The following is the speech content delivered by Ms. Wang Ruyi, marketing expert at Lawson Convenience Stores, at the 5th FMCG + Internet Conference hosted by New Distribution, organized and published for readers. Hello everyone, I am Wang Ruyi from Lawson's marketing department, mainly responsible for IP marketing and membership marketing. This time, I will introduce Lawson's IP-empowered new retail approach in four parts. The first part is the definition of new retail and IP; the second part will briefly introduce Lawson's current situation in China; the third part, which is the focus of this presentation, is why we want to build IP marketing; and the last part will introduce Lawson's IP marketing cases and my personal summary. Part 1: Definitions of New Retail and IP Definition of new retail: In new retail, customers are identifiable, and their consumption records are storable. The tool Lawson uses in new retail is the Lawson Points membership system. Currently, our total membership in China reaches 6.5 million, with a monthly active rate of 12%-15%, and member sales account for 15%. From member data, our main customer group is aged 25-34, with females more active than males. Very gratifyingly, through Lawson's continuous cooperation with popular IPs over the years, the proportion of younger consumers aged 15-19 has been growing. IP: IP can be anime works, literary works, videos, or even just a concept. A good IP must have commercial value; it can be derived into movies, TV, games, anime, music, merchandise, and other products. Speaking of Lawson, you will definitely think of our themed stores cooperating with well-known cartoon anime IPs like Ultraman, Conan, and Rilakkuma. The coordinate chart below is a collection of IPs Lawson has cooperated with in the past. But besides themed stores, we have many other IP marketing plays, which I will introduce one by one today. Part 2: Lawson's Current Situation in China Lawson is a Japanese convenience store chain. As of January 18, 2019, the number of stores nationwide exceeded 2,000, mainly covering Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Beijing, Dalian, Wuhan, Chongqing, and Hefei. This is a set of data from Nielsen, mainly showing the sales growth rate of various channels in 2018. The red box highlights what we call modern trade. It can be seen that convenience stores had the highest sales growth rate in 2018, and convenience stores are in a stage of vigorous development. The next set of data also comes from Nielsen. Purple represents the overall sales growth of Chinese convenience stores in 2018, and blue represents Lawson China's overall sales growth in 2018. It can be seen that Lawson China's growth rate has always been much higher than the national average for convenience stores and continues to rise. Part 3: Why We Build IP Marketing IP derivatives are loved by young consumers and are the general trend in the era of consumption upgrade. According to Maslow's theory, we can see the chart above. At the current stage of convenience store development, they need to satisfy not only consumers' survival needs, but also, due to their ubiquity, 24-hour operation, and strong convenience, they are an important place to meet consumers' spiritual needs and self-fulfillment. As mentioned earlier, those who win the youth win the world. We are always actively cultivating the next generation of consumers, the Generation Z. What characteristics do Generation Z consumers have? According to our survey, they like personalized things and are willing to share with others. Through cooperation with IPs, we can not only bring traffic to Lawson stores but also maintain the youthful vitality of the Lawson brand. Similarly, because Lawson has been cooperating with popular IPs, our activities can also maintain the IP's market heat. This is the significance of our cooperation with IPs. Part 4: Lawson IP Marketing Case Sharing I summarize Lawson's cooperation with IPs into three types. The first is IP + Activity, the second is IP + Brand, and the third is IP + IP. IP + Activity is mainly reflected in the form of point collection activities; IP + Brand is presented through the well-known pop-up stores and themed stores; IP + IP is relatively unique and fun. As a Japanese convenience store chain, we treat Lawson itself as a Japanese IP. Through customized content, customized products, customized experiences with the IP party, cross-audience, and topic creation, we ultimately achieve brand exposure, new customer acquisition, and repeat purchases from old customers. Here, new customer acquisition is multi-dimensional: through cooperation with IPs, stores have new forms that attract new customers; new categories of products are added in stores to realize IP monetization; and IPs are given new forms and implemented, forming a flow from Lawson fans to the IP. The first type is IP + Activity. First, let me introduce Lawson's point collection activity: members can redeem free Lawson and IP co-developed merchandise by purchasing a certain amount of designated products. This case is our cooperation