--- title: "Jiangxiaobai's Entry into Sichuan: An Alternative Approach to Deep Distribution" description: "Despite the adage 'Don't enter Sichuan in the west, don't enter Anhui in the east,' Jiangxiaobai created an industry legend in Sichuan. Many attribute this to its marketing communications, but its traditional marketing prowess, especially in channel distribution and promotion, is equally strong. Even if your IP is hugely popular, if your product cannot reach consumers through channels, everything is zero. Therefore, before Jiangxiaobai's IP, content, and self-media marketing took off, its marketing team worked with platform partners to adopt a combined online-offline human-wave tactic to deeply cultivate channels. This article details Jiangxiaobai's deep distribution model using the Chengdu campaign as an example." author: "杨叶护" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-10-22" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/jiangxiaobai-s-entry-into-sichuan-an-alternative-approach-to-deep-distri-bed8aa04/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/jiangxiaobai-s-entry-into-sichuan-an-alternative-approach-to-deep-distri-bed8aa04.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Fi7DFny8xfjmV1LzK_SiNA" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%B1%9F%E5%B0%8F%E7%99%BD%E5%85%A5%E5%B7%9D%E8%AE%B0-%E6%B7%B1%E5%BA%A6%E5%88%86%E9%94%80%E7%9A%84%E5%8F%A6%E7%B1%BB%E7%8E%A9%E6%B3%95-bed8aa04.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/jiangxiaobai-s-entry-into-sichuan-an-alternative-approach-to-deep-distri-bed8aa04/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Jiangxiaobai's Entry into Sichuan: An Alternative Approach to Deep Distribution > Despite the adage 'Don't enter Sichuan in the west, don't enter Anhui in the east,' Jiangxiaobai created an industry legend in Sichuan. Many attribute this to its marketing communications, but its traditional marketing prowess, especially in channel distribution and promotion, is equally strong. Even if your IP is hugely popular, if your product cannot reach consumers through channels, everything is zero. Therefore, before Jiangxiaobai's IP, content, and self-media marketing took off, its marketing team worked with platform partners to adopt a combined online-offline human-wave tactic to deeply cultivate channels. This article details Jiangxiaobai's deep distribution model using the Chengdu campaign as an example. The liquor industry has long had a saying: "Don't enter Sichuan in the west, don't enter Anhui in the east." Yet Jiangxiaobai managed to create an industry legend in Sichuan, a veritable 'wine nest.' Many believe Jiangxiaobai's success is due to its excellent communications, but they overlook its solid traditional marketing foundation; its channel distribution and promotion capabilities are second to none. Even if your IP is as hot as the midday sun, if your product cannot reach consumers through channels, everything is zero. So, before Jiangxiaobai's IP marketing, content marketing, and self-media marketing took off, its marketing team, together with platform partners, adopted a combined online-offline human-wave tactic to deeply cultivate channels. Today, I will break down Jiangxiaobai's deep distribution model using the Chengdu campaign as an example. Chengdu is a battleground for the Chinese liquor industry, the city of global liquor industry business cards (the annual Chengdu Spring Sugar and Wine Fair in March is the world's largest exhibition), and one of the three highest vantage points (3C) for small-bottle liquor in China. The saying "Don't enter Sichuan in the west, don't enter Anhui in the east" reflects that liquor brands in Sichuan and Anhui lead the entire Chinese liquor market through innovative business and channel models. In their home markets, they have established strong brand and channel barriers, leading most national brands to strategically abandon these two provinces. Yet we managed to create an industry legend in Sichuan, this 'wine nest.' **Determining Strategy** Sichuan consists of 1 Chengdu, 17 prefecture-level cities, 3 autonomous prefectures, and 183 districts, cities, and counties, resembling a giant crab. Our market layout is also composed of a crab belly, two crab claws, and several crab legs. The market position, role, and strategic positioning of the crab belly, claws, and legs differ at various stages of market development. Chengdu, as the provincial capital, is the 'crab belly,' serving as the supply and hematopoietic center for the entire market. Once the crab claws take shape, they can clamp down on major competitors. For example, securing Nanchong secures northeastern Sichuan, and taking Xichang secures western Sichuan—this is the strategic position of the crab claws. The crab legs are just icing on the cake; taking them means the entire market is in a flexible state. From a brand strategy perspective, China's urban development is highly concentrated, with a widening gap between first- and second-tier cities and third- and fourth-tier cities, including cultural gaps. Brands will only extend and