From March 25-26, 2021, the author led the New Distribution CEO class to Lidu for the third time, following 2019 and 2020. Five days prior, on March 21, Guobao Lidu Wine Sales Co., Ltd. issued a notice titled "Notice on Suspending Supply of 52% vol Lidu Sorghum 1308, 52% vol Lidu Sorghum 1955, and 50.8% vol Lidu Sorghum 1975," announcing an immediate halt in shipments for all three products in its high-end product matrix.

What kind of liquor has seen dozens of price increases since its inception, yet remains in short supply, even reaching the point of a full halt in shipments for its mid-to-high-end products?

What kind of distillery can attract senior executives from FMCG companies across the country to visit repeatedly, seeking marketing insights from Commander Tang?

Today, I will unveil a model of new marketing in the baijiu sector: the marketing code behind Commander Tang and Lidu liquor.

-01- Who is Commander Tang?

In 1989, Tang Xiangyang graduated from university and was assigned to the brewing workshop of Shaoyang Distillery in Hunan. This state-owned enterprise, founded in 1957, was a mid-sized backbone enterprise in Hunan's liquor industry. Its Shaoyang Daqu was once rated as a famous Hunan liquor and won honors such as Hunan Province High-Quality Product and a gold medal at the First China Food Expo.

Tang Xiangyang worked at Shaoyang Distillery for 14 years, rising from workshop director to deputy director, deputy party secretary, and general manager of the sales company.

In 2003, Wu Xiangdong, owner of Huaze Group, acquired Shaoyang Distillery, and Tang Xiangyang was brought under Wu's wing. From then on, Tang moved from Hunan to Beijing, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jilin, and then Jiangxi, serving as a "regional governor" for Jindong's liquor companies, a "group official" in Beijing, and then the "top leader" of an acquired company, never leaving.

In March 2014, Commander Tang was sent to Lidu Liquor as a "firefighting captain." From then on, Commander Tang and Lidu forged an unbreakable bond.

-02- Small and Beautiful

Before Commander Tang took over Lidu, the distillery was a local baijiu brand that had changed five general managers in five consecutive years and suffered losses for five straight years. The liquor produced was mostly low-end local baijiu. Previous general managers had done almost nothing to enhance the brand.

When Commander Tang took office, the distillery was destitute. However, during resource inventory, he discovered that Lidu still had a considerable amount of aged liquor resources and a unique national intangible cultural heritage: the Yuan Dynasty ancient cellar pits. These are the earliest distillery site in China and highly valuable product symbols.

Within less than a year of taking office, Commander Tang streamlined the sales teams in other regions of Jiangxi, quickly solved the company's survival issues through sealing jars (fengtan), then adjusted brand and product strategies, shifting from low-end to high-end. He launched the 1955 series, which can be considered China's most expensive bottled liquor (guangping jiu). Today, its retail price exceeds 1,200 yuan, yet it remains hard to find.

Commander Tang positioned this liquor as a small and beautiful high-end baijiu brand. What is a small and beautiful brand? In Commander Tang's words: Small means a niche audience; beautiful means consensus among the many and the public. A small and beautiful baijiu brand satisfies the needs of a niche audience for a better life.

In today's market, consumers do not lack a bottle of liquor worth one or two thousand yuan. The key is what kind of liquor is offered to consumers—not just whether it feels worth the price, but more importantly, whether it is a product that can co-create a beautiful life experience with consumers.

This positioning is very precise: knowing who you are, what you can do, how many resources you have, and the competitive landscape of China's baijiu market.

It can be said that Commander Tang's positioning is quite unique.

-03- Opening Move: Experience × Culture

Undoubtedly, Lidu is culturally confident; this is the cornerstone of product value.

Lidu liquor is not just good; more importantly, the national first-class intangible cultural heritage at the Lidu Distillery is the matrix of Lidu culture. The profound history is the premise supporting Lidu's sense of value. Commander Tang also innovatively proposed the concept of "cultural relics in the Yuan Dynasty, culture in the Song Dynasty," merging China's most splendid source of baijiu with its cultural source.

However, having a good story is not enough. If you claim your liquor is good and has a story, not all consumers will believe you. During our exchange, Commander Tang shared an important viewpoint: Although I may not know the world's second, third, or fourth highest peaks, I definitely remember the mountain I once climbed.

This statement fully expresses the importance of consumers participating in the product experience.

