This article is a transcript of Wang Jinghua, founder of Miduo Big Data Engine, sharing his speech on "The Underlying Logic Behind 10x Growth for FMCG Brands in the DT Era" at the FDIC 2018 China FMCG Digital Innovation Conference.
At the beginning of the conference, Wang Jinghua posed a question. Have you noticed that in recent years, the baijiu (white liquor) market has been sluggish? Moutai, Wuliangye, and Luzhou Laojiao are no longer the focus of public opinion. Instead, Jiangxiaobai, an "outlier" in the liquor industry, has been sweeping the market like a dark horse since its inception, with average sales growth of 100%, expanding from Chongqing to the whole country, and even to the internet. Some say Jiangxiaobai's success is due to its copywriting and is accidental, but I think that's not the whole story.
Additionally, as the two giants of China's dairy industry, Mengniu and Yili were once evenly matched, fiercely competing in a "battle of dragons." However, in just the past four years, Mengniu has been overtaken by Yili, and the gap is widening, reaching 11 billion yuan. The reason behind this is inseparable from Yili's precision marketing. Wahaha was once a "unicorn" in the beverage industry, but in the past three years, its revenue has plummeted by 20.8 billion yuan, a cause worth investigating.
Facing new changes and environments, some FMCG companies choose to ignore them, while others actively embrace them. In essence, the FMCG industry needs a recasting—recasting companies' understanding of themselves and their users, using reconstruction thinking to find a growth system that fits the company, and exploring a MOM (complete integration of online and offline, where all online and offline data and everything merge into one ecosystem).
In the past, companies' operational behaviors, marketing models, and products often borrowed from competitors. In today's market environment and consumer groups, with the new generation of consumers gradually becoming the main force in the consumer market, these new-generation consumers have significantly changed their definition of brands, causing the entire FMCG industry to enter an adjustment period. The industry needs to adopt a different mindset—reconstruction thinking—by breaking free from past experience constraints and avoiding meaningless homogenized "struggles" with peers. With a "reset" mindset, shift business operations from "product-centric" to "user-centric," and re-examine industry and corporate opportunities.
If 2017 is called the "first year of new retail," then 2018 is the year new retail lands. More and more FMCG companies are joining the new retail wave, and few are drowning; instead, many are riding the wave. More and more FMCG companies are using new retail to reconstruct their business strategies to meet the challenges of the changing times. Reconstructing "people, goods, and scenes" to achieve "what you see is what you get" for users through new retail transformation. Indeed, for companies to continue succeeding, they need a more sustained consumer insight system, and new retail is one such system.
Looking back at successful FMCG companies in 2018, their business and marketing models often first "touch the heart," conveying products to consumers through scenarios; secondly, they have "good looks," catering to consumer demands; then, marketing must be self-propelled with traffic, making consumers willing to spread the word, and refining marketing activities based on consumption scenarios. Only when marketing is highly aligned with consumer consumption scenarios will consumers actively spread it. Jiangxiaobai is a typical example.
The content of this sharing is divided into the following 10 major sections:
1. In the past, there were no niche markets; in the future, there will be no mass markets.
2. New retail is not a trend; it's a trend.
3. What does the DT era mean for the FMCG industry?
4. Four business forms for FMCG enterprise transformation and upgrading in the DT era.
5. The prerequisite for deeply binding customer relationships is the establishment of a user account system.
6. The prerequisite for social clustering and consumption scenarioization is the privatization of user data assets.
7. Products are the most direct "bridge" between brands and users.
8. Break through "known barriers" and reconstruct the understanding of One Product One Code.
9. "Big middle platform, small front desk" big data operation strategy.
10. Summary—The underlying logic behind 10x growth for FMCG brands.
In the past, there were no niche markets; in the future, there will be no mass markets.
Changes and inflection points in the FMCG market breed new opportunities, but a complacent mindset will lead to problems when changes and inflection points arrive, causing missed opportunities and leading "industry leaders" onto the wrong track of "failing because of success."
