Source | Kong Shou
Recently, I saw a joke online: Why do Chinese workers prefer coffee over tea? The answer is that if you hold a cup of coffee at work, your boss thinks you're working hard; but if you brew a pot of tea, your boss thinks you don't have enough work! Although it's a joke, it's very real. In the office scene, both tea and coffee have refreshing effects, but people's perceptions of them are vastly different.
In the online context, coffee is tightly bound to modern workplace culture, labeled as an office life-saver, overtime companion, and workplace fuel, spawning many memes like "Buying coffee for work is like a donkey buying a whip to whip itself." The brand Qingshang even launched a product called "Niu Ma Latte" (literally "Ox Horse Latte").
Tea, on the other hand, is traditionally associated with traditional culture, representing health, Eastern Zen, and a leisurely lifestyle.
Because of these different labels, people make different choices between tea and coffee in the same scene, and others perceive us differently based on our choices. This shows that scenes need labels to complement them. A brand can only influence user choices and strengthen preferences in a specific scene if it has the corresponding labels. Conversely, if a brand lacks the labels or its labels conflict with the target scene, it cannot enter that scene.
Scene + Label
A scene represents the user's task in a specific life situation. In different scenes, consumers have different tasks, and the same task can be accomplished by multiple categories, products, and brands.
For example, in the office scene above, consumers have the task of staying alert, improving attention, and working efficiently. This task can be accomplished by coffee, tea, energy drinks, mint candies, lemon roll-on essential oils, etc. So how do consumers ultimately choose?
It depends on which product's labels better match the cultural context, user needs, and emotional state of the office scene, and which brand's office scene marketing is better and strongly associated with this scene. If consumers can think of the brand first in the office scene, develop a conditioned reflex, and even form a habit, then the brand has occupied that scene.
"Scene thinking, label cognition, brand expression" represents the consumer's decision-making model. In this model, consumers first think about what their task is in a specific scene, then recognize whether different products fit the scene, and then make their consumption decision. First comes the task, then brand preference. Around scenes and tasks, labels help brands stand out.
I recently heard another joke. Suppose you are a man inviting a female friend to dinner. When ordering, if you say let's have some red wine tonight, she might think you are romantic, gentle, and tasteful; but if you say let's have a bottle of baijiu, she might think: What are you up to?!
This means that red wine and baijiu have different labels, and people perceive them differently, so consumers make different choices in different drinking scenes, and choosing different types of alcohol carries different meanings and effects.
For years, red wine has been dedicated to creating labels of elegance, romance, refinement, and premium feel.
Major red wine manufacturers often promote refined food pairings, such as red wine with red meat and white wine with white meat, as well as complex tasting rituals including decanting and swirling the glass, with attention to how to hold the glass and the matching of different wine bodies with different glasses. Additionally, consumers need extensive professional knowledge to appreciate red wine, such as grape vintage and variety, wine body's front, middle, and back notes, and tannin content.
This approach has indeed shaped a high-end and sophisticated image for red wine, but it has also encountered fatal problems in consumption. First, consumers cannot distinguish the difference between a few dozen yuan and a few hundred yuan red wines; many professional terms sound like metaphysics. Second, the younger generation finds drinking red wine too troublesome: it requires pairing with steak, decanting, memorizing vintages—too tiring, and it seems pretentious.
Especially, the labels on red wine make it incompatible with many lively scenes, such as eating hotpot or skewers; pairing red wine with these feels very strange and out of place.
Moreover, the common Chinese drinking style of bottoms-up is mocked as rustic when applied to red wine. Early on, because Chinese people were not used to the taste of red wine, the practice of mixing red wine with Sprite was also widely ridiculed, which severely dampened enthusiasm for red wine consumption. Therefore, red wine consumption is limited to scenes like Western restaurants, business receptions, and some couple dates, making it highbrow and unpopular.
The lack of scenes has severely impacted red wine's performance. In 2024, the entire Chinese wine market sales were only 9.09 billion yuan, just 1.2% of the baijiu market size, not even a fraction. In 2016, this figure was 46.45 billion yuan, a drop of 80%. It's no exaggeration to say red wine has suffered a strategic defeat in China.
In terms of product attributes, red wine has a pleasant alcohol level, high taste acceptance, and a decent overall image. It should be suitable for various scenes and people, whether for business, parties, solo drinking, weddings, with meals, or neat.
However, in terms of label perception, red wine lacks the lively, down-to-earth quality and doesn't fit mainstream drinking scenes well. Although it seems to fit many scenes, red wine is not the first choice in any scene; it's the third or fourth choice, unlike baijiu as the standard for business banquets or beer for casual gatherings. So, red wine's problem is not the product but the lack of a main scene and label limitations.
