--- title: "The Past and Present of 'One More Bottle'" description: "This article explores the history and impact of Kangshifu's 'One More Bottle' promotional campaign, which was launched as a defensive strategy against competitors like Coca-Cola. While it initially boosted sales and market share, it also led to redemption difficulties, counterfeit caps, and financial strain, ultimately revealing that the campaign was a form of 'concept marketing' with actual redemption rates below 50%." author: "潘卫艳" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2014-10-14" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-past-and-present-of-one-more-bottle-02b1cc86/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-past-and-present-of-one-more-bottle-02b1cc86.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Jz4WAcjRYZYvoz_n2UcFkw" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%86%8D%E6%9D%A5%E4%B8%80%E7%93%B6-%E7%9A%84%E5%89%8D%E4%B8%96%E4%BB%8A%E7%94%9F-02b1cc86.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-past-and-present-of-one-more-bottle-02b1cc86/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # The Past and Present of 'One More Bottle' > This article explores the history and impact of Kangshifu's 'One More Bottle' promotional campaign, which was launched as a defensive strategy against competitors like Coca-Cola. While it initially boosted sales and market share, it also led to redemption difficulties, counterfeit caps, and financial strain, ultimately revealing that the campaign was a form of 'concept marketing' with actual redemption rates below 50%. Friendly reminder: Click the blue text above “FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting” to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management. 1. Why did Kangshifu launch “One More Bottle”? Besieged from all sides, it was a last resort. Although Kangshifu held over 50% of the tea beverage market, Coca-Cola, with its deep pockets, never ceased coveting and encroaching on the tea beverage market: after 1998, Coca-Cola launched “Tian Yu Di” (Heaven and Earth), which failed; launched “Lan Feng Women's Honey Tea”, failed again; launched “Sunshine Ice Fruit Tea”, failed a third time; launched “Nestle Ice Tea”, failed a fourth time; launched “Tea Research Workshop”, failed a fifth time... Truly persistent, giving Kangshifu no respite. In March 2008, Coca-Cola finally found a magic weapon—"Yuanye Tea" (Original Leaf Tea), endorsed by Jackie Chan and his son, with 34 million free samples throughout the year, its formula directly targeting Kangshifu's green tea, jasmine tea, and a hint of honey "three-in-one", and promoted directly by the US headquarters. That year, sales exceeded 100 million bottles, capturing nearly 15% market share in one fell swoop, forcing Kangshifu's packaged tea share to drop by 3.8 percentage points. Worse, Kangshifu also faced pincer attacks from Jinmailang and Uni-President. Under such great pressure, Kangshifu's own situation was not optimistic. After the noisy "Water Source Gate" incident, Kangshifu had been struggling to win back public favor, actively creating momentum to divert consumers' attention in hopes of repairing its severely damaged brand image. However, in the short term, Kangshifu still could not change the fact that its mineral water series products were sourced from tap water. With internal and external troubles, Kangshifu was pushed into a duel. However, to everyone's surprise, Kangshifu's trump card turned out to be the unremarkable "One More Bottle"! The bold "terminal decisive battle" stunned the market—no brand in history had ever offered free drinks equivalent to several times the size of competitors' markets! In just 2 months, Kangshifu successfully cultivated a market psychology—buying tea drinks without "One More Bottle" is unreasonable! "One More Bottle" quickly cornered competitors. For both distributors and retailers, preferential policies for beverages are crucial. Compared to promotions like empty box rebates, gross margin support, or prizes under caps, "One More Bottle" is the most practical for consumers and more feasible for channel partners to promote products or clear inventory. However, any follower must weigh whether they have the strength to follow. The market fell silent. Kangshifu's "defensive counterattack" turned into a frontal "group warfare" on the battlefield, instantly dissolving the "three-way siege" that had plagued it for years. When the scale of "One More Bottle" exceeded "hundreds of millions", it was enough to block challengers like Jinmailang, which were still weak, in the channels, achieving victory without fighting. Uni-President's fresh orange and other juice drinks gradually lost their leading position, with market share hovering around 20%. Kangshifu dragged all beverage companies into the quagmire of a "world war". 