The rise of China-chic in recent years has popularized a number of 'domestic soda' brands. According to media reports, Dayao, endorsed by actor Wu Jing, has annual sales exceeding 3 billion yuan; Beibingyang, based in Beijing, has annual sales over 1 billion yuan; Bingfeng, which went public and then quickly withdrew, had revenue over 219 million yuan in the first half of 2021; and Hankow No.2, which became popular with its retro China-chic style and convenience store channels, has annual revenue over 300 million yuan. However, the current situations of these brands differ. Beibingyang advertised during the 2023 Spring Festival Gala, Dayao closely followed the buzz of Wu Jing's Spring Festival film 'The Wandering Earth 2', while Hankow No.2 has 'run into trouble'. Recently, Hankow No.2's affiliated company, Wuhan Hengrun Shi Operation Management Co., Ltd., was added as a person subject to enforcement, with an enforcement target of 60,000 yuan, and the enforcement court is Wuhan Jiang'an District People's Court. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2021, China's carbonated beverage sales reached 58 billion yuan. Coca-Cola and Pepsi took the vast majority of the market, leaving only 8.8% of market share for other players, and the way they divided it was mostly by 'starting anew', these players gained a foothold through catering channels and deep cultivation of regional markets, and Dayao is one of the standout examples. Even though there are already some domestic soda brands with sales ranging from hundreds of millions to billions, I believe that no domestic soda brand truly understands branding. Next, I will break down Dayao's rise path, and by analyzing Beibingyang, Bingfeng, Hankow No.2, etc., discuss the reasons behind this. How did Dayao rise to prominence? In the book 'Upgraded Positioning' by Mr. Feng Weidong, founding partner of Tiantu Investment, he told the story of the herbal tea war between Wanglaoji and JDB. In the end, Wanglaoji's parent company, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group, only recovered the Wanglaoji trademark and formula, while the supplier system, distributor system, and employee team were all JDB's. Many thought JDB would win, but Wanglaoji quickly regained market leadership. So Mr. Feng Weidong reiterated the positioning theory: the core business achievement of an enterprise lies in the customer's mind, which influences their choices. This core business achievement is the brand. Mr. Feng Weidong then put forward his view: the ultimate battlefield of competition is the customer's mind, but enterprises cannot change the customer's mind out of thin air; they influence it through the three physical battlefields of product, channel, and media. Let's try to use this theory to analyze Dayao's success path. Image source: Dayao official website First, the product battlefield, which refers to being able to produce products in short supply or making an important product, and through a huge victory in the product battlefield, achieve victories in other battlefields. Dayao Jiabin soda has a unique flavor combining honey, rich fruit aroma, and carbonated beverage. According to some consumer feedback, Dayao's taste is indeed relatively unique, but not to the point of having a strong urge to buy repeatedly, so it cannot be said to be in short supply or particularly unique. An industry insider told New Consumption Think Tank that 'Yinmei Cola' founder Wang Yingjie passed away earlier this year. Yinmei Cola has a similar taste to Dayao, also following the route of low price and large volume, and is quite popular in Xuchang, Henan. According to New Consumption Think Tank's research, Yinmei Cola was founded in 1984 and is a beverage processed from honeysuckle, dark plum, galangal, honey, etc. So, from a product perspective, Dayao's taste may have some memory points, but it is not particularly unique, and it is not enough to achieve a huge victory in the product battlefield. Image source: Yinmei Cola official WeChat account Next, the channel battlefield. Customers judge a brand's grade by the channels it appears in, and when a brand covers a wide range of channels, customers feel it is a national big brand and are more willing to buy. According to official information released by Dayao, Dayao soda has established 1 million retail terminals, covering 31 provinces and cities, with 1,600 distributors. From the purchase channels, 78.4% of consumers often buy Dayao from catering establishments. In comparison, Kangshifu and Red Bull have over 4 million retail terminal outlets, Nongfu Spring covers over 2.43 million retail terminals nationwide, and Genki Forest, when its revenue reached 7 billion in 2021, had over 1 million offline terminals. Dayao's terminals may be mainly in the catering sector, while other FMCG giants' terminals are mostly in the retail sector. From a simple quantity perspective, Dayao has indeed spread out in the channel battlefield. Moreover, soda in the