penetrate from first- and second-tier cities to third- and fourth-tier cities, as consumers always pursue brands from lagging markets to advanced markets. Therefore, we must focus all resources on the strategic market, the 'crab belly' Chengdu. If the prototype of the Chengdu model market is not established, there is no base, no model effect in the overall strategic layout, and no ignition point. But if we quickly build the 'crab belly' prototype, the effect will be immediate. After clearly defining the strategic positioning of "Take Chengdu, Ignite All of Sichuan," we adopted a deep distribution model as the core tactic, with a clear approach of directly building our own team and directly building terminals. We divided Chengdu into 7 major districts, 7 columns, with one main base plus 4 offices. We quickly assembled our team, conducted a census, and formulated a battle route map, dividing the 7 districts into 60 business sub-districts, each with 200-260 terminals. During the market coverage phase, to quickly and efficiently seize terminals, we implemented a strategy of giving 6 bottles per outlet (a single-store, single-strategy approach for A and B class stores), trading space for time. Only by quickly entering terminals and making that final push can subsequent actions follow. If we encountered old slow-moving products during coverage, we replaced them one-on-one, re-maintaining customer relationships and enhancing the brand's new image. **Leveraging Snow Beer's Channels** During our direct-sales team's deep distribution in the 'crab belly' market of Chengdu, we discovered that some high-quality outlets in each area were impenetrable, and some high-vantage points were blocked because distributors or competitors had exclusive liquor supply contracts, preventing Jiangxiaobai from entering those stores. Due to these channel obstacles, we conducted a thorough review of Chengdu's channel structure and surprisingly found a breakthrough—Snow Beer's channels. Snow Beer has over 200 first- and second-tier distributors in Chengdu, with a market share of over 75% and a scale of 1 billion yuan. Through deep distribution, they meticulously cultivate every area and every outlet with professional business skills, and many A and B class high-quality outlets have deep relationships with these distributors. Our product and Snow Beer are seasonally complementary: the beer peak season is before October, while Jiangxiaobai's is after October. If Snow Beer distributors also handle Jiangxiaobai, from an operational perspective, costs decrease, efficiency increases, and the average efficiency of personnel, vehicles, and warehouses improves. It also enriches the product mix and builds their own channel barriers—why not? Once our marketing team confirmed this, we immediately initiated collaboration with Snow Beer's channels. I formulated a one-on-one negotiation strategy and established a channel expansion team. Regional sales reps were responsible for sweeping the streets to gather information on Snow's regional distributors, and we visited them one by one to negotiate: "Mr. X, in your area of 200 outlets, we cover 80% with 70% terminal visibility. We'll give you 30 yuan profit per case, and if sales exceed a certain volume, I'll reward you with an additional 10 yuan per case. Our company will provide dedicated regional personnel for professional maintenance, and we'll bear the first-round outlet coverage costs. All regional market investments and consumer pull investments are directly funded by us. You just need to handle distribution, channel coordination, customer relationship grafting, and financial management!" Adopting a nanny-style marketing model, Jiangxiaobai grafted onto one-third of Snow's distributors, opening up channels for the Chengdu market. This allowed us to avoid spending energy competing with rivals on channels and avoid consuming limited resources on non-strategic directions. We could focus our limited human, material, and financial resources on the consumer fulcrum to leverage the Chengdu market. **I Endorse Jiangxiaobai** Through the desperate efforts of our dozens of brothers, we 'occupied' every street and alley in Chengdu, making Jiangxiaobai's presence visible in thousands of restaurants, hotpot shops, skewer shops, food stalls, and noodle shops... You can see Jiangxiaobai in any dining scenario, from breakfast to dinner. In this way, day by day, we eroded your mind, built a small brand image in your heart, and conditioned you to recite "I am Jiangxiaobai, life is simple" and "Eating hotpot, singing songs, drinking Xiaobai, and playing finger games." Consumers gradually went from having heard of us to seeing us to understanding us. Through multiple rounds of outlet coverage and terminal visual merchandising, we made most consumers very familiar with Jiangxiaobai, and then we began to pry open consumers' mouths to get them to actually drink. To solve the last-meter consumer pull problem, we launched the "I Endorse Jiangxiaobai" campaign. The activity works like this: diners simply take a photo with Jiangxiaobai or the "I