinese nourishing brands have risen abruptly. Xiao Xian Dun has become the biggest dark horse in the nourishing industry, being the first nourishing brand to enter Tmall's billion-yuan club. This year's "Double 11 Shopping Festival" saw it defeat the established bird's nest brand Yan Zhi Wu, becoming the top-selling bird's nest product on Tmall, and also the top brand on JD.com and Xiaohongshu. Xiao Xian Dun was established only 5 years ago. In 2018, sales broke 200 million yuan, but in 2019, they rapidly climbed to 800 million yuan. From obscurity to fame, what exactly did Xiao Xian Dun do right? -01- Product is the core competitive barrier Xiao Xian Dun's brand carries a distinct founder imprint. Lin Xiaoxian's labels of "born into a traditional Chinese medicine family, graduated from the First Military Medical University," and "national first-class health manager" endorse the quality of Xiao Xian Dun. Whether in Focus Media elevator ads or live streams, Lin Xiaoxian's approachable and professional image becomes more real, continuously increasing consumer trust. Product is the core, and also the core competitive barrier of Xiao Xian Dun. Before Xiao Xian Dun, there were already ready-to-eat bird's nest products on the market with a shelf life of one and a half to two years, similar to canned food technology, with widespread concerns about "additives and nutrient loss." To solve this pain point, Xiao Xian Dun established the "fresh stewed bird's nest" 5 standards. By selecting raw materials, building its own factory, and after 280 tests, it determined a 38-minute, 95-degree Celsius stewing time ratio to ensure nutrients are not lost. It is also the first in the industry to adopt a C2M model of same-day fresh stewing and cold-chain delivery. The shelf life is only 15 days, truly achieving zero additives. As the pioneer and leader of the "fresh stewed bird's nest" new category, Xiao Xian Dun conforms to the major trend of consumption upgrade, meeting the four major demands of the rising middle class for convenience, freshness, nutrition, and ample ingredients, representing the future consumption direction of bird's nest products. With "solving market pain points + excellent products," the founding team of Xiao Xian Dun, through online promotion—finding bird's nest taste influencers—accumulated the first 1,000 orders after the brand's birth. Product strength is Xiao Xian Dun's core capability. With this confidence, Lin Xiaoxian made the grand vow of "breaking 100 million next year" at the 2018 Tmall Double 11 awards ceremony. Now the vow has come true; Xiao Xian Dun is the first nourishing brand to enter Tmall's billion-yuan club. "The first time I ate bird's nest in my life was Xiao Xian Dun," commented a post-90s user on Tmall. Xiao Xian Dun is also becoming the first bowl of bird's nest for more and more young women. -02- Brand rise: offline Focus Media ignition, online live streaming seeding From the development trends of segmented media in the past two years, only elevator TV, elevator posters, and mobile internet advertising have maintained growth. Traditional TV and variety shows have performed poorly. On one hand, TV startup rates have repeatedly declined; on the other hand, the audience is aging. Meanwhile, online video advertising, once favored by brands, has seen paid users exceed 300 million, indicating that the most consumption-capable people paying to "remove ads" has become a major trend. This has spurred the popularity of content marketing on mobile internet. Xiao Xian Dun initially relied on online seeding, live streaming, and other means to achieve brand breakthrough from 1 to 10. With excellent quality, Xiao Xian Dun was early on favored by celebrities, including Chen Shu, Zhang Bozhi, Zhang Yuqi, Jing Tian, and more than 20 other celebrities as early annual card users. Among them, actress Chen Shu transformed from a loyal fan to an investor, leading an early investment of 20 million yuan in Xiao Xian Dun. Driven by many celebrities, Xiao Xian Dun attracted a lot of attention in a short time, with over 2 million seeding posts on Xiaohongshu. Xiao Xian Dun also harvested the dividend of live streaming, cooperating with Wei Ya and Zhang Dayi. Lin Xiaoxian found that live streaming is a good form of harvesting traffic, as it can intuitively present the stretching and Q-elasticity of bird's nest and receive real-time user feedback. A live stream with Zhang Dayi and Lin Xiaoxian achieved sales of 5.6 million yuan. Afterwards, as the online traffic dividend ended, growth became clearly sluggish. In-site traffic costs continued to rise, and costs for seeding and live streaming on Douyin and Xiaohongshu also surged. Xiao Xian Dun realized this potential crisis as early as 2018. Moreover, to go from an internet-famous brand to a star brand, building brand influence and enhancing brand premium capability is the only way to support Xiao Xian Dun's growth and strength. With insight into the media landscape and control of brand competitive strategy, Xiao Xian Dun founder Lin Xiaoxian decisively joined forces with Focus Media elevator media to concentrate efforts on building the brand. Last year's "38 Queen's Day," "Xiao Xian Dun × Focus Media" staged a textbook marketing campaign that ignited offline and online simultaneously. On "38 Queen's Day," a "red gift box" appeared in all Focus Media elevators across Beijing. Inside the box were genuine bottled Xiao Xian Dun bird's nest and a weekly bird's nest card—real products on display, see and get. Instantly, a "sweeping the building for treasure" craze erupted in the capital, and online social media was flooded with Xiao Xian Dun's activities and lucky users who received gift boxes. While the activity trended on hot searches, countless users were also won over by Xiao Xian Dun's sincere marketing creativity. On the day of the event, Xiao Xian Dun's bird's nest sales increased by 465% year-on-year. Since then, Xiao Xian Dun has continuously increased its investment in Focus Media, and brand momentum has continued to rise. During "E-commerce 618," Xiao Xian Dun fresh stewed bird's nest sales increased by 497% year-on-year. During Tmall's "Double 11 Shopping Festival," online sales reached 130 million yuan, defeating the bird's nest brand Yan Zhi Wu with over 20 years of history, becoming the top-selling bird's nest product on Tmall and the first nourishing brand to enter Tmall's billion-yuan club. It is also the top bird's nest brand on JD.com, Xiaohongshu, and the entire network. Lin Xiaoxian also expressed gratitude, saying, "2019 is the first year of strategic cooperation between Xiao Xian Dun fresh stewed bird's nest and Focus Media, helping Xiao Xian Dun achieve growth of more than three times. Focus Media has high momentum, can accurately and efficiently reach mainstream audiences, help Xiao Xian Dun establish awareness of the 'fresh stewed bird's nest' new category, and convey the trust of Xiao Xian Dun as the 'expert brand in fresh stewed bird's nest.'" -03- The key leap from internet-famous brand to star brand Using offline Focus Media elevator media to ignite advantages is an opportunity many brands have not seen, but Xiao Xian Dun seized it, mainly due to these three points: First, the amount of GMV is directly proportional to brand strength. There is a famous formula in the industry: GMV = Traffic x Average Order Value x Repurchase Rate x Conversion Rate.