This is an era that calls for individuality. In recent years, with the rapid rise of the middle class and the emergence of the post-90s, post-95s, and post-00s generations, personalized consumption trends have gradually emerged. This new consumer group is no longer satisfied with simple functional products; they have higher aesthetic abilities and more personalized needs. They pursue freshness, uniqueness, originality, design, and personalized customization.
Compared to homogenized, mass-market products, they are more eager to highlight their unique taste and inner personality through niche, distinctive brands.
As this consumer force grows, the "long tail" phenomenon in the sales market will become more pronounced. Mass consumer goods serving everyone will be rapidly differentiated, and niche brands serving niche demands will become the next economic explosion point in the commercial market.
Small but beautiful hits have gradually become mainstream, while the old "big and bulky" products are not favored. Taking Wahaha as an example, its performance has declined by 50% in three years, while niche products have succeeded smoothly, continuously verifying a fact: In the past, there were no niche markets; in the future, there will be no mass markets. The so-called niche is nothing more than "mass with smaller sales volume"; in the future, there will be no mass markets; the so-called mass is nothing more than "cross-border popular niche."
Only by segmenting markets based on income, gender, and age as basic criteria; and niche markets based on shared subcultures, similar values, and similar "Three Alls and Five Senses" (Three Alls: all-weather, all-scenario, all-experience; Five Senses: sense of existence, sense of participation, sense of ritual, sense of honor, sense of happiness) as basic criteria, can we find new breakthroughs and help brands better gather consumers under multi-line intertwined business expansion strategies.
The niche consumption trend is more of an opportunity than a threat for small and medium-sized enterprises, as it indicates that the era of "big fish eat small fish" is over, and the era of "small fish eat big fish" is coming.
Especially in the context of new retail reconstructing "people, goods, and scenes," brands should pay more attention to being people-oriented, creating product added value based on user needs, to achieve long-term sustainable development.
New retail is not a trend; it's a trend.
After understanding the impact of new retail driving industry reconstruction and the niche economy's "small fish eat big fish," let's further explore the essence of new retail. What is new?
Before that, let's try to explain new retail in one sentence: New retail is driven by new technology and big data, centered on the user account system, using data to reconstruct "people, goods, and scenes," achieving what users see is what they get, enhancing user experience through technology, shortening the distance between brands and consumers, and more quickly improving consumers' awareness and loyalty to the brand.
Compared to the past, brands committed to new retail transformation now pay more attention to user value, user management and experience, and the degree of consumer data mastery. In the past, communication between traditional enterprises and consumers was often fragmented, unable to directly contact end consumers, and had to rely on media or channel partners for interaction. Obtaining first-hand user data has always been difficult. The emergence of new retail is to reconstruct "people, goods, and scenes" to achieve what users see is what they get.
What does the DT era mean for the FMCG industry?
Since we believe new retail and the niche economy are the future trends, let's consider a proposition: New retail is a product of the DT era, but why has "data" become the battleground of the DT era, a must-fight for every player? Why is "data" the primary productive force for brands in the DT era?
Reviewing the four productivity revolutions in human history:
- Steam engine revolution (capacity revolution)
- Electric power revolution (energy revolution)
- Information technology (IT) revolution (efficiency revolution)
- Data technology (DT) revolution (value revolution)
It is evident that in any productivity revolution, the first 20 years are spent building the infrastructure for the productivity change, to change individuals' work methods and living habits; the next 30 years are spent empowering market entities, to change their business methods and operational efficiency. We must deeply recognize who the market entities are—they are brand owners. All channels and terminals serve brand owners; this is the essence.
The shift from efficiency revolution to value revolution is also driving the reconstruction of the FMCG industry. This means that regardless of size, brands are all standing on the same starting line, with equal resource endowments and equal opportunities. If you can't figure it out, consider how the rise of niche products is forcing the once-dominant leaders to change.
In the DT era, in terms of business operations, all FMCG brands must transform from "product-centric" to "customer-centric"; having the operations team of FMCG companies possess internet thinking and embedding internet genes into business behaviors is the key to success. In the future, the second half of the DT era, niche markets, community marketing, personalized products, and maker-style operations are the trends for "growth." After understanding that FMCG companies need internet thinking and the transformation from "product-centric" to "customer-centric," we then consider how to transform.
