---
title: "今麦郎、白象 vs 拉面说:差在哪了???"
description: "As people pay more attention to healthy eating, fast foods like instant noodles are being gradually abandoned. But don't think instant noodles have fallen out of favor; they haven't. Among the rapidly popular consumer brands in the past two years, besides beverages like Heytea, Naixue's Tea, Li Ziqi, Haohuanluo's river snail rice noodles, and Zhong Xue Gao ice cream, there are also noodle brands like Lamian Shuo that focus on the ramen segment. When it comes to instant noodles, the first names that come to mind are Kangshifu, Uni-President, and the Japanese and Korean brands familiar to the public in recent years, while Jinmailang and Baixiang are relatively weaker."
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published: "2020-10-06"
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# 今麦郎、白象 vs 拉面说:差在哪了???

> As people pay more attention to healthy eating, fast foods like instant noodles are being gradually abandoned. But don't think instant noodles have fallen out of favor; they haven't. Among the rapidly popular consumer brands in the past two years, besides beverages like Heytea, Naixue's Tea, Li Ziqi, Haohuanluo's river snail rice noodles, and Zhong Xue Gao ice cream, there are also noodle brands like Lamian Shuo that focus on the ramen segment. When it comes to instant noodles, the first names that come to mind are Kangshifu, Uni-President, and the Japanese and Korean brands familiar to the public in recent years, while Jinmailang and Baixiang are relatively weaker.

As people pay more attention to healthy eating, fast foods like instant noodles are being gradually abandoned.
But, do you think instant noodles have fallen out of favor? Actually, they haven't.
Among the rapidly popular consumer brands in the past two years, besides beverages like Heytea, Naixue's Tea, Li Ziqi, Haohuanluo's river snail rice noodles, and Zhong Xue Gao ice cream, there are also noodle brands like Lamian Shuo that focus on the ramen segment.
When it comes to instant noodles, the first names that come to mind are Kangshifu, Uni-President, and the Japanese and Korean brands familiar to the public in recent years, while Jinmailang and Baixiang are relatively weaker.
Although these brands were all household names in the early days, and even Jinmailang and Baixiang had larger consumer bases, mainly because **the early brand positioning, pricing, and brand image of Jinmailang and Baixiang were centered around the lower-tier market—rural areas—with a value-for-money image deeply rooted in people's minds.**
**However, with the impact of consumption upgrades and health awareness, the loss of small-town youth, and the rise of food delivery platforms and new consumer brands, the consumer markets of Jinmailang and Baixiang have been greatly affected.** Both have attempted brand upgrades and reshaping their consumer base, aiming to become younger, enter first- and second-tier cities, and be more favored by young consumers, completing brand "self-rescue."
Youthfulness, first- and second-tier cities, and consumer preference—these are what all traditional brands want to embrace, but few have successfully transformed and upgraded. Shi Youqu has discovered some patterns and shortcomings in the transformation of old brands, which are worth referencing.
**1. Change labels and reshape brand positioning**
**First, traditional old brands are old not only because they have existed for a long time, but also because their inherent brand concepts, images, or consumer propositions when entering the mass consumer market are relatively outdated.**
Since people's entertainment time was mainly focused on television media, in the era of advertising through traditional TV, the brand content or characteristics conveyed by brands were deeply rooted in people's minds. When social and entertainment resources were scarce, many traditional brands did become famous overnight by appearing on TV.
But in the digital social era, not all labels and brand concepts are suitable for the current social environment and new consumer groups. Traditional brands that realize this **take the first step of innovation and upgrade by changing labels and reshaping brand positioning, in order to change consumers' existing perceptions of the brand and re-activate consumer interest.**
For example, Baixiang, which focused on low-price strategy, has also started to take the high-end route, and Jinmailang has launched a new sub-brand, Lao Fan Jia. Shi Youqu believes that traditional brand upgrades cannot completely reinvent themselves; incubating sub-brands is more in line with market trends.
**2. Product updates: flavors, packaging, categories**
In the past few years, we have seen many internet-famous brands rise, and many have fallen. What traditional brands disdain is that early internet-famous brands had only brand names without products, showing that a good product is crucial and is the carrier of brand vitality.
However, traditional brands have also learned from internet-famous brands' packaging techniques and have started to innovate in products. Flavor, packaging, and category can be said to be the sharp tools to capture new consumers' minds.
For example, in terms of flavor, from the changes in flavors of milk tea, ice cream, potato chips, zongzi, and mooncakes in recent years, it can be seen that novel and unique flavors are a social key to open communication with consumers. **On one hand, they cater to young consumers' curiosity; they like to try new things and seek novelty.**
**On the other hand, products with unique, fresh, and high-appearance value are also social "celebrities" that can meet young people's social needs.** For example, Baixiang, in addition to its big bone soup noodles, has also launched spicy chicken shred mixed noodles, and Jinmailang has launched Chongqing small noodles.
In terms of packaging, Baixiang has also upgraded the visual effect of its classic spicy beef noodles, enhancing the product's packaging aesthetics and quality.
Many netizens say, "It has that vibe now, looks more expensive."
