During the recent '6·18' shopping festival, Miaokelanduo reported impressive results, with sales on Tmall flagship store, JD self-operated, and Pinduoduo growing by over 43%, 172%, and 288% year-on-year respectively, securing the top spot in multiple categories. This marks the third consecutive year since 2019 that Miaokelanduo has dominated the '6·18' category rankings, reflecting its strong performance in the company's business.
Miaokelanduo's cheese segment revenue reached 921 million yuan in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 102.2%; in 2020, this figure exceeded 2.07 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 125.15%, achieving consecutive annual doubling.
However, just three years ago, Miaokelanduo faced a completely different situation.
As cheese is an 'imported product,' consumers naturally tend to prefer 'imported goods' and foreign brands. The top five cheese brands were all foreign, and almost no domestic brand believed it could seize market opportunities from such a 'tiger's mouth,' let alone aim for the top spot in cheese.
Three years later, Miaokelanduo achieved it. Interview today's Miaokelanduo consumers, and over 90% will say they have seen Miaokelanduo repeatedly in elevator ads. That's right, our strategy to ignite the brand and win the category is to concentrate resources and heavily invest in Focus Media.
Facts have proven this to be a successful choice, but at the time, many did not approve of this communication approach, and doubts accompanied Miaokelanduo's development. Yet we walked firmly because we knew we were doing the right thing.
To make a comeback, heavy brand investment is necessary.
The core of rapid brand growth is a good product. Investment in product strength has always been Miaokelanduo's insistence.
We are not only one of the first Chinese dairy companies to master the production technology of natural cheese, but over the years, we have also developed flagship products such as cheese sticks and mozzarella cheese. We can confidently say that the quality of Miaokelanduo's cheese products is on par with any foreign brand.
With the guarantee of product strength, the construction of brand strength has a solid foundation. But ideals are full, reality is too skinny.
In recent years, under the national trend, we have seen many Chinese brands rise successfully, which is inspiring and gives many Chinese enterprises hope and direction. However, the reason why the national trend is inspiring is that it is not easy.
Yes, the rise of Chinese brands is really difficult. Chinese brands in many industries have been suppressed by foreign brands for years, and we deeply understand this.
When Miaokelanduo first entered the cheese industry, the leading brands were almost all foreign, especially the French brand Breguet, which had been developing in the Chinese market for over 10 years, leading with nearly 30% market share and annual revenue of around 1 billion yuan.
To make a comeback, heavy brand investment is necessary.
The achievement of brand strength is fundamentally the effective expression of brand core value and the establishment of consumer trust, which is also a process for enterprises to transform product advantages into cognitive and competitive advantages.
In this long process, brand investment is indispensable, especially for the vast majority of Chinese brands. To make a comeback and overtake, it is an unavoidable reality.
In fact, even today, many enterprises try to find so-called shortcuts. Underestimating the brand, or even blaming brands that invest heavily in brand building, this conceptual deviation brings consequences like losing at the starting line.
Strategic Insight and Strategic Boldness Behind Heavy Investment in Focus Media
Miaokelanduo regarded 2019 as the first year of comprehensive brand building. Behind this decision is a race against the clock with the time window.
Although the cheese track is already crowded with strong players and foreign brands, the entire Chinese cheese consumption market is still in its infancy. The vast majority of consumers have not yet started consuming cheese, and when it comes to cheese brands, they cannot name any.
This contains a huge opportunity. If Miaokelanduo can expand the cheese category, make customers remember it first, and become the preferred brand for cheese purchases, it can completely reverse the industry pattern.
With the acceleration of China's consumption upgrade, the huge potential of the cheese industry is already a consensus. Although Miaokelanduo saw the opportunity, this is a race. As one of the new entrants, Miaokelanduo will inevitably face the vigilance and pursuit of competitors. Only by continuously accelerating can it avoid elimination.
