---
title: "Commercial Nuclear War: Three Ways to Press the Nuclear Button"
description: "This article discusses the concept of 'nuclear weapons' in commercial warfare, using case studies of Genki Forest, Ele.me, Miaokeland, and Guazi to illustrate three strategies for pressing the 'nuclear button': the strong using it to seal a category, the weak using it to secure survival, and the strong using it to maintain dominance. It emphasizes the importance of timing, strategic judgment, and brand building in executing such high-stakes marketing moves."
author: "胡喆"
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published: "2021-09-09"
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# Commercial Nuclear War: Three Ways to Press the Nuclear Button

> This article discusses the concept of 'nuclear weapons' in commercial warfare, using case studies of Genki Forest, Ele.me, Miaokeland, and Guazi to illustrate three strategies for pressing the 'nuclear button': the strong using it to seal a category, the weak using it to secure survival, and the strong using it to maintain dominance. It emphasizes the importance of timing, strategic judgment, and brand building in executing such high-stakes marketing moves.

Source: Left-Right Fox (ID: Left-Right-007) Author: Hu Zhe

On the morning of August 6, 1945, a 14-member crew led by Tibbets of the U.S. Army Air Forces flew a B-29 bomber codenamed "Enola Gay" over Hiroshima, Japan, and dropped an atomic bomb codenamed "Little Boy."

A few days later, at noon on August 15, the Japanese Emperor broadcast to the nation, accepting the Potsdam Declaration and surrendering unconditionally, ending the war.

Nuclear war became part of human warfare history, and nuclear weapons became a spiritual symbol, representing humanity's ultimate force.

Commercial warfare is a more intense, longer-lasting, and more omnipresent war than hot war. So, does commercial warfare also have "nuclear weapons"? Are the principles of applying these "commercial nuclear weapons" the same as those of real nuclear weapons?

**Part One: The Ultimate Weapon**

Although nuclear weapons have never been used in actual combat in the decades since World War II, they have existed as an ultimate weapon in the human world.

The defining characteristic of nuclear weapons is their immense power. However, as the number of legally and de facto nuclear-armed states has increased, humanity has suddenly realized that "nuclear war" = "end war" is not necessarily the only outcome.

For commercial warfare, the situation is even more complex. The complexity lies not only in how to use nuclear weapons but also in the relative ease of acquiring them. The phenomenon of multiple parties repeatedly using nuclear weapons in a commercial war is increasing. So, how do we grasp the laws of war when dealing with a weapon whose results cannot be controlled after pressing the launch button?

We must study what can be called nuclear weapons in commercial warfare.

**In a sense, building a brand to seize and solidify consumer mindshare is the most common and long-term commercial tactic. The nuclear weapons of commercial warfare are the detonation facilities that help brands seize the precious time window and repel any opponent attempting to encroach on consumer mindshare with saturation attacks, ultimately achieving decisive victory.**

From this perspective, CCTV's National Brand Project, Focus Media's offline concentrated detonation, and top-tier variety shows are the three most common types of commercial nuclear weapons with different forms and yields.

Genki Forest is a typical case, almost too typical.

Genki Forest's sparkling water embodies founder Tang Binsen's entrepreneurial philosophy of "innovating on mature products." In the sparkling water field, which had existed for years, Genki Forest carved out a dedicated niche by adding the new concept of "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories."

In the early stages of brand development, Genki Forest's breakout was largely due to **this new concept resonating with consumers**. Additionally, methods like **penetrating internet consumer communities through KOLs and seizing convenience store channels**, while not unique, quickly helped raise Genki Forest's visibility.

We must emphasize that no product can become the market leader solely through brand promotion without product strength. Market research firm Ipsos reported that "when purchasing food and beverages, 76% of consumers aged 24-40 pay attention to health-related information such as sugar-free and additive-free."

Thus, Genki Forest's "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories" concept precisely hit this pain point, allowing Genki Forest to gain a local advantage. The "Market Leadership Rule" also holds that creating a product that makes you the "first" in a category is much easier than trying to convince people you offer better quality or service than the originator.

This means Genki Forest needed to continuously emphasize its leadership in zero-sugar sparkling water to occupy consumer mindshare. However, in this process, Genki Forest encountered increasing resistance.

At its core, zero-sugar sparkling water is not like an iPhone or a chip; it lacks exclusive product strength. To some extent, it is quite easy to imitate.

