---
title: "The Mastermind Behind Li Ziqi's Brand Reveals the 'Hit Product' Methodology for IP Consumer Goods"
description: "Personal IP-derived consumer products are not exclusive to Disney. In the food sector, many influencers have explored the 'personal IP + brand' model, but few succeed. Li Ziqi, despite recent controversy, stands out as a pioneer in high-quality personal food brands, with her team's underlying logic for building a phenomenal IP and brand."
author: "王晓萱"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-02-07"
language: "en"
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---

# The Mastermind Behind Li Ziqi's Brand Reveals the 'Hit Product' Methodology for IP Consumer Goods

> Personal IP-derived consumer products are not exclusive to Disney. In the food sector, many influencers have explored the 'personal IP + brand' model, but few succeed. Li Ziqi, despite recent controversy, stands out as a pioneer in high-quality personal food brands, with her team's underlying logic for building a phenomenal IP and brand.

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**Personal IP-derived consumer products: Disney is not the only answer.**
In the food sector, many influencers are actively exploring the **"personal IP + brand"** business model, but very few manage to stand out.
Early viral food influencers like Xiaoye Office, Mizijun, and Langweixian still focus on advertising monetization. Despite the low ceiling of advertising revenue, they have not easily ventured into their own brands.
What truly advanced content e-commerce is Li Ziqi, recently embroiled in the "kimchi controversy," who is one of the pioneers of high-quality personal food brands in China.
As the largest IP under Weinian Technology, Li Ziqi accumulated over 10 million followers on YouTube with just over 100 videos and was listed on Fortune China's Most Influential Business Women Future List last year.
Her brand, as one of the top ten new national brands going global, is accelerating its growth with public support.
In 2019 alone, the single product, luosifen (river snail rice noodles), achieved sales of 3 billion yuan. Other products like lotus root starch, brown sugar ginger tea, and rice cakes also reached annual sales of 20-80 million units, totaling approximately 300-500 million yuan in sales.
Recently, **Li Ziqi joined Ele.me to strengthen offline channels,** with products covering multiple categories such as snacks, instant drinks, and convenient fast food. There are already 10 first-batch takeout stores in Shanghai.
Li Ziqi's team used pastoral marketing to create a phenomenal IP, which is not accidental. Weinian, centered on premium IP, expands deep management capabilities in brand R&D, marketing communication, e-commerce operations, and supply chain, which is worth studying. Focusing on how the Li Ziqi IP went from 0 to 1 and broke through in a niche track, there is a set of underlying logic supporting it.
**-01-**
**The Underlying Logic of Building a Personal IP**
The explosive popularity of the Li Ziqi brand is core to the insight into human nature and the promotion of civilization internalized into product power.
Li Ziqi's team leader, Li Xiaodao, once told Bizwhale that they internally agreed that **Li Ziqi has "non-replicability," and the key to building an IP is to find a group of people one can represent, preferably a prototype found in film and television, and use personal charm and spiritual appeal to establish a "group consensus" in subcultures.** For Li Ziqi, she represents a "pastoral lifestyle," echoing "escaping from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou."
Specifically, at last week's "Creating the Future - 2021 Trends Forum," Li Xiaodao elaborated on the internal logic behind the rise of the Li Ziqi brand. Combined with related content, Bizwhale has organized and supplemented it.
Going back to the 1950s, Campbell studied cultures around the world and found that regardless of ethnicity or civilization, **the myths told all share a common system—the hero model.** Heroes initially refuse to leave their comfort zone, but after doing so, they overcome obstacles with the guidance of companions, gain inner fulfillment, and eventually bring their achievements back home.
The former **"worker" Li Ziqi's personal experience is very similar to Campbell's mythological hero theory, aligning with the collective imagination of the masses. This imagination is related to the subconscious and collective unconscious of the masses,** and it can transcend ethnicity and language, evoking empathy and identification in viewers.
**This means that content itself is not the core; whether the personality charm behind the content is accepted and recognized by consumers is most important.**
For example, Sun Wukong, an omnipotent character, represents the public's aspiration to resist injustice. Nezha is the public's resistance to feudal patriarchal oppression. **So the most classic IPs in China are rebellious characters. Weinian Technology found a character that matches Li Ziqi's real experience, called the "Innocent."** The core of this image is returning to simplicity, being free of desires and worries, and having no worldly concerns.
Coca-Cola's polar bear is also an "Innocent" image, but Coca-Cola is a young innocent, with ads sharing love, happiness, and beauty.
Li Ziqi is an image of someone who still believes in beauty after experiencing social hardship. She not only has the gift of confidence and optimism but also an extra layer of wisdom. **Conversely, most people in reality feel helpless about life, and even the purest heart cannot withstand the pressure of reality, which makes the public yearn for purity more firmly. The IP model of the Innocent** is thus more likely to gain sympathy from the target group.