To return to mainstream scenes, red wine needs new marketing communications to create new labels and change past public perception. Capturing scenes requires labels to complement, and labels should be adjusted based on scene changes. When consumption scenes change but brand labels remain unchanged, the brand will age and be abandoned by consumers.
Take instant noodles. Looking back at ads from ten or twenty years ago, the main appeals of major brands were: first, large noodle cakes and generous portions, with common promotions like giving away sausages or braised eggs; second, nutrition and health, such as non-fried instant noodles or bone broth noodles.
This is because the main scene for instant noodles used to be regular meals, and people's pursuit for regular meals was to be full, nutritious, and healthy.
Now, the main scene for instant noodles has shifted to leisure. I once took photos of the packaging of Master Kong's Tang Master series products at a convenience store near my home and shared them in my community and on my public account. The packaging printed five scenes: seeking inspiration during overtime, relaxing during travel, chatting in the dorm, watching dramas at home, and immersing in nature while camping.
Master Kong's mini mini bucket series also printed six scenes on the packaging: a small snack between classes, a quick extra meal after school, a small hunger relief during work, a delicious snack while watching dramas, a happy late-night snack, and enjoying freely during outdoor trips.
When leisure replaces regular meals as the main scene for instant noodles, we see changes in product specifications: previously it was "one bucket," now cups have become mainstream.
Various novel flavors have become popular, such as Korean Shin Ramyun, Thai Tom Yum noodles, and in the past two years, Baixiang's super fragrant coriander noodles and fold-ear root mixed noodles, and Jinmailang's Anhui Ban noodles have become hits, replacing traditional meal flavors like braised beef, pickled cabbage fish, mushroom chicken, and golden soup beef noodles, becoming internet-famous.
In brand communication, the labels brands attach to themselves have also changed to novelty, deliciousness, excitement, fun, relaxation, vitality, and inspiration. For example, Baixiang, a traditional instant noodle brand, has changed its image and value.
Brand building starts with finding the main scene among a range of consumption scenes, developing products around the scene, providing solutions for users, and creating corresponding usage experiences.
Once the main scene is established, companies should also promote through labeling, strongly associating the brand with the scene. The main scene's labels reflect the brand's value, image, and persona in consumers' minds. The product experience and brand labels built around the main scene constitute the process of brand building.
Another classic case is Huiren Shenbao (a traditional Chinese medicine for kidney health).
Everyone knows its famous slogan "He is good, and I am good too." This tells us that Huiren Shenbao's main scene is the family, and the brand strategy is to leverage sexual relationships to influence user decisions. It uses the tone of a wife or girlfriend to express, implying the product's function of enhancing male sexual ability, while also letting women influence men's purchase decisions.
In the decision-making process, men are the end users, but women are the influencers, decision-makers, and even purchasers.
In 2019, Huiren Shenbao upgraded its slogan to "He is good, and the family is good" and launched the communication slogan "Cheers for the men who support their families," which not only further strengthened the home scene and family decision-making (the social relationship in this scene is husband and wife, or couples), but also attempted to use warm emotional communication to downplay the sexual innuendo of the original slogan and better shape the brand image.
In recent years, to expand growth, Huiren Shenbao has begun to extend its brand reach to more scenes and more people.
In June 2023, Huiren Shenbao launched a new brand TVC and invested in a large amount of media, also introducing brand IP characters "Shengsheng" and "Baobao." These three TVCs targeted three scenes: workplace office, romantic nights, and daily life, describing user dilemmas in these scenes.
For example, feeling sleepy in the afternoon, making mistakes at work, and being scolded by the boss; feeling sleepy at night, messing up dates, and being disliked by partners; daily life with back pain, fatigue, poor spirit, and being called out by others.
Then, Huiren Shenbao tells them that this might be due to insufficient kidney vitality. Try Huiren Shenbao tablets to boost your energy. Huiren Shenbao can not only ignite love for couples but also replenish energy for those working late and restore vitality for mothers with young children.
The new scenes actually expand the brand's target audience from the original middle-aged male users to office workers, young couples, and mothers. It's also evident that Huiren Shenbao is trying to step out of the family scene and gradually make the office a new main scene.
In this scene, office workers are the mainstream population, and they generally face high work pressure, heavy workloads, and frequent late nights, with the task of improving work performance and maintaining high energy, and they have strong pain points. Especially, workplace culture is mainstream culture with high social attention.
Huiren Shenbao's focus on this scene for communication and promotion is a great strategic adjustment. It not only helps expand business and audience, achieving new growth, but also enhances brand heat and user stickiness, improving user perception and brand image.