catering sector is mostly bottled in glass, because in the same environment, glass bottles have lower temperature and better taste than plastic bottles. If expanding across provinces and cities, the issue of cross-regional glass bottle recycling arises. Dayao, however, made an early national layout. Since 2014, Dayao Beverage has built eight core production bases in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia; Shizuishan, Ningxia; Shenyang, Liaoning; Siping, Jilin; Fuyang, Anhui, etc. Digging deeper, the secret to Dayao soda entering hundreds of thousands of catering channels lies in simultaneously benefiting consumers and terminal merchants. A 248ml Beibingyang sells for 6-8 yuan in supermarkets, a 275ml Hankow No.2 retails for about 8 yuan, a 200ml glass-bottled Bingfeng sells for 5 yuan, while Dayao's retail price is 5 yuan for 520ml, and a 500ml bottled cola costs only 3.5 yuan. For consumers, Dayao's capacity is twice that of traditional soda, and the price per bottle is around 5-6 yuan. And Dayao gives terminal merchants a profit of 3-4 yuan per bottle, while cola only earns 1-2 yuan. So why can a product have substantial terminal profits without being particularly expensive for consumers? How does Dayao do it? It is understood that Dayao even directly eliminated salesmen, giving all the saved costs to store owners; some analysts also believe that Dayao has low juice content, giving it a cost advantage. Finally, the media battlefield. The purpose of corporate communication is not communication itself, but to find the mental battlefield on the competitive map and strengthen customers' brand awareness. With a differentiated product and extensive channels, Hua & Hua added fuel to the fire for Dayao. Hua & Hua has always been good at finding super symbols. They believe Dayao's product nature is a large glass bottle of soda, resembling a beer bottle, so they created the super slogan 'Big soda, drink Dayao', presenting a grand and refreshing brand image. Then came another slogan extracted from the frontline market: 'Don't drink alcohol, drink Dayao'. Do you think there is a category cognition of 'big soda' in consumers' minds? Probably not, but this 'big' marketing just fits the current consumers' need for careful budgeting. The 'ice cream刺客' incident last summer is an example. Dayao caught the pulse of the times. According to Mr. Feng Weidong's upgraded positioning theory, Dayao's rise may have captured customers' minds through the channel and media battlefields. Why do I say no domestic soda brand truly understands branding? Before Coca-Cola came to China, Chinese consumers already knew through movies, TV, sports events, etc., that authentic cola is Coca-Cola, and its biggest competitor is Pepsi. But at that time, they couldn't drink it, so local Chinese colas had their golden period. At that time, Wahaha's Future Cola had the highest sales of 7 billion yuan, and Tianfu Cola, which was recently widely discussed, once dominated the domestic market with over 75% share. In the 1990s, Coca-Cola and Pepsi swallowed up seven major Chinese beverage brands, including Beijing Beibingyang, Shenyang Bawangsi, Tianjin Shanhaiguan, Qingdao Laoshan, Wuhan Binjiang, Chongqing Tianfu Cola, and Guangzhou Asia Soda. Beibingyang, which started producing soda in 1951, and Bingfeng Beverage, born in 1953, are the only two survivors among the 'Seven Cola Sons', and at least they still hold the Beijing and Xi'an markets respectively. Hankow No.2, established in 2017 and positioned as a 'trendy drink' for young people, leveraged the retro China-chic trend to break out from the crowd of domestic sodas that were about to disappear. But why do I say I am not optimistic about domestic soda brands? From a brand mentality perspective, it is difficult to find suitable promotional symbols for domestic sodas; from the external expression of domestic sodas, they find it hard to surpass the expressions of Coca-Cola and Pepsi; from the product trend perspective, the future trend is healthy and sugar-free, such as the sugar-free sparkling water led by Genki Forest. First, look at Dayao. A key move by Dayao was inviting the powerful actor Wu Jing as brand ambassador. From 2022 to 2023, Wu Jing has been active in the frontline, so Dayao found the connection between the two as 'national tough guy' and 'national beverage'. But what is the next step for the term 'national'? It seems there is no further interpretation. The advertising slogan in the promotional video Wu Jing made for Dayao is: 'Soda comes in a big bottle, Dayao big soda, big bottle, big mouth, big drink, share big happiness together, grand, refreshing, big soda drink Dayao', the whole thing revolves around 'big'. Dayao indeed has its own symbol among the small-packaged sodas, but then what? The relative 'big bottle' represents people's sensitivity to price. After the 'big' selling point, what reason do consumers have to buy Dayao? Video source: Dayao Beverage official WeChat account