In 2021, for the consumer industry and brands, it was the best of times and the worst of times. The dividends of new demographics, platform dividends, heavy capital bets, and strong supply chain logistics and other infrastructure enabled Chinese consumer brands to rise rapidly. The initial premonition of Daoism (referring to the publication) began to be confirmed: China's P&G and L'Oréal might be born among this batch of new consumer brands. But as dividends faded and capital retreated, the public began to realize that behind the savage growth of new consumer brands lies the jungle law of survival of the fittest. Daoism never came because of the peak of new consumer brands, nor will it leave during the industry's downturn. What we want to do is accompany, empower, and provide solutions for brands. Daoism hopes to provide brands and the industry with replicable cases, learnable methodologies, and actionable strategies — we deconstructed the boutique instant coffee brand "Three顿半" (Saturnbird), upgraded the "Momentum Brand Theory" to the "Momentum Brand Four Quadrants," and launched the "Chengjiu Brand Founder Club" to explore brand solutions together with China's future "super brands." Over the past year, Daoism has engaged with 100+ brand founders and operators, exchanged insights with heads of platforms like Douyin, Weibo, Tencent, Tmall, and experts from third-party institutions, and ultimately summarized the 5 key trends for the new consumer industry in 2021: 1. Niche Categories Brands' focus and deep cultivation of niche areas stem from today's consumers' increasingly detailed needs. Take personal care as an example: in the 1980s, it was common for a family to share one bottle of shampoo, with the need being "clean"; in the 1990s, people gradually discovered that shampoos had different functions like "anti-dandruff" and "conditioning," and products began to diversify. Now, hair cleansing products include not only shampoo but also specialized scalp cleansing gels and scalp scrubs; repair and moisturizing products have evolved into conditioners, hair masks, hair oils, scalp serums, and more. In various niche categories, we are delighted to see the rise of a large number of new consumer brands: Zuben, entering the makeup remover market with plant-based cleansing oils; BOP, proposing "oral care beautification"; Spes, positioning as functional head care; ffit8, focusing on protein bars; and Daren Tang, committed to normalizing adult products... E-commerce platforms are also continuously driving the "niche-ification" of consumer brands. During the 2021 Double 11, Tmall claimed that over 700 new brands became the No.1 in their niche categories, compared to 360 the previous year. Whether it's industry media's choice of brands to report on or capital's choice of "potential stocks," it seems that as long as a brand has the words "niche category TOP1," it is the right choice. This has also given rise to some oddities: brands rack their brains to find niche tracks, and as long as the category is niche enough, they can always find a field to be No.1. Daoism believes that it is commendable for brands to continuously seek out unmet small needs or new needs and develop and provide products for them, just as Japan excels at making "small things" — doing one need thoroughly and exquisitely can secure a place in the market. But segmenting for the sake of segmenting is not wise. 2. Wild Consumption "Wild consumption" was selected as one of the top ten brand buzzwords of 2021. It originated in July 2021 when Henan suffered severe floods. Erke's donation of 50 million yuan in supplies was jokingly called "bankruptcy-style donation" by netizens. Deeply moved, they flocked to the brand's live stream to place orders, expressing support for the caring enterprise. The brand founder and streamers urged everyone to consume rationally, but netizens responded in the comments, "I want to consume wildly." The rise of "wild consumption" boosted a large number of old domestic brands represented by Erke. They were once childhood memories of the post-80s and post-90s generations, flourishing at one time, but gradually ignored by the market due to slow product iteration, outdated marketing methods, and design aesthetics that didn't match modern young people's preferences. The underlying logic of wild consumption is twofold: first, the national confidence and patriotic sentiment generated by the country's increased strength make consumers more tolerant of domestic brands; second, when a company proactively assumes social responsibility and aligns with consumers' values, they choose to vote with their money. Admittedly, the growth brought by wild consumption is only temporary. For mature Chinese brands and time-honored brands, the key is how to retain this "windfall" of users and carry out self-iteration and innovation. 3. Rational Consumption Rational consumption is the antonym of wild consumption. Consumers nowadays are increasingly hard to fool. The topic "young people begin to counter-plant grass" (anti-influencer marketing), which was hotly debated for nearly a month last year, is the best evidence. The prevalence of rational consumption is also the result of multiple factors. For example: brand market education has given consumers more "professional knowledge," convenient information retrieval has narrowed the information gap between brands and consumers, and consumers' own needs are constantly evolving, making them more aware of what they want. Also, under the batch-style seeding marketing of emerging new consumer brands, consumers have gradually developed the ability to discern information and no longer blindly follow. Brands that were once good at buying traffic to quickly wash users have found this approach no longer works, not only because ROI has dropped significantly, but also because the tone of comments on social media is dangerously close to the edge. This has actually forced many brands to start refining their user asset management and more rigorously polishing their products. 