But objectively speaking, the wish is good, but Huiren Shenbao's past brand image and labels do not match this scene. If a consumer puts a bottle of Huiren Shenbao tablets on their office desk or takes them openly in the office, they might be ridiculed by colleagues... This hinders Huiren Shenbao's new scene development.
I can understand this very well because I was responsible for the brand agency of Jing Jiu (a Chinese herbal liquor) for many years, and Jing Jiu faces the same problem. People often joke that drinking Jing Jiu means you want to boost your sexual function or that you have some dysfunction, so Jing Jiu finds it hard to enter formal drinking scenes like business banquets and receptions, and is limited to personal drinking and intimate scenes with a few close friends.
To break this dilemma, Huiren Shenbao first launched a black-gold packaged tablet to enhance the product's fashionability, and following the beauty industry's practice, named it "Energy Little Black Bottle" with the appeal "Save energy overdraft, restore vigorous energy." Secondly, it carried out a large number of communication and promotion activities around the workplace scene.
In October 2023, Huiren Shenbao successively created three event marketing campaigns: "Black into Your Office Building," "Black into Your Office," and "Black into Your Phone."
In Wuhan, it launched creative light shows on seven landmark buildings, promoting slogans like "Get off work early," "Restore your energy value," and "Black out your negative status";
In Zhengzhou, it created a building-sweeping interaction in office buildings, where IP dolls Shengsheng and Baobao interacted with users and gave away "Shenbao Social Cow Cups," with the appeal "Black out negative emotions, awaken new energy";
And it cooperated with vivo phones to display brand-specific content on phones during work or work-related chats, combining workplace culture to remind young people to restore their energy value.
The "Shenbao Social Cow Cup" is a peripheral product launched by Huiren Shenbao. Its shape resembles the product packaging, and the bottle is printed with many workplace memes, such as: "kidney not by oneself," "crispy worker," "asking salary without guilt," "lacking sleep in the five elements," "overtime face," "tired ugly," "I miss home at my workstation," etc.
Around this product, Huiren Shenbao also carried out specific communication and promotion, creating pop-up events in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan, giving away water cups and energy coffee to young office workers.
I think the most important value of the Shenbao Cup is to gradually make consumers accept that it's reasonable for Huiren Shenbao to appear in the workplace, not abrupt on the office desk, allowing the brand to naturally integrate into the workplace and into young people's social context.
In May 2024, Huiren Shenbao used the creative concept "Low Fatigue Point" and adopted an innovative media approach for outdoor advertising at Guangzhou Book Center. The ad headline was "I started getting tired halfway through posting this ad..." This innovative form vividly showed the physical state of office workers, who get too tired to continue halfway through a task. The novel visual presentation sparked online discussion and is one of the most outstanding media innovation ad cases in recent years.
This ad had a whole series, with other copy like "Not even Friday yet, and I'm already tired," "Not long after overtime, I'm already tired," "Not long after working out, I'm already tired," "After playing for a while, I'm already tired," "Not a few days into a business trip, I'm already tired," etc.;
In addition to CBD outdoor billboards, it also placed ads on subway cars, bus bodies and stops, and office building elevators, comprehensively surrounding the daily life scenes of office workers, delivering a "face-to-face" output to workers.
Online, Huiren Shenbao also created supporting topics like #打工人累点低到离谱# (Workers' fatigue point is ridiculously low) and #累点低试试能量小黑瓶# (Low fatigue point? Try Energy Little Black Bottle), which reached the top 25 on Weibo hot search and top 1 on Guangzhou local hot search, attracting a lot of user discussion, with total reads exceeding 290 million, discussions over 50,000, and interactions over 150,000.
The concept of "fatigue point" hit the psychological state of office workers and the pain point of fatigue and lack of energy at work, perfectly bringing the brand into the workplace scene. It was not just an ad placement but a precise emotional resonance.
In daily social media operations, Huiren Shenbao also publishes content around the workplace scene, creating various small contents like workplace energy amulets, Monday soul-reviving guides, and memes like "Under the scorching sun, finally Friday," strengthening the brand-scene binding.
Additionally, to support the scene shift and product promotion, in May 2023, Huiren Pharmaceutical launched three new brand attitude micro-films, using heartwarming family stories of couples, mother-son, and mother-daughter to reinterpret "He is good, I am good too," conveying the genuine feelings of "Wife is good, I am good too," "Mom is good, I am good too," "Daughter is good, I am good too."