And Dayao launched a new product, honey grapefruit sparkling tea, on Valentine's Day, with a completely different packaging style. Apart from the brand name 'Dayao', you can hardly see any trace of Dayao. On the shelf, it would probably be 'lost in the crowd', ordinary. In fact, Hua & Hua had already extracted the super symbol 'classic stripes' for Dayao's packaging. Obviously, this product did not continue this 'brand mentality', but instead made customers feel cognitive confusion. Image source: Dayao Beverage official WeChat account Next, look at Beibingyang. Beibingyang is a fruit juice soda, with freshly ground orange paste and orange oil extracted from orange peel. In 1983, the Beibingyang brand appeared on the first CCTV Spring Festival Gala, becoming the first beverage brand to enter the Spring Festival Gala. Now in 2023, when the entire Spring Festival Gala advertising is basically dominated by liquor brands, Beibingyang also showed its face on the Spring Festival Gala. Screenshot from the Spring Festival Gala In addition, Beibingyang spent heavily on CCTV advertising during last year's World Cup. The themed advertisement 'Fruit juice soda, drink Beibingyang' was shown on CCTV-1, 5, and 5+ sports channels, with exposure during the mid-game periods of all 64 matches. But such a big spend does not seem to have left a deep impression. When mentioning the World Cup, people can think of the emoji of the little prince of Qatar, the Hisense advertisement 'China first, world second', the BOSS Zhipin on the scoreboard, or even Yang Mi's advertisement for Meituan 'Meituan delivery, fast delivery of everything', but it seems there is no impression of Beibingyang. It seems Beibingyang is doing sports events and Spring Festival Gala, appearing everywhere, but it seems to be communicating for the sake of communication, without communicating something that can occupy customers' minds. Beibingyang promotes itself as a fruit juice soda, but do customers really have 'fruit juice soda' in their minds? Customers may have a perception of cola as 'happy water', which has emotion, and may have a perception of Genki Forest's 0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calorie sparkling water (now adding '0 potassium sorbate, 0 sodium benzoate'), because it takes into account health, but what does fruit juice soda mean to consumers? Besides fruit juice soda, what is Beibingyang's brand spirit? It seems we haven't seen it either. Next, look at Bingfeng. Bingfeng's bumpy listing process is not discussed here. According to Bingfeng Soda's prospectus, from 2018 to the first half of 2021, its market share in the bottled beverage market in Xi'an remained above 80%. That is to say, Bingfeng is more of a regional brand. Unlike Beibingyang, which was hidden for a few years and then came out again, Bingfeng survived the brutal cola war partly because it signed an additional agreement with Pepsi, prohibiting the latter from producing glass-bottled beverages in Xi'an. Since then, Bingfeng has been called one of the 'Sanqin Set' along with cold noodles and roujiamo. Unlike other domestic soda brands that are only emphasized by consumers for their regional attributes, Bingfeng often actively associates itself with Xi'an's urban memory and culture in its brand promotion, always prefixing 'Xi'an' before Bingfeng. But Bingfeng only binds with Xi'an and does not do much interpretation of the city's spirit, so it has not been able to go out of Xi'an, and it seems it has not made preparations for the national consumers' minds. Finally, look at Hankow No.2. As a brand reviving China-chic, being able to catch up from behind, Hankow No.2 does have some skills. Image source: Hankow No.2 official WeChat account It once keenly captured people's nostalgic memories. Because the old No.2 factory soda had long disappeared, after Hankow No.2 soda was launched, many people shouted that they had finally found their childhood memories. And it targeted the Z generation, with more colorful and complex packaging design and more fashionable bottle copy, making it easier to attract the attention of young girls. Therefore, it quickly obtained financing and was welcomed by chain convenience stores like Today and FamilyMart. But not long after, Hankow No.2's financing process stalled, and recently the company added 'enforcement information'. As a new brand, Hankow No.2's concept actually has some merits, for example, it proposed that the word 'factory' represents the sense of security of people in that era, and for young people, they also need to find ancient urban cultural imprints to inherit and find a carrier of cultural confidence. This is also why it could become an internet-famous product and move young people. But after consumers tried it, Hankow No.2's price is too high, and there are dozens of flavors at once, putting too much pressure on this nascent brand. After looking at domestic sodas, let's look back at what Coca-Cola is expressing. In one