Click to read the original article for details. Tsingtao Beer's Innovation Marketing Headquarters—this department, known internally as the 'Blue Army,' has attracted attention since its inception, and its series of marketing moves have generated their own topics and traffic. Unity of knowledge and action; uphold integrity and surprise. These are the eight characters that leave the deepest impression when entering Tsingtao Beer's Innovation Marketing Headquarters. This department, known internally as the 'Blue Army,' has attracted attention since its inception, and its series of marketing moves have generated their own topics and traffic. From creating full-wheat white beer, partnering with KFC and Pizza Hut, to launching Warcraft cans, Midnight Diner cans, and Wolf Warrior cans, the new tactics are endless, and the results are evident. For example, during this year's 618 mid-year promotion, Tsingtao Beer's official flagship store achieved the number one position in the beer category on both Tmall and JD.com. What kind of team is the Blue Army? What mission does it carry? Since its establishment, what innovations has the Blue Army made? And how does it achieve both visibility and sales? New Situation: Understanding 'Millennial' Needs China's 'millennial' consumers will dominate the consumption landscape in China and globally over the next decade, as proposed by Roland Berger and Global Blue in their report 'Millennials Reshaping Travel and Shopping Habits.' Against the backdrop of fully satisfied basic material needs, niche and personalized consumption have become keywords in Chinese millennials' consumption trends. Compared to the previous generation, Chinese millennials increasingly seek unique products that provide a sense of superiority, such as niche brands, affordable luxury, online brands, and customized products. For example, some cross-industry beverages are very popular. At the same time, young consumers are more willing to interact with brands, exchange ideas about products and brands, and begin to deeply participate in the design process of products and services. These market signals were insignificant to the company's overall business at the time, but if they are not seen, understood, or ignored, they might suddenly grow large one day. The Tsingtao Beer Blue Army was established in this context to study and pay attention to changes in the new generation, and to explore new demands and business opportunities. As Suzuki Toshifumi, founder of Japan's 7-Eleven convenience stores, said: 'Fortunately, the world is changing. Changes in the times often create new demands. By responding to the new demands brought about by changes in the times, we make it possible for the enterprise to grow.' New Organization: Empowering Through Innovation Facing this niche, segmented market phenomenon that requires rapid response, large-scale group operations are no longer suitable. Empowering new organizations and building agile teams to handle uncertainty has become a necessity. In 2014, Tsingtao Beer's Blue Army 'Innovation Marketing Headquarters' was established. In terms of organizational empowerment, Tsingtao Beer's practices are worth learning from: the marketing vice president personally leads, showing organizational attention; in team building, members are deliberately selected from non-marketing departments, as they lack inherent marketing thinking and are more likely to broaden ideas; resources are fully provided, whether for brand or communication, and needed resources can be called upon; trial and error is allowed, with free play and no overly high quantitative indicators set, to avoid deformation of marketing actions. The company did not set too many restrictions on this new department, but hoped it would boldly innovate, explore, and fully leverage its subjective initiative. The products under the Blue Army also have distinct symbolic characteristics: distinctive, niche, personalized market segments, or high-end, slow-growing categories. In terms of positioning, the Tsingtao Beer Blue Army also has its own understanding:
'First, an incubator. The Blue Army will pay more attention to future-oriented, emerging things, and new special products will be piloted here.
Second, a new engine. Whether short-term or long-term, ultimately it must contribute to corporate growth.