First, understand the business forms for FMCG enterprise transformation and upgrading in the DT era.
- FMCG enterprise transformation and upgrading unfolds in four dimensions: "point, line, surface, and body."
- More than 99% of FMCG companies will evolve into "new species."
- Only a very few FMCG companies can become industry reconstructors.
- The disruptors of the FMCG industry will definitely come from cross-border attacks.
- Those responsible for linking will definitely be the monopolists of internet application infrastructure.
The core concept to achieve these four points is that companies must implement: One Center (centered on the user account system); Two Basic Points (normalization of One Product One Code application & privatization of user data assets); Four Online-izations (employee online, product online, customer online, management online); Four Modernizations (enterprise platformization, brand personification, product personalization, all-staff makerization).
FMCG companies must treat the normalized application of One Product One Code as a top-priority project; this is fundamental!
For FMCG companies, if they use first principles to return to the essence of things, before reaching the peak of the first curve (here, the peak refers to the company's own comparison), cross the non-continuity, find the "second curve" that leads to the company's second takeoff, and ensure the second curve begins growth before the first curve reaches its peak, to compensate for the resource consumption (time, money, and energy) in the initial stage of the second curve, then the company's growth will be smooth. (For traditional FMCG companies, the most important thing for the growth of the second curve is the "user-centric" business transformation and the privatization of user data assets.) Otherwise, like a headless fly, they will be disoriented and fall in the "survival of the fittest."
We've talked a lot above, always emphasizing the importance of data. What implications does this have for FMCG companies? From the use of Alibaba's Taobao and JD.com, the higher the user usage frequency, the more precise the push from Taobao and JD.com to that user, almost achieving 100% precise push for "rigid needs." This is based on backend data analysis and collection. For traditional FMCG, the same can be achieved, just in a different way.
In the DT era, the biggest challenge and most urgent problem for the FMCG industry is to change from "people looking for goods" to "goods looking for people," with user experience at the center, data-driven reconstruction of "people, goods, and scenes," achieving "what you see is what you get" for users. Establishing a data collection and application system centered on user experience is becoming the strategic turning point and 10x speed change point for FMCG brands transforming into new species at this stage.
For any FMCG brand, collecting user data through One Product One Code, using data to gain insights into users' "small certain happiness," and finding the next 10x business growth point based on "niche" and "community" is the lowest cost, shortest path, and most effective key path at this stage.
Why have we been emphasizing the importance of data and the privatization of user data assets for FMCG companies?
From Alibaba's layout in the DT era, its core competitiveness can be summed up in two "all's": All online platforms not centered on the Taobao account system are either acquired or swallowed and refrigerated; all offline channels not centered on the Alipay account system are either invested in or controlled and then transformed. The only purpose behind this is to build a "Maginot Line" of user data asset privatization centered on its user account system.
In short, under this system, whether brand owners rely on giant online channels or the current "new retail" for marketing, the data ultimately belongs to the giant platforms, and the ownership of user data is not with the brand owner. This is unfair.
The consumer data of brand owners should belong to the enterprise itself. Therefore, brand owners need to establish their own user account system to achieve the privatization of user data assets.
The biggest difference between new retail and traditional business models is that in the traditional model, consumers are one-time and lack interaction; new retail allows users to continue consuming and provide feedback on products and market conditions, especially collecting and analyzing the big data generated by users' product usage, and turning data into productive forces.
Data has existed for hundreds of years. Why are we now emphasizing its importance to brand owners? Because this data is not the same as before. The data mentioned in the DT era specifically refers to "live data" centered on the user account system. This is why we often say that in the new retail era, we must transform from product-centric to customer-centric, and data is an important basis for enterprise transformation.
The prerequisite for deeply binding customer relationships is the establishment of a user account system.
If brand owners want to achieve the "user-centric" transformation, they need to build a user account system, where users actively trigger different scenarios to collect their "original data, scenario data, behavior data, and transaction data", and use this data to penetrate various business behaviors and drive decisions.
If brand owners want to be "customer-centric," they must master user data. "Without data, it's all empty slogans."
