Another annual goods festival has passed. While marveling at Li Jiaqi's success, we see many new-generation new consumption terms, and the trendsetters behind these terms are not fighting alone but have their own factions, existing within their own circles, gradually breaking out. Based on the founders' educational backgrounds or work experiences, factions like Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, and the 'ex-P&G' P&G faction have formed. In August 2021, Temasek invested in meal replacement shake brand WonderLab, and before Temasek's entry, WonderLab's previous investors included Tiantu Capital, IDG Capital, Rich Growth Capital, Cathay Capital, and Spades Capital. New consumption brand WonderLab was founded in 2019, with founder Xiao Guoxun having served as P&G's regional market head, and he and his partner Liu Le both worked in marketing at P&G. In June 2021, children's nutritional snack brand 'Manfen Niuniu' received tens of millions in angel round financing, just two months after its establishment. 'Manfen Niuniu' founder Li Rui previously served as Senior Manager of Crest Product Planning and Director of Hair Care Content Communication at P&G. In March 2021, 'Meixian Shuo' launched on Tmall, reportedly achieving millions in sales in its first month. 'Meixian Shuo' founder and CEO Feng Qiuwan was a director at P&G with 10 years of FMCG industry experience, spanning e-commerce, brand, operations, channels, and other departments, and also completed internal entrepreneurship at P&G. Not long ago, 'Meixian Shuo' completed a Pre-A round of financing of tens of millions of RMB, with investors Yisan Capital and ZhenFund. Is it that P&G gave them platform resources, or honed their abilities, or do investors simply recognize the 'P&G faction'? Why did the P&G faction leave? To compete with each other? Or to some extent, did P&G train a main force for China's new consumption? In any case, when P&G's platform could no longer match their ambitions, new consumption entrepreneurs carved out their own territories. After all, WeChat has hundreds of millions of users; who still uses SMS? Times have changed, and with the transfer of the realm, P&G-faction entrepreneurs have used P&G's model to create new 'P&Gs'. P&G Faction Inheritance Technique 1: Data is King The P&G faction places great emphasis on consumer data analysis, charging ahead on the front lines and rooting among the masses. In product development, they are closer to consumers, or pay great attention to brand product development and creation, excelling at grasping consumer psychology and pain points. P&G's research teams not only use market forecasting, quantitative research, qualitative analysis, symposiums, seminars, and store surveys to research users, but also send observers deep into user groups to observe daily life and lifestyles to analyze consumer habits. After determining product-related content, P&G conducts repeated user testing. They set up dedicated shelves, placing their products alongside competitors, inviting consumers to view them, and then continuously adjust colors, shapes, positions, etc., from preliminary research, product positioning, to later testing. P&G excels in data analysis and market analysis, a model that entrepreneurs should learn from. And 'ex-P&G' Huang Jinfeng's Yixian E-commerce's 'Perfect Diary' and others have absorbed this approach, but perhaps because new consumption investment and scale haven't yet reached the level of giants, it feels somewhat superficial. However, for 'digital natives,' new brands also bring freshness. Perfect Diary first created a user profile, stating that surveyed post-95s wear makeup more to please themselves, 34.79% of respondents said they wear makeup almost every day, 92.46% said they wear makeup when going out shopping or on dates, and nearly 55% wear makeup at work. It's worth noting that while post-95s favor European and American brands, they also love domestic products. The proportion of respondents who purchased both European/American and domestic brands was around 78%, and over 90% said they had purchased Perfect Diary products. According to Tmall data, in the TOP 10 cumulative sales ranking of makeup stores from January to September 2019, domestic brands accounted for 40%, with Perfect Diary ranking first. Respondents generally said that in recent years, domestic makeup products have become more cost-effective, packaging has become more thoughtful, and the experience is not inferior to major European and American brands. Perfect Diary's research also showed that offline store consumption is gradually increasing, with nearly 40% of respondents purchasing beauty products both online and offline, and nearly 50% saying they definitely or usually make purchases when visiting offline stores. 38.34% of consumers buy 4-9 lipsticks per year. You could say that Perfect Diary found a niche market, then rode the new consumption wave, using Gen Z's new perception of domestic products to become a leader in new consumption. But undeniably, Perfect Diary understands customer psychology well, and all of this is intricately linked to P&G. At P&G, Huang Jinfeng fully learned how a global FMCG giant helps daily chemical products complete production and sales in China, mastered market research methods and brand marketing logic, and wrote the widely circulated 'P&G CMK in My Eyes'. 