Third, a special forces unit. Build and lead a strong team to face various market opportunities quickly and flexibly, forming a co-opetition relationship with the existing team. This is also an important consideration in Tsingtao Beer's organizational optimization.' Around this positioning, the mission of the Tsingtao Beer Blue Army is clear: Whether it is product innovation, channel innovation, or model innovation, it is very important for the Blue Army. New Products: Brewing Distinction In launching new products, the Blue Army also needs to rehearse. Through market insight, the team ultimately chose white beer to take the lead. Why white beer? In the Chinese beer market, two categories have dominated for decades: lager and ale. Launching new products certainly requires market insight and research into mature European and American beer markets. Wheat beer is a major beer category in Europe, while in the Chinese beer market, wheat beer is just beginning. As an industry leader, Tsingtao Beer keenly perceived and seized this opportunity. After nearly a year of research, development, and planning, in 2015, Tsingtao Full-Wheat White Beer was grandly launched with the slogan 'Distinct from the first sip.' The Blue Army carried out a series of innovative marketing practices. Part One: Product Differentiation. In terms of the product itself, the taste goes without saying, as it is a new category different from the current mainstream products; in terms of image, a new European-style logo was designed to highlight elegance and refinement, distinguishing it from existing products. Part Two: Focus on emotional communication with consumers. The Blue Army successively released the 'China Craft Beer Lifestyle White Beer Book' versions 1.0 and 2.0, continuously conveying a healthy, joyful, quality-oriented lifestyle that is particular and not compromising. The key is to identify product characteristics, relate them to consumers, and dramatize them in scenarios. It is called 'scenario' rather than 'scene' because it includes not only scene-based immersion but also emotional output. Full-wheat white beer reflects a philosophy of quality life, addressing quality, taste, and individuality. For example, this year, Tsingtao White Beer further focused its brand appeal of 'Savor Craft Beer, Enjoy Life' and proposed the annual theme activity 'Savor Life, Start from the Heart.' Through online and offline recruitment of 'White Beer Lifestyle Ambassadors,' it selected popular homestays corresponding to the four seasons, arranged white beer-themed scenes, and let the recruited ambassadors personally experience the craft beer lifestyle, feeling the trendiness, joy, ritual, and happiness of the quality life advocated by full-wheat white beer. Part Three: Highlight culture and build IP. Alongside the launch of Tsingtao Full-Wheat White Beer, the Tsingtao Beer Craft Beer Community also went online. With the appeal of 'Savor Craft Beer, Enjoy Life,' the community uses images, text, short videos, comics, interactive games, and other forms, and operates through columns such as White Beer Category Knowledge Lectures, White Beer Sister Talks Craft Beer, Beer Knowledge Fun Classes, and Innovation Family Savor Gatherings, as well as activities like 24 Solar Terms Food Pairings: Beer + Food Lab short videos, internet celebrity live streaming of the Qingdao International Beer Festival, and Full-Wheat White Beer China Tour, to manage the community and conduct fan marketing. What the Blue Army wants to convey is: Drinking beer can also be a cultured, refined, and stylish behavior. Beer is not for competing (drinking games) but for savoring. To widely promote this savoring culture, the Blue Army also specially planned and designed a mobile savoring experience space, selecting key cities nationwide to provide consumers with scene-based interactive experience venues. In addition, it created the unique full-wheat white beer tasting guide 'Seven Savoring Techniques'—settle, pour, observe, smell, swirl, drink, and savor—full of ritual, also reflecting the unique texture of this series of products. But the Blue Army's goal is not limited to this. In the next 5-10 years, making white beer the third major category in the Chinese beer market and making Tsingtao White Beer synonymous with the white beer category is the Blue Army's goal. New Channels: Seeking Cross-Industry Win-Win As a very important future category for Tsingtao Beer, white beer is still an innovation in strategic categories, so channel selection still focuses on traditional and mainstream channels. The real new channel development starts with cross-industry collaboration. During the Spring Festival of 2017, news that KFC was selling beer flooded social media. Behind this event was the Blue Army's new channel expansion. The Blue Army is committed to finding completely blank channels for Tsingtao Beer, that is, can places that originally couldn't sell alcohol also try to sell it? For example, KFC has high-quality terminals, and its consumer group is mainly young people. Moreover, beer with fried chicken has become a classic CP combination. So the KFC 'Good Fortune, Chicken Dance' edition was born. The collaboration with KFC brought economic benefits, but more importantly, it enhanced brand power. The event itself was highly topical and spontaneously triggered widespread online sharing, forwarding, and discussion. This move by the Blue Army also played a good supporting role in Tsingtao Beer's youth strategy. Social communication is not the goal but the result—the result of product innovation, channel innovation, and marketing innovation. Therefore, rather than focusing on gimmicks, it is better to do solid innovation. Collaboration with leading enterprises has a good driving effect. Subsequently, cooperation with Pizza Hut went smoothly. Tsingtao Beer cooperated with Pizza Hut on a World Cup theme, launching a customized 'Good Fortune' edition, selling tens of thousands of bottles during the World Cup. This slightly high-end product might not sell that much in a year in some weak markets. As long as there is a cross-industry cooperation with a 1+1>2 effect, the Blue Army is willing to try, including Zhou Hei Ya and others. These unconventional combinations of tactics have a good promoting effect on the sales of Tsingtao Beer products and brand communication. Of course, such cooperation is selective. In summary, the following points are considered: First, the overlap with existing channels, focusing on blank channels; second, the fit with the partner brand's fans; third, the match in industry status; fourth, terminal quality; fifth, avoiding potential association and public relations risks. New Business: Promoting Private Customization The collaboration with KFC was initially aimed at channel expansion, but it also opened the door to a new business: customization. Tsingtao Beer originally did not have this business, but now customization has become a normalized, systematic operation. 