4. From Seeding to Tree Planting At this year's major summits, forums, closed-door meetings, and industry articles, we can hear the call "from seeding to tree planting," and it has a deep connection with Daoism. At the beginning of 2021, Daoism invited the President of Kotler Consulting Group China to share brand marketing growth logic with members. In that sharing, Cao Hu proposed that "in 2021, brands should focus more on planting trees than seeding." Behind the marketing trend shift "from seeding to tree planting" lies the change in the language of communication between brands and consumers, the change in the values, attitudes, and culture that brands carry, and the role of the brand is to maintain its core "unchanged" amidst constant change. Therefore, short-term, improvised brand marketing actions and tactics may achieve some results in the moment, but they are easily imitated and thus become ineffective; while brand values and the emotional connection between brand and users, which require long-term watering, irrigation, and nurturing, are the roots of the brand tree. Making consumers choose based on the brand is the truly lasting traffic. 5. Metaverse In 2021, if a marketer hadn't heard of the "metaverse," they would 100% be "expelled." Everyone is talking about the metaverse, but few know how to do it; everyone thinks others are doing it, and a bunch of internet and consumer goods companies are piling on, claiming they are doing the metaverse... As the hottest concept on the market, the metaverse has received polarized reviews in just a few months, from "niche" and "pioneer" to "common" and "harvesting leeks." Now there are countless articles on metaverse marketing. In Daoism's content matrix alone, we explored the possibility of brands opening marketing boundaries through the metaverse in October 2021, and recently sorted out metaverse marketing trends at home and abroad and the historical and cultural origins behind them. Daoism believes that the metaverse provides a grand and inclusive theme for contemporary and future marketers, brand people, and content creators, allowing brands to build their own worlds while inviting users to co-create experience scenarios, extending the intimate relationship between people and between people and brands from the real world to the virtual world, and then feeding back from the virtual world to real life. But brands also need to be wary: marketing actions should not be for the sake of riding the trend. Consumers may not be able to discern your intentions, but they can feel your sincerity. For the future, Daoism also gives 5 key trends for how to build brands in 2022: 1. Content as a Carrier Content is always an eternal theme. The essence of content commercialization is to find opportunities for dividends in content carriers. For self-media practitioners, text as a carrier is the logic of building accounts since 2015, led by WeChat official accounts; images as a carrier are the graphic notes of Xiaohongshu and Weibo from 2013 to now; Medium and long videos as a carrier are the vlog craze and Bilibili videos around 2018; short videos as a carrier are Douyin around 2020... For brands, doing content is not just about continuously updating and iterating the optimal presentation of brand content (text, images, video, products), but the core lies in the production and accumulation of high-quality content. Daoism is a company that grew out of content, and it is also a platform institution that uses "content as the main driving force" to continuously deliver brand solutions to the industry. But how to do content? How to do it well? What kind of content? Behind these three big questions lies insight into human nature. If you only look at user/market data to decide products or content, you'll find that products or content that hit human weaknesses always perform better: voyeurism, gossip, emotional appeal, sex, gambling, and drugs. Doing content/products this way may easily become popular, but over time you'll find the content is full of incitement, violence, falsehood, and impetuousness, and you won't accumulate any assets. So content creators should not "completely follow consumers," but need to have their own values and bottom line, and "lead consumers one step ahead." In today's society, doing content requires a "product manager" mindset: do content like SKUs, start with simple basic items, then expand horizontally and vertically, summarize hit methodologies, and think about how to scale. However, the best content is definitely not replicable or template-able. Talents who can produce such content must be monopolized or strongly bound. To sustain high-quality content, you need the ability (magnanimity, attitude, values, and professional competence) to gather like-minded people with the same values to co-produce content. In this way, the brand's content stands firm, its values stand firm, and it has a soul. 2. Brand-Effect Synergy In 2019, Daojie Doris discovered that marketers wanting to do a campaign that only looks at brand and not effect had become a pipe dream, and "brand-effect unity" became a nationwide craze. Daojie released the "Brand-Effect Unity Bible," which gained over 100,000 reads. The popularity of brand-effect unity stems from changes in the marketing environment: since the digitalization of advertising channels, advertising effectiveness has gone from untrackable to trackable; with the rise of internet seeding strategies, consumer shopping paths have shifted from delayed gratification to impulse consumption; traffic competition has become increasingly fierce while false bubbles have grown larger. With brands' return to "long-termism," the public has realized that brand and growth are not opposed but can move forward in synergy. Brand-effect unity is only a temporary stage; brand-effect synergy is the long-term solution. This year, we saw that live-streaming e-commerce, mainly based on CPS, became a key channel for brand sales. Top streamers like Li Jiaqi, in addition to selling goods, gradually took on brand promotion responsibilities; The strong rise of Douyin e-commerce and the release of models like "FACT" show that platforms also hope brands will change their "buy effect, wash traffic" mindset and focus on accumulating brand momentum. In fact, the core of "brand-effect synergy" lies in combining brand advertising centered on creativity with performance advertising aimed at sales, balancing the enhancement of long-term brand influence and the conversion of short-term marketing effects. Only by learning to walk on two legs can Chinese brands advance steadily and boldly. 