---
title: "The Future of Channels: All Are 'Special Channels'"
description: "Since starting my business, I've sensed that traditional sales scenarios and channels are on the verge of a complete overhaul. Now I'm increasingly certain: channels are transforming, and the key shift is from being mere 'sales pipelines' to 'content pathways' that connect producers directly to consumers' minds. In the future, all channels will undergo 'special channelization,' where content reconstructs scenarios and scenarios drive impulse purchases."
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published: "2026-06-04"
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---

# The Future of Channels: All Are 'Special Channels'

> Since starting my business, I've sensed that traditional sales scenarios and channels are on the verge of a complete overhaul. Now I'm increasingly certain: channels are transforming, and the key shift is from being mere 'sales pipelines' to 'content pathways' that connect producers directly to consumers' minds. In the future, all channels will undergo 'special channelization,' where content reconstructs scenarios and scenarios drive impulse purchases.

Since starting my business, I've had a vague feeling that past sales scenarios and channels are about to be completely overturned.
This feeling isn't just about e-commerce or live-streaming; it's more about offline channels. Over the past two years, I've written several articles about special channels.
Today, I'm increasingly certain: **channels are changing.**
**This isn't just a structural change in people, goods, and places; the most important shift is in the nature of channels.**
**In the past, channels were essentially 'sales pipelines'; in the future, they will be 'content pathways'**—a pathway from the producer's factory or company to the consumer's heart.
In the future, all channels will undergo 'special channelization.'
Recently, I was invited to Shijiazhuang to attend the 'China Distributor Evolution Conference—Seeking Growth from Special Channels' organized by Huatang. At the conference, I gave a keynote speech titled **'Traffic Peaks, Special Channels Rule.'**

At the conference, I told the distributors: 'Unlike your professional backgrounds, I come from content, investment, and branding. Gathered here, my value is to share my views on special channels from a brand content logic and investment perspective.'

**The Logic of Traffic Redistribution**
Many people are anxious, saying traffic has peaked or disappeared. Traffic has always been there; everyone is on their phones daily, still following what interests them, still active, shopping, traveling... How can traffic disappear?
**The reality is that traffic has been redistributed as attention shifts with content.**
A city dweller encounters over 5,000 brands a day, but how many truly capture our attention?
I took the high-speed rail from Beijing to Shijiazhuang, staring at my phone the whole way. If you asked me now what brands I saw on the train, or whose ad was on the seatback in front of me, I wouldn't remember—I didn't even notice there was an ad there.
So, for that seatback ad, I was just statistical traffic, not real traffic in the content sense.
Thus, old methods of calculating traffic have failed. Traffic is no longer determined by where people appear, but by whether they are attracted by relevant content in that setting.
In the past, 'advertising' wasn't what we now call scenario-based content; it was more like a 'slogan'—forced information. Today, with so much information, forced insertion no longer works.
**Content now holds the power to allocate traffic.**

**A New Interpretation of Brand, Content, and Channels**
In the previous era, our old logic was '**brand equals advertising, content equals slogan, channel equals pipeline**.' Back then, we didn't need to think much; as long as we dared to go all-in on ads and buy traffic, we got results.
But today, with intensifying competition, we need to re-understand channels and the value of special channels, and grasp the new brand content logic.

* **Brand is Information**
The essence of a brand is information—bits of information implanted in consumers' minds. Whether a brand is good depends on the quantity and quality of information it has deposited in users' minds.
If our knowledge of a brand is limited to its name, its information bits are too low; it's just a well-known trademark, not yet a brand.
But if we know not only the name but also its founder, product sequence, pricing, even launch details... that's when it truly becomes a brand. Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi are such brands.

* **Content is Experience**
For many years, brand content was a slogan—language unilaterally conveyed by the brand to users. With one-way, flat media, that worked.
But today, media has made content diverse; content has become experience—users' experience of every aspect of the brand. Their experience determines where they place their attention.
So I say, content is experience; it determines the power to allocate traffic.

* **Channel is Scenario**
We used to think of channels as 'pipelines'—just let people flow through. The traditional logic was that products sat on shelves waiting for passersby to pick them up.
But now, channels are consumption scenarios. **And special channels are the kings of scenarios.**

**Special Channels Are Inherently Scenario-Based**
Why do I say that?
Because special channels have four core attributes: closure, scenario, niche, and complementarity. The most important is scenario.
**In traditional special channels, people buy products; in innovative special channels, people buy needs.**
So now, our requirement for special channels should focus on whether users' needs are precisely met.
For example, you rush into a convenience store to buy water because of the instant physiological drive of thirst. A friend buying a protein bar at the gym isn't buying food; they're buying the psychological compensation and functional supplement for wanting to lose weight or build muscle.