2. Who did the double-edged sword cut? Killing three thousand enemies, losing eight hundred of your own. While Kangshifu used "One More Bottle" to conquer territory, it also wounded itself with this double-edged sword. The "One More Bottle" that once delighted channel partners became a source of tears during the peak sales season due to the massive volume of free drinks. The 700 million bottles of free drinks forced Kangshifu to run out of stock in June 2009, and the chaos caused by 1.5 billion bottles is even more imaginable. In almost all major markets nationwide, Kangshifu and its followers faced the problem of "difficulty in redeeming prizes". In reality, for most retail terminals, the "shared benefits" of "One More Bottle" were minimal. Typically, manufacturers give distributors one free case for every 15 cases, and distributors give retailers one free bottle per case. If a case contains 15 bottles, the retailer returns 15 winning caps to the distributor and receives 16 bottles; the extra bottle is profit, which when spread over 15 bottles yields a gross margin of 0.1 to 0.2 yuan, with net profit negligible. But selling a bottle yields a gross margin of over 30%, around 0.6 to 1 yuan. The comparison is clear, and this became the main reason terminals shirked redemption. In fact, many retail terminals used tricks to separate winning products for their own use, while collecting the corresponding caps for unified redemption. In this way, terminals siphoned off this profit, and the manufacturer's marketing strategy intended to stimulate consumption was not effectively realized, even damaging brand credibility—a case of "losing both the wife and the soldiers". In the domino effect, it's never just one tile that falls. A distributor of Kangshifu beverages in the southwest region said the company accumulated tens of thousands of winning caps every month, which could only be redeemed after applying to the relevant Kangshifu manager, once every half month or month. This meant tens of thousands of yuan in payments were frozen by "One More Bottle". The terminal market was even more chaotic. Worse, a "One More Bottle cheat sheet" appeared online, teaching consumers how to win every time. Although officially debunked as "not genuine", the influx of a large number of "counterfeit caps" into the market was an indisputable fact. A wholesaler in Chongqing said: "There are specialized cap buyers in the market who can print 'One More Bottle' themselves. It's hard for general retail terminals to distinguish, and manufacturers basically don't accept fake caps." "One More Bottle" posed a huge challenge to manufacturers' reputation building. Some even asserted that "One More Bottle" would be more fatal than the "Water Source Gate", becoming a marketing poison for all follower companies! So, should they rein in at the brink or escalate further? 3. The truth of the "world war". Any corporate behavior not aimed at profit is hooliganism. Kangshifu invested huge human, material, and financial resources and made such a big fuss over "One More Bottle"—of course, not for charity. Profit is the iceberg beneath the surface. Dispelling the smoke of market warfare, let's estimate using Kangshifu tea beverages as an example, and we'll find this fact: Kangshifu claims a winning rate of 20%, equivalent to selling all products at 20% off. Kangshifu's 15-bottle case is 32 yuan, each bottle 2.13 yuan, 20% off is 1.7 yuan, of which the PET bottle cost is close to 1 yuan. So the question is, do the contents, operating costs, labor, logistics, and losses together amount to less than 0.7 yuan? If so, how could Kangshifu be profitable? But Kangshifu Holdings' annual report clearly shows that in 2009, Kangshifu's beverage revenue increased by 32.11%, and profit attributable to shareholders increased by as much as 47.16%—that is, "One More Bottle" actually gained both momentum and results. Where's the problem? The core issue behind this contradiction lies in the magical concept of "redemption rate". An industry insider who requested anonymity said that based on empirical data, the actual redemption rate for "One More Bottle" in the beverage industry generally does not exceed 50%, and some manufacturers even have rates below 10%. "If it were truly 100% redemption, no manufacturer could be profitable." From this perspective, "One More Bottle" is truly "concept marketing". In reality, product price cuts would be reflected in the financial reports of listed beverage companies, inevitably causing negative reactions from investors, while "One More Bottle" would not show obvious effects. That is, "One More Bottle" is just a disguised advertisement costing beverage companies a bit of product cost, with actual expenses far lower than our earlier estimates. Moreover, there is a very critical issue—"One More Bottle" is addictive! And this "addiction" could very well kill competitors. After Kangshifu launched its massive "One More Bottle" strategy, not only did the whole industry follow, but it also created an invisible threshold effect within the industry. Industry analysts believe that for second- and third-tier beverage companies, a massive "One More Bottle" is almost an impossible task. They can neither advance nor retreat, stuck on a tiger's back, and can only swallow their teeth. -------------------------------------- **Like this article? Feel free to click the top right corner to share to your Moments;****** About us: WeChat name: FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting Management Account intro: 20 years of FMCG distributor operation and management experience, professionally targeting distributor internal affairs: We understand distributors better than manufacturers, and we understand internal management better than distributors. 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