Scene marketing is hot, but many brands are even more confused: what is the relationship between scene marketing and terminal materials? How do consumption scenes and sales scenes connect?

At the main forum of CFC·11th China FMCG Conference on March 16-18, Ms. He Luyi from New Canned gave a brilliant speech titled "POSM Practical Guide: Creating a 'Speaking' Terminal."

She pointed out: consumption scenes are responsible for sowing, sales scenes are responsible for harvesting, and a set of hooks is needed to connect them—and this hook is the speaking terminal POSM.

The following is an edited transcript of Ms. He Luyi's speech.

Why Are Your Terminal Materials Ineffective?

You invest heavily in terminal materials, but sales show no improvement. This is a dilemma almost every brand and distributor has faced.

New Canned attributes this to four major pain points: not reaching, not accurate, saying too much, and not moving.

Not Reaching

Nowadays, channels are increasingly fragmented, store areas are shrinking, the number of points where materials can be placed is decreasing, and some channels no longer even leave display space for brands. Last year, He Luyi encountered many brands that simply gave up: "We won't do POSM this year; the channel doesn't even give us a point."

Not Accurate

Materials are produced, but implementation is another matter.

New Canned often encounters situations where brands bring design drafts to confirm direction, but the on-site implementation result is completely different from the design draft. The root cause is inconsistent information among the brand department, third-party design companies, and the frontline sales team, with obvious gaps. The information chain is broken, and the material's communication logic naturally fails.

Saying Too Much

Facing the dilemma of fewer points, brands often react in two extremes. One is to give up completely; the other is to increase investment—massively investing in materials at every marketing node. But after materials are shipped to the terminal, the sales effect cannot be verified, and ROI cannot be calculated clearly. Costs are real, but effects cannot be traced.

Not Moving

This is the most easily overlooked of the four pain points, and possibly the most far-reaching.

For example, a material card on a bread shelf tells consumers this is bread, which seems to complete the material placement, but is actually meaningless. There is no directive, no scene basis, no guidance for consumers to take the next step—it just "exists."

In contrast, "Any 3 bottles for 10 yuan" seems like just a promotional message, but it is truly directive language—it gives consumers a clear action instruction, directly driving purchase decisions.

Whether there is directive language is the key to whether materials can truly drive sales.

How Should Good Terminal POSM Be Done?

Corresponding to the four pain points, He Luyi gave four directions: speak accurately, speak movingly, speak well, and speak.

Speak Accurately: Small Points, Big Gains

Channel points are decreasing. Instead of fighting over scarce large points, it is better to re-examine the value of small points.

Brands and distributors that do well share a common feature: they customize independently based on the actual store type of the current store, find display methods in the smallest display space, and strive for more sales opportunities. For example, when New Canned studied temporary channels, they found that some merchants changed advertising spaces to magnetic type to improve efficiency—essentially an innovation in cost reduction and efficiency at the material level.

Speak Movingly: Clever Combinations, Sell Packages

Displaying products by category on shelves often has sales problems. Scene-based combination packages are becoming a more effective way to drive sales.

At the brand level, multi-combination packages should be made based on their product lines. Bottle Planet, which New Canned is currently serving, has already been doing package stations—ice cups with soda water, and then with different wines, making the combination possibilities richer and consumers' choice paths clearer.

At the distributor and channel level, existing multiple products are combined based on consumption scenes, and cross-selling is driven through associated displays.

Speak Well: Controllable Costs, Create Freshness

Many brands want to establish new communication with consumers, and their first reaction is to develop new products, change flavors, or forms. But the real bottleneck is often not in product development, but in the material side—packaging quantity and promotion methods are what actually hold back execution.

Without changing the product, increasing product interactivity through vivid materials is a more feasible path. It is not traditional stacking displays, but material forms that stimulate UGC and increase consumer participation, continuously creating freshness while the product itself remains unchanged.