Conversion rate—depends on brand awareness and recognition, i.e., brand influence determines the level of conversion rate; Average order value—depends on the premium capability brought by brand momentum; Repurchase rate—depends on product experience, brand stickiness, and the frequency of hitting user minds (partially related to traffic). From the above, it can be seen that the three factors determining GMV are all related to the brand. However, due to the obvious temptation of digital media, most brand owners spare no expense to invest in increasingly expensive, fragmented, and even dust-like "effect-visible" traffic advertising, while neglecting brand building and brand ignition that can equally or even more significantly boost GMV. Xiao Xian Dun's great success validates the necessary path for internet-famous brands to grow into star brands: from relying on traffic leadership to brand leadership, from price and volume both declining to both rising, because people's hearts are more important than traffic, and seizing user minds is the kingly way for enterprise survival. Second, be the category champion and industry leader in "fresh stewed bird's nest." Because the premium and profit space for the first place far exceeds that of followers. As competition in the bird's nest industry intensifies, old rivals and new entrants will inevitably enter. To maintain competitive advantage, Xiao Xian Dun must seize the leadership position in the "fresh stewed bird's nest" category, widen the market gap, create the maximum profit space, and resist unknown risks. Now, information is fragmented and dust-like, and brand information is easily submerged in the virtual ocean of information. The reach and visibility make brand owners panic, because in the mobile internet era where consumers have the initiative, blocking and filtering are the norm. Only the centralized ignition effect of centralized media can alleviate brand owners' anxiety. Looking at the current media trends and successful cases in the past two years, such as Guazi Used Cars, Luckin Coffee, Feihe Milk Powder, Miaokelanduo, and Qiaqia Little Yellow Bag, all have bound with Focus Media elevator media to complete transformation and upgrading, or occupy the first place in the category. This concentrated ignition power that changes industry patterns and reverses market trends can only be achieved by Focus Media elevator media, and Xiao Xian Dun's founder feels it deeply and has witnessed it firsthand. Third, the urgent need to transition from internet-famous brand to star brand. Too many internet-famous brands are fleeting. The reasons for their demise are closely related to brand price wars and normalized promotions. To obtain better traffic, promotional traffic diversion and live streaming sales are inevitable. To resist competitors' defensive attacks and encroach on the market, price blocking has immediate effects. However, as competition intensifies, both sides continuously consume and wear each other down, greatly damaging their vitality. In the end, although consumers pick up a lot of bargains, brands find it hard to recover. Most consumers are spoiled into price-sensitive individuals, and brands fall into a low-margin, micro-profit survival period, with few turning the tables. Looking at many industry cases, the only way to redemption is to continuously enhance brand momentum, establish brand advantage awareness, and let the brand leap from the internet-famous stage to the star stage, so as to continuously create profit space for online traffic harvesting and bring more stable traffic to the brand. As Yang Fei, CMO of Luckin Coffee, said, "Brand is the most stable traffic pool." Some experts predict that the bird's nest market will grow from nearly 100 billion in 2019 to "over 200 billion" in 2020. Competition in the bird's nest industry is bound to intensify, with attacks and counterattacks constantly playing out. In an era where traffic dividends disappear and spiritual dividends rise, whoever occupies more user minds will win a larger market. For now, Xiao Xian Dun has more advantages. In terms of internal strength, product strength and leadership are superior; in terms of external strength, it plays the new brand model of "offline Focus Media ignition, online content marketing" with ease. In fact, time left for other competitors in the industry is running out! According to Wu Xiaobo's prediction, under the trend of "China's new manufacturing," more Chinese "new brands" will emerge. Whether they can leap from internet-famous brands to star brands, and from high-end brands to top brands, is the lifeline for corporate brands. For example, Guazi Used Cars and others, domestic down jacket brand Bosideng and others, domestic cheese brand Miaokelanduo and others, either become the head, winning high brand premium power; or become others, falling into the dilemma of razor-thin profits. Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.