1. Group Customization In exploring blank channels, the Blue Army also pondered a question: Cooperation with catering brands is still a sales channel, meaning beer is still placed there for sale. But besides that, there are many channels that do not sell alcohol themselves but still need to consume beer. Is it possible to expand into the leading enterprises in these industries and platforms? Once they thought of it, they implemented it. The Blue Army first targeted the real estate industry. Taking the cooperation between Tsingtao Beer and Vanke as an example, the real estate industry is not short of money, and some high-end products like 'Good Fortune' can enter; Vanke also has many brand promotion activities nationwide, such as the 'City Happy Run' project, with large demand; Vanke has numerous properties, and Tsingtao Beer is also doing community living rooms, so there are many points of integration; Vanke is also creating a beautiful lifestyle, which aligns with the concept Tsingtao Beer conveys... The driving effect of leading enterprises appeared again, and later Fosun, Sunac, Poly, and Country Garden also came knocking. Cooperation with these leading real estate enterprises can achieve mutual sharing of channels, brands, and communication resources, with obvious effects. As more and more brands cooperate, the Blue Army has gradually established some rules, which is also a new growth point the Blue Army has explored for the company. The customization business subsequently spread throughout the company. Tsingtao Beer encourages provincial companies to use their own resources to carry out cross-industry cooperation and various customizations. 2. IP Customization The Blue Army's customization business has also begun to reach more and more IPs. Consumers increasingly pursue niche self-expression rather than mass conformity, which creates the characteristics of segmentation and the existence of various communities, and also provides opportunities for niche fission communication and the formation of mass popularity. IP carries its own momentum and traffic, acting like a huge magnet that gathers user groups. The Blue Army's combination with the 'Warcraft' IP is commendable. First, game players with a 'Warcraft' complex are mostly 'post-80s' and 'post-90s', and they are numerous, matching the target consumer group; second, in product design, the movie poster occupies 90% of the can body, creating a strong visual impact. Compared to some brands that deliberately highlight their own elements when using IP images, the Warcraft can itself created points for player collection and topic sharing; third, it tapped into the potential of game guilds. Tsingtao Beer cleverly utilized the characteristics of the two opposing camps in the game—Horde and Alliance—to stimulate fans' 'PK awareness.' For example, on Tmall, they competed in pre-order sales, and many Warcraft players' enthusiasm was mobilized, starting to initiate group buying activities in game guilds. The store backend received orders from 'Warcraft fans' across the country, with almost every guild ordering 100-200 boxes at a time. One million cans of Warcraft beer were sold out in a short time. In addition to game guilds, platforms such as WeChat Moments, WeChat groups, QQ groups, Douban groups, Baidu Tieba, Zhihu, and even A-station and B-station, or communities and new media, all have the potential to consolidate users into operational channels. Besides 'Warcraft', there are also film and television IPs like 'Midnight Diner' and 'Wolf Warrior 2'. More and more customizations with topicality and product power appear in the public eye, as well as zodiac bottles, constellation bottles, and even private customized versions, to meet consumers' personalized and differentiated needs. 3. Private Customization Group customization and IP customization have a certain scale, so they are easier to operate. How to integrate those personalized, small-batch demands is a big challenge. 'Just putting a label on it can be considered private customization, and laser engraving is also possible, but there is no sense of design. If we can find a solution for direct-to-consumer customization, I think it will be a huge blue ocean market,' said Li Shousheng, deputy general manager of Tsingtao Beer's Innovation Marketing Headquarters. As a pioneer in customization within the beer industry, Tsingtao Beer officially launched a beer customization platform for individual users on July 27. By digitally transforming the production line and supply chain, it achieved a substantial breakthrough from enterprise-scale customization of 3,000 boxes to private customization of 15 boxes, officially entering the era of private customization. This involves adjusting the entire supply chain, and it has to be done in reverse. The traditional sales model is that you give me a plan, and I make inventory to respond to you. But for direct-to-consumer, the entire logic must change. The supply chain needs to be transformed, including can-making equipment, plate-making and printing technology, etc., all need updating; the ERP system also needs to be redesigned; data processing, order allocation, logistics sorting, etc., also need to be more intelligent and information-based. How to solve this problem? In terms of cost, the effect of scale customization must be considered; in the supply chain, upstream and downstream collaboration capabilities are needed. First, in the can-making process, can-making factories are matched with breweries nearby. At Tsingtao Beer's No. 3 Plant, the leading can-making enterprise ORG's factory is just across the road from Tsingtao Beer's No. 3 Plant. The biggest advantage is the timeliness of service, and transportation costs are also greatly reduced. Moreover, the data of upstream beer can production and beer production