Speak: Directive Language

The most common failure mode of terminal POSM is only doing product promotion—telling consumers how good the product is. But truly effective materials tell consumers in what scene they should buy, must buy.

Take Hsu Fu Chi New Year candy as an example. When New Canned cooperated with Hsu Fu Chi, they always conveyed the same message through directive language: during the Spring Festival, you must eat Hsu Fu Chi New Year candy. This is not introducing the product itself, but establishing a strong binding relationship between the scene and the brand in consumers' minds.

How to Implement the Methodology?

Methodology implementation ultimately needs to be verified in specific channels and scenes. Next, I will share three cases.

Case 1: Haorenjia Hotpot Season—How Traditional Channels Do Layered Materials

Before Haorenjia came to New Canned, they faced two core difficulties. First, material management was chaotic: six channels were running, material circulation passed through multiple departments, and it was impossible to tell which materials were suitable for which channel and which were truly effective. Second, price pressure: the product was 20% to 30% more expensive than similar competitors, and materials not only had to be implemented but also had to explain why it was expensive.

The New Canned team visited multiple cities and channels and diagnosed several common problems: remote displays were numerous but not unified, so consumers could not see who it was; terminal materials existed but lacked appeal; different channels had no differentiated adaptation, and all materials were universal.

In response to these problems, New Canned took three actions.

First, merge materials. Haorenjia previously had two sets of materials for clear soup pot and red soup pot, making management extremely complex. New Canned unified all materials, focusing on the single scene of "eating hotpot at home," shifting from product functional value to scene value, allowing consumers to form a unified perception of Haorenjia doing hotpot.

Second, explain why it is expensive. Haorenjia has real high-value support in raw materials and production processes, but previous materials never clearly presented it. New Canned extracted these value points and directly told consumers where the premium lies.

Third, create leverage points by channel. Taking the agricultural trade channel as an example, New Canned only made three material changes: the remote end used the largest area to ensure brand recognition, the terminal hanging net was recolored to differentiate from competitors, and the near end updated the fish plate material. In agricultural markets, the materials most frequently used by vendors and closest to consumers are near-end materials like fish plates. Choosing the right three materials, without needing to spread 10 or 20, can solve the problem.

Case 2: Royal Tiger and Convenience Store Mixology Area—Small Unit Replication in New Channels

Channel areas are shrinking, and SKU competition is becoming increasingly fierce. The core logic to cope with this trend is: rapid replication of small units. The inspiration comes from Pop Mart—using small units to do scene-based combination displays, and this logic also applies to consumer goods.

Royal Tiger is a typical example. It enters efficiency-oriented channels with the smallest unit, extensively entering convenience store egg tart hot cabinets.

The convenience store mixology area is another direction: rapid replication of emotional theme-based prop units. More importantly, these terminal displays should be linked to the content the brand has played in consumption scenes—after exposure in restaurants, KTVs, and bars, when returning to the terminal, POSM should echo these scenes, making consumers' mental establishment more complete.

Case 3: Green Sword × Instant Retail—Online-Offline Integrated Closed Loop

When talking about terminal marketing, most people default to physical channels like supermarket end caps. But with the intervention of instant retail, the thinking boundary of terminal displays has extended to online.

Green Sword started trying this logic last year: doing promotional activities on instant retail platforms like Meituan, while binding with catering brands, and then spreading content to social platforms through UGC.

This path can be broken down into three layers.

The first layer: select consumption scenes and build momentum;

The second layer: return to terminal outlets to receive traffic. Most brands stop here;

The third layer: link back to instant retail—so that consumers not only encounter the brand's scene content when dining in restaurants, but also continuously strengthen awareness in relevant categories every time they order takeout.

Three cases, three channels, but the underlying logic is the same: high-momentum consumption scenes are responsible for sowing, sales channels are responsible for receiving, and instant retail does another closed-loop harvest. Terminal POSM is not an isolated sticker or sign, but an indispensable node in the entire scene chain.