Combined with the micro-films, Huiren Pharmaceutical also created the hot topic #恕我想歪了 他好我也好 竟然变了# (Forgive me for thinking wrong, 'He is good, I am good too' has changed). This topic also aims to refresh the brand image, changing the past brand association of passionate love between couples to a real, pure, and warm family love.
From the family to the workplace scene shift, Huiren Shenbao's series of marketing actions, on one hand, strengthen the brand's binding with the workplace scene; on the other hand, they shape new brand labels, from a couple's product and kidney tonic to energy value, youthfulness, office companion, and workplace artifact. When consumers accept Huiren Shenbao's presence in the new scene, user perception is naturally reversed, and Huiren Shenbao completes the strategic task of expanding new scenes and reaching new audiences.
Therefore, we can say that scene + label is the key to brand expression. Promoting around new scenes and matching labels is essentially reshaping the brand.
Increment Big Model
For a brand to grow, on one hand, it needs to occupy as many consumption scenes as possible in consumers' lives, involving more consumer groups. Capturing new scenes naturally stimulates demand; on the other hand, to occupy new scenes, the brand needs to create corresponding labels to match, prompting consumers to identify with and choose the brand in that scene. Both ultimately drive growth and help the brand find increments.
This growth chain of capturing scenes - attaching labels - creating increments, I call it the Increment Big Model. Using a formula: Setting scene + Tag label = Added Growth increment growth, so I also call this model the STAG model.
Its specific thinking is:
1. Build a scene map
Brands need to discover how many consumption scenes their products have in consumers' lives and list them one by one. The more scenes a brand captures, the greater the sales it can create.
2. Choose scenes and form a scene marketing roadmap
Brands also need to analyze the market capacity and growth rate of different scenes, how their brand and competitors perform and penetrate in these scenes, and which scene(s) represent growth opportunities for the brand and are crucial for brand building.
This determines the brand's choice of scenes, which scenes get more resources, which get less, and which are done first or later. The focus and order of scene marketing investment constitute the scene marketing roadmap.
3. Analyze specific scenes and refine the scene structure map
Brands also need to analyze consumer behavior and psychological characteristics in different scenes, discover consumer "original voices," and the specific analysis content includes:
A. What are the specific occasions and places where consumers use the product?
B. How do consumers use the product, what is the frequency, and what is the complete consumption process?
C. Do consumers use it individually, or is there social sharing behavior, and what social relationships drive it?
D. How do consumers purchase the product in different scenes, where do they buy it, what is the decision-making model and behavior chain, and which touchpoints influence them?
These questions determine whether the brand can effectively reach the target scene.
E. What are consumers' different concerns about the product in different scenes, how do they talk about the product, and what are they satisfied and dissatisfied with about the brand?
F. What are consumers' emotional states in different scenes, and what environmental factors and social topics stimulate consumer behavior?
These questions help us better understand user tasks in different scenes and also help brands find appropriate labels to win growth opportunities in corresponding scenes.
Today, doing marketing requires these three maps: scene map, scene structure map, and scene marketing roadmap.
The next chapter will focus on the classification of different scenes and the enterprise's scene portfolio strategy, i.e., the scene marketing roadmap. The four basic concepts in the first chapter discuss the scene structure map. This article and subsequent chapters focus on the scene map, including scene analysis and label shaping.
To build a scene map, fully explore the various scenes in consumers' lives, and understand their tasks, enterprises should adopt a combination of big data and small data.
Big data clustering can provide a glimpse of the overall consumption scene, analyzing when and where consumers use the product and what they do with it; it can also analyze the emotional state, specific behavior patterns, product concerns, and corresponding social topics when consuming the product.
Small sample research can use questionnaires, interviews, and other forms to deeply explore specific scenes and user tasks, and can also study scenes through point-of-sale observation and social listening to understand consumer behavior.
In 2005, Coca-Cola used user research, through in-depth interviews, to analyze the top 10 scenes where consumers drink beverages in their lives, and quantitatively studied which beverage types consumers drink in each scene and their proportions, drinking habits (frequency, social sharing), and purchasing behavior (which channels they buy from, their in-store behavior, and how they make purchase decisions). This became the basis for Coca-Cola's scene marketing decisions.
Next, I'll share a case of using big data to create a scene map.
On March 26, 2025, tea beverage brand Chagee submitted its prospectus to NASDAQ. The prospectus shows that in 2024, Chagee's annual revenue reached 12.405 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 167.4%, with net profit of 2.515 billion yuan, up 213.3% year-on-year. Its net profit margin even exceeded Mixue Bingcheng.
By the end of 2024, Chagee's total number of stores soared to 6,440, with each store selling an average of 25,000 cups of milk tea per month. Its super hit product, Boya Juexian, sold over 600 million cups in the past three years.