We say the core of closing a deal consists of three parts: scarcity, trust, and user's urgent need.

From the perspective of scarcity, Lidu's Yuan Dynasty ancient cellars are themselves intangible heritage. The profound history, combined with Lidu's long brewing culture, is sufficient to support the product's scarcity and cultural connotation.

Lidu's distillery site was archaeologically excavated in 2002. Relevant data shows that Lidu Liquor owns "13 Yuan Dynasty cellars, 9 Ming Dynasty cellars, and 32 Qing Dynasty cellars," meaning the Lidu Yuan Dynasty distillery site has a total of 54 national treasure-level ancient cellar pits.

Renowned archaeologist Yang Jun disclosed in "Deciphering the Yuan Dynasty Ancient Cellar Archaeology" that "the Lidu distillery site clearly includes 13 circular cellar groups from the Yuan Dynasty, marking the first discovery in China of cellars from that period using ground vat fermentation and distillation."

Although scarcity exists, building genuine consumer trust is very difficult. The only thing to do now is to let consumers experience it firsthand—visit the Lidu distillery, feel its profound history, culture, and product quality.

Let core consumers see, touch, and experience. Only by experiencing Lidu's product quality and culture firsthand can they truly recognize Lidu's value and scarcity.

Therefore, Commander Tang innovatively proposed the immersive experience marketing model, building genuine trust and emotional connection with users by letting them experience Lidu's history and culture firsthand.

Returning to the consumer's urgent need: with so many liquors on the market, why should I consume Lidu? The earlier positioning section partially answers this: Lidu cannot satisfy all consumers' needs; it only provides a beautiful life experience for a small segment of consumers.

This kind of experience is overlooked by big brands, while small brands lack cultural depth and product strength. It is precisely this niche market that represents the true pursuit of baijiu culture by the new generation of baijiu consumers.

Commander Tang specifically mentioned the three senses in his marketing insights: a sense of participation, a sense of ritual, and a sense of entertainment. The core of these three senses is to let consumers learn through fun, understand Lidu's products and culture through experience, and achieve the trinity of consumer experience, cognition, and dissemination.

-04- KOC: Word-of-Mouth Driven

When Commander Tang first arrived at the distillery and began bold reforms, he raised an important topic: In today's market, do people seek the liquor, or does the liquor seek people?

Undoubtedly, in today's market, for most products, the liquor seeks people. But liquor seeking people is hard; people seeking liquor is easy.

So how can consumers actively seek out the liquor?

Lidu people must use a new way of thinking to solve this problem.

The author first heard about Lidu when Lin Feng recommended their "Three Temples" model, which sparked curiosity.

In Lin Feng's explanation of the Three Temples: "Small Temple - Lidu Sorghum Cooperative," "Middle Temple - Zhiweixuan," and "Big Temple - Distillery." "Small temple for traffic diversion, middle temple for experience, big temple for conversion." Progressing layer by layer, with three-level interaction.

The "Three Temples" Lin Feng mentioned are actually what they internally call the "Three Helms": the general helm is the factory, the branch helms are the Zhiweixuan (tasting houses) distributed in various cities, and the small helms are the Lidu Sorghum Cooperatives and tobacco and liquor stores nationwide.

The so-called general helm is Lidu's consumer factory experience tour project. By inviting a large number of KOLs and KOCs to the factory, they engage in a series of immersive experience projects, such as self-blending liquor, distiller's grain popsicles, distiller's grain eggs, distiller's grain masks, food tasting, and foot soaks in yellow water, allowing users to deeply participate and experience.

This lets users deeply experience Lidu's culture and value, making these KOLs and KOCs genuinely identify with and understand Lidu's culture. These opinion leaders naturally spread Lidu's products through their social networks and Moments, influencing those around them to experience Lidu.

The branch helms refer to the 360 Zhiweixuan that Lidu has opened nationwide. These are important venues for Lidu to establish mass connections with KOCs. Lidu plans to open 500-600 Zhiweixuan nationwide in the coming years.

These Zhiweixuan are not just for eating and drinking; they purposefully and systematically cultivate Lidu's KOC matrix. Through these nationwide venues, consumers who cannot easily visit the Lidu distillery can learn about Lidu culture, experience the Lidu 1955 product, and ultimately recognize and recommend Lidu products to others.

