Affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies faced huge operational pressure in the first half of 2020 due to reduced store traffic and declining consumer spending. Entering the second half of the year, the crisis of uncertainty still lingers. As the first internet food FMCG brand to surpass the 10 billion yuan threshold, Three Squirrels also faces challenges. However, outstanding entrepreneurs are always better at finding opportunities in crises and thriving. In a speech titled "From the Traffic Era to the Content Era: The Next P&G Era Has Arrived", Squirrel Dad Zhang Liaoyuan shared his in-depth thinking and implementation methods for building new brands as Three Squirrels transitions from a single brand to multiple brands. Before diving into the main content, here are three key conclusions: 1. The FMCG industry is transitioning from the traffic era to the content era. With the emergence of new content entry points like short videos, the old marketing chain has been broken. The past marketing models of "building sales through brand" and "building brand through sales" are being replaced by the new model of "integration of brand and sales". Under the new model, the efficiency of linking products to users has been greatly improved, lowering the barrier for building new brands and accelerating their growth. This means the "New P&G Era"—a once-in-20-years opportunity—has arrived. 2. To seize new opportunities, build new brands. Three Squirrels has summarized its "Three New Strategy" (New Brand = New Product x New Design x New Marketing), which means achieving new products through new processes, new appeal through new design, and new reach through new media. Among the "Three News", new products serve as the foundation, with efficiency stacking and amplifying at each level. 3. To seize the "New P&G" era. Three Squirrels must change its cognitive path dependency of the past 8 years: it must forget the traffic era and embrace the new content era; it must get used to slowing growth and embrace new sustainable development; it must learn to do subtraction and maintain strategic focus, doing harder things, truly achieving "1 meter wide, 1000 meters deep". The following is an excerpt of Squirrel Dad's speech, shared with you in hopes of providing some inspiration. (There's a bonus at the end*: Dad's video explaining the brand innovation formula?) -01 - The "New P&G Era" of Multi-Brand Synergy Has Finally Arrived "Why doesn't Three Squirrels do multi-brand?" Many people have asked me this question. Previously, my answer was usually just one sentence—the opportunity hasn't arrived. Why do I say that? Over the past 15 to 20 years, the internet has reshaped the world, but in the FMCG sector, there are not many emerging companies that have reached the 10 billion level, and emerging snack brands at that level are even rarer. Whether it's Daliyuan (founded in 1989) or Want Want (officially entered the mainland market in 1992), the barriers built by these traditional snack giants remain hard to shake. The reason behind this is that building a brand requires going through the process of "awareness—purchase—loyalty". Many brands fail to overcome the barriers, often because they fall at the "awareness" stage. If users don't recognize the brand, the rest is impossible. Today, with the internet entering the short video era, the "awareness-purchase-loyalty" closed loop has formed for the first time, which is very exciting. Three Squirrels has also made a major transformation, from single brand to multi-brand. We now have our own zoo. In addition to Three Squirrels, we have four new "animal brands": Xiaolu Lanlan, Yanglege Maohai, Tiegongji, and Xixiaoque. Of course, this is an extremely difficult path, but it's something we must explore in the face of the era's opportunities. Once we establish the new model, we will launch more animal brands. -02- What is the Omni-Channel Marketing Era? What Does It Mean for Brand Entrepreneurship? From a marketing perspective, let's look back at the past 20 years and see what methodologies those successful brand-building companies have used. Based on different methodologies, we can roughly divide them into three periods: 1. TV Era (representative case: P&G): Building sales through brand, i.e., establishing brand awareness through TV media and achieving sales

  1. Core element: Product advertising
  2. Core channel: Supermarkets
  3. Core strategy: Occupying advertising entry points. If I occupy the TV advertising entry point, I occupy user mindshare, thereby leveraging various sales terminals. In this stage, you must first establish brand awareness to achieve sales, so the core positioning method is the more segmented the single product, the better. 2. Graphic and Text Era (representative case: Three Squirrels): Building brand through sales, i.e., first selling products through internet graphics and text, then forming a brand
  4. Core element: Product word-of-mouth. We let users buy products at a high cost-performance ratio. For example, when we first met users 8 years ago, we enhanced the consumption experience with accessories included in the package. These experiences that exceeded user expectations helped us form word-of-mouth, and the rise of social platforms like Weibo and WeChat stimulated word-of-mouth spread.
  5. Core channel: E-commerce
  6. Core strategy: Occupying traffic entry points. As long as I occupy the traffic entry point, sell products, and establish word-of-mouth points in the process, I can generate publicity through social media. Compared to the TV era, which suited segmented single products, this stage favored full-category strategies. At that time, Taobao's traffic allocation was mainly based on store traffic weight. If you compare Taobao to a super mall, no matter how users browse, they first see the number one in each category. Once a brand seizes this traffic entry point, it only needs to continuously add quality products to the pool to further lock in consumer purchasing power. 3. Video Era (the omni-channel marketing era of "Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, Zhihu, Bilibili, Taobao"): Integration of brand and sales Yes, it's not "integration of brand effect and sales effect"—we changed one character. Because in the short video era, the communication and sales chain has shortened, and brand promotion and sales are fully integrated. We can establish product awareness through short video content and quickly achieve precise sales.