On the marketing side, Chagee has also been quite successful and frequently goes viral, providing excellent support for growth. In 2024, Chagee ranked first in the industry in terms of interaction volume, search growth, and hot search frequency on Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Weibo. Especially on Weibo, Chagee built a very good marketing system.
In 2023, Chagee cooperated with Weibo to create a scene map for milk tea.
The Weibo team conducted text mining on 19,000 original posts discussing new-style tea drinks, identifying 9 major tea consumption scenes. The specific scenes and their proportions are: party entertainment 20%, meal accompaniment 17%, work 17%, seasonal 12%, self-discipline 9%, campus 8%, dating 7%, leisure 6%, concert 3%.
It can be seen that the consumption scenes clustered by text mining technology do not strictly follow the MECE principle, with some overlap and intersection, and the classification dimensions are not entirely consistent.
However, these scene divisions include basic scene variables, such as by consumption timing: beginning of autumn, autumn rain, sunset evening breeze, cherry blossom season, and other seasonal, time, and solar term scenes;
By consumption place: work, campus, meal accompaniment (hotpot restaurants, snack streets), and leisure scenes like shopping, camping, art museums;
By social relationship: personal scenes like self-discipline and self-pleasure, and social scenes like parties, dates, and concerts;
Also, high-frequency pan-life scenes like meal accompaniment and work, and low-frequency specific celebration activity scenes like concerts and holiday hotspots.
After finding the tea consumption scenes, Weibo sampled 200 posts from Chagee's order-showing users to identify user emotional drivers in different scenes, finding the role the brand plays in consumers' lives and the corresponding differentiated emotional value points.
The analysis found that in daily life scenes like leisure, meal accompaniment, and seasons, consumers seek comfort, ease, and relaxation, and the brand plays the role of "small happiness" in daily life fragments;
In positive emotional scenes like birthday parties, dates, and concerts, consumers seek passion and excitement, and the brand provides "stimulants" for high-intensity emotional expression;
In scenes with negative emotions like studying and working, the brand serves as "electronic ibuprofen" to relieve anxiety and fatigue.
Additionally, Weibo analyzed the interaction behavior and frequency between consumers and the brand in different scenes. In pan-life scenes like work, leisure, and meal accompaniment, and personal scenes like seasons and self-discipline, users interact with the brand frequently; while in social scenes like parties and dates, and campus life scenes, the brand needs to strengthen communication frequency with users.
With this data analysis, brands can know what consumption scenes exist in consumers' lives, accurately identify consumers' differentiated emotional expressions and behavioral habits in different scenes. On one hand, this helps brands seize potential scenes and create growth opportunities; on the other hand, quantitative analysis of different scenes helps brands design labels and develop content more targeted, establishing effective communication. This is the direction and method for brand efforts.
For the 9 major tea consumption scenes, Weibo designed a systematic hot topic matrix for Chagee. For example, choosing holiday hotspots like Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, May Day, and National Day to focus on leisure travel scenes; choosing traditional solar terms like Beginning of Spring, Beginning of Autumn, Autumn Equinox, and Minor Snow to occupy seasonal scenes; choosing drama series, variety shows, and popular concerts for entertainment and concert scenes, especially leveraging ancient costume drama hotspots, which not only achieves brand presence and positioning in corresponding scenes but also strengthens the brand's ancient style image.
A specific example is the seasonal scene of Beginning of Autumn ("the first cup of milk tea in autumn" is the biggest festival in the tea beverage industry). In the Beginning of Autumn scene, Weibo analyzed consumers' four major concerns:
First, traditional culture: appreciating autumn and drinking tea, making friends through tea, tea tasting culture, etc.;
Second, emotional resonance: warmth, beauty, crisp autumn air, ritual, reconciliation with oneself, etc.;
Third, autumn atmosphere: breeze, fallen leaves, golden, romance, healing, etc.;
Fourth, social meme: showy, milk tea freedom, companion culture, etc.
These words are keywords extracted from text analysis of consumer behavior and voices. They represent consumers' product concerns, user emotions, values, and lifestyles, and represent consumers' decision factors and evaluation criteria for products in that scene.
For brand marketing, brand labels can be extracted from these words to find the marketing direction. Chagee thus formed a communication line of atmosphere ritual + trendy memes + cultural heritage, and derived high-quality content and social gameplay, standing out in the competitive Beginning of Autumn marketing environment.
When conducting text analysis on the social content of Chagee and its competitors, Weibo also divided social content into three categories: exclusive to this product, exclusive to competitors, and shared by both. In Chagee's exclusive content, more than half is related to health and weight loss, with consumers particularly concerned about calories and non-dairy creamer, which points to Chagee's brand differentiation. So Chagee specifically promoted the self-discipline scene.
