In recent years, driven by new drinking demands such as "self-pleasing," "health," and "drinking for a sense of life aspiration," low-alcohol drinks, marketed as trendy, palatable, and "tipsy," have become increasingly popular among young people. More and more DTC new brands are accelerating their layout in the low-alcohol drink track to seize growth opportunities.

However, due to relatively low entry barriers, lack of clear industry standards for production and research, and weak brand education, the current low-alcohol drink market faces relatively high product homogeneity and insufficient consumer loyalty.

In the future, to establish a firm foothold in the new blue ocean and successfully break through the brand "melee," low-alcohol brands must build a comprehensive marketing system integrating brand, product, and channels, deepen exploration of new scenarios, enhance awareness among new consumer groups, and accumulate competitive advantages in the industry.

So, specifically, how should low-alcohol brands at different development stages and with different needs proceed? Currently, the diverse business models explored by leading low-alcohol brands such as MissBerry, Shíqī Guāngnián, and Drunk Goose Lady within the Tencent ecosystem may provide references for the industry.

MissBerry: Dancing with Gen Z Women to Unleash Strong Brand Power As a leading new brand in the first tier, MissBerry has positioned itself as a new fruit wine brand that better understands women's needs since its inception in 2019.

After the rapid development phase, how can the brand further strengthen user awareness, capture category mindshare, and consolidate its industry leadership?

Based on deep insights into young female demographics, MissBerry chose to collaborate with Tencent Ads, adopting a marketing strategy of "new idols + social scenes" to capture the attention of young female users, enhance brand social awareness and influence, and drive new customer growth.

Through joint efforts, MissBerry ultimately achieved over 100 million in brand exposure, daily sales exceeding one million, and leveraged the long-term exposure of WeChat's social ecosystem to elevate consumer awareness of the category and brand to new heights.

STEP 1 Celebrity Endorsement: Directly Targeting Gen Z Female Circles, Leveraging Star Power to Drive Brand Power To deepen brand positioning and further establish a confident and fashionable brand tone, MissBerry has been collaborating with Tencent's "Produce Camp" series Gen Z idols R1SE Zhai Xiaowen and INTO1 Liu Yu since the end of last year, reinforcing a youthful brand image and portraying a vibrant "sweetheart" brand persona.

At the same time, leveraging major promotional nodes mid-year and year-end, they strengthen interaction and exposure between endorsers and products, converting celebrity fans into new customers, thereby driving growth in both brand awareness and product sales.

STEP 2 Brand-Effect Synergy: Celebrity Same-Style Seeding to Occupy Category Mindshare, Binding Life Scenarios for Efficient Sales Today, Moments has become a mainstream social scenario for users, and the WeChat ecosystem has become an important battleground for brands to strengthen category education, occupy mainstream user mindshare, and create blockbuster effects.

To this end, MissBerry uses its small square bottle sweet wine as the flagship product, choosing long-term bidding ads in Moments to directly drive conversions to the mini-program mall.

The brand combines the social scenario of "girls' gatherings" for positioning, using native graphic content to seed life scenarios; using celebrity creative materials to strengthen the celebrity same-style mindshare, enhance user favorability and trust, thereby driving transaction growth and private domain accumulation.

According to Tencent Ads data, thanks to continuous optimization in creativity and technology, MissBerry's average ad click-through rate exceeded 1.8%.

Meanwhile, with the assistance of Tencent Product Ads, MissBerry's ad competitiveness and click-through rates significantly improved, with single ad consumption increasing by 91%.

Shíqī Guāngnián: Omnichannel Scenario Linkage and Synergy to Stimulate Product Seeding Emerging fruit wine brand Shíqī Guāngnián innovatively uses rice wine as the base, employs the group's patented single-side fermentation 90-day temperature-controlled fermentation technology, selects premium fruits, maximizes fruit flavor retention, adheres to 0-additive processes, and is popular among young consumers for its unique flavor.

