The Spring Festival is the most important peak season for consumer goods Festivals have always been the most important social activities for Chinese people, and the Spring Festival is the most significant of all. Returning home and reuniting with family is the most ritualistic scene in every Chinese person's heart. Driven by China's rapidly developing economy, advancing transportation, and the tradition of family reunion, China has created the miracle of 'Chunyun' (Spring Festival travel rush) in the history of human activity. The Spring Festival is also the world's largest consumer goods peak season. Every year, it is the most important marketing season for major brands. According to statistics, a Chinese person's Spring Festival consumption accounts for about a quarter of their annual spending, and for some categories like baijiu (white liquor), consumption during this period exceeds one-third of the annual total. Therefore, almost every leading FMCG brand treats the Spring Festival as a must-win battle. Is Spring Festival marketing really easy? Many sales managers report that the effectiveness of Spring Festival marketing is declining year by year, with sales dropping and the return on investment sharply decreasing. The Pain Point of Spring Festival Marketing: Slow Sales Why is the peak season not selling well? Are consumers not spending during the Spring Festival? Obviously not. In the past, Spring Festival marketing relied on three magic weapons: brand advertising in the sky, forced distribution through channels on the ground, and in-store promotions at terminals. But today, these three magic weapons have all failed. What we often see is that before the festival, brands desperately push inventory to channels, and distributors push it to wholesalers and terminals. But Spring Festival sales are getting worse, leading to massive overstock, returns, and cross-regional selling after the holiday. This disrupts the market, crashes prices, damages channels, and loses trust and confidence, leaving a chaotic market in disarray. Consumers' enthusiasm for spending during the Spring Festival has not significantly waned, so why is there such a big problem with Spring Festival sales? Reason 1: Consumers' purchasing channels are diversified and highly fragmented. In the past, offline stores were the main purchasing channels for consumers, especially during the Spring Festival, when large shopping malls were the top choice. But today, consumers have too many shopping scenarios: e-commerce platforms, O2O, various new retail formats, live-streaming rooms, etc. Diversified shopping channels disperse sales, putting immense pressure on offline terminal sales. Reason 2: Brands' Spring Festival operations rely too heavily on channel stuffing. Many marketers still believe in 'stuffing channels creates miracles,' but today is the era of consumer sovereignty. Even if you stuff goods to the terminals, if your brand and promotional design fail to move consumers, they still won't buy. If we continue to focus our core energy on channels rather than consumers, the phenomenon of dead inventory will continue. Reason 3: Brands' consumer promotions rely too much on price wars. Indeed, when prices drop below the psychological threshold, almost nothing fails to sell. But can such low prices last? Is suicidal selling meaningful? The reason is that many brands' Spring Festival promotional themes are lackluster, failing to move consumers beyond price. Is the Spring Festival marketing campaign still worth fighting? How can we achieve the desired effect of peak-season sales? Theories and methods summarized are often pale and boring. Today, we use the latest case of a century-old brand to tell readers that even the most common FMCG products can still find new ways to play and shine in Spring Festival marketing. This Spring Festival, Lee Kum Kee Played a New Trick As a brand with a 133-year history, Lee Kum Kee's products are sold in most countries around the world. It can be said, 'Where there are Chinese people, there is Lee Kum Kee.' Starting from January 1, 2022, Lee Kum Kee launched a nationwide campaign: 'Eat Better for the New Year, Follow the Chef to Choose Lee Kum Kee.' According to reports, Lee Kum Kee's 'Chef' campaign will run from New Year's Day until the end of the first lunar month, covering multiple online social platforms and 3,000 core offline stores. Although the Spring Festival has not yet arrived, the 'Follow the Chef to Choose Lee Kum Kee' campaign has already received a positive market response upon launch. In the condiment industry, Lee Kum Kee is undoubtedly an 'elephant' in terms of scale and strength. In our perception, such traditional enterprises are usually conservative in marketing, steady but somewhat slow. So why has Lee Kum Kee's Spring Festival marketing achieved completely different results? What allows the 'elephant' to dance lightly? Let's dissect Lee Kum Kee's 'Follow the Chef' campaign this Spring Festival season. 