First, Weibo created the hot topic #你喝的奶茶有身份证吗# (Does the milk tea you drink have an ID card?) to attract user attention and discussion, strengthening the association between milk tea and "product calorie ID card," conveying the brand's health concept.
Second, Chagee launched a calorie calculator mini-program, allowing consumers to calculate the calorie values of different products, showcasing product selling points in a fun way and stimulating consumer trial and exploration.
Finally, it invited KOLs/KOCs to participate in topic interaction and created the topic #减脂期可以喝奶茶吗# (Can you drink milk tea during fat loss?), attracting public attention and participation, sparking a trend of healthy drink check-ins.
This series of operations achieved the brand's "no burden" and "low calorie" cognitive penetration, attaching the label of "healthy, low-calorie" to the brand. This not only helped Chagee become the first choice in the self-discipline scene but also defined Chagee's brand image and personality in consumers' minds, giving the brand differentiated value and helping Chagee find its marketing direction.
In April 2024, Chagee officially announced tennis star Zheng Qinwen as the brand's first health ambassador, using her healthy and confident image to shape brand perception. On the product side, Chagee further enriched its low GI (glycemic index) product matrix, adding a "low GI" label to its product menu.
In March 2025, Chagee launched an innovative product, the "Light Cause Series," reducing the caffeine content of its classic hit Boya Juexian by about 50%, allowing consumers to drink it safely in the afternoon or evening.
These joint efforts on the brand and product sides have made Chagee's healthy image more deeply rooted, helping the brand become a trusted healthy beverage choice for consumers.
It can be seen that the "scene + label" marketing system can be analyzed through data, better guiding the application and implementation of big data in brand marketing, empowering enterprise marketing implementation and brand building, and driving growth.
Another example is the potato chip brand Lay's. Lay's is a brand under PepsiCo, and achieving growth through scene marketing is PepsiCo Foods' global strategy; Lay's has long targeted three strategic scenes: late-night snacks, Outing (short trips, outings), and Work Break.
In July 2024, Meituan and Meituan Instashopping released the "Scene Marketing Knowledge and Action Record," launching its own "Sixteen Scenes." Specifically, they include:
4 social scenes: home gatherings, gift care, sweet dates, workplace meals;
3 dietary scenes: energy brunch, afternoon tea, late-night cravings;
6 home scenes: energy daytime shopping, nighttime errands, grocery shopping and cooking, weekend restocking, family companionship, heavy items to home;
3 travel scenes: local fun, out-of-town travel, emergency response.
Meituan is a leading life services e-commerce platform in China, and Meituan Instashopping is Meituan's instant retail brand, covering many product categories, emphasizing "everything to home" in 30 minutes. Based on this local service advantage and comprehensive coverage of consumers' daily lives, relying on massive sales and ecosystem data, Meituan proposes a "scene marketing" center, capturing specific scenes in consumers' lives in real-time, stimulating and satisfying consumers' real-time needs in the current scene.
At the same time, Meituan emphasizes that scenes can bring new marketing perspectives to enterprises and brands, leading brands into a new marketing era. Meituan will provide brands with full-link digital marketing solutions centered on consumer life scenes, helping brands define and prioritize scenes, scientifically insight into user needs in scenes, deeply explore the consumption potential of different scenes, thereby achieving deep connection between brands and consumers and driving real growth for brands.
After cooperating with Meituan, Lay's matched its 3 strategic scenes with Meituan Instashopping's 16 scenes and selected afternoon tea, local fun, out-of-town travel, and nighttime scenes as core target scenes. Then Lay's analyzed these scenes one by one, scientifically evaluating the sales scale of each scene and Lay's performance in these scenes, such as penetration rate and growth rate.
(Image source: Meituan's "Scene Marketing Knowledge and Action Record")
Some very interesting phenomena and user insights were discovered. That is, the same consumer's needs change in different scenes, even down to specific product flavors.
Meituan data found that in the late-night craving scene, consumers prefer novel and spicy flavors, such as spicy crayfish, charcoal grilled pork belly, and spicy hot pot flavors; while in travel scenes, they prefer regular flavors like original and cucumber; in home gathering scenes, they prefer large packages, and when giving gifts, they like multi-flavor combination packs.
The main reason is different emotions. For example, at night, after a day of work, feeling tired and upset, craving relaxation, enjoyment, and self-compensation, they are more attracted to heavy flavors and prone to impulse buying; in travel scenes, the consumption psychology is mainly safety, so they choose light flavors to reduce gastrointestinal irritation and avoid inconvenience during the trip;
At gatherings, consumers want everyone to share and create a happy atmosphere; in gift-giving scenes, diverse flavors and product combinations better express thoughtfulness and reduce the risk of error when the recipient's taste is unknown.