Moreover, at that time, Miaokelanduo's resources and scale were far inferior to the industry leader, whose market share in China was more than ten times that of Miaokelanduo. Under such a huge gap, Miaokelanduo had to find a quick winning method.
First, we had to find our own direction, touch consumers' hearts, and find the reason why consumers choose you over competitors. This was Miaokelanduo's rapid response at that time.
We positioned the brand as 'cheese products suitable for Chinese people' and used 'Cheese, choose Miaokelanduo' as the brand slogan. This includes our analysis of Miaokelanduo's comparative advantages as a domestic brand, as well as our ambition to equate Miaokelanduo with cheese and seal off the cheese category.
Second, we identified the right opportunity, focused resources, and put full effort into brand communication. Betting on Focus Media was Miaokelanduo's best choice under this premise.
A brand offensive first requires ensuring rapid, high-frequency information dissemination to penetrate the market thoroughly. Secondly, for Miaokelanduo, it was necessary to ensure precise reach to urban middle-class families with cheese consumption habits or potential.
The advantage of Focus Media's elevator media lies in occupying the indispensable core scene in the life trajectory of the city's mainstream consumer group.
Whether in residential communities, office buildings, or shopping malls, it can fully utilize fragmented time to penetrate high-frequency, precise advertising into the elevator scenes that target consumers must pass through, achieving efficient and in-depth communication with consumers.
In an era of highly fragmented or even dust-like information, such media characteristics are valuable. Which media can guarantee 6 effective touches to target consumers a day?
Some say it's the era of mobile internet, and we should pursue fun and novelty, using various concepts to capture consumers. Variety shows, social seeding, and viral hits are the trends for brand building. In fact, truly explosive brands are rare and hard to replicate.
The key to brand communication lies in the repeated effective reach of information. Only by constantly repeating information can a brand combat consumers' instinctive forgetting and ultimately be firmly remembered by customers.
And brand advertising like Focus Media can precisely solve the problem of consumers achieving long-term repeat purchases through brand trust.
It is easy to make a comprehensive brand plan that invests in all media and plays with all creative ideas. Instead, concentrating on Focus Media for saturation attack was an absolutely correct decision for Miaokelanduo's decision-making layer.
Simple and crude? Or you just don't understand
Some question that the combination of Miaokelanduo and Focus Media is just using brainwashing ads to repeat simply and crudely. I want to say, this is still not understanding.
Although the media characteristics of Focus Media's elevator media ensure its communication can be saturated and high-reach, truly analyzing the successful cases ignited by Focus Media reveals that investing in Focus Media actually has a high level of technical content.
The essence of communication lies in the more effective acceptance of information by consumers. Miaokelanduo did not simply and crudely loop the phrase 'Cheese, choose Miaokelanduo' infinitely, but also made efforts in two aspects: leveraging IP and advertising songs.
Leveraging IP, we considered that parents are the actual decision-makers for cheese products. Using anime characters familiar to both them and their children can greatly attract their attention and better establish brand communication.
So Miaokelanduo chose to cooperate deeply with the well-known Chinese anime IP PAW Patrol, not only printing PAW Patrol images on cheese stick packaging but also integrating Miaokelanduo's brand and product elements into the 'PAW Patrol' animation. These measures played an important role in Miaokelanduo's breakthrough in the children's cheese market.
To make consumers firmly remember the brand name 'Miaokelanduo', the polishing of advertising songs is also a very important part of Miaokelanduo's brand communication.
After research and comparison, we chose the household children's song 'Two Tigers' and adapted it into Miaokelanduo's advertising song: 'Miaokelanduo, Miaokelanduo, cheese sticks, cheese sticks, high calcium and nutritious, accompanying my growth, really delicious, really delicious.'
In the catchy tune, the familiar children's song endows the brand with super communication power, laying the groundwork for subsequent strong communication.
Communication also needs control
Of course, investing in Focus Media is not a one-time solution or unchangeable. Like in a ball game, the outcome often depends on the ability to control the field, and the rhythm control of brand communication is often the key to the success or failure of the entire communication campaign.
