A few days ago, I went to Guiyang Cigarette Factory for an experiential inspection. During a deep discussion with Mr. Liu Chunxiong on new marketing and new retail, a topic emerged: can current FMCG marketers be categorized? What are the characteristics of each type?
Twenty years ago, Sales and Market magazine published data: China had 80 million marketers. Of course, due to the vague definitions of disciplines and positions, 'marketer' is a broad term, not necessarily a precise label.
Thirty years of Chinese marketing have seen countless practitioners rise and fall, and like the martial arts world, it has spawned numerous schools. From the initial stage of production-led dominance to the channel-led stage, the functions of marketing organizations have become increasingly powerful, knowledge systems more complex, and capability requirements higher.
Marketing is the process of satisfying demand, but marketing always lags behind demand by one step. Apart from economic factors, the biggest factor influencing demand is the 'space' where people are.
Two factors affect the change in people's space: geographic space and virtual space.
1. Geographic space: This is essentially the location where people live, work, and reside. The biggest influencing factor here is urbanization. China has increased its urbanization rate to 55% in 30 years, with an average of over 15 million people entering cities each year. This is a unique population migration in the world! It inevitably leads to changes in demand, deformation of channels, and upgrading of marketing! The marketing high ground during this period is territory and channels. Where people are, marketing organizations should follow.
2. Virtual space: The emergence of the internet has led consumers to a second spatial shift. This shift breaks the limits of geographic space; people have grown wings and can soar in the internet space. This soaring not only forms virtual traffic but also creates powerful functions for brand and sales in the marketing field, almost a replica and mirror of geographic space!
Because of the internet, two torn worlds have formed: offline and online.
Corresponding practitioners have also emerged: offline marketers, characterized by channel and terminal distribution rates;
online marketers: mouse, screen, mobile internet.
These two worlds were initially separated, even mutually incomprehensible, each speaking its own language—you don't understand me, I don't understand you.
In the last two years, as online dividends have been exhausted, online and offline have begun to integrate, giving rise to hybrid talents, such as communities based on online-offline integration.
There are still many marketers whose space is determined by the industry attributes of their companies. Where do marketers reside?
To address this issue, let's categorize current marketers:
1. Pure offline marketers, colloquially: distribution rate.
This group has been collectively voiceless in the past few years because discourse power and attention have been taken away by the internet. Their original language and knowledge systems seem to have lost market value overnight, leaving them with no audience and no new content to share.
In the past 20 years, offline marketers successfully created a god-like strategic and tactical system in Chinese marketing history: deep distribution. Almost all successful FMCG brands in the past were built within this system. This operating system, which pushed tactics to the extreme, influenced generations of marketers and successfully defended the 90% contribution of FMCG from offline. These brothers walked the streets and alleys, wielding their swords and horses, living a life of heroic freedom.
2. Pure online marketers, colloquially: traffic.
The advent of the internet, especially the rise of e-commerce, drove the rise of a group of marketers and also took away the transformation of another group! These people use new knowledge systems and business dimensions as their starting point, without regional or even organizational boundaries, with individual rise, and with internet wings. A large number of marketers and young people have moved into the new world built by the internet. Marketing positions have become blurred, boundaries are no longer clear, and internet positions related to 'marketing' are hard to find.
New media professionals, influencers, experts, delivery riders, Meituan and Ele.me riders, Didi drivers... these new professions have surged like waves, forming a new world, while traditional marketers have begun to wither.
3. Offline marketers + internet: label: new marketing.
After a long silence, the transaction boundaries of the internet have become increasingly clear, and many FMCG categories that cannot fly still dominate offline.
If focusing on sales, it seems to be at a standstill, because many FMCG products have very few online transactions. However, if focusing on communication, it can be a different scene. At the same time, the strength of internet marketers is based on technical solutions, while their weakness is lack of operational and management skills.
A group of offline marketers who awakened first began to rise: they can do offline work and shout online (communication), with the upper body of the internet and the lower body of traditional marketing—light and agile in the upper three paths, solid and steady in the lower three paths! The boundaries between sales and marketing departments blur, functions overlap, and headquarters' back-end is based on production, R&D, and content creation. New marketers have risen, and while achieving the rise of some new brands, they have also begun to drive the awakening and transformation of some existing brands.
4. Internet marketers + offline: label: new retail!
The emergence of new retail is based on the end of the pure e-commerce era and the exhaustion of online traffic, marking the beginning of the plunder and integration from online to offline.
Use internet tools to transform and equip the three modules of FBC, making transaction behavior data-driven, visualized, and thus controllable—that is, empowerment.
The rise of retail's status is based on changes in the smile curve of production, supply, and demand:
Stage 1: Production-led. Factory brands become the highest point of the smile curve;
Stage 2: Channel-led. Channels begin to rise from the lowest point of the smile curve. Manufacturers and brand owners shift from controlling distributors to controlling terminals. Later, the rise of e-commerce caused channel leakage, and a single channel management system could no longer control the whole picture.
Stage 3: Consumption era. The background of this era must be oversupply, where factory brands and channels are close in height, nearly at the same level.
The internet begins to control and seize retail terminals, forming scale barriers and using two types of traffic to create a platform for positioning. At both ends of the platform are two corners: one is the factory brand side, and the other is the consumer side.
One gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and life continues endlessly! Because of the emergence of geographic and virtual spaces, and the split between online and offline, countless schools and knowledge systems have been produced. Currently, there are many top talents and advanced theories and practices in each space, but there are not many composite talents and theoretical systems that can connect and integrate them. There may even be anxiety of being dazzled by the complexity.
At the launch ceremony of Mr. Liu Chunxiong's new book "New Marketing," I once exchanged views with Mr. Liu: this book will be incomprehensible to many marketers! Those who don't understand will be two types: pure offline marketers and pure online marketers!
During the exchange at Guiyang Cigarette, a question also arose: among the four types of marketers above, which type is most promising?
Keep your head down to pull the cart, but also look up to see the road! Clearly see the space you are in. If the space is shrinking, the dividend is shrinking; if the space is expanding, the east wind has risen!
Marketers, where your space is, there your battlefield is!
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