In fact, Genki Forest's own data shows that it has received over a hundred cases of imitation recently, involving more than 20 domestic beverage brands. The plagiarism ranges from manufacturing materials and processes to product branding, packaging, and even advertising slogans, constituting "pixel-level" copying.

If pixel-level copying is merely an unrefined tactic, then well-known brands entering the track puts even more pressure on Genki Forest.

For example, some offline stores of Heytea and Sexy Tea launched sparkling waters named "Heytea Little Tea" and "Scholar Spirit," while beverage giants like Nongfu Spring, Beibingyang, Mizone, and Jianlibao have also announced new zero-sugar or low-sugar sparkling water products. These are all brands with mature market recognition in the soft drink industry.

Despite being "hunted" by many brands, Genki Forest held its ground. Public data shows that Genki Forest's sales scale increased by 2.7 billion yuan in 2020, a year-on-year growth of 309%.

Even compared to the equally popular Heytea sparkling water, Genki Forest has a clear advantage. Heytea's 2020 data shows that its Tmall flagship store sold about 1.4 million bottles of Heytea sparkling water, while Genki Forest sold over 20 million bottles on Double 11 alone last year.

The barrier here, beyond the product, is largely built through brand mindshare. Facing the dual pressure of new brands emerging endlessly and consumers' attention being hard to focus, **maintaining high brand momentum inevitably requires high-density marketing.**

Influenced by his previous entrepreneurial experience in the gaming industry, founder Tang Binsen was very firm in his marketing investment.

Genki Forest's transition from advantage to victory actually lies in its timely pressing of the commercial nuclear button—in May 2020, Genki Forest began detonating on Focus Media!

It can be said that from the moment Genki Forest detonated on Focus Media, the gap between it and other brands was completely widened.

**The "attention bias" theory holds that the more frequently a consumer sees your ads and messages, the more likely they are to purchase from you.**

From this perspective, Focus Media, which covers mainstream office buildings and residential communities nationwide, is on people's daily high-frequency commuting paths, and spreads with "ear-piercing" repetition, is the best tool for creating "attention bias."

A veteran in the same industry said, "When Genki Forest started heavily investing in Focus Media, we realized the time window for this category was basically closed."

The key here is Tang Binsen's determination—you know, annual investment in Focus Media requires substantial strategic resources. In a super first-tier city, it might be tens of millions of yuan; nationwide, it could be hundreds of millions.

99% of competitors did not expect Genki Forest to use this method to block the category. A mature manufacturer launching a new sparkling water product and initially covering channels might only need a few million to tens of millions of yuan. Even with some media placement and internet traffic purchases, marketing would at most be tens of millions.

This matches the mentality of most chasers: quickly imitate, promote at low cost, move fast, and frequently test... using the lowest cost to catch this wave.

Genki Forest's ruthlessness lies in this: I guessed others would follow collectively, so I would throw a nuclear weapon. Through several rounds of nationwide, saturation-attack-level huge investments, Genki Forest's image as the leader in "0-sugar fruit-flavored sparkling water" is deeply imprinted in consumers' minds. Leveraging the "hard to enter, hard to exit" nature of mindshare, it occupies consumer mindshare at once, leaving no opportunity for latecomers.

Facts have proven that Genki Forest's decisive pressing of the "nuclear button" of Focus Media was very correct. Genki Forest officially announced that a new round of financing was completed, with a post-investment valuation of $6 billion. Compared to the previous round in spring 2020, Genki Forest's valuation has tripled within a year.

After this, ordinary players no longer have a seat among Genki Forest's investors. This round was led by existing shareholder Sequoia Capital China and new investors Warburg Pincus and L Catterton, with Temasek following, and existing shareholders Gaorong Capital and Longfor Capital continuing to increase their stakes.

This also confirms that using commercial nuclear weapons is most effective when "I have it, you don't," because it can cut off opponents' path to advancement in one fell swoop. It can be said that anyone now making zero-sugar sparkling water will find it difficult to surpass Genki Forest, even if "Two Colas" enter the field themselves.

This is because Genki Forest seized the time window through Focus Media and then solidified consumer mindshare through a series of combined moves, never letting it go.

Of course, this textbook-style "one investment ends the war" is not always the case. In many situations, the landscape of nuclear war is much more complex.

**Part Two: Speed is Unbeatable**

Sometimes, the use of nuclear weapons is not for the strong to win a battle, but for the weak to secure the right to survive, because only with the right to survive is there the right to develop. So, the second logic for pressing the commercial nuclear button is—

There are too many examples to cite here.

