There is no shortcut to success; the key is to take the right path and avoid detours. Success has no fixed formula, and the method lies in your heart. Wang Dehui, with years of experience in wine marketing, shares some insights—if you resonate, take them to heart; if not, learn from them. Business does not cling to the past, and adjustments should be made without sentimentality.

1. Without Passion, There Is No Future People always need some passion. Without passion, you cannot achieve great things, let alone build truly excellent brands or create genuinely good products. For operators, passion is a noble integrity, or interest, or aspiration, or state of mind. Even if some companies achieve temporary success due to special reasons, without passion, they cannot go far.

2. Reset Your Mindset, Improve Daily The industry has entered a golden development period, as steady as the moon and rising like the sun. Many capitals are pouring in. However, do not be blindly optimistic; there is no free lunch. Competition will naturally intensify. Many entrants are like stuck in a quagmire, like a ram caught in a fence, unable to advance or retreat. Although the principles of success are universal, each industry has its own essence and basic rules. Past success experiences cannot serve as the standard for current success. Therefore, abandoning assumptions and re-examining with a zeroed mindset is a necessary task for new entrants. Mature companies should also do the same: reset to zero every day to maintain an empty cup mindset, improve daily, and accumulate small gains into great achievements.

3. Predict the Trend, Follow It The future is always coming toward you. But the future belongs only to operators who can judge the trend. There are two basic strategies in the wine industry: innovation and following the trend. Many companies are more about "following," and following can also get you meat, but definitely not the fattest part; you might even only get soup. Looking at successful companies, they are those that led the market at a certain stage, aligned with trends, and seized opportunities. Following the trend can best avoid risks. Therefore, rather than blindly pursuing innovation, it is more feasible to innovate while following the trend. Only by clearly judging the future can you truly have a future.

4. Know How to Please, with a Touch of Mischief Being well-behaved in branding and honest in business was once our creed. But in this era, how many consumers are willing to accept that? Sometimes doing marketing is like being a beautiful woman: too ladylike and dignified, and you won't be popular. It can even be said that sometimes doing branding, business, and marketing requires a bit of "mischief." Truly good operators can see through consumers, know how to please them, and cater to their preferences. Of course, leave a good impression.

5. Don't Seek Perfection, Break Through at a Single Point Wise bosses know that perfection does not exist and never pursue it. They also know what to do and what not to do. Few bosses who want to do everything do well. Successful operators are almost all masters of "playing to strengths and avoiding weaknesses," rather than "balanced development and constantly fixing weaknesses." The barrel theory focuses on the short board, but short boards are often hard to fix, and sometimes unnecessary. In the future, it is more important to play to strengths and avoid weaknesses. Make your strengths even stronger, thereby widening the gap with competitors and gaining market position. Do fewer things, do one thing well, and do it to the extreme—this is the best strategy. In today's era, as long as you do one thing well, you can change the world.

6. Not the Best, but Different There is no real standard for "good." Pursuing the best is endless. Companies should be good in all aspects, but not necessarily the best in all; the most important is to be different and distinctive. Companies, products, and brands with characteristics turn those characteristics into competitiveness, even becoming leaders in a certain field, to achieve great development. Companies differ in positioning, goals, and resources; there is no replicable success. Success is doing yourself well.

7. Simplify, Be Fun and Interesting Consumers do not want complexity; they do not need complexity, and they do not want to become wine experts. As a cultural product, wine is just a beverage. Do not make wine too elegant. Therefore, when spreading wine culture, you must advocate a simple consumption proposition. Too many formalities increase the burden on consumers. Consumers may have many reasons to buy a product, but more likely, they have only one.

In fact, simplicity to the extreme is beauty. In today's era, the simpler, the more useful. The more fun and interesting, the more accepted.

8. Ultimate Single Product, Make People Scream A diversified product structure can meet the diverse needs of consumers. But marketing is not about having many products to sell well. Real sales are not piled up by numerous single products. In fact, market experience tells us that every successful company has only one best-selling and most profitable product, which we call the "big single product phenomenon," while other products serve as supplements or auxiliaries. Companies should not compare who has more fingers, but who has a harder fist! But if the single product is not done to the extreme, it has no competitiveness. What is extreme? Treating it with the best attitude even where others cannot see. If you don't scream yourself, consumers won't scream either. Without a product that makes people scream, how can there be sales?

9. Position Small, Focus the Market Focus is the ultimate strategy and rule in the era of competition. In an age of product surplus and information overload, making consumers remember hundreds of wine products or brands is harder than reaching the sky. With continuous market segmentation, only "focus, focus again" can keep you invincible. In today's complex and competitive market, not all consumer groups are our customers, and not all distributors can become partners. You should focus on one aspect and do it deeply. Products, regions, channels, advertising, talent—all need focus.

10. Overtake on the Curve, Opportunity Won't Come Again Market resources are never evenly distributed to every company. The strong get stronger. Resources always tilt toward large companies and strong brands. Theoretically, if large companies and big brands do not make mistakes, it is hard to defeat them. If there is no industry turning point, all resources of the leader strengthen its competitive advantage. Once the industry enters a turning point or adjustment period, the "scale advantage" may become a scale burden. At every turning point, the leader has the highest probability of being eliminated. Therefore, closely monitor market progress, seize the opportunities of the times, and be ready to overtake on the curve.