sentence, it is expressing vitality, passion, creation, enjoyment, and other American spirits. Let's look at Coca-Cola bottles; there are many different expressions. Some cola enthusiasts even have a wall full of different cola bottles. No matter how many designs and colors are changed, you know it is Coca-Cola at a glance. Andy Warhol once said that kids in the slums drink Coca-Cola, the president in the White House drinks Coca-Cola, and rich businessmen also drink Coca-Cola. But the most interesting thing is that no one ever got a better cola because they were richer. What does this concept resemble? If you replace 'drinking Coca-Cola' with 'basking in the sun', does it still hold? This may be the highest state of a consumer brand: it almost becomes a 'spiritual necessity', with a 'sense of equal luxury'. These domestic sodas mainly have channels in the catering sector. For this reason, I specifically looked at the brand advertisement of Minute Maid Pulpy, a cola product that is more popular in catering channels, and its expressed brand spirit is still vitality. What do people buy when they buy Coca-Cola? They buy the 'addictive' taste, and also happiness and a lifestyle. So, I say no domestic soda truly understands branding, because behind these brand promotions, there is no brand mentality that can truly move customers for a long time, and their expressions are hard to surpass giants like Coca-Cola. It is difficult to surpass in brand mentality, and there is no huge innovation in products. As long as you make cola or soda, the product is always overshadowed by giants like Coca-Cola. Not long ago, after Maiquer had an incident, a group of niche milk brands behind Maiquer, such as Xinjiang milk, attracted attention. In a milk market dominated by giants like Yili and Mengniu, why can such a group of niche brands still emerge? Besides catching up with dividends like live streaming, these niche milk brands are in a track that conforms to the health trend, and the market has been growing. Moreover, niche milk like Xinjiang milk does have some taste innovations, meeting people's diversified and individualized needs for milk. But why can't domestic sodas do the same? One of the reasons may be that the classic tastes of domestic sodas do not conform to the current beverage consumption trend. What should Dayao and others do in the future? In the foreseeable future, what should domestic soda brands like Dayao do? Taste innovation is difficult, and it is hard to surpass classic carbonated beverages like Coca-Cola, while Genki Forest has already captured the brand mentality in the concept of healthy sparkling water. So, in the media battlefield, how can they still capture customers' minds? What is the correct way for these domestic brands to do China-chic? The earliest concept of China-chic started with Li Ning. The term 'China Li Ning' gave a sense of cultural confidence and was very impactful at the time. From a global perspective, Li Ziqi's popularity both abroad and domestically represents Chinese culture, exporting the diligence and classical aesthetics of the Chinese people. Which other consumer brand has successfully brought out China-chic? For example, among emerging beauty brands, Perfect Diary's Little丸子 image and Florasis's Eastern aesthetics; the latter proposed a set of Eastern beauty systems around Eastern aesthetics, with stronger vitality. Another typical example is Sexy Tea. Sexy Tea also does a good job with the China-chic style. As a brand rising from Changsha, Hunan, it conveys China-chic rather than Hunan culture. From product naming to the entire store presentation and service methods, it provides a complete China-chic brand experience. But the current domestic sodas are just local soda brands, and they have not actually extended the connotation of China-chic. If sparkling water and carbonated beverages represent indulgence and freedom, it is difficult to echo the implicit and euphemistic temperament of traditional Chinese culture. With the improvement of national strength, many people believe that the rise of domestic brands is a long-term trend, and that many domestic brands will replace imported brands and even become global leaders. But I think it is still difficult at least in the carbonated beverage category, because the mentality of cola being refreshing and joyful is deeply rooted, and carbonated beverages do not conform to the trend of food health. Dayao and others may be able to carve out a piece of the catering channel, and domestic soda brands have also had brilliant achievements in retail channels, but when the real owners Coca-Cola and Pepsi came to China, they were quickly defeated. Later, Beibingyang and Bingfeng found living space in regional markets and catering channels, but when Dayao, Beibingyang, etc., move to Coca-Cola's home turf of retail channels and confront them head-on, the outcome is uncertain. The images in this article are only for introduction and not for any commercial use.