Endorse Jiangxiaobai" movie callboard card, upload it to Weibo and WeChat Moments, and add a line: "We're gathering at Dalongyi (the restaurant name), and we endorse Jiangxiaobai." After sharing, our promotion team would promptly open 2-4 bottles of Jiangxiaobai and pour it for them, saying, "Brother, if the wine isn't enough, the restaurant has it for sale." In one smooth motion, we completed the opening, tasting, and sales actions. "I Endorse Jiangxiaobai" is not just for tasting experience; it's designed based on three pain points: 1. The dining scenario of friends gathering lacks an emotional medium to ignite the atmosphere; 2. The product's secondary dissemination based on the lively consumption scene; 3. Consumers actually open the bottle and drink freely, not just liking my copy! This activity solves the secondary dissemination of the product in consumption scenarios, solves the experience problem of consumers opening and drinking, and solves the interaction problem between the product and the consumption scene—killing three birds with one stone. **After-Work Bar Appointment** Today's urban youth live fast-paced lives with high work pressure, spending more time on phones and less time meeting friends. To break the shackles of concrete and steel for the 'post-80s' and 'post-90s' generations, to break the excuse of "We live in the same city but haven't gathered for a long time," to break the reality of "We only meet in our friend circles," and to break the coldness and helplessness of "Colleagues and comrades have never been drunk or sober together," we should use a real drinking appointment to subtly change this group's virtual social habits. Use a small bottle of liquor to advocate warm social interaction, strengthen their interactive stickiness, and rewrite their lifestyle. Therefore, in Chengdu's major CBDs, high-tech zones, software parks, and entrepreneurship incubation areas—places where the new generation is highly concentrated—and at subway entrances that commuters pass by, we launched a fierce "After-Work Bar Appointment" ground promotion campaign, aiming to create a face-to-face drinking scenario for this group suffering from 'post-work silence syndrome.' The activity is simple and easy to execute: 1. Target consumers take a photo with our product, share it on Weibo and WeChat, @ three or more friends, and issue a drinking invitation with the line "I have wine, you have stories; let's go to a bar after work!" 2. If it's a corporate or departmental gathering, through our H5, they submit the gathering time, location, number of people, and amount of liquor, and we arrange for the regional manager to deliver it. Liquor is an emotional beverage that amplifies our emotions and helps us express ourselves better. Living in the present, we don't need romanticism or fantasy; we just need sincere listening and clinking glasses among friends. We are not work machines, and family and friends should not be sacrificed for work. Save the 'post-work silence syndrome'—after work, let's go for a drink! Not for business, not for socializing, not to get drunk, but for a simple, pure gathering among brothers and sisters. **Dear Xiaona** We often think about how to connect closed but high-traffic traditional media with social platforms to create interaction, using offline traffic entrances to precisely guide consumers online to interact with the brand. After screening, we locked onto subway frame media and used the 'Jiangxiaobai style' to leverage this traffic entrance, pulling offline audiences from subway media to Weibo for interaction. This is an advertisement we placed on the Chengdu subway, investing over 100 boards, directly connecting with Weibo: "Dear @Xiaona: Winter has arrived in Chengdu. Are you cold in Beijing? I'm drinking today, and I miss you very much. The brothers drinking with me told me that the first person you think of after drinking is your true love. Is this 'in vino veritas'? I've already spilled it, and I can't take it back." This copy was crafted with insight into human consumption needs. Because of high work pressure, many are in long-distance relationships. When such netizens see this ad, they will definitely take a photo, share it, and @ the person they miss, creating a point of active dissemination for consumers. Finally, it's worth mentioning that in the mobile internet era, traditional enterprises should learn to use new marketing to redefine themselves and leverage its power to upgrade and transform their businesses and brands. Source: Sales and Market (ID: cnmarket) **2017 (3rd) FMCG + Internet Conference** will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme "New Forces, New Ecology," inviting domestic **1000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, and 100+ investment and financing institutions** to jointly explore new chapters of cross-border integration! Click the link below to review the highlights of the first and second FMCG + Internet conferences: [2016 "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum]() -END- --- ## 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