In the DT era, data is the raw material, computing is the productive force, and the internet is the production relationship. In the DT era, data will ignite the next marketing revolution. Just as nuclear energy differs from wind and water energy—both generate electricity, but the former's energy produces geometric fission—the significance of data to marketing is the same. To win in the future marketing revolution, you must firmly grasp user data. Through the "fission capability" of data, combined with precise "community marketing," you can rapidly expand brand awareness and increase user loyalty to the brand.
In the second half of the DT era, I prefer to call it the era of big data and social networking, an interconnected era centered on users. The length of the consumer lifecycle, their needs, and their love for the company leading to recommendations have become the core of the enterprise, hence the emergence of BAT.
This also illustrates a point: The earlier a company focuses on users and values user data, the faster its value iterates to a new valuation model: user data x number of users = enterprise value. At this point, the core of improving business efficiency becomes: user data, matching different scenario marketing decisions, formulating strategies tailored to individuals (groups), ultimately achieving continuous operation of the user's full lifecycle.
In the past, marketing was extensive. After occupying a marketing channel, you didn't need to look at the effect; you just looked at performance. But now, the wind vane has changed. Occupying a channel with just a product is not enough. It's not that products are no longer important; they are more important. What matters is how to make the product carry its own traffic and IP, making the product 1+1>2, exceeding the product's own premium.
Products are the shortest path for each brand to communicate with users, with the lowest cost and highest efficiency. The establishment of strong relationships wins unlimited business opportunities (first purchase rate, repurchase rate, and word-of-mouth) and imagination space for the enterprise.
The prerequisite for social clustering and consumption scenarioization is the privatization of user data assets.
In the DT era, products are content, users are media, brands are personality, and data is value. Products are 1, communities are 0. Communities can multiply commercial value to realize your business value. Based on products, establish connection points so that every product sale can achieve a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Let's return to the discussion of "user-centric." For traditional enterprises, "social clustering and consumption scenarioization" are becoming the basic cognition that traditional enterprises must possess for transformation and upgrading in the DT era.
Content is the core driving force to penetrate social clusters, and brand personification is the key to activating scenario-based consumption. The essence of marketing is the deep "seizure" of consumers' fragmented time in targeted scenarios within social clusters. Where consumers' attention and time are, there should be brand exposure and investment.
For consumers, it's not enough for a brand to meet functional needs; the brand also needs to have warmth, emotion, playfulness, and engagement attributes. For consumers, the most important value of a product is to be "labeled" and "scenarioized," allowing it to spread in their social tools and satisfy daily scenario sentiments, not just limited to basic physiological needs. Instead, sell products based on the subculture of segmented niche markets, similar values, and consumption scenarios, keeping the brand in high-frequency interaction with all consumers.
To achieve this, all traditional enterprises must have a big data engine system that can form a user account system seamlessly and without perception in different consumption scenarios, used to collect each precise target user's "original data, scenario data, behavior data, and transaction data", and use the data collected by the account system to mine user profiles from different dimensions, different demand motivations, and different scenarios. This enables brand owners to accurately segment groups, redefine and package products based on data, recreate products and services, and plan and expand a lean product line.
This helps traditional enterprises embed internet genes into their business behaviors, use internet thinking to connect online and offline application interactions and experiences without changing the existing channel structure. Different from traditional promotion models, data-supported marketing activities help brand owners achieve explosive growth in brand communication and marketing.
Use internet thinking to connect online and offline applications without changing the existing channel structure; innovate marketing strategies to achieve brand communication and marketing growth; or seize the opportunities of different types of channels and terminals rising and falling in the industrial structural transformation, fully utilizing information technology and internet genes, as well as new marketing concepts, methods, and tools such as self-media and communities, to supply products and services to customers who represent future trends and markets.
Scale effect + zero marginal cost will be the most basic elements of all great businesses. At the initial stage, what needs to be done is to form a closed loop of "links" (products link users, users link users, users link brand owners) to unleash the true value of marketing. One Product One Code is the key element linking them and the most convenient way to help brand owners establish a user account system.
But for traditional enterprises, this sounds almost impossible. It is understood that many traditional companies are not really traditional; their operations also have internet thinking (user thinking), but they lack a platform for establishing a user account system and a platform for user data collection, leading to limitations in their ideas.