This means that through precise scene identification, brands can more clearly understand user needs and purchasing behavior, thereby creating corresponding growth strategies for different target scenes, improving marketing efficiency, and promoting efficient conversion.
Therefore, Lay's marketing and sales departments worked closely with Meituan Instashopping to plan and implement different marketing strategies and operational layouts for each target scene, including target audience selection, product strategy, in-site touchpoints and content strategy, and off-site media strategy.
Take the travel scene as an example.
In terms of audience strategy, from April 16 to May 9, 2024, Lay's precisely targeted travelers who booked May Day flights and hotels on Meituan; and created a travel campaign across the internet, then uploaded the exposure audience ID package to Meituan for in-site retargeting, continuously optimizing the placement combination, bringing in 42,000 new customers outside the category.
In product strategy, since consumers in travel scenes not only prefer light flavors but also tend to buy cans rather than bags to prevent crushing, Lay's prominently displayed canned products in ads and changed the marketing hero image of core product SKUs to travel backgrounds.
Moreover, Lay's launched the "Huaxia Scenery Limited Edition Can" products featuring domestic popular scenic spots as design elements, printing 7 architectural landmarks such as Xi'an Bell Tower, Xiamen Gulangyu Bagua Tower, Suzhou Hanshan Temple Fanyin Pavilion, and Guizhou Zhaoxing Dong Village Drum Tower on 7 product can bodies.
Lay's purpose is to firmly bind the brand with the travel scene and stimulate consumer identification and resonance through regional characteristic culture. In fact, in 2023, Lay's also launched the "Guizhou Culture Limited Edition Can," combining local intangible cultural heritage techniques to create limited products, with the promotion theme "Travel with you, Lay's unlimited," mainly featuring original and cucumber flavors.
In terminal promotion strategy, since 62% of puffed food buyers have the habit of browsing in stores, and seasonal scene content easily stimulates their purchase needs, Lay's collaborated with retailers to set up scene tabs like "Weekend Outing" and "Enjoy the Weekend" on in-store category navigation pages, placing canned products at the top.
Offline, Lay's laid out limited-edition shelf displays (POSM) in partner terminal channels for scene-based display; and created giant potato chip can sculptures at landmark scenic spots in Xi'an, Shaanxi; Pingyao, Shanxi; and Luoyang, Henan, attracting tourists to check in and interact.
(Image from the internet)
In advertising communication strategy, Lay's carried out a travel-themed communication campaign across the internet and did various forms of advertising, such as iQiyi pre-roll ads with Meituan delivery landing pages.
Since I often travel on business, on May 10 and May 20, 2024, I twice photographed Lay's billboards at Hangzhou East Station. The ad featured the Huaxia Scenery Limited Edition Can series, with the theme "Lay's accompanies you to travel across China."
Lay's entire marketing is scene-centered, organizing target audience selection, product design and portfolio, advertising communication, terminal display and promotion, forming a complete integrated communication plan. Scenes run through the entire process of Lay's market insight, strategy formulation, specific implementation, and execution, linking internal departments such as insight, marketing, data, media, and O2O sales.
This is a full-link marketing built around strategic scenes, based on data and technology. Lay's has thus achieved comprehensive improvement in multiple indicators such as GMV, user numbers, purchase frequency, and scene penetration rate, achieving efficient growth.
Brand Digitalization
Marx once said, any discipline in the world, if it has not developed to the point of being closely connected with mathematics, indicates that the discipline has not yet matured.
For years, I have used this statement as a yardstick for learning marketing knowledge and examining different marketing theories. Specifically, today, any brand model and methodology, I believe, should first aim at growth, structured around the fundamental issue of how to drive enterprise growth.
Yes, the center is growth, not competition orientation, not occupying user mind, not designing brand LOGO, IP, slogans, and other communication elements. These are all means, and the ultimate goal is to drive enterprise growth.
Secondly, the methodology must be able to integrate data and technology, formulate strategies based on data and conduct quantitative assessment, so it can be called a brand big model.
If it still relies on experience and intuition to set direction and strategy, and on personal taste and aesthetics to determine brand image and brand appeal, then it is no different from traditional brand thinking, just changing terms.
In recent years, the industry has talked a lot about digitalization.