In the process of gradually becoming the leader in the cheese category, Miaokelanduo planned three stages:
Stage One: Clarify who Miaokelanduo is and what its value is In the early stage of investment, we expected to quickly ignite the brand. This means whether we have the strength to penetrate consumer minds and support the brand to cross the inflection point from quantitative to qualitative change is the biggest challenge at this stage.
At this time, we chose to focus firepower, using the strong communication power of the familiar advertising song to roll the ad on Focus Media elevator media in major cities at high frequency, achieving the goal of igniting the brand with saturation attack, allowing consumers to firmly remember Miaokelanduo in a short time.
So, the story that followed is familiar to everyone. The Miaokelanduo advertising song adapted from 'Two Tigers' echoed in major office buildings, and the slogan 'Cheese, choose Miaokelanduo' became deeply rooted in people's hearts for a time.
In less than a month, our WeChat and Baidu indices also significantly improved, and cheese was equated with Miaokelanduo.
Stage Two: Clarify sales and establish the leader perception of sales first
In the second stage, we began to amplify the news value of Focus Media's elevator media platform.
At that time, after several months of continuous investment, Miaokelanduo had become the new industry leader, with all attention indices surpassing foreign brands.
During the 2019 '6·18' period, Miaokelanduo won the double crown of Tmall and JD sales, with a year-on-year increase of over 300%. These facts and data are the best brand trust endorsements, helping to seize the existing market of cheese consumption.
There is a very famous theory in communication studies called 'the medium is the message', which still applies in today's communication environment. The medium itself is the truly meaningful message—the media platform we choose to advertise on proves what kind of brand we are.
So in the second stage, we quickly updated the ad content on the Focus Media platform to 'Miaokelanduo won the double crown of JD and Tmall, with sales growth of 300%', using Focus Media, a widely covered and efficiently reached media carrier, to convey the message like news.
Focus Media ads penetrate the elevator scenes that city mainstream consumers must pass through, reaching a population that represents the vast majority of mainstream consumption power and influence in Chinese cities.
At the same time, sales as a strong endorsement of brand products, highlighting sales leadership, can also dispel doubts of mothers who do not yet know Miaokelanduo and make them recognize the quality of brand products. After all, more people's choice must be right.
Stage Three: Strengthen category education and give consumers stronger purchase reasons
Advancing to the third stage, after the early occupation of consumer minds and accumulation of brand momentum, Miaokelanduo has successfully sealed off the cheese category.
However, cheese consumption habits in China are still in the early stage, with per capita consumption only 1% of Europe's, and more people do not know the benefits of cheese.
So, at this stage, we began to shift the communication focus to category education, and the ad content also turned to promoting 'In Europe and America, cheese is known as the gold of milk' as the main message, giving consumers stronger purchase reasons and expanding the potential market for overall cheese consumption.
Only by shouldering the responsibility of a leader can a brand continue to develop.
In conclusion:
Many Chinese enterprises have strong production capabilities, but they do not understand branding or communication, and in the end, they can only rely on price wars to acquire customers, which is a pity.
Foreign brands are strong because they know how to do branding. Even if the quality is the same as domestic, they can have good profits. Today, Chinese consumers are increasingly opening their hearts to domestic brands, and domestic brands are surpassing foreign brands.
In this situation, if you want to overtake on the curve in brand building and run faster, I think elevator media is very worth paying attention to.
Elevator media is an innovation in China's media industry. Many Chinese brands still do not understand it, let alone foreign brands.
In this era of information dust, fragmentation, and overload, Focus Media is one of the few media that still has the ability to widely ignite. The core of communication is to make information effectively reach consumers and form memory, which is exactly the strength of Focus Media as a centralized media platform.
It is also because of this that we see that besides Miaokelanduo, many Chinese brands have become household names from this small screen.
Are you 'watching' me?