Take Ele.me, which is indeed a pioneer in domestic food delivery. Similar to the beverage war, food delivery is a battlefield without absolute competitive barriers, so for a long time, everyone was competing on subsidies and ground promotion.

In this situation, Ele.me, with relatively weaker brand momentum and financing ability, was struggling under the pincer attack of Meituan and Baidu Takeout.

Zhang Xuhao was unwilling to be suppressed and sought advice from experts everywhere. Finally, he decided to compete with differentiation: while everyone was competing on subsidies and ground promotion, Ele.me would take the lead in entering consumers' minds through brand mindshare.

In June 2015, Ele.me "went all in," using Focus Media to detonate its brand in almost all office buildings nationwide, announcing the launch of 200,000 free lunches to treat white-collar workers.

Ele.me had two advantages here: first, it was the first to use a brand detonation device; second, it created some differentiation—at that time, most food delivery platforms leaned toward campus and lower-tier markets, while the white-collar market was relatively blank.

It can be said that without this lightning raid, Ele.me would soon have faded into obscurity. But precisely because of this counterattack, Meituan was left with no room to maneuver. At this point, Ele.me also received $300 million in financing from Dianping.

The effect of this detonation even influenced October 2015, when after Meituan and Dianping merged, they had the largest market share in China's food delivery market. The second place was Ele.me, with a ratio of about 55:45, which was closely related to who pressed the nuclear button first.

However, against the backdrop of the Meituan-Dianping merger, Ele.me's achievement of holding a 55:45 ratio while fighting alone gave it enough capital to eventually attract Alibaba's investment, securing a rare opportunity for survival and growth.

A person close to Ele.me told the author that this investment was Ele.me's third major strategic action in its development, alongside the "campus offensive" and "city opening plan."

"Without this mindshare offensive, we would have been quickly forgotten by the market. But because we occupied mindshare, Ele.me had a group of loyal customers that Meituan could not shake, the so-called customers with solidified mindshare. They supported Ele.me's foundation and still do."

Since then, "strike first when facing a strong opponent" has become a common tactic in the internet industry. Whether it's Didi using WeChat red packets to ambush Alipay, or Yuanfudao counterattacking TAL, they all seize the initiative by investing in advertising first when facing strong enemies. This has become a classic tactic.

It is worth noting that this tactic is not only applicable to the internet industry but also effective in traditional industries.

For example, Miaokeland.

**Public information shows that Miaokeland officially defined 2019 as the first year of brand development. Miaokeland focused on Focus Media's elevator media, launching a strong screen-dominating model, determined to become "China's No.1 cheese brand."**

In the cheese market, Chinese companies do not have a category awareness advantage. Cheese is a genuine imported product and a consumer good that is not yet widely accepted by Chinese people. Some say, "Chinese people can't even recognize all the international cheese brands, so how would they accept a domestic cheese brand?"

But Miaokeland precisely identified the key issue. **Chinese consumers' shallow awareness of cheese consumption is not a bad thing but a good thing, indicating that foreign brands have not established sufficient brand awareness in Chinese consumers' minds. In this case, "entering a blank mind" is much easier than "changing an entrenched mind."**

So, a cheese advertisement adapted from the children's song "Two Tigers" was frequently exposed on CCTV and Focus Media elevator screens. Behind this simple and cute ad is a highly invasive brand detonation—Miaokeland cheese stick ads aired on CCTV1 and also covered tens of thousands of Focus Media building and community screens in dozens of major cities nationwide, including first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, with high-frequency broadcasts all day.

One direct result of Miaokeland's continuous screen dominance was a rapid surge in its online popularity. **According to Baidu Index's 90-day search index, its main competitor Baijifu had a slightly higher search index than Miaokeland for a long period, but from the end of February 2019, Miaokeland's search index rose sharply, reaching several times that of Baijifu.**

Baijifu is not a novice but a genuine internationally renowned brand. Baijifu is a French cheese brand born at the foot of the Alps. It has been selling in China for over ten years and is familiar with this land.

The real problem is that multinational companies' response speed and flexibility to the market are far lower than those of local startups. Some say, "Perhaps by the time Baijifu's request to headquarters to expand the advertising budget entered the management discussion, Miaokeland's investment had already broken through."

**Part Three: The Strong Must Also Be Fast**

In the previous chapter, we discussed that the weak pressing the nuclear button first can win the right to survive. This leads to another question: if the strong has a clear advantage, does it still need to press the nuclear button?

The story of Guazi Used Cars is a classic answer to this question.