Enterprise digitalization, on one hand, is digitalization in production, including creating a C2M (Customer to Manufacturer) production and sales model where consumers reach the factory directly, using data and algorithms to predict hits and estimate product sales and adjust production lines, thereby achieving on-demand production and zero inventory, achieving mass customization, and achieving digital management of suppliers;
And digital product lifecycle management, implementing product R&D and new product innovation based on user data and sales data.
On the other hand, it is digitalization in marketing, including media digitalization, channel digitalization, user operation digitalization, and brand digitalization. These are the four categories of marketing digitalization as I understand it.
In the entire marketing chain, the first to be realized is media digitalization, such as DSP, programmatic buying, and feed ads, enabling precise placement;
Second is the development of digital systems for terminals and stores, allowing the enterprise headquarters to grasp real-time inventory and sales data of each store, thereby optimizing product production and inventory management;
Third is establishing direct connections with consumers through online media such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, and operating private domains through WeChat groups and enterprise WeChat, establishing digital links with consumers;
Finally, it is the digitalization of brand building and communication.
Currently, the industry mainly discusses media digitalization and user operation digitalization.
Media digitalization is the easiest to achieve because it is the digitalization of external platforms. Enterprises only need to purchase digital advertising products from internet platforms, including social marketing and interactive marketing concepts, which also refer to communication methods using digital media for placement.
User operation digitalization essentially refers to using digital tools to establish direct, multi-dimensional, and continuous connections with consumers. In this way, enterprises can obtain more precise consumer profiles, guiding product development and brand building;
Second, it is to attract consumers to private domains, achieving user activation, repurchase, and recommendation through community activities and online interactions. The AARRR growth hacking model is a common user operation tool;
Finally, it is to continuously accumulate user data assets, achieve repeated touch, relationship building, and continuous operation of users, obtaining customer lifetime value (LTV).
The sources of user big data are, first, through media digitalization, and second, through channel digitalization.
Channel digitalization depends on how it is understood. Initially, it mainly referred to e-commerce channel development, completing transactions and forming customer relationships through online platforms. DTC also refers to this. But compared to online, how to achieve digitalization of traditional offline channels is the focus and difficulty.
Because offline channel digitalization not only refers to establishing an F2B2b2C data interconnection and intelligent decision-making system, real-time monitoring of orders, inventory, and terminal sales data. The key is that it also involves the distribution of interests among external stakeholders such as distributors and terminal merchants, and changes in the enterprise's internal organizational structure.
For example, Mr. Liu Chunxiong's "bC integration" is to solve this dilemma, directly establishing connections with C-end users while solving digital management of b-end stores.
Brand digitalization is another difficulty. I propose this concept because in actual work, I find it very difficult to use data technology to empower brand building.
When we talk about brand digitalization now, it basically refers to using big data to obtain more precise user profiles and deeper consumption insights, but at this point, the application of data technology ends, although the brand strategy has not yet begun.
The formulation of the entire brand strategy, such as planning the brand's basic architecture (refining core brand value, shaping brand image and personality, designing brand positioning, establishing brand style and persona), designing brand elements (such as LOGO and VI, SLOGAN, brand manifesto, brand story), formulating brand strategy (medium and long-term brand planning, annual integrated communication), and content creativity and brand communication (creating brand films, key visuals, brand IP), etc., is still very subjective, and data has no place in it.
The core strategy and creative parts of the brand still rely entirely on the creativity and imagination of brand people, personal experience, insight, and aesthetic ability. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this; creativity is humanity's most powerful weapon compared to data and AI.
But if brand building completely relies on individual subjective initiative, guessing what consumers think and feel, and constructing through flashes of inspiration; if decisions are not deeply integrated with data, making it impossible to scientifically judge what is good or bad, right or wrong, then it returns to the traditional "shoot from the hip" model, or even completely depends on the personal taste and preferences of the enterprise boss and management, which is very unreliable and can even make directional errors.
Brand digitalization lacks a model and framework that integrates brand and data. The value of the Increment Big Model is that every link can be quantitatively analyzed through data, making strategy evidence-based and growth rule-based.
Scenes can be based on Big Data analysis, clustering consumer behavior to discover what scenes exist in consumers' lives, insight into specific variables and user tasks in different scenes, what main and secondary scenes are suitable for the brand to occupy, and what potential scenes can drive brand growth, etc.
Labels can be based on various content published by consumers online, including original content and brand area comments, through NLP natural language processing, to analyze consumers' concerns and key association words about the brand in different scenes, and analyze consumer psychological states and emotions, etc.
Of course, scenes can also be clustered through text mining technology by analyzing user content; labels can also be based on big data to find user labels, and then convert user labels into brand labels.
Building a brand system through scenes + labels to drive growth is the method of brand marketing in the digital age and the path to creating increments.