Products are the most direct "bridge" between brands and users.
In the internet era where customer acquisition costs continue to rise, with the total number of market users roughly unchanged, everywhere is a red ocean.
So, in a market where "the cake is this big, and more people are dividing it," how to acquire customers and how to maintain each user painstakingly acquired has naturally become a headache for many brand owners. They spare no expense to launch "bombardment" promotions, but the final result is that at least 50% of marketing costs are wasted, and fans/users haven't grown.
Many companies mistakenly believe that seed users are the first batch of users, initial users. As long as there are enough users, brand promotion and marketing effects will be better. This leads to a problem. When promoting new products, they always want to occupy the market with "crazy bombardment," wishing everyone could become your seed user. But in the end, a group of people are cheering and watching, while another group actually pays, resulting in half of the marketing costs being wasted.
In the true sense, real seed users are those who can continuously pay attention to the brand and stay, and can produce a certain "ripple effect" to attract more users. Whether your product functions are perfect or not, they are willing to experience and try new things, and are happy to provide feedback and optimization suggestions.
Over time, traditional marketing methods often suffer from poor quality, low precision, and mismatch of seed users, leading to significant deviations in brand owners' data analysis. However, 80% of traditional enterprises still cannot find more effective methods to acquire and retain users.
I believe: "The closest and most direct bridge between consumers and brands is the 'product' itself. Products are the best entry point for communication, and products naturally enable full interaction with consumers. Turning 'product sales' into 'brand traffic' is the first communication channel that CMOs should pay attention to."
Looking at the traditional "one more bottle, one more can" promotion methods, they are merely promotions for the sake of promotion, with no data feedback. All user data and sales data are in the hands of terminal channel partners (or even terminals have no data). The communication between brand owners and end consumers is fragmented. This model cannot establish two-way interaction between consumers and brands. To put it bluntly, such traditional promotion methods can only increase sales for that month or quarter. But in the internet+ era of marketing, this is far from enough, after all, this is an era where "data is king."
Marketing in the internet+ era should treat products as a traffic entry point, transforming the most primitive "one more bottle" into interactive marketing activities where consumers feel a sense of participation, allowing consumers to enjoy benefits while interacting with the company and leaving personal information data (user profiles). This enables companies to better understand what consumers like through user profile analysis, how brand marketing should be done, and who the target consumer groups are.
One Product One Code is the entry point for FMCG brands to interact and market with users and channels, the core source of precise user data assets, and the origin of building a marketing growth system.
Break through "known barriers" and reconstruct the understanding of One Product One Code.
In this code-scanning era, through the information transmission after each scan, enterprises can save a lot of terminal communication costs, and each promotion message can be precisely delivered to consumers. Moreover, each scan connects the scanner, who is the real consumer group. "One Product One Code" collects real consumption data, including core user information and profiles. Only when brands firmly grasp the first-party data of users can they achieve the business essence of "deeply binding users."
The simplest way to achieve this goal is "One Product One Code." Through One Product One Code, transform products into touchpoints that form relationships with consumers, treating products as traffic entry points for internet+; this way, the terminal route can be turned into a "honeycomb," allowing companies to better understand product flow, endow products with marketing functions, and reduce investment in intermediate links.
One Product One Code is the entry point for FMCG brands to interact and market with users and channels, the core source of precise user data assets, and the origin of building a marketing growth system.
"One Product One Code," as the name implies, is to put a unique QR code on each product, i.e., the product's digital ID card, containing information such as brand, product name, batch number, marketing activities, anti-counterfeiting, anti-channel conflict, and traceability marketing. When consumers purchase the product, they also purchase this digital ID card itself. However, many traditional enterprises still have cognitive blind spots regarding the data value and technical understanding of One Product One Code, such as:
1. Thinking One Product One Code is just an ordinary tool: Although the application of One Product One Code is no longer unfamiliar, unfortunately, many brand owners still treat it as a simple tool for scanning codes to receive red packets. They think anyone can do One Product One Code on the market, scan to get a red packet, and sell the product.