After understanding the public's subconscious, Li Ziqi produced a large number of videos with the same tone and placed them on the internet, using rustic and appetizing videos to collect users' fragmented time, quickly gaining widespread user affection. Li Ziqi gradually established a deep connection with users.
This connection enhances the differentiation and sustainability of the Li Ziqi IP. With this psychological foundation among users, brand building becomes possible.
**-02-**
**The "Long-term Path" of the Brand**
When Li Ziqi had only 300,000 followers, she was discovered by Liu Tongming, founder of Weinian Technology, who "visited three times" to persuade Li Ziqi to cooperate. Later, they received investment from Huaying Capital. Huaying Capital believes that **MCN institutions that can incubate consumer brands through content can truly break through the ceiling,** and Weinian might need to "do something different."
Later, Weinian Technology also received investment from platform parties like Sina Weibo, and the team is familiar with channel strategies. This allows the IP to attract fans without over-consuming brand goodwill.
During the brand incubation process, Li Xiaodao, head of the Li Ziqi business unit, emphasized, "All brands emphasize positioning, so a brand needs to find a place in consumers' minds that belongs to it."
Li Ziqi traces back to China's thousands of years of traditional culture. **Its core is: poetic life, pastoral farming, intangible cultural heritage, and home.** These cultures are inexhaustible, and these artistic conceptions are enduring sentiments in the hearts of Chinese people.
Since ancient times, Chinese people have had food culture and the Peach Blossom Spring. **Li Ziqi's lifestyle is something many yearn for but may not be able to achieve. Just thinking about Li Ziqi's existence and her life satisfies part of the inner void.** Even foreigners who don't understand Chinese culture, after watching Li Ziqi's videos, will feel that this is an image with a strong modern contrast.
Moreover, Li Ziqi is very restrained in advertising and endorsements, and it is precisely because of this restraint that the brand has its tone. Li Ziqi's IP itself does not limit categories. **The team considered that food has high repurchase attributes and is easiest to globalize, so they decided to use food as the entry point in the early stage, naming the brand "Oriental Food Lifestyle Expert."**
After clarifying the positioning, the Li Ziqi brand hopes to let everyone feel a poetic lifestyle through products, content, activities, materials, and cultural and creative merchandise.
Pixar has a movie called "Soul," whose core is to showcase a poetic life and let viewers feel inner tranquility. Similarly, when the public uses Li Ziqi brand products, they still have to deal with life's hardships tiredly. But for a moment, they can remember that there is still Li Ziqi living poetically in this world, and occasionally experiencing it is enough.
**-03-**
**Humanized Food Innovation**
Food twenty years ago belonged to "factory thinking," focusing on functionality; now food is "consumer thinking," focusing on emotional and psychological communication between products and consumers. **In terms of product direction, the Li Ziqi team is clear: they want to create new traditional, slow-life products.**
In product selection and innovation, Li Xiaodao concluded that **"traditional culture should be fashionable, and local cuisine should be globalized."** In the track of personal IP + self-made products, **although the Li Ziqi IP does not yet have strong competitors, the team also faces different challenges and opportunities.**
Li Xiaodao believes there are two directions: First, good products that deteriorate in quality over time need to be re-excavated and repackaged to appeal to young people. Second, certain foods that suit local tastes but may not be palatable elsewhere need to be repackaged and developed to make them popular. Li Ziqi's product vision is "Let the world fall in love with Chinese flavors."
Specifically, for products like zongzi (rice dumplings), which is one of the symbols of Chinese traditional culture, after opening Li Ziqi brand zongzi, the reed leaves can be DIY-folded into a dragon boat, placed at home as a decoration, and also enhance parent-child interaction.
Then there are local specialties like luosifen. The luosifen on the market has a strong taste, so the team developed a flavor acceptable to other regions, coupled with marketing support, achieving monthly sales of 10 million bags within a year of launch, successfully breaking out of the niche. Moreover, the Li Ziqi brand is accelerating the globalization of luosifen, and the world is gradually accepting the Chinese flavor of luosifen.
Another example is the case of lotus root starch. Previously, consumers of lotus root starch were concentrated among the middle-aged and elderly, and young people did not touch this category. After research, the Li Ziqi team added nuts and other ingredients to enhance the packaging's appearance. Although the price is three to four times higher than pure lotus root starch, it has consistently been the number one in the lotus root starch category.
Now all industries are involuted, but in Li Ziqi's eyes, food cannot be. As the brand's "moat," she still showcases a slow life. Whether these wildly growing sales and frequently born hit products can win long-term reputation and go abroad is another matter.
Source: Bizwhale (ID: bizwhale)


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