  7. Core element: Product contentification. Product contentification is different from product advertising. Product advertising is about condensing into one sentence within limited time. Product contentification is continuously enriching content under the same positioning. For example, an educational product can have potential users see dozens of different pieces of content in a day to guide them to download the app. That's product contentification.
  8. Core channel: Diversified
  9. Core strategy: Occupying content entry points. As long as you occupy the product content entry point, you can precisely and quickly sell products to users, achieving integration of brand promotion and sales, changing the marketing chain. It's certain that new media forms represented by short videos are occupying more user time and cultivating new habits. This form can link products to users more efficiently, making new brands grow faster and lowering the barrier to entry. This stage requires every product to be contentified, achieving content as product, product as traffic. Therefore, product positioning must emphasize a certain group's urgent need in a certain scenario. Under this focused product positioning, you can make your content richer. To summarize, any change in marketing model will affect or even reshape the entire chain. The restructuring of new elements will stimulate new value. Compared to the past, the main changes in the content era of omni-channel marketing are shortened marketing chains and traffic changing at any time due to content. In this context, for Three Squirrels, crisis and opportunity coexist. The danger is that the three models we used to excel at—product model based on micro-innovation, operation model centered on traffic, and single-brand model—no longer adapt to the new era. The opportunity is that the "New P&G Era" of multi-brand synergy has finally arrived. Transformation is imperative. -03- New Brand = New Product x New Design x New Marketing So, in the omni-channel marketing era, how to achieve "integration of brand and sales"? For this question, Three Squirrels' answer is a formula—New Brand = New Product x New Design x New Marketing. This is what we internally call the "Three New Transformation Strategy", which means achieving new products through new processes, new appeal through new design, and new reach through new media, with each layer stacking and amplifying. 1. New Product: Achieving new products through new processes Three Squirrels has gone through the full-category period, and we have a comprehensive understanding of the food industry. We have two food research institutes and a set of supply chain technologies. This solid foundation allows us to exert richer creativity at the new product level. At the new product level, we have made the following attempts. Achieving new products through micro-innovation processes: Making micro-innovations in formula application, packaging processes, labels, and flavor upgrades to form new selling points and new content. Examples include the flavor innovation of white peach dates, the dry-wet separation packaging of daily nuts, and the formula upgrade and portioned packaging of the cat food brand Yanglege Maohai. Achieving new products through supply chain technology: Shortening the sales chain through direct shipping to shorten sales cycles, and using cold chain supply for functional innovation, such as launching 15-day short-shelf-life products made to order. Achieving new products through cross-industry process application: Applying one process or formula to a new field to create new products. For example, "Nainaitian" applies canning technology to desserts. Another example is the new brand Tiegongji, which industrializes ingredients like duck blood and chicken liver that were previously not industrialized, allowing users to enjoy authentic duck blood vermicelli soup and Huainan beef soup. Achieving new products through core technology from basic research: For example, "Suan Pro" for fitness enthusiasts applies fermentation technology to room-temperature foods. After two years of development, it offers chicken breast and beef that not only have the usual low-fat, low-calorie, high-protein selling points but also are safer and easier to absorb due to the fermentation process. Of course, the other side of adding innovation is continuously doing subtraction on the product side, until fully realizing newly defined new products. 2. New Design: Achieving new appeal through new design New design includes new brand design and new packaging design. The core characteristic of both is to emphasize visuality, which is conducive to subsequent new marketing. In terms of new brand and packaging design, we are gradually transitioning to multi-branding, forming brands that represent categories and brands that represent single products, achieving new associations between each brand and product. We strive for innovation and visuality in brand names, packaging design, and scenario expression, promoting long-term accumulation of product content mindshare. For example, Three Squirrels has launched four new brands—Tiegongji (positioned as a new-generation internet fast food brand), Xiaolu Lanlan (positioned as a professional internet infant and child food brand), Yanglege Maohai (positioned as a new-generation internet domestic pet food brand), and Xixiaoque (positioned as a new-generation internet celebration gift brand). The positioning of these new brands is the result of careful consideration. If in the past, positioning theory mostly emphasized matching user mindshare, then in the omni-channel marketing era, the connotation of positioning needs to be upgraded: New Positioning = User Mindshare × Digital Mindshare. Not only must you consider user mindshare, but also digital mindshare, meaning when planning a brand, you must clearly answer: what specific group of people uses you? When answering this question, you need to consider the intelligent recommendation of digital systems. Taking Taobao as an example, Taobao is transforming from store traffic recommendation to precise crowd recommendation. So when planning your product line, you need to choose specific groups from its eight major crowd tags. This is also an important reason for Three Squirrels' transformation to