Spicy Strips Are Hot: Who Will Be the Next 'Internet-Famous Food'?

Introduction Who says traditional industries are hard to crack? Look at how 'junk food' spicy strips turned from a 'dead fish' into a 'dragon'. What does it take for a product to become an internet sensation?

As 2016 winds down, the food industry is a tale of two extremes. On one hand, traditional big players, small players, and their followers are all declining, with wails of despair—we've mentioned this several times, so we won't name names. On the other hand, innovative products are quickly gaining a foothold in the market, rapidly capturing market share, and becoming the internet celebrities of their generation. In the catering world, there's spicy crayfish; in Shanghai, the magical 'salted egg yolk and pork floss green rice ball'; and of course, the hottest of all—spicy strips—which, like a cheat code, shot from being the poster child of 'junk food' to the 'number one internet-famous food'. There are also briquette-shaped cakes and creative dishes like glutinous rice eggs—the creativity is mind-blowing and eye-watering.

Why did they become 'hot'? Can we also become 'hot'? Let's dive in and see if you have what it takes to create a viral product.

Most people are familiar with spicy strips, so let's use them as an example.

In the food industry, when it comes to a tarnished reputation, spicy strips are second to none: 'junk food', 'black-hearted workshops', 'school canteen snacks'—these labels are stuck fast. Companies making spicy strips are even embarrassed to say they make 'spicy strips'; they prefer to say they make 'gluten snacks'.

But then, overnight, the dead fish not only turned over but started leaping over the dragon gate.

One company that must be mentioned is Weilong.

Their Tmall store, launched only in 2015, achieved a natural search rate of 40-50% on Taobao, and their Weibo daily interaction topics reached over 100,000 at their peak. Open Weilong's flagship store, and you'll see nearly a hundred products, many with sales in the hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of comments, making other brands that spent heavily on ad slots, direct traffic, and promotions but saw disappointing sales green with envy.

Driven by the 'number one internet-famous food', the spicy strip category is said to have reached a market size of 50 billion yuan, with 'Greater Henan' alone producing 30 billion yuan annually.

Just recently, at the end of 2014, due to negative press and government crackdowns, the spicy strip 'industry' was in shambles. The number of manufacturers dropped from over 2,000 to just over 500, and the market was oversupplied and bleak.

As for the story of Weilong leading the spicy strip industry to 'leap over the dragon gate', readers can search online—there's plenty of material and jokes, more entertaining than what I can offer. Here, I'll break down how to become an internet-famous product, and you can check if your own products have the potential.

Keyword 1: Creativity

Over the past year or so, Weilong's rise to fame has been a journey of wild creativity. From initially trying to clear spicy strips' name, to collaborating with Rage Comics, Weibo meme accounts, the Tmall store incident, a series of parody videos online, the Apple-style aesthetic, and even 'international luxury goods'.

Weilong embraced a nonsensical spirit of 'no pain, no gain' and played happily with young netizens, repeatedly attracting audiences who actively participated in spreading the word about spicy strips—they just couldn't stop.

No creativity, no internet fame. In this age of imagination and creativity, if you don't do something mind-boggling, you'd be embarrassed to say hello to people.

Keyword 2: Cognitive Foundation

For the post-80s and post-90s generations, spicy strips are part of almost everyone's memories, with strong recognition and high acceptance.

Spicy strips are not just a tasty snack; they evoke childhood memories, school days, childhood friends, and parental discipline. Once this cognitive foundation is awakened, it can unleash powerful market energy.

Because the 'unhealthy' image of spicy strips is deeply ingrained, most people were suppressed from eating them in childhood. This suppression is released as they become independent and the image of spicy strips improves, turning into market energy.

Keyword 3: Mashup

First, there's a mashup of product attributes. Spicy strips innovated by adding sweetness to the original spiciness, enriching the flavor profile. Another internet-famous food, the salted egg yolk and pork floss green rice ball, changed the traditional light flavor by mixing heavy flavors into the rice ball.

This technique has been used in marketing before—computers mixed with phones gave us the iPhone, vitamins mixed with candy gave us Yake V9. But to become an internet sensation, your mashup needs to be even more outlandish.

Then there's the mashup of images: Apple is admired by many, but if you're a phone brand and imitate Apple in every way, even if you claim to be 'the best in the Eastern Hemisphere', you can't shake off the suspicion of being a 'knockoff'. But if you're a snack brand and imitate Apple in every way, it's refreshing and eye-catching.

Choosing the right model to imitate is crucial. In the past, people believed 'food should look like food, clothes like clothes, appliances like appliances'. But the internet-famous mindset is the opposite: 'A driver who doesn't want to be a chef isn't a good tailor'—mashups are all the rage.

Keyword 4: Promoters

Weilong's rapid rise was largely due to Rage Comics and Weibo meme accounts.