Official records show that Guazi Used Car Direct Selling Network separated from 58.com to operate independently on September 27, 2015.

On September 6, 2015, Ganji Haoche Network was renamed Guazi Used Car Direct Selling Network, and its website changed to guazi.com, a domain that Yang Haoyong had stored since the Ganji era.

On September 15, Yang Haoyong, in his capacity as co-CEO of 58.com Ganji Group, announced that the group's key innovative project, Ganji Haoche Network, was officially renamed "Guazi Used Car Direct Selling Network."

At the same time, it was announced that to support the launch of the new brand, Guazi had invested over 200 million yuan in marketing, with a year-end goal of capturing 80% of the C2C online used car market.

When Yang Haoyong started in used cars, he identified clear competitors from the beginning: Renrenche and Youxin Used Cars.

Renrenche founder Li Jian said, "At that time, the used car industry looked great. There were no brands, no companies positioned as used car trading platforms, no big capital, and the industry was extremely fragmented. These were all good foundations for future development. Doing C2C in this field was a natural opportunity."

It was precisely because Renrenche discovered and presented the value of used car e-commerce that so much big capital poured in, big platforms emerged, and the industry consolidated.

Another heavyweight player, Youxin, was even a step ahead of Guazi. Youxin's founder Dai Kun came from Yiche and later entered the B2B used car trading with "Youxin Pai."

With the support of Tan Hainan, then managing director of Tiger Fund, Youxin received $200 million from Tiger Fund in September 2014. In addition to strengthening B2B, Dai Kun finally launched the C-end business at the end of that year, something he had long dreamed of.

Dai Kun's reason for launching the C-end business was his belief that the B2C model was a true business revolution. Among the three companies, Youxin's model exploration was the most cutting-edge and stable.

Overall, the other two companies' models underwent multiple major adjustments, while Youxin consistently maintained confidence in its model.

**Yang Haoyong, entering the used car market, had a very clear goal: to "burn" out awareness and absolute leadership through strong financing ability.**

Yang Haoyong's reasoning for pressing the nuclear button was simple: the used car industry was huge, primitive, without giants, and had great future space. Li Jian and Dai Kun were both talented, capable, and had financing ability. Given time, they would become strong enemies of Guazi, so he had to strike hard.

Yang Haoyong said that these two phrases are probably the biggest lies in the entrepreneurial field. The former is used to deceive investors, and the latter to deceive the media.

In fact, he firmly believed that no matter how large the future market expectations, only three companies could share the market share, and it would never be evenly divided. The only result would be 7:2:1, where the strong get stronger, and the weak struggle to survive.

From this, we can perhaps understand Yang Haoyong's underlying logic in viewing competition, and thus his repeated proactive pressing of the nuclear button, using media like Focus Media to launch powerful marketing campaigns to suppress competitors.

To this end, he spent tens of millions of yuan to hire Trout & Partners, a top Chinese positioning marketing firm, to design the slogan "No middleman to take the difference, sellers sell for more, buyers pay less" for Guazi, and placed it on elevator media mainly through Focus Media. At the time, this was considered standard for new economy enterprises to detonate their brands.

Years later, this slogan was still selected by an authoritative domestic research institution as the advertising slogan that most deeply penetrated consumer mindshare. Yang Haoyong's own evaluation was, "(This slogan) clearly differentiated us from our competitors."

**Mindshare is not a vague thing; it can be quantified. In our research, without prompting, when mentioning used cars, 6 out of 10 people said they would go to Guazi to take a look. This is a very wide moat and a large, hard-to-replace asset.**

With this mindshare advantage, Guazi's competitors were already quite passive.

Of course, the used car war is not over yet. Renrenche and Youxin are still stubbornly surviving in their own ways, but Guazi occupies the top of the track with a valuation of $10 billion, while the other two have gone from a three-way standoff to struggling for survival.

Although there are various complex factors, fundamentally, if Guazi had not pressed the nuclear button at the first opportunity, the used car market landscape might not be what it is today.

So, do all cases convey a message that to win, you must press the nuclear button? In fact, this question cannot be viewed so simply. Pressing the nuclear button is indeed a powerful weapon in commercial warfare.

But it still must be combined with a series of timing choices, strategic judgments, and combined offensives. It still requires extremely high brand-building ability and a deep understanding and grasp of mindshare. Only then can the brand war be called the most exciting and highest-IQ nuclear commercial war, not a crude game where burning money guarantees victory.

**Are you "watching" me?**


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