with Doraemon. The activity lasted 4 weeks. Customers who purchased a certain amount of Lawson's own products, bread & desserts, could get one Doraemon travel set for free. During the activity, we promoted through in-store posters and online via SNS, WeChat, Weibo, and apps. The final results were a 108% increase in sales of the target products and a cumulative exposure of 13 million UV. It was a win-win result for both Lawson and the IP party. The second type is IP + Brand. Lawson has always cooperated with various Japanese and American IPs to launch pop-up stores/themed stores. For example, we have cooperated with Japanese IPs like Naruto, Conan, and Rilakkuma. The representative American IP is Barbie. In recent years, it has always been the year of games. To attract more young consumers, we have also cooperated with major game IPs: Youzu's "Angel Era"; Bandai's "Gundam Versus"; and DENA's "For Whom the Alchemist Exists." In our cooperation with "Angel Era," we even launched 2 customized rice balls, which were sought after by players; in the cooperation with "For Whom the Alchemist Exists," Lawson points could be used to redeem limited skins in the game. Through such cooperation, the mutual fermentation between Lawson fans and game players is ultimately achieved, which is very meaningful for both parties. It is worth mentioning our cooperation with Youzu's "Touken Ranbu," a very popular mobile game. In addition to pop-up stores, we also carried out point collection activities, aiming to give players a complete, immersive scene experience, which is exactly what Lawson is good at. A recent case is the themed store cooperating with the two-dimensional Bilibili. The themed store is located in the Wujiaochang business district in Shanghai, under Bilibili's headquarters building. After the store opened, the spread on Bilibili and other internet platforms was very high. Many UP masters spontaneously filmed videos in the store and uploaded them to the internet. One UP master's video about the themed store had over 843,000 views and over 20,000 comments. The Bilibili themed store has two floors: the first floor is the sales area, and the second floor is the leisure area. The store's color tone is mainly blue and white, which matches Lawson's color tone very well. The Bilibili themed store is customized with IP characteristics as the starting point, both in hard and soft decoration. At the same time, there are dedicated shelves in the store displaying Bilibili merchandise for sale, aiming to give two-dimensional fans a scene-based experience after arriving. The third type is IP + IP, where Lawson appears as a Japanese IP. Here I will share three mobile game cases. In the cooperation with Honkai Impact 3, the main idea was to let the popular game protagonist Kiana wear Lawson's uniform and start a part-time job journey. This deeply and compatibly combined the game protagonist with Lawson. Players expressed that they loved this combination and found it very down-to-earth. The target audience of the activity was players, so player recognition is crucial to us. At the same time, we also launched a point collection activity where players could get merchandise + virtual items. Virtual items, as virtual rights, are also a kind of consumer rights. The cooperation with Bilibili's Azur Lane, a warship-themed naval game, took the form of point collection activity + pop-up store + in-game interaction. We "opened" Lawson in the game, which not only promoted the brand but also allowed players to feel close to Lawson in the game, giving the game a fresh feel. In the middle picture, we can see consumers queuing at the store entrance to participate in the activity. This fully confirms that our activity planning was successful, completely understanding what players wanted, and everyone was very willing to participate. The cooperation with Tencent's QQ Speed. The biggest difference between this cooperation and the previous two cases is that we added LBS technology to drive traffic to stores and also built a temporary arena Lawson store. With LBS technology, every Lawson store is a race venue. Players within 1,000 meters of a Lawson store can join the Lawson track to PK with other players. At the same time, Lawson coupons are distributed in the game, ultimately achieving the effect of driving traffic to stores. At the arena Lawson temporary store, players can even battle with S-level racing gods on site. Lawson will have more innovations in IP cooperation. Finally, let me summarize the three modes of Lawson's IP cooperation: IP + Activity; IP + Brand; IP + IP. I believe the significance of convenience store and IP cooperation lies in the following two points:

  1. Convenience stores have convenience, ubiquity, and 24-hour operation, making them a good place for consumers to meet various needs.
  2. Through cooperation with IPs, we achieve brand exposure, acquire new customers, and ultimately form mutual fermentation between fans, achieving a win-win effect. Finally, thank you for listening! Thank you! Welcome your guidance and suggestions.