Internet catchphrases like 'Have a pack of spicy strips to calm down', 'Have a pack of spicy strips to be quiet', 'Angrily eat ten packs of spicy strips' all came from these promoters. They are not only content creators but also the hub of promotion.

Rage Comics created a strong conflict between the 'silly and cheap' image of Weilong spicy strips and exaggerated 'arrogance', making it a major topic on the internet. The creative line was to contrast the ordinariness of spicy strips with exaggerated consumption experiences, creating drama and resonating emotionally with the post-80s and post-90s.

Now, dear readers, do you feel the urge to 'not talk to Lao Miao and throw a pile of spicy strips at him'?

Besides catchphrases, there are all sorts of bizarre stunts, also driven by these promoters. The flagship store hacking incident fooled countless people, the 'Apple-style' image was stunning, and foreign teachers eating spicy strips and 'international luxury goods' added plenty of topics to the internet.

This reminds me of what Mr. Chen, the boss of Yake, said: 'Yake is willing to hand over brand building entirely to teams like Yihe, because external brain companies will always understand market changes better than the company itself and be better at consumer communication.' This makes one yearn for the glorious days of Madison Avenue, when advertisers, creatives, and marketers all worked at third-party agencies, continuously providing creativity and professional services, while manufacturers focused on making great products. Countless great brands and companies like Coca-Cola, Nike, Levi's, Marlboro, Ogilvy, McCann, etc., flourished in that era under this beautiful division of labor.

In recent decades, manufacturers started running their own brand operations and introduced mature brand management systems. The abnormal situation of referees playing football became the norm, and companies and service providers became 'mutually cursing fools' in an 'A-party/B-party' relationship.

From Mr. Chen's statement, Weilong's operations, and the steps of many forward-thinking companies in the market, we seem to see that in the era of content being king, a more professional division of content is taking shape.

Keyword 5: Stickiness

If Weilong hadn't become an internet sensation, many might not know that in 2010, the company hired A-list star Zhao Wei as its image spokesperson, and later popular actress Yang Mi. However, these spokesperson images were all outshone by Wang Nima, who wore a head covering.

Image spokespersons are a typical practice of the 'channel is king' era, using celebrity effect to quickly form a brand image, then using heavy advertising and wide distribution to achieve a double meeting of image and product with consumers. This method still works, but the cost is high and the effect has diminished.

In the era of channel dominance, content demands 'sharpness'—razor-sharp. It's about claiming territory; channel resources are king. A memorable image, slogan, or visual is crucial.

But the game has changed. The demand is no longer sharpness but stickiness. When information comes in, it should stick to the consumer's mind like paste, impossible to shake off. Information is no longer simple; it has stories, twists, cause and effect. Audiences are willing to retell it, and it becomes a topic.

How to create stickiness? Go back and look at the meticulous creations of Weilong's meme accounts.

Keyword 6: Channel Black Holes

Channel black holes refer to channel distributors or retailers that charge various fees or extract profits without providing core channel value. For most small and medium enterprises, large supermarkets are channel black holes; for small businesses lacking promotional capabilities, some distributors who only handle delivery but take distribution profits are also channel black holes; and Taobao, having passed its dividend period, now has extremely high platform fees and expensive traffic, possibly making it the biggest channel black hole.

For offline channels, spicy strip companies generally did not adopt so-called 'channel intensive cultivation' or 'direct terminal control' models, but rather a relatively loose agency system, sometimes even a large agency system. Ground promotion functions were operated through agents with distribution capabilities, thus avoiding offline channel black holes.

As an 'internet celebrity', e-commerce is inevitable. Currently, Tmall's traffic costs are so high that most companies are losing money. Alibaba has almost made operating on Tmall 'the hardest business in the world'. It's fair to say that Tmall flagship stores are the 'number one channel black hole'.

Weilong took a different path, not only successfully avoiding the channel black hole but also using Tmall's platform to turn its internet fame into sales. The method seems simple, but many companies wouldn't dare to think of it: reduce in-site promotion, do internet promotion, and drive traffic from outside the site. This seemingly more circuitous route, driven by Weilong's 'good content', actually lowered the cost of traffic acquisition.

Of course, most internet-famous products are trend-based, and from a business perspective, they rise and fall quickly. But their advantages are also obvious: low market startup costs, high success rates, rapid explosion, and the ability to quickly bring profits and attention to the company. At the same time, some product categories, like spicy strips, have a deep cognitive foundation and can leverage the internet fame to rise, but they are not trend products, so their prospects are much brighter.

Times change. Many people tell me that traditional methods seem ineffective, and many products appear to 'rise swiftly and fall swiftly', making them uneasy.

But if you understand human nature better, understand consumer purchasing behavior patterns, and discern the principles behind market changes, you'll find that there are many patterns to follow in the seemingly complex surface. Once you master these, succeeding with a product and brand is much easier than traditional 'territory claiming'. Maybe the next internet-famous product will come from you.

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