To expand brand awareness and accelerate omnichannel product seeding, Shíqī Guāngnián chose to collaborate with Tencent Ads, customizing a marketing strategy of "leveraging IP to seize social mindshare + pop-up store live streaming for seeding," fully leveraging the WeChat ecosystem's social seeding value during the growth phase to enhance target consumers' awareness and recognition of the brand.

STEP 1 Moments Brand Promotion: Variety Show IP Authorization Linkage to Occupy Category Mindshare in Social Scenes Based on in-depth consideration of young people's emerging gathering places, Shíqī Guāngnián chose to collaborate with popular variety shows, using IP-authorized co-branded celebrity posters, program videos, and other materials to place ads in Moments, seeding the same-style fruit wine, leveraging the IP's popularity and social transmission momentum to expand brand cooperation influence and occupy the social scene mindshare of the fruit wine category.

STEP 2 Pop-up Store Live Streaming: Video Account Live "Store Visits," Multi-Touchpoint Connectivity to Accelerate Omnichannel Seeding During the Shanghai BFC Bund Music Season, Shíqī Guāngnián's pop-up store landed on Video Account live streaming, using the new "weekend store visit" live format to attract online users to watch, check in, follow, and share.

With the strong support of Video Account's high-quality public domain live streaming entrance and the powerful boost of Moments bidding ads, the goal of omnichannel seeding was successfully achieved.

At the same time, thanks to the multi-touchpoint connectivity of mini-programs, official accounts, and Video Accounts within the WeChat ecosystem, it effectively helps brands attract fans to their private domain.

With the endorsement of the variety show IP, Shíqī Guāngnián's Moments celebrity large-image ad click-through rate approached 2%, 50% higher than the industry average for the beverage sector.

During the pop-up store event, Shíqī Guāngnián's two weekend live streams averaged over 20,000 viewers, with the single highest viewership exceeding 30,000, setting a new peak for emerging low-alcohol brand live streaming.

Drunk Goose Lady: Future Deep Cultivation of WeChat Social Ecosystem Maximizing Channel Connectivity Of course, besides emerging low-alcohol brands continuously deepening their exploration in the Tencent ecosystem, many mature beverage brands also hope to strengthen their layout in the Tencent ecosystem.

Drunk Goose Lady has accumulated a loyal fan base since the self-media era and has built a unique "self-developed + imported agency" product matrix, fully meeting the needs of different wine-buying groups.

To further enhance brand and individual product awareness, attract new customers, better serve existing customers, and drive long-term GMV growth, Drunk Goose Lady hopes to collaborate with Tencent Ads in the future, relying on the WeChat ecosystem to improve digital infrastructure and new touchpoint layout, and deepen exploration of private domain monetization models.

For example, in the direct sales model, Drunk Goose Lady hopes to continue driving traffic from public to private domains through Moments ads and official accounts, using community tiered operations and optimization of Video Account live streaming touchpoints to strengthen refined management of private domain users, and leveraging mini-programs to meet users' full-chain needs of "learning about wine, browsing wine, and buying wine," providing personalized and differentiated service experiences, thereby truly completing the "seed-grow-harvest" closed loop and accelerating membership business growth.

In addition to the direct sales model, Drunk Goose Lady also hopes to further deepen exploration in the distribution model, using tools such as Tencent Youshu and Tencent Smart Retail Cloud Mall to enhance sales efficiency and data accumulation and reuse, driving comprehensive GMV growth.

During the golden period of strong development for low-alcohol brands, Tencent Ads hopes to fully release high-quality resources, deepen product and service capabilities, meet the diverse marketing needs of low-alcohol brands, assist them in deepening industry marketing exploration, and accelerate business model upgrades.

Recently, many emerging low-alcohol brands have joined Tencent's "Domain Supernova" plan, leveraging multi-dimensional support resources in Tencent's trading field to initiate new growth.

In the future, Tencent Ads will continue to leverage its platform "connector" value, increase support for low-alcohol brands, and help low-alcohol brands at different development stages seize the growth blue ocean within the Tencent ecosystem and capture market opportunities.

Review: Asher

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