Shi Youqu believes that **in the future, consumers will become increasingly picky about brands, conducting comprehensive assessments from brand values, brand behavior, and brand aesthetics, with higher and higher requirements.** But if a brand gains consumer favor and converts consumers into fans, the fan power will also support the brand to go further. So while pursuing external aesthetic consistency, brands should not forget to achieve spiritual resonance with consumers at the inner level.
**3. Celebrity endorsements and persona refresh**
Celebrity endorsements have always been one of the common means in brand marketing. **In past brand-celebrity cooperation marketing cases, the brand's purposes were basically three: first, to use the celebrity's fame to quickly open the market, mainly for brands with weak early brand power or new brands, such as Luckin's cooperation with Tang Wei and Zhang Zhen;**
**Second, to use the differentiation between celebrity fans and brand consumers to achieve a second expansion of consumption scale**, mainly for brands with sluggish consumer market growth or those developing new categories, such as Yi Yangqianxi's cooperation with BMW and Tiffany;
**Third, to strongly associate with celebrities, transferring the celebrity's image to brand personification and updating the brand's original perception**, mainly for brands with transformation and upgrade needs, such as Jinmailang's cooperation with Jia Ling and Baixiang's with Yue Yunpeng.
Actually, for Jinmailang and Baixiang, the commonality is that both chose highly recognizable comedy stars who are down-to-earth, funny, and similar in appearance. Although these two stars are well-known and can help the brand re-enter the mass market, whether they can help the brand open up the younger market and first- and second-tier cities is questionable.
In general, Jinmailang and Baixiang have both started to try to break out of their "besieged city," and reforms and upgrades are being carried out step by step, but why is there still no sign of a comeback in the mass consumer market or the youth market?
Shi Youqu believes that for the market, what is closer to consumers is brand marketing and product feedback, so brand marketing and products must first understand consumers best. In contrast, **Lamian Shuo, as a new-generation internet-famous brand, has deep insights into consumers and brand marketing strategy formulation that old brands can learn from.** Shi Youqu summarizes the following points:
**1. Lack of product matrix innovation and multi-category matching**
In the past, traditional brands relied on a single classic product to support the entire enterprise. But now this product strategy is no longer applicable. With the personalization and segmentation of consumption habits, consumers' pursuit of product categories and flavors is increasingly differentiated. For example, Jinmailang's noodle products are relatively single, focusing on the classic braised pork beef noodles, lacking innovative combinations in flavor and category.
Especially, we can see many emerging brands launch numerous products at different stages of brand growth, or even at the same stage. The product matrix approach is very common, such as classic, seasonal, co-branded, and limited editions. The speed of product innovation closely follows consumer preferences, and even leads new consumption trends.
Shi Youqu believes that in the future, competition in product innovation will be fierce on the brand track.
**2. Lack of brand topic creation and cross-border marketing**
Cross-border marketing is a marketing method that attracts much attention from young people. It is a marketing process where brands create content, spread products, and attract consumer attention. However, it also tests the brand's ability to self-produce news, communicate with consumers in a younger way, and expand brand voice.
Lamian Shuo is also relatively mature in cross-border co-branding marketing. Since the second half of 2018, it has cooperated with FGO, NetEase Weiyang, "The Perfect Restaurant," Miaoshou Huichao, Mike Rice Wine, D5 Squad, KAKAO FRIENDS, Luzhou Laojiao, 999 Ganmaoling, the National Gallery, and others, as well as the earliest co-branding with Mewei from "Qipa Shuo" in 2017.
Now more and more brands are doing co-branding marketing. **On one hand, by cooperating with brands of different tones and launching co-branded products, they can combine brand tones and expand around their own product characteristics, functionality, and consumption scenarios.** This brings them closer to consumers, makes product features concise and powerful, and also creates differentiation from other instant noodles;
**On the other hand, co-branding between brands can also achieve dual coverage of consumer groups, multiple touches, and also achieve population expansion, attracting new consumer groups for the brand.**
**3. Lack of social communication and omni-channel exposure**
**For current brands, they all need to have the ability to communicate socially with consumers and have a sense of internet trends.** Someone once said, to see if a brand is alive and well, check if there is new news about it online. In recent years, it can be seen that almost all popular brands come from the internet, such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Weibo, etc.
A simple comparison of Jinmailang, Baixiang, and Lamian Shuo on social platforms shows that Lamian Shuo has brand-related planting notes and consumer-shared videos on Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
In fact, internet-famous brands almost all focus on social platforms where young people gather—Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. They use multi-social platform planting linkage, combined with different platform content playstyles, and collaborate with different styles of KOLs or co-create interesting, life-oriented, scenario-based topics with KOCs, amplifying product features and brand advantages in the form of images and videos.
Shi Youqu believes that **if there is the biggest difference from traditional brands, it is that internet-famous brands are well-versed in young people's social marketing playstyles and can easily get among consumers. They can not only conduct one-way communication from brands, KOLs, and celebrities to fans, users, and consumers, but also leverage consumer power to help products spread autonomously and plant more consumers. Traditional brands should "get online" more.**
Source: Shi Qu Research Institute (ID: SocialTouch2020)
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