In 2015, Uni-President launched a total of 15 new beverage products. After a review, I found they cover almost all beverage categories: tea, juice, comprehensive drinks, coffee, and premium water. You can see photos of the new products below.

The product lineup has suddenly transformed from relying solely on Assam as the single hero product to a wolf pack strategy. What is the underlying reason for this shift? Is it due to immense performance pressure or a keen sense of the consumption upgrade trend? Let's analyze this in depth.

1. Completely Breaking Away from Traditional Thinking, Increasingly Fresh Feel

The mainstream consumer group for beverages is mainly people aged 15-35, i.e., the post-80s, post-90s, and some post-00s. This group has a high acceptance of new products, is not averse to personalized and high-quality products, and has strong purchasing power.

From the overall industry development perspective, a consensus among all practitioners is that under the influence of the information flood in the Internet era, the pace of product iteration across the industry is clearly accelerating.

After rapidly developing new products around user needs, Uni-President is no longer just naming products from a product perspective, such as calling it "Xiaoming Classmate" instead of "Uni-President Cold Brew Tea," or "Hai Zhi Yan" instead of "Uni-President Sea Salt Drink." Instead, it completely differentiates from competitors at the brand level.

At the marketing level, it better aligns with young people's tastes, deeply linking product positioning, packaging, and names with the hot topics that young people care about. Leveraging Internet communication, it greatly shortens the time for consumer awareness. Once launched, products are both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. It must be said that it has completely broken away from traditional thinking and is increasingly fresh.

Editor's Comment:

Following the trend, FMCG is facing a dual transformation: consumption upgrades and the rise of Internet culture. Rapid iteration and new product launches to cater to consumers in need of upgrades is a timely and accurate marketing strategy.

  1. The rules of the game in FMCG marketing are changing. Whether to change or not is no longer solely decided by the company. The trend is unstoppable; whoever opposes the trend will perish.
  2. In the Internet era, what has changed is not only the way users access information but also the amplification of personalized demands and the acceptance of high-quality products.
  3. In FMCG, the rules of the game in sales management and brand promotion are being rewritten. Whoever can establish an efficient operating system under the Internet will survive the fittest!

2. Kangshifu Still Relies on the Same Flavor

While Uni-President is striving to launch new products, Kangshifu is still relying on price increases for old products to boost profits and quality upgrades to reduce the uncertain risks of new product promotion. It is clear that Kangshifu's strategic focus is on increasing profits!

We all know that in the FMCG industry over the past decade, marketing theory has been deeply influenced by Kangshifu's channel cultivation, with a firm belief in the terminal supremacy strategy. Channel cultivation has also helped it achieve great success in China, beating its little brother Uni-President for years. But times have changed. Now, labor costs in China are rising, and the diversification of channels brought by economic development makes terminal management increasingly difficult. Doing terminal work is easy, but doing it well is not. Kangshifu will find it increasingly difficult to expand the depth and breadth of terminals through intensive cultivation. The voice within the industry to return terminals to distributors is growing louder. And Kangshifu's huge management inertia makes change not easy.

3. Uni-President's Weakness:

There is a famous saying in the FMCG circle: "Whoever is closer to the consumer is farther from competition."

For a company to succeed, it must bridge two distances between the product and the consumer: the distance of the heart and the physical distance. For a product to succeed in the market, both are indispensable. What Kangshifu cannot break out of is exactly what Uni-President lacks. The three high characteristics of the food and beverage industry—high homogenization competition, high convenience requirements, and high visual conversion—have not changed much in essence in the Internet era. After years of competing with Kangshifu in channels, it seems that Uni-President has not made much progress in the channel aspect.

The rapid launch of new products in clusters, to streamline channels and terminals and enable products to quickly reach consumers, is definitely a huge challenge for Uni-President!

However, the advantage of new products lies in high gross margins. Fundamentally, if the product is not problematic, profit is the best motivation for distributors to quickly distribute. What Uni-President needs to focus on is coordinating advertising and product exposure.

Poll:

Uni-President's product superiority vs. Kangshifu's channel supremacy—like the Heavenly Sword against the Dragon Saber. I dare not make a hasty judgment here. You can present your views and PK with others to see which marketing model is superior.

I have briefly listed the 14 series of new beverages Uni-President has launched this year:

  1. Hai Zhi Yan
  2. Ru Yin
  3. Xiao Ming Tong Xue
  4. Ya Ha HEY, Lang Duo series:
  5. Wei Shi Ke
  6. Yi Shang
  7. PLAN N Ci Fang
  8. Assam Xiao Nai Cha
  9. UNIYES Tou Dao Zha Ye Zi Zhi
  10. UNI SPORT
  11. Xiao Ye Nai Cha
  12. Ai Kua
  13. Ba Ma Quan
  14. He Cai

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