11. Disrupt Tradition, Innovate Demand Disruption will be the norm of this era. The industrial age emphasized "function" and "management," promoting products through systems. Today, it emphasizes "single products," driving the system with single products. The competition between small and large enterprises should be an asymmetric war, doing subtraction. Disruptors can disrupt not because they seize the niche markets of large enterprises, but because they do the chicken-rib markets that large enterprises look down on. Rather than dividing the cake, it is better to eat a cake that no one has eaten. Large enterprises find it hard to innovate; small enterprises must innovate. Large enterprises pay close attention to consumption trends but lack the courage to innovate. Facing many future demands from consumers, they often do not know how to decide, redefine products, or fear losing existing markets. Continuous innovation is the magic weapon for sustainable development and maintaining a leading position.

12. Strategic Breakthrough, Break Bottlenecks Breaking through must be strategic, and the landing is in the product. The essence of strategy is to "break the situation"; a strategy that cannot break the situation is not a good strategy. Strictly speaking, all strategic breakthroughs are determined by purpose. Time cannot buy back the future. From a marketing perspective, nothing is impossible. When the market develops to a certain region and the brand reaches a certain sales volume, every company will encounter bottlenecks. The problems and resources at each development stage are different, which is the fundamental reason for bottlenecks. Ways to break through include strategic adjustment, brand breakthrough, image change, network reconstruction, etc. If there is no breakthrough, then it is like sailing against the current: if you do not advance, you retreat.

13. Speed Wins, Rapid Development In this era, are you still thinking about a century-old store? This is an uncertain era; the only certainty is uncertainty. Enterprise development is not planned but evolved. In this era, following the routine may lead to death. In the wine industry, where warlords are dividing the territory and the big brand landscape has not yet formed, quickly occupying the market and consumer mind is crucial. Do not hold the idea that "it's okay to have no performance now; persist for ten years and you will succeed." Seize the opportunity, act quickly, and make time your competitive advantage.

14. Build a Model That Cannot Be Copied Every successful company has its own success model. There are thousands of models, and they are vastly different. Any operational form and method that can make money is a good model, but its form determines who will go further and last longer. Models are hard to copy; they can only be used for reference. Each wine company has different resources and advantages, and their operational models differ. Therefore, each wine company should form its own development model based on its characteristics, summarize and clarify its model during development, and then amplify or replicate it.

15. Beyond Products, Brand Supreme Products belong to the factory; brands belong to consumers. Wine is an emotional and highly personalized product. Consumers find it hard to distinguish between products. At the same time, consumers generally do not seek complex cognition and prefer simplicity. Choosing by brand is the most direct. As market competition intensifies, with more categories, varieties, items, and brands, consumers have more choices, leading to confusion. At this point, brand power will become the mainstream force in purchase decisions.

16. Know Your Target, Not Everyone Future successful companies will be those that truly know who they are doing business with. Define your consumer group clearly, because you cannot serve everyone; you can only serve a portion. Knowing who your consumers are allows you to act with purpose. The future market is fragmented; some people like you, some do not. Do not seek everyone; serve those who like you. In the fan economy, 100 loyal fans are better than 10,000 junk fans.

17. Guide Consumption, Create Trends Meeting demand and guiding demand is like the chicken-and-egg question. But consumers are mostly the result of guidance. Consumers go from not understanding to understanding, from not loving to loving, from not adapting to adapting, and finally form follow-the-crowd consumption, which is more often brought about by guidance. The process of creating demand is the process of creating convenience for consumers. Therefore, for wine companies and brands, what needs to be done is to guide potential consumers, let them know us and understand us. The best effect is undoubtedly to create a consumption trend.

18. Tell More Stories, Less Reasoning Behind every product is culture. Wine is especially so. Talking about wine without culture is like a tree without roots or water without a source. Wine marketing must let culture go first. But what culture of the brand do you want to convey to consumers? What culture do you want consumers to recognize? Is the culture you recognize the one consumers recognize? Often, what you hope for is not what consumers understand and accept. Successful companies are good at telling stories; telling stories is much better than lecturing consumers with a lot of reasoning. Professionalization is not as good as popularization; being fun and interesting is the real rule.

19. Avoid Misplacement, Correct Positioning Misplacement in wine operations is everywhere, such as using high-end product thinking for low-end products, creating a high-end image, and creating scarcity value; while high-end products use low-end thinking, with selling points and image that cannot support high-end, just having a high price. The high or low price of a product is not the issue; high prices still sell, and low prices may not sell well. The key is the match between price and value. Whether it is the company or brand, channel or promotion, everything must return to its proper position, because only by positioning correctly can you be on the right track and release value.

20. Seize Resources, Occupy Minds The world is not flat; whoever rises first becomes the sun. Modern marketing is, in a sense, a battle for resources, but resources are scarce, especially public resources. Therefore, for companies or brands, it is important to seize resources. The purpose of seizing resources is to establish cognition in consumers' minds; one of the essences of marketing is to create cognition. A beautiful girl, before marriage, theoretically belongs to all men in the world, but once she marries you, she is your wife. This is resource occupation.

21. Experience Economy, Experience the Future Developed social economy, based on developed service economy, is following the "Internet" era and gradually or even on a large scale developing the experience economy. The experience economy is the fourth stage of human economic life after the agricultural, industrial, and service economies. In the future, it can be said that no experience, no marketing. Without experience, there is no transaction. Whether physical or virtual experience, it will become an important factor influencing consumption. Wine tasting is not the whole of experience; wine companies should vigorously study multiple experience forms, only then will they have a future.

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