2. Thinking One Product One Code is just a phased promotional tool: A certain liquor brand client, when first contacting Miduo last year, confidently said that there are many companies doing One Product One Code promotions on the market, and Miduo had no advantage. They even listed two other technical service companies and chose one of them. However, in the first half of this year, they replaced that company with Miduo, saying they had a new understanding of One Product One Code. Previously, they purely understood One Product One Code as promotion. The initial effect was good, but after half a year, they found the scan rate dropped significantly. Finally, through diagnosis and analysis, the prizes hadn't changed, but consumers had developed a fatigue towards the prizes. This cost them a high price. Once the promotion budget stopped, sales declined, and nothing was accumulated!
His deep realization: One Product One Code is not just for promotion; it also involves brand customer management, data capture and retention. They are highly correlated, and it's a process of quantitative and qualitative change for the brand.
Let's talk about two more phenomena. Many brand owners, when choosing One Product One Code, casually choose a tool. Due to the system's immaturity and poor user experience, consumers complain about the brand, and the brand owner suffers instead, as follows:
3. Thinking One Product One Code red packet costs are high, with a "earn five, lose one" marketing: For example, before the product is launched to the market, the code has already been scanned at the factory. Also, after customers scan the code, they just get money. Many brand owners say they can't afford to give money now. Actually, for users, what they need is not just a red packet, but more importantly, effective interactive experiences and effective purchase reasons.
4. Thinking One Product One Code data is useless: Many One Product One Code software lack a user management system, cannot automatically build a user account system at the moment of customer scanning, and fail to organically link with official account fans, turning the scanned data into a pile of dead data with no mining value.
These are the common misunderstandings in the application of One Product One Code, thinking it's a simple tool or software with no use. In reality, One Product One Code is the best entry point for zero-distance, barrier-free, low-cost interaction between brand owners and consumers.
Behind a true One Product One Code is a user account system.
Just like building a mall more than ten years ago, each company might spend a few thousand or tens of thousands to build a mall, but in reality, there was no traffic. Finally, Tmall used 30,000 people to build a mall, iterating daily, organizing the entire operation logic in an orderly manner. Now, when people mention e-commerce, they think of Tmall and JD.com.
In summary, we can basically get a clear understanding: fans and members belong to the brand. One Product One Code is not just promotion; it also involves brand customer management. Brand owners can enhance interaction between the brand and consumers by linking scan activities and interactive games!
How to establish a user account system belonging to the brand owner through One Product One Code, deeply binding the relationship between consumers and the brand owner? The key to achieving this lies in the "normalized application of One Product One Code." To achieve this goal, it needs to be implemented in four stages:
- Implement saturation attack to establish scan awareness;
- Build a rights closed loop to strengthen customer retention;
- Embed brand interaction to seize user mindshare;
- Focus on user value, All in community marketing.
Currently, many brand owners have many confusions and complaints in the specific implementation of One Product One Code, such as: no effect, no one scans, data useless, etc. This is because brand owners have not normalized the application of One Product One Code, embedding scanning behavior into consumer behavior, and forming a rigid awareness of your product's One Product One Code.
Take Master Kong as an example: If all its products have codes, scanning a code can get a red packet, scanning a code can have any interaction, and the activity content can change every week and month. If such awareness can be formed, then all your interactive activities can be carried out more effectively.
What is the greatest value of One Product One Code? It allows brand owners and consumers to establish a zero-distance, no-perception, anytime-anywhere interactive entry point. For brand owners, they can change the promotion structure anytime in the system backend.
In the past, to do a promotion, you might plan 3 months in advance, plan for three months, print materials, and then whether the promotion is effective or not is left to fate.
Through One Product One Code promotion, many of your materials, including promotional gifts, don't need to be stocked in advance because when customers need them, they can be shipped directly from headquarters. Moreover, the One Product One Code system can achieve automated integrated shipping. Brand owners don't need to select goods or stock up; just recharge in the backend, and once you set what goods, the backend will automatically ship for you.
So when using One Product One Code for promotions, especially when competing with competitors, you can be very flexible.