lines can be connected, truly achieving seamless docking, laying the foundation for faster response in customization. In the most challenging filling process, Tsingtao Beer adopts a centralized production method for orders, breaking the bottleneck of scale production for niche, high-end customized products. Based on a minimum order of 15 boxes, a thousand orders concentrated would be 15,000 boxes, matching the production line's filling capacity of over 60,000 cans per hour. At the same time, Tsingtao Beer also launched AI recognition equipment to replace manual labor with machines for accurate sorting and tracking of customized products. Tsingtao Beer's customization platform has clear phased plans, from personalized theme selection to order visualization, from choosing existing products to participating in flavor adjustment. Tsingtao Beer's response cycle will become shorter and shorter, and consumer participation will become deeper and deeper. Regarding how to integrate the huge but extremely fragmented personalized demand in the market, Tsingtao Beer proposed a solution—modularizing customization. Through data collection, for different scenario needs such as weddings, school advancement, birthdays, meetings, graduation parties, ten-year reunions, etc., different elements are extracted for consumers to freely combine, and the template library is continuously optimized, subdivided, and improved. Like Dell computers, it scales and modularizes the diverse personalized needs. Next, Tsingtao Beer will connect the entire upstream and downstream process to achieve online visualization of customized products, including when the product is filled, when it is shipped, and where it arrives. Once 'private customization' reaches a certain scale, Tsingtao Beer will also establish a dedicated production line with storage tanks at the front end of filling, allowing consumers to customize different beer liquids, from packaging patterns to beer categories, truly realizing 'My Beer, My Rules.' New Retail: Interacting with the Times As the earliest brand in the domestic beer industry to go online, Tsingtao Beer began exploring the e-commerce field in 2013. In this year's 618 mid-year promotion, Tsingtao Beer won the double crown on Tmall in the beer brand TOP10 list and the beer store TOP10 list. On JD.com, Tsingtao Beer's official flagship store ranked first in the '618 Store Ranking on the Day' and first in the '618 Store Ranking for the Whole Period,' also winning the 618 mid-year promotion crown. In addition to Tmall, JD.com, and WeChat, Tsingtao Beer has also touched NetEase Yanxuan, community group buying, and internet celebrity live streaming. In September last year, the Blue Army's e-commerce team sold over 30,000 barrels of Tsingtao Beer's customized original pulp 3L barrels through WeChat community building and Moments-based sales. During the 2018 World Cup, the Blue Army launched a 3L football barrel of original pulp. Original pulp is called the beer that brewers can drink, but its shelf life is only 7 days. In traditional multi-level channels, after several rounds of logistics turnover, by the time it reaches the terminal, the shelf life may be only two or three days left, leaving little space and time for original pulp to play. 'The way of thinking to solve the problem must change,' Li Shousheng judged. How to sell beer like selling flowers? At that time, Li Shousheng posted news of this product on his Moments. A friend in Beijing asked under the comment, and through back-and-forth, Li Shousheng realized the feasibility of social e-commerce. So the Blue Army reorganized the price system, mobilized colleagues within the company, set up WeChat groups, posted on Moments, and blazed a trail for social e-commerce. Business operates on information flow, commodity flow, and capital flow. True new retail needs to improve efficiency, reflected in functions: whether costs are lower, whether logistics and transactions are more efficient, whether product display is more sufficient, and whether it is more conducive to information communication. From this point of view, whether it is social e-commerce or live streaming with goods, whether it is the reconstruction of people, goods, and scenes by the customization platform, or the full-link marketing that connects online and offline, these are all the Blue Army's, or Tsingtao Beer's, understanding and exploration of new retail. Now, the Blue Army is also thinking about how to build an OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) business model. OMO is an industry platform business model that effectively aggregates online shared commerce, mobile e-commerce, and offline commerce, helping enterprises adapt to the development of the experience economy and changes in user needs, simplifying the way to obtain physical goods and services, and creating an online-mobile-offline trinity all-time-space experience store marketing system, enabling enterprises and users to transact and consume through various carriers and terminals. The Blue Army hopes to integrate offline resources of its own and terminal physical stores, such as community living rooms, savoring spaces, and experience stores, to let them carry product display, experience, and distribution functions, aggregating scattered, niche, fragmented market demands into large quantities and big orders. Online, Tsingtao Beer will build a platform to serve these B-end physical stores, connecting online, offline, and mobile. When the past innovative tactics become today's mature system, it can no longer be called innovation. So-called keeping pace with the times, innovation must be a continuous process of self-breakthrough. During the conversation with this magazine, Li Shousheng occasionally made marks in his notebook, such as content involving community group buying, film and television product placement, IP cooperation, etc. He also repeatedly mentioned a sentence: 'Welcome your suggestions, because we are also learning.' This reminds me of the words of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company: 'Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.' Century-old Tsingtao Beer, with a zero-based mindset, unity of knowledge and action, upholding integrity and surprise. We also look forward to the Blue Army and Tsingtao Beer bringing more distinctive tactics and ideas to the market. Source: Sales and Market (ID: cnmarket)