1) A marketing campaign theme that touches people's hearts is almost half the battle. What is the most important thing about the Spring Festival? Family reunion. What is the most important thing about reunion? Eating, eating, eating. And Chinese people have always been particular about food, emphasizing 'flavor first.' At the Spring Festival reunion, delicious food is a must, and condiments are the soul of cuisine, adding to the family meal. So in the phrase 'Eat Better for the New Year,' 'New Year' is a scene reminder, and 'Eat Better' is a demand trigger. In the culinary world, 'chefs' are undoubtedly the most influential KOLs, and 'Chef God' (Chu Shen) is a title reserved for those with exceptional culinary skills. The chefs' pursuit of perfection in taste extends to their choice of condiments, naturally selecting the best. It is rare to have multiple national-level chefs collectively endorse Lee Kum Kee's brand and products. The chefs' professional credibility is enough to prove the excellent quality of the century-old Lee Kum Kee products. Looking back, the theme 'Eat Better for the New Year, Follow the Chef to Choose Lee Kum Kee' contains a deep insight into consumers' need for delicious food during the reunion, uses multiple chefs' endorsements to gain the trust and recognition of housewives, and finally issues a clear and explicit action directive to consumers with 'Choose Lee Kum Kee.' 2) Creative chef signature dish guides give every housewife a trick or two. Lee Kum Kee's 'Chef' campaign promotion, tailored to the age characteristics of modern housewives, fully utilizes H5, a mobile internet tool, to achieve penetrating communication effects. Modern housewives are mainly post-80s, and even if they don't cook in many families, they still hold the 'purchasing power.' What are their specific needs? During the Spring Festival, besides some traditional Chinese dishes, housewives also want to have a trick or two up their sleeves to show off in front of family or guests. Lee Kum Kee discovered this hidden need and used a clever concept to stimulate housewives' enthusiasm for reading and saving the H5 page. Lee Kum Kee selected dishes suitable for home cooking and family banquets from the signature dishes of many chefs, and had the chefs share their cooking methods, collected in the 'Chef' campaign's recipe collection. After scanning the QR code to enter the campaign, housewives can see the chefs' backgrounds, their experiences with Lee Kum Kee products, and the 'guides' for their selected signature dishes. If you are a housewife in a big family, wouldn't you be delighted and immediately read and save such a thoughtful 'Spring Festival cooking guide'? And when you want to show off these newly learned tricks, wouldn't you buy Lee Kum Kee? 3) Creating an atmosphere at 3,000+ core terminals, making the 'Chef' appear nationwide overnight. Today, a single online or offline promotion is bound to decline in effectiveness. Any effective promotion must combine online and offline, with three-dimensional promotion. Unified image, content, and activities across online and offline ensure that consumers receive completely consistent information whether in virtual space or physical stores. During the New Year's Day period, Lee Kum Kee covered 3,000+ core store terminals nationwide overnight. The fully unified online and offline campaign image and content immediately associated the professional image of the Chef with Lee Kum Kee's brand and products. Moreover, this integrated promotion approach covers multiple activity scenarios of the same consumer. She might see the campaign ad online, see the ground promotion at the store, and after scanning the QR code, receive the chefs' signature dish guides. If a brand's information can hit a target consumer clearly, precisely, and effectively three times in a short period, the probability of being chosen by that consumer will exceed 80%. What Can We Learn from Lee Kum Kee's Chef Campaign? Lee Kum Kee's 'Chef Campaign' is a typical strategy-driven battle. What lessons can we learn from Lee Kum Kee's 'dance of the elephant'? 1) All marketing planning and actions should not be 'sales-only.' Sales are the result of planning, not the starting point. Activity planning should be designed and implemented around consumers, not around stuffing channels. 2) Only by going deep into consumers' real scenarios can we gain insight into their real needs. What can move consumers is not just price; and what can deeply move consumers is even less likely to be price. What can deeply move consumers is only value. Lee Kum Kee's chef signature dish guides create irresistible unique value for housewives hosting Spring Festival banquets. Does this require spending money or lowering prices? Obviously not. 3) Activity planning should organically and closely combine consumers' core interests with the brand and products. Lee Kum Kee chose the Chef as an IP because the Chef represents the highest culinary art, fully consistent with Lee Kum Kee's high-quality product appeal. Many brands choose KOLs with huge traffic, but they cannot be integrated with the brand and products, nor can they create positive associations. Such activity planning, besides bringing a wave of attention, does no good to the brand. Are you 'watching' me?