The small helms include not only tobacco and liquor stores but also cloud stores opened by numerous urban partners. Their value is to allow consumers to buy Lidu liquor anytime without leaving home, contact Lidu at any time, and establish deep connections with Lidu.

The core of Lidu's immersive experience is to turn KOLs and KOCs who have experienced Lidu culture into loyal fans, leveraging their word-of-mouth to solve brand communication problems. We all know that for true high-end brands, it's not what you say that consumers believe, but what their friends say.

Lidu's Three Helms aim to use the word-of-mouth of professional opinion leaders around consumers to influence, connect, and interact with consumers, uncover potential fans and KOCs, and ultimately solve the problem of people seeking the liquor.

-05- Product as the Cornerstone

Lidu liquor has a unique flavor profile known as "one sip, four aromas": when you raise the glass, you smell strong aroma; when it touches your lips, you taste rice aroma; upon careful tasting, you detect light aroma; and the aftertaste carries aged sauce aroma. This is inseparable from Lidu's unique brewing process, its proprietary "two ancients and two longs" traditional technique.

"Two ancients" refers to Lidu products being brewed in ancient cellars using traditional manual methods. Lidu's ancient cellars are a group of Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasty blue-brick cellars in continuous use, and production employs full manual traditional brewing.

"Two longs" first refers to Lidu's long fermentation period, exceeding 60 days, which allows for sugar, alcohol, and aroma production; second, it refers to the long storage period, which reduces volatile impurities and promotes esterification and hydrolysis, gradually balancing alcohols, acids, and esters.

Notably, in recent years, Lidu Liquor has also discovered 167 ancient microbial OTUs in its cellars, ensuring the unique flavor and style of Lidu products.

"Not only do we have excellent cellars, but a very important feature of Lidu liquor is that we have a lot of aged liquor. When the liquor tastes good and word-of-mouth is good, we save on packaging and advertising costs, which is more affordable for consumers," said Tang Xiangyang.

Because of its outstanding quality, at the 2015 Brussels International Spirits Competition, Lidu Sorghum 1955 stood out from 1,397 entries and, together with 53% vol Feitian Moutai, won the competition's highest award—the "Grand Gold Medal." In 2019, Lidu Sorghum 1308 won another gold among 1,750 samples. Thus, Guobao Lidu became the only baijiu brand in China with two "Grand Gold Medals."

-06- Digital Leverage

Lidu not only excels at storytelling but also leads the industry in applying new technologies. Lidu was one of the earlier baijiu companies to propose user operations. The basic tools for operating users are a series of digital tools centered around users and communities.

Lidu uses official accounts, enterprise WeChat accounts, WeChat groups, and the Guofen Home as its core marketing platforms, supplemented by mini-programs, e-commerce platforms, one-code-one-item, H5, and other digital tools. This transforms user operations from simple information push and transaction conversion into a collaborative operation system based on the full user lifecycle.

Through offline experiences and online traffic pools, Lidu establishes close connections with users, continuously accumulating water and energy, turning customers into bridgeheads for Lidu's communication. This enables users to spontaneously fission, ultimately achieving the strategy of user experience and word-of-mouth, and through the community matrix, completing brand communication and transactions.

It is worth mentioning that Lidu not only has traditional distributors but also Lidu cloud merchants and cloud store owners. In Lidu's own words, channel fan-ization does stock, fan channel-ization does increment.

This means that the traditional distribution system handles existing business, while turning fans into channels handles future business. Lidu relies on the C-end to drive increment, empowering the B-end, and further leveraging the stock market.

-07- Summary

Lidu's marketing system truly caters to the current market demand for small and beautiful products.

In summary, Lidu's "Four Haves":

Have culture, have good liquor, have experience, have methods.

New Distribution's study tours have visited Lidu three times in three years, and each visit brought different gains and experiences. It has witnessed Lidu's rapid development over the years and seen the cognitive upgrades and iterations of Commander Tang and his team.

The biggest takeaway from this visit is that Lidu has fully become a new baijiu consumer brand, and truly a new high-end baijiu brand, which is groundbreaking.

Mr. Chen from Niulanshan commented that Lidu, like Jiangxiaobai, is a brand that will be remembered by China's baijiu industry. It has opened a new track and gameplay for the industry and found a new breakthrough direction for countless local baijiu enterprises with distinctive features.

Kudos to Lidu, and kudos to Commander Tang!

Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once the story is adopted.