multi-brand. Previously, the single brand of Three Squirrels covered too broad a crowd, and the result of being too broad is poor recommendation precision and diminished effectiveness. If the digital mindshare tags of products are clearer, then no matter which platform you advertise on, the system can better complete automatic recommendations, achieving twice the result with half the effort. This means future digital marketing will be based on precise artificial intelligence. The more precise you are in selecting crowds, the higher the efficiency. Take Three Squirrels' new brand "Xiaolu Lanlan" as an example. In the new design phase, not only must packaging and other expressions be more visual, but they also need to be interactive. Our brand IP image is a cute blue deer with big eyes, a long neck, and a bit of a quirky look. How was this image chosen? We showed different design images to one-year-old children and asked them which one was the deer. Whichever image the child pointed to and was most willing to interact with, we chose. Later promotion results confirmed this method was correct. In the e-commerce platform comment sections, many users posted photos of their children with the product, indicating the design is loved by children. In addition to design, there's also the digital mindshare we just mentioned. Xiaolu Lanlan is positioned as a professional internet infant and child food brand. Its crowd tag (mother and baby crowd) is very precise, targeting a long-missing category. If you have experience raising children, you'll notice that there was no well-known brand in the market providing professional infant and child complementary foods and snacks other than milk powder. Our brand mainly provides one-stop scientific feeding from nutritional complementary foods to infant and child snacks for children aged 6 months to 14 years. Because the products are excellent and positioning is precise, filling the missing category, the series of products developed sell very well. Xiaolu Lanlan was launched in June this year, and by August it had achieved sales of several million yuan, and should soon reach monthly sales of 10 million yuan. 3. New Marketing: Achieving new reach through new media After the stacking and amplification of new products and new designs, the final step is new marketing. The "omni-channel" in omni-channel marketing refers to reaching users comprehensively through "Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, Zhihu, Bilibili, Taobao", building user mindshare more quickly. At the same time, with short videos as the core, for Squirrel it means building normalized reach for different brands, different single products, different levels, different content, and different crowds. Through broad casting of more brands and more single products, we gradually occupy content entry points, ultimately forming a brand content promotion matrix, empowering all-channel sales, and achieving marketing model transformation and reusability. For example, our new cat food brand "Yanglege Maohai" has launched new products and new designs around the brand positioning of "care like a baby, how to achieve scientific feeding". This includes the suggestiveness of the brand name (cat owners treat cats as children), the formula upgrade of exclusive pet food (targeted research based on the characteristics of different cat breeds), the timed and portioned bag design (no longer in snake bags placed on the ground), and shortening the shelf life (from the common 18 months to 8 months). These measures make the new selling points easily visualizable. Combined with the clear tags of cat owners, we achieved very good precise marketing results through omni-channel reach. Whether on short video platforms or Taobao promotion, efficiency is high. Take the single product brand Nainaitian as another example. As mentioned earlier, at the "new product" level, it uses cross-industry processes, applying canning technology to desserts. At the "new design" level, we named the product "Nainaitian" and made it in the shape of a milk bottle, small and portable, suitable for being cute. Then, we created a series of content on "Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, Zhihu, Bilibili, Taobao". The product has been on the market for only half a year, and now Douyin views exceed 400 million, with cumulative sales across all channels reaching tens of millions of yuan. It should be emphasized here that the logical relationship among new products, new design, and new marketing is layer-by-layer amplification. So the foundation for the "Three News" is still a good product. If the product is a zero, no matter how much you amplify it later, it's still zero. -04- Change the Cognitive Path Dependency of the Past 8 Years, Embrace the "New P&G" Era This is a once-in-20-years opportunity to give birth to a "New P&G". From the traffic era to the content era, the change in marketing model poses a huge challenge for a 10-billion-yuan Squirrel, because change inevitably brings short- and medium-term pain. However, we firmly believe that the opportunities brought by transformation are greater. The new "integration of brand and sales" model can quickly establish product awareness and achieve precise sales, opening up the closed loop of "Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, Zhihu, Bilibili, Taobao". For Three Squirrels, with the emergence of this new marketing closed loop, what we ultimately need to do is provide solutions for every family's food consumption scenario. We must seize this opportunity period to complete the P&G-style upgrade of multi-brand. Seizing the "New P&G" era means that for all Three Squirrels employees, we must change the cognitive path dependency of the past 8 years: we must forget the traffic era and embrace the new content era; we must get used to slowing growth and embrace new sustainable development; we must learn to do subtraction and maintain strategic focus, doing harder things, truly achieving "1 meter wide, 1000 meters deep". (Please click the bottom right corner of the video for full screen. First published on Dad's Douyin account, welcome to follow: "松鼠老爹_章燎原", id: songshulaodie) Source: Fengrui Capital (ID: freesvc); Author: Zhang Liaoyuan If a tip is adopted, a payment of 400-2000 yuan will be made.