---
title: "A Company Should Not Be Like a Frog, Biting at Anything That Moves"
description: "When a company has a star product, it gains a ticket into various retail systems and basic traffic on e-commerce platforms. This gives the company the ability and willingness to spend money to continue buying shelf space, allowing weaker products and non-competitive 'generic goods' to also get on shelves and gain traffic, becoming options for consumers. Many companies mistakenly believe this is due to their 'brand' strength, but in reality, it's often a differentiated good product plus advertising that gives their other products a chance on shelves. Once retailers shift from selling shelf space to selling products, they will eliminate weak products and generics, keeping only the strongest competitive products. This will lead to a significant decline in overall company performance, but also presents opportunities amid the upheaval."
author: "苗庆显"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2024-12-08"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-company-should-not-be-like-a-frog-biting-at-anything-that-moves-b27a954f/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-company-should-not-be-like-a-frog-biting-at-anything-that-moves-b27a954f.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/pFysXUDGO91IPQqkTqVtsQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%81%9A%E4%BC%81%E4%B8%9A%E4%B8%8D%E8%83%BD%E5%83%8F%E9%9D%92%E8%9B%99-%E7%9C%8B%E5%88%B0%E5%8A%A8%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%9C%E8%A5%BF%E5%B0%B1%E4%B8%80%E5%8F%A3%E5%92%AC%E4%B8%8A%E5%8E%BB-b27a954f.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-company-should-not-be-like-a-frog-biting-at-anything-that-moves-b27a954f/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# A Company Should Not Be Like a Frog, Biting at Anything That Moves

> When a company has a star product, it gains a ticket into various retail systems and basic traffic on e-commerce platforms. This gives the company the ability and willingness to spend money to continue buying shelf space, allowing weaker products and non-competitive 'generic goods' to also get on shelves and gain traffic, becoming options for consumers. Many companies mistakenly believe this is due to their 'brand' strength, but in reality, it's often a differentiated good product plus advertising that gives their other products a chance on shelves. Once retailers shift from selling shelf space to selling products, they will eliminate weak products and generics, keeping only the strongest competitive products. This will lead to a significant decline in overall company performance, but also presents opportunities amid the upheaval.

When a company has a star product, it gains a ticket into various retail systems and basic traffic on e-commerce platforms. This gives the company the ability and willingness to spend money to continue buying shelf space, allowing weaker products and non-competitive 'generic goods' to also get on shelves and gain traffic, becoming options for consumers. Many companies mistakenly believe this is due to their 'brand' strength, but in reality, it's often a differentiated good product plus advertising that gives their other products a chance on shelves. Once retailers shift from selling shelf space to selling products, they will eliminate weak products and generics, keeping only the strongest competitive products. They will choose only the company's strong competitive products, one or two per small category. For the rest, they prefer to make white-label products. So the 'brands' that most companies have painstakingly built will soon become ineffective. Their inherent strong competitive products will see amplified performance. Originally, with sales of 1.5 billion, strong products contributed 400 million, weak products 800 million, and generics 300 million. In the future, it might become strong products at 600 million, and other products only 100-200 million. The company's overall performance will be halved. Once product-selling retail becomes dominant, this change will come swiftly, triggering a new round of major reshuffling, fraught with danger but also hiding opportunities. Of course, under the logic of product-selling retail, there will be other impacts on brand owners, changes for distributors, and significant effects on upstream suppliers like technology service providers, raw material suppliers, and equipment manufacturers. We can discuss specific predictions another time; those interested can also make their own forecasts.

The second fundamental change is that platforms will gradually move toward restraint. This includes transaction platforms like Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, and live-streaming platforms, as well as information platforms like Douyin, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu. With the retirement of Ma Yun as a marker, the restraint of transaction platforms is already very evident. Today, I'll focus on information platforms. If internet transaction platforms only shook the foundation of traditional transaction platforms, then current internet information platforms are completely grinding traditional media into the ground. New media has captured at least 90% of people's attention and information sources. The biggest feature of new media is 'decentralization,' which initially was thought to bring 'information equality.' But in reality, with decentralization and algorithms, new media brings more 'information cocoons.' This manifests in society as 'population fragmentation,' and then further 'fragmentation.' Each hot topic adds another split, and people's tolerance decreases, making the splits more severe. Previously, splits were over major issues like GMOs, traditional Chinese medicine, and international relations, but as time goes on, people become more sensitive, splits become more frequent, and figures like Sima Nan, Dong Yuhui, Jiang Ping, and Yang Maoyue can become triggers for online explosions. Centralized media is elitist, restrained, and strictly regulated, while new media is a mass movement, extremely fragmented and emotional. Once this emotion is exploited and mobilized, it becomes 'masses fighting masses,' with serious consequences. New media gives ordinary people a voice, which should be encouraged, but given its characteristics, where should the bottom line be? Should there be reasonable guidance? Should efforts be made to break the 'cocoons'? These are questions on the table and changes that should come next. Since last year, I've often advised friends to do video accounts instead of Douyin. Douyin is a completely free world where you can express and perform freely; the more extreme and controversial, the more attention you get. Video accounts are similar, but they are somewhat connected to your social circle. Your posts and comments are more likely to be seen by friends, which makes people a bit more cautious. This bit of caution gives video accounts a bottom line and will become a dividing line between video accounts and Douyin/Kuaishou. People believe there is a god watching from above. Even a little reverence, maintained over time, can lead to a completely different state, whether for individuals or platforms. In fact, changes in new media platforms are already emerging, whether proactive or reactive. Earlier this year, Gao Xiaosong, who was once scolded off live streaming, reappeared, and his new work still has considerable influence. Just last month, Sima Nan, the top internet commentator on current affairs with tens of millions of followers, was silenced; I judge this to be long-term. A landmark event was when Zhong Shanshan, who suffered online attacks earlier this year, directly challenged Zhang Yiming, and then official media stepped in to criticize platform algorithms.

**This event, I believe, is no less significant than Ma Yun's Bund Summit incident four years ago. It marks the beginning of information platforms moving significantly toward restraint. It is the most important event in Chinese business in 2024.** If the past decade saw traditional media and official media lowering themselves to learn from self-media, playing with memes, self-deprecating, and interacting with the public, then the next phase will see self-media platforms learning from traditional media: increasing restraint, enhancing services, breaking information cocoons, and guiding creators to produce more valuable content. This will bring major changes in how companies create content, operate, interact with users, guide users to generate UGC (user-generated content), and select partners. There are many more foreseeable changes. Media and retail formats are the two biggest environmental factors affecting business and the most important commercial infrastructure. Let's start with these, and the rest can be discussed later.


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671