3. People-Centricity In the second half of 2021, Daoism proposed: "The future brand must be a 'people brand,' a 'people-centric' brand." So what kind of brand is "people-centric"? First, literally, "people-centric" means everything starts from user needs. This part has been discussed a lot, so I won't repeat it. Second, being people-centric means finding the "people" the brand cares about. Humans are social animals; they gather in communities around their unique cultures. Therefore, whether for new consumer brands or mature big brands, to capture users' hearts in the future, they need to find the cultural codes and core influencers of their circles and communicate in their language. Today's consumers are digital natives, materially abundant, well-informed, with a strong desire for self-realization and self-identity. They hate copy-paste and love individuality and self-expression. For them, they need brands that can showcase their personality. The reason they choose a brand is no longer "what the company can sell" but "do you represent me?" Therefore, for today's and even future consumers, the sense of meaning and belonging behind the brand is more important. Buying this brand's products is not only to meet basic survival needs but also because the values it conveys and the people it attracts are like me. If a brand can capture these core circle users, it is highly likely to capture its "super users," i.e., a group of loyal users who are willing to buy whatever the brand launches, regardless of premium, and are willing to spread the word. So how to operate these "super users" well? It can be roughly divided into online and offline approaches: Online, through the construction of "private domain + CRM," create an online "same-temperature layer" for users, provide a space for free communication and clear, direct feedback paths, and maintain intimate interaction between brand and users. Offline, through physical stores, pop-up experience stores, exhibitions, markets, etc., provide "consumer-centric, product-as-prop, service-as-stage experiences that create consumption experiences that allow consumers to participate, remember, and even be moved." 4. Spiritual Consumption When we talk about "momentum brands," "spiritual consumption" is an unavoidable keyword. In the past, people's primary task was "survival," so they valued "good quality" and "practicality," which are material functional needs. Now the public pursues "life," so people not only have material needs but also need spiritual value. Whether it's Apple, lululemon, Patagonia abroad, or Guanxia, NEIWAI, MAIA ACTIVE at home, we find that these brands have created new value beyond the current products and beyond what the category originally had: new scenarios, new values, new emotional stories, new lifestyles, etc. The spiritual consumption that accompanies spiritual needs transcends physical boundaries. It not only provides practical utility in real scenarios but also provides emotional sustenance in the spiritual world, allowing consumers to find like-minded people in the cultural community built by the brand. This point actually echoes the "people-centricity" mentioned above. As mentioned in "Cultural Strategy," when we used positioning theory to deconstruct the success of certain brands in the past, we often ignored "ideological opportunities arising from social and historical changes." If China wants to produce a "super brand" like Apple, it must find new cultural opportunities, perfectly integrate them with the brand mission, and then further implement based on the mission and ideology: What social problem are you solving? What is your original intention? There will definitely be many potential opportunities in 2022. For example, many products are currently made by foreigners for foreign needs. Can Chinese brands use these clues to create products more suitable for Chinese people? Can they find spiritual needs that better fit current Chinese social conditions? 5. Consumption Equality In recent years, there has been a very interesting phenomenon: consumption in lower-tier markets is rapidly upgrading, while consumers in first- and second-tier markets are starting to seek affordable alternatives. Whether it's Tmall's "town youth" or Xiaohongshu's "town young wives," the "rich and idle" consumer groups in lower-tier markets, after the internet connected information and e-commerce logistics solved the last-mile problem, have shown strong purchasing power. When chatting with the founder of a high-ticket brand, she mentioned that the brand once received a delivery address written as a utility pole in an unheard-of place. This shocked her: "So my products are selling to these places." As first- and second-tier cities become destinations for young talent, high rents and prices have led some working-class people to seek affordable but equally satisfying "little blessings in life." Pinduoduo and 1688 quickly exploded among young people. Whether on Bilibili, Douyin, or Xiaohongshu, we can see tens of thousands of seeding videos and notes, and even a large number of "1688/Pinduoduo store-exploring bloggers." Most people might think that cost-effectiveness has little value and that brands should have a premium. But in fact, China's wealth gap is huge, and there are still many places and people who haven't used products we take for granted, such as cotton towels, sanitary pads, etc. High-cost-performance products still have a vast market in China. If we can let most people in China or the world use good and inexpensive products, this is of great social and commercial value, and it is also the opportunity and value point for 'kinetic brands' to become 'national brands.' Source: Daoism Research Institute (ID: DigipontClub) -END-