We had a colleague who left to start a brand selling seed bracelets and nutshell wind chimes in temple settings.
The wind chimes made from plant shells make a crisp, soothing sound when the wind blows. I visited her and saw she had a tagline: 'Listen, it's the sound of water in your head'—oddly fun and amusing.
She wasn't just selling products; people were also stringing bracelets and making wind chimes with her on-site. She was selling an experience.
Such products don't have high R&D barriers or inaccessible raw materials, but the key is matching them to a precise scenario.
Once matched to a temple, where spiritual needs are met and people's desire to 'calm down' is satisfied, sales and premium pricing become possible.

During the May Day holiday, I also visited the 'Laborers' Market' at Beijing's Langyuan Station. The organizers invited over 190 boutique brand owners to this venue.
We had to pay 39 yuan for entry—paying 39 yuan for the right to shop.
Why are people willing to pay? Because the retail inside is curated, scenario-matched, and content-driven. It studies what I might want to buy and what content value it can provide during the process—that's worth the ticket price. Sam's Club membership follows the same logic.
These are typical scenario solutions, all operating on special channel logic.

**All Channels Will Become 'Special Channelized'**
My judgment: **In the future, all channels will be 'special channelized.'** **Special channel is not just a noun; it's also an adjective.**
'Special channelization' means all instant retail, boutique retail, and even traditional mass channels will start learning the logic of special channels: **use content to reconstruct scenarios, and use scenarios to trigger impulse.**
Special channels are no longer just a noun; they should be an adjective. Many retail formats are already in the process of special channelization:

**1. Product Contentification**
The Shanghai Mental Health Center's mooncakes went viral purely through content-driven special channels.
With the cultural and creative label of 'Abnormal Human Research Center' and content resonance, they turned a mooncake into a content carrier and cultural product.
When young people gift these mooncakes, they're exchanging identity and conversation topics.

**2. Souvenir Logic**
Another familiar example is Ziguangyuan yogurt. This old brand cleverly used special channel logic to tap into the 'leaving Beijing' scenario—like high-speed rail stations, airports, and tourist spots—turning a mass product like yogurt into a must-buy souvenir for departing visitors.
Its popularity made me realize how scarce Beijing's souvenir options are.

**3. Self-Created Scenarios**
Many brands are starting to 'build their own special channels.'
For instance, Atour Hotel develops sleep products, Shilifangfei and Aranya offer lifestyle experiences, and Haidilao's Beijing stores are testing sales of blueberries, coconuts, and beverages.
There are also places born as special channels: Yangcheng Lake highway service area, One-Way Space bookstore, Disneyland, and more.

**The Imagination of Special Channel Operations**
In the era of brand content, the core of special channel operations is the **imagination** of people, goods, and scenarios.
In the past, many had fixed views of special channels, thinking they were 'the domain of high-margin, relationship-based, low-quality products'—selling overpriced, inferior goods.
But now it's different; we must not confine special channels to old imaginations.
**In the future, all channels will be broken apart, reconstructed by content, and rebuilt by scenarios.**
**We must operate channels with content logic; the imagination of content is the imagination of channels.**
We need to think about what good content to match in what scenarios. Special channel operations must leap from a 'selling goods' logic to a 'buyer' logic.

We're currently doing a strategic consulting project for China Tourism Group on innovating and developing private and co-branded products.
They once launched a private brand called 'Fuji Dim Sum,' turning Hong Kong-style and Cantonese tea snacks into plush toy souvenirs like Jelly Cat—think small soup dumplings, chicken feet, and ribs as plushies, served on a trolley that can be wheeled right up to boarding gates.
If I'm queuing at the gate and someone wheels over a cart, I see a cute soup dumpling, squeeze it, and might buy one to take home.
This sales method and profit logic differ from the traditional airport retail model.

**In the buyer logic, product selection also requires imagination.**
The future is an era of curation. Special channel product selection can't just focus on profit like before.
Take Langyuan's Laborers' Market: getting so many boutique brands together is itself a capability. The content experience shown by this curation ability makes many people willingly pay 39 yuan to enter. The ticket itself becomes revenue.

Another interesting case this year: a Beijing top-tier hospital. For Women's Day, instead of giving out endless shampoo and tissues, they hired a professional photography studio to take photos.
The hospital purchased three photos per staff member, but almost all female staff paid extra—hundreds or even thousands of yuan—for more photos beyond the free allocation.
What a vivid special channel scenario: the hospital is satisfied, staff are delighted, and the photography studio gains huge incremental business.
When we break free from the obsession with 'selling goods' and **reconstruct product selection with aesthetics, content, and understanding of human nature**, we can likely open a blue ocean of growth in seemingly red-ocean channels.

**Conclusion: Let Good Brands Enjoy Good Traffic First**
In the era of stagnant traffic, many brands, big and small, have used special channel thinking to firmly occupy a group's minds and lives.
**The social responsibility of channel players is to let good products and good brands enjoy good traffic first.**
This operation based on content experience and precise scenarios is the king's path for future brand growth.
Every transformation brings new brands. In the special channel era, new brands are rising—let's wait and see.

**With traffic redistribution, special channels become the next growth code for brands.** **How to re-understand special channels and seize the dividends of innovative special channels requires a systematic, actionable toolkit.**


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