In the past, when we did promotions and interacted with consumers, many promotional gifts might be intercepted by channels, but through One Product One Code, any promotional materials won't be wasted much. Because besides the flyers that need to be distributed, all promotional gifts are shipped directly from headquarters. In other words, Miduo will ship on your behalf; you only need to control costs. And under normal circumstances, your promotion costs can be saved by more than 30% if you use One Product One Code to distribute normal costs.
In fact, in the future brand new retail era, agents will definitely disappear. All terminals will be controlled by B2B platforms. The most important thing for brand owners is to master their own user profiles to survive effectively in the future new retail era.
Only when brand owners fully understand the four stages of One Product One Code can they understand its greatest value; only by "cognitively" understanding the normalized application of One Product One Code and that each product's code is a user account system can they "apply what they learn."
At this point, everyone might still be half-understanding, but it's not hard to see there's still a confusion: For traditional enterprises, how to establish a user account system? How to batch acquire seed users at the lowest cost? How to achieve quantitative and qualitative changes in brand premium?
This brings us back to thinking about the underlying logic of One Product One Code. As we just mentioned, many brand owners' current One Product One Code is only a phased promotional tool. The internal logic is not solid, easily leading to cognitive blind spots in the data value and technical understanding of One Product One Code application.
Using the brand owner's WeChat official account as the carrier, build a user account system; through the normalized application of One Product One Code, each product behind is a precise fan. Scanning the code to receive a red packet requires following the official account, reverse-channeling scanning users to the brand owner's WeChat official account platform, helping brand owners acquire customers at low cost and in batches; through One Product One Code to achieve "privatization of user data assets," the brand's quantitative and qualitative premium is achieved.
The underlying logic of One Product One Code is: One center, "centered on the user account system"; and two basic points, "normalization of One Product One Code application and privatization of user data assets." Brand owners must treat the normalized application of One Product One Code as a top-priority project, because this is the "live data" support foundation for traditional enterprises to transform from "product-centric" to "user-centric" in the DT era, and it is the first and most important step for traditional enterprises to achieve the "four online-izations" in the DT era, namely: employee online, product online, customer online, management online. This is also the basic condition for traditional enterprises to reconstruct "people, goods, and scenes" with data-driven approaches, achieving "what you see is what you get" for users, and it is the most core condition.
Reviewing the content just now, it's not hard to see that in today's material abundance, the material attributes of products are no longer the sole pursuit of consumers; they pay more attention to how to "play." In the era of customer sovereignty, enterprises should forget selling points and find buying points, finding customers' "itch points" and "pleasure points."
Ten years ago, it was a channel war; now it's a user war. Rather than a user war, it's better to say it's a tug-of-war over user data assets. The competitors of enterprises are no longer peers, but the ever-changing consumer groups and consumer demands in the market. This is the direction for enterprises to reconstruct and start over.
"Big middle platform, small front desk" big data operation strategy.
In the future, all enterprises will become such organizational structures:
Small front desk: Sales personnel have strong individual combat capabilities. Everyone is strongly connected to headquarters through the big data engine system, not because they are capable themselves.
Big middle platform: The marketing team mainly focuses on the big data engine system, placing data collection points through One Product One Code and API interfaces in all original scenarios. Data granularity becomes finer, data accumulation increases, multi-dimensional data analysis models around the user account system become more complete, and data applications become more intelligent.
Rich ecosystem: Channels, terminals, advertising companies, manufacturers, and even logistics partners are closely integrated around the brand's own user account system. Customer satisfaction determines the existence value of the ecosystem.
Co-governance: In the future, even the smallest brand will have its own big data engine. All brands will center on their own big data engines, mutually serving as platforms and ecosystems, linking through API interfaces, supervising each other with their respective users at the center, and deciding whether to link based on user value. All staff as one gun, laying a solid foundation for maximizing single elements.
Summary—The underlying logic behind 10x growth for FMCG brands.