'CMK requires strong analytical skills and keen business acumen, strong communication skills to help teams solve problems, and also strong leadership, which is more about influence—that is, how to start from objective data, propose credible business logic, and influence the entire business process.' Huang Jinfeng believed he possessed the abilities of a 'CMK person.' This also provided him with confidence and foundation for later founding Perfect Diary. Find user pain points from basic market research data to determine entrepreneurial direction. For example, Perfect Diary's Huang Jinfeng and his two partners, when they weren't sure what to do in the early days of entrepreneurship, traveled the world, even visiting stores in various categories to investigate and inquire, trying to find opportunities in the consumer field. After researching and analyzing 7-8 consumer tracks, Huang Jinfeng's team found that the beauty market develops very well in various countries, with the ratio of skincare to makeup in mature foreign markets being 1:1, while in China it's 9:1; but compared to skincare, makeup is also more likely to attract young users. Considering both market potential and product attributes, Perfect Diary ultimately chose to enter the market through the makeup category. This approach of finding opportunities from market research data. Perfect Diary's Vice President of Marketing, Christy, also said that P&G is a company that places great emphasis on consumer research, almost to the point of obsession with consumer insights and research. This experience made Perfect Diary very skilled at studying consumers and data analysis from its inception. Besides Huang Jinfeng, skincare brand HFP founder Lü Bo, oral care brand Usmile founder Chen Jianqun, e-cigarette brand RELX founder Wang Ying, daily chemical brand Plantown founder Tang Liang, and restaurant brand Good Salad Xiao Guoxun all previously worked at P&G. Li Lun, partner at Panda Capital, believes that among the new wave of entrepreneurs, elites represented by the P&G faction, who have received systematic training and possess internet capabilities, are the best entrepreneurs. Panda Capital data shows that as of 2018, among the more than 3,000 people who graduated from P&G, 20% chose to start businesses or join startups as partners. According to online information, in the 30 years since P&G entered China, it has cumulatively provided more than 6,000 high-level talents to the domestic consumer goods and related industries. P&G Faction Inheritance Technique 2: Psychological Offensive Because they excel at grasping consumer psychology, the P&G faction is very good at marketing and creating momentum, proficient in internet tactics, or rather, better at marketing from 10 to 100 than the wild growth from 0 to 1. Since entering China in 1988, P&G has been known for its systematic training management and outstanding marketing capabilities. Because it frequently planned household advertising like Head & Shoulders' 'Dandruff Strength' and Rejoice's 'So Confident,' it is hailed as the 'Whampoa Military Academy' of marketing. Of course, a prominent advantage of P&G people is marketing ability. Whether it's Perfect Diary, HFP, or Usmile, these 'P&G faction' new consumption brands are all good at content marketing. In brand marketing, they share two common points: creating concept marketing and sustaining advertising offensives. Taking Usmile as an example, it not only promotes the brand concept of 'caring for the mouth like skincare' but also has different marketing concepts for related oral care products following consumer preferences. New consumption mostly uses new media marketing, and P&G is well-versed in this. Usmile reaches users by targeting female users, and in content production and channel distribution, it focuses on platforms favored by post-90s, especially Xiaohongshu and Weibo. Now Usmile's Xiaohongshu account has 140,000 followers, with over 4,000 shared notes. Diversified KOL seeding repeatedly reinforces product awareness, influences user decisions, and ultimately drives purchases. By integrating KOLs of different sizes and types, they achieve comprehensive and maximized communication effects. Various types of KOLs publish numerous usage notes, so when users search, they feel many people are already using and recommending the product. (Image source: Xiaohongshu) First, celebrity seeding: Usmile uses celebrities familiar to post-90s and post-00s like Angela Chang, Bao Wenjing, and Lil Ghost Wang Linkai for endorsement. Second, internet celebrity seeding is more personable, with stronger trust and emotional bonds with fans, making it more suitable for in-depth product interpretation and meeting users' needs for shopping information. The distribution of marketing discounts and other information makes it more brand-influential and conversion-driving. Finally, ordinary users' various reviews and seeding/avoidance content appear more authentic to users, with high acceptance among fans. HFP, Perfect Diary, and other brands still adhere to this approach in marketing, using public domain platforms like WeChat, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin for KOLs to intensively publish seeding content, channeling public domain traffic into private domains like Tmall stores and WeChat official accounts to achieve transaction conversion. The founders of HFP, Perfect Diary, and other brands come from the P&G faction and carry a strong P&G logo, meaning they excel at 10-100 rather than the wild growth of 0-1. But because they have all experienced setbacks and failures, and Huang Jinfeng also had entrepreneurial experience at Yuni, they were able to achieve the leap from 0 to 1. However, marketing is not omnipotent. Since 2020, Perfect Diary has shown a trend of sluggish growth and has even been overtaken by competitors. Despite significant increases in sales and marketing expenses, Perfect Diary has fallen into a user growth bottleneck, and its position as the 'No.1 domestic beauty brand' is precarious. HFP, after rapid growth in previous years, has also seen a significant decline in GMV and GMV year-on-year growth. Only Usmile, which reportedly filed for an IPO in January this year, seems to still be on the rise. How to ensure that by learning from various sources, they find a breakthrough from 0 to 1, and then use their 'P&G' thinking advantage to form 10-100 sustainable enterprise growth? That is the question P&G-faction founders should consider. But in the eyes of investors, even with some drawbacks of growing in a large company system, a P&G background remains an advantage for some founders. P&G: I Want to Be a Bit Wilder Of course, what we mean by P&G's 10-100 is that the P&G faction is better at systematically and normatively doing or executing a task, or one could say they have strong execution. More than 10 years ago, foreign companies were one of the most desirable places for college graduates, and P&G, with its comprehensive training and job rotation system, became a 'talent harvester' among foreign companies. Xie Zhen, founder and CEO of Maitao Qinzi, recalls joining P&G more than 20 years ago, and the scene is still vivid. P&G's training methods surprised them: first, three months of training at the Guangzhou headquarters to learn communication management skills and organizational principles, then a year of on-site training. Xie Zhen was assigned to Xiangyang, Hubei, where he pulled a tricycle loaded with goods every day, visiting over a hundred mom-and-pop stores in the streets and alleys. P&G wants to select people with high goals and resilient personalities. Xie Zhen said, 'These three years at P&G helped me develop good professional habits, accumulate communication skills and connections, and were also helpful for my later entrepreneurship.' Li Lun, partner at Panda Capital, said: The best founders nowadays might be those who, when young, worked at big companies like P&G for five years, were systematically trained, later had industries matching their previous experience, and had abundant connections to use. Perfect Diary founder Huang Jinfeng also said that P&G taught me methodologies for doing things in the daily chemical field, such as how to build brands, how to develop channels, and how to drive markets—these specific execution-level tasks. An excellent founder from the P&G faction explained P&G's 10-100 management as follows: 'For example, the most essential part of P&G experience is not people, not execution methods, not strategy, but the system—P&G has a rigorous, complete, and comprehensive single-brand and multi-brand management system, precisely because of this system. For example, in the early stages of entrepreneurship and even during growth, companies inevitably face incomplete cognition, cognitive biases, cognitive misalignment, etc. Cognitive inconsistency is a thorn in the side of all enterprises, but there is no shortcut to unifying cognition; it requires professional and systematic brand training, and it requires training the internal team's professional habits, professionalism, and self-drive. P&G's rigorous, complete, and comprehensive single-brand and multi-brand management system is enough to quickly turn graduates who are still at the 'blank paper' stage into good 'cogs.' Moreover, P&G has various brands internally, with a brand manager often managing 1-2 brands and a brand director simultaneously handling 2-3 brands. Relatively speaking, even young brand managers at P&G have seen or experienced multi-brand management. It is precisely because of the multi-brand manager system that P&G, such a huge machine, can operate flexibly.' It is these 'international big factories' that trained our first batch of 'internet-native brand managers.' A saying circulates online: People cannot earn money beyond their cognitive scope. A P&G executive summarized: 'The entire market is indeed full of 'barriers,' and each circle has its own 'barriers' and cognitive boundaries. Most people may be limited by their circles, energy, personal cognitive obstacles, and personality habits, confined to their small circles, unaware that there are heavens beyond heavens and people beyond people.' But those from the P&G faction, starting from P&G, adding P&G connections and P&G height, thus give young entrepreneurs a strong backing and the possibility of breaking through dimensions. Source: Chief Business Review (ID: CHReview) Author: Li Jiaman -END-