Finally, to summarize, in the face of the ever-changing "mindset" of consumers in the new retail market, how should enterprises center on their own "user account system," use data to reconstruct "people, goods, and scenes," achieve "what you see is what you get" for users, and ultimately achieve the underlying logic behind 10x growth for FMCG brands? Wang Jinghua summarized this sharing into 11 viewpoints:
1. In any productivity revolution, the first 20 years are spent building the infrastructure for the productivity change, to change individuals' work methods and living habits; the next 30 years are spent empowering market entities, to change their business methods and operational efficiency. We must deeply recognize who the market entities are—they are brand owners. All channels and terminals serve brand owners; this is the essence.
2. In the DT era, all brand owners must transform from product-centric to customer-centric. What does customer-centric mean? It means all data must be derived with the customer as the origin. Simply put, it is centered on the customer's account system, where customers actively trigger scenarios to collect users' "original data, scenario data, behavior data, and transaction data," and use this as the center to decide various business behaviors of the brand.
3. What is brand owner new retail? Centered on the self-owned "user account system," use data to reconstruct "people, goods, and scenes," achieving "what you see is what you get" for users. Brand owner new retail focuses on user value.
4. The era of the Internet of Everything is an exponential economy. The most important thing for brand owners is to pay attention to the brand index formed by your users' "original data, scenario data, behavior data, and transaction data" derived from the account system on various platforms. Be sure to create content based on user value, because the quality of content determines the competition for users' "time" and "mindshare." Content is the core driving force to penetrate communities.
5. The two important moments when brands contact and influence users are both around "products": The first moment: the scenario of seeing and purchasing the product; the second moment: the scenario of using the product. Therefore, users at these two moments are your most important seed users. You must occupy them first. Implementing One Product One Code across the entire product line based on content, interaction, and privileges is the first step in brand transformation retail.
6. One Product One Code is the handle for the Internet of Everything in the IoT era, the zero-distance, barrier-free, low-cost native entry point for interaction and marketing between brands and channels, terminals, sales guides, and users, the first source of precise user data assets, and the origin of building a secondary marketing system.
7. One Product One Code is a top-priority project. Successfully implementing the One Product One Code strategy must be based on "one center" and "two basic points." One center is: centered on the user account system; two basic points are: normalization of One Product One Code application and privatization of user data assets.
8. The essence of business operations is "deeply binding customer relationships." Building a marketing system based on "normalization of One Product One Code application" is the most important, lowest-cost, and most effective primary way for traditional brands to transform to new retail. Customer management based on "privatization of user data assets" is the ultimate pursuit of traditional brands transforming to new retail. In the DT era, all marketing system construction of traditional brands must be based on a user account system; this is the king's way.
9. In the future, there will be no distinction between internet companies and traditional companies. All companies are traditional companies with internet thinking and internet genes. All brand owners must first achieve the "four online-izations": customer online, product online, employee online, and management online, to ultimately achieve the "four modernizations": enterprise platformization, brand personification, product personalization, and all-staff makerization. This is the ultimate choice for every traditional brand in the DT era to undergo nirvana.
10. Traditional brands transforming to new retail, choosing One Product One Code is not a simple tool. Its underlying layer is a big data engine based on a user account system, an engine based on user data, reconstructing a heart to mobilize all blood (data). Only in this way can the enterprise's brain (decision-making layer) freely command all neural networks.
11. In the IT era, every successful enterprise needed an ERP software to reconstruct the finance department, integrate the purchase, sales, and inventory supply chain centered on "products," improve internal operational efficiency, and achieve "cost saving." In the DT era, every successful enterprise needs a big data engine to reconstruct the marketing department, create a community ecosystem based on "people, goods, and scenes" centered on "customers," occupy user mindshare, and achieve "revenue generation."
Through this sharing, I hope everyone can "break through known barriers," have a new understanding of One Product One Code, and understand that behind One Product One Code is the brand's own "user account system" as the center, using data to reconstruct "people, goods, and scenes," achieving "what you see is what you get" for users. It is centered on the "what you see is what you get" of terminal scenarios, using data to reconstruct "people, goods, and scenes," achieving user convenience. Everyone must be clear that in the second half of the DT era, product marketing revolves around "users" and "scenarios."
And the foundation of all this is to establish the brand owner's own user account system, achieve the privatization of user data assets, and then through data collection and analysis, operate the user's full lifecycle. All data must be created based on the user itself; otherwise, users and data are both lifeless.
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