Discussing the impact of a missing department on enterprises As emerging products of the past two years, Seeyoung and Saky have gained some fan attention and quickly risen to occupy a certain market share. However, when trying to advance to a higher level, they find themselves powerless. Seeyoung Following the Old Path of Meifubao Seeyoung, a shampoo and hair care brand launched by Guangzhou Huanya Group, is another rapidly rising domestic brand after Bawang, and is currently the leading domestic shampoo brand. Seeyoung was planned by the famous marketing guru Mr. Ye Maozhong, who introduced the concept of "silicone-free," quickly sparking a silicone-free trend. Even international giant L'Oreal followed suit with silicone-free shampoos, showing Mr. Ye's planning ability. Seeyoung is a product very much in Mr. Ye's style. It hired Korean celebrity Song Hye-kyo as its spokesperson, and with the popularity of "Descendants of the Sun" in 2014 and the rumors of the Song-Song couple, it greatly benefited Seeyoung's brand promotion. Combined with overwhelming advertisements on major TV stations and the Seeyoung Theater, Seeyoung was at the peak of its popularity for a time. Besides high exposure, Seeyoung also has excellent quality. In the recent incident in Hong Kong where six P&G products were found to have excessive dioxane, Seeyoung's products were repeatedly mentioned in many articles—no dioxane. Seeyoung can be said to have proven the quality of domestic shampoos. While Bawang is half-dead due to negative news, Slek is declining day by day after Seba was acquired by Beiersdorf; as for the once-famous Liangzhuang, Hedi, and Dihua Zhixiu, they are nowhere to be found, and Yunnan Baiyao's Yangyuanqing is struggling. It can be said that Seeyoung is the undisputed domestic No.1. Despite being such a good product, when I asked industry beauty experts for their opinions, the consensus was: not optimistic, considering Seeyoung a muscle product of Huanya. The relevant people basically agree with Lao Na's opinion: product marketing relies on advertising, and product sales rely on promotions. They push too hard but lack grounding, failing to truly resonate with consumers' hearts. Actually, Huanya has had precedents. Back then, Huanya's Meifubao was also extremely popular. It once created a sales myth of 3.5 billion yuan with a marketing team of 50 people. However, such glory lasted only 3-5 years before fading away. Some say this is due to the natural life cycle of products, but is that really the case? In the current beauty market, the mainstream brands are still those with history. Even with product upgrades, Huanya's Franic didn't achieve further breakthroughs. Saky Under the Moon Saky toothpaste, under Guangzhou Weimeizi Group, is definitely another dark horse in the domestic toothpaste industry. Compared to the century-long history and strong government support of domestic king Yunnan Baiyao, Saky's founders Wang Ziquan and Cao Rui'an can be said to have started from scratch. Wang Ziquan is a well-known operator in the daily chemical industry. He created the industry miracle of DICAI. Compared to Wang Ziquan's extroverted and unrestrained personality, Cao Rui'an is more introverted and rational. He has an almost obsessive pursuit of product quality, which has created the good quality of Saky toothpaste. In terms of marketing methods, the two also have different promotional styles. Cao Rui'an prefers a teaching and problem-solving approach, so he created the concept of Saky oral beauty. Unlike other companies' promoters who immediately talk about product discounts, Saky's promoters first diagnose the consumer's oral condition and then provide solutions—recommending the appropriate toothpaste for the consumer's specific problems. This greatly increases consumer acceptance, improving the transaction rate and average order value. (It's rare for a small company like Saky to be so enthusiastic about public welfare) Moreover, Saky teaches consumers how to use toothpaste effectively and how to pair toothpaste with toothbrushes better. It truly popularizes the concept of oral care to consumers, unlike Crest, Colgate, and Zhonghua, which just launch new products with different gimmicks without explaining the differences. Unlike Cao Rui'an's promotional style, Wang Ziquan prefers a high-profile, people-intensive strategy. The unique city campaign involves concentrating all employees in one city to launch a focused attack, aiming to multiply store sales in that city by four to five times in a short period, boosting customer confidence. Wang Ziquan often goes to stores himself to guide promoters on how to shout sales pitches. The two founders' personalities—one fiery, one icy; one unrestrained, one rational—complement each other well, which has helped Saky improve its performance year after year and consistently rank among the top five oral care brands. Saky's innovative small-head toothbrush also led a new trend. Although Saky is successful in both quality and promotional methods, it is following the old path of Blue Moon—over-relying on modern channels and promotions, with weak brand power. Brand power cannot drive sales, so it relies more on price wars to attract consumers. In fact, Blue Moon has the same problem: big promotions lead to big sales, small promotions to small sales, and no promotions to no sales. Without brand power, besides modern channels, traditional channels are basically absent. Brand power cannot drive sales. Do You Know Consumer Promotion? Why do two such good products fail to achieve further breakthroughs? In Lao Na's view, both products lack a crucial department—the promotion department. Any product has both push and pull activities. Sales push the product to the end. Whether through media advertising or low-price promotions, it's just to push your product to consumers through distributor channels or e-commerce channels. That's the role they play. Sales and brand advertising serve to make consumers aware of your product. The promotion department, on the other hand, pulls consumers to your product, conveys your brand to consumers, and makes them willing to buy your product and recognize your brand. It plays the role of bridging the gap between product and consumer, building a bridge between them. Many companies have a one-sided understanding: What's the use of a promotion department? It's just doing some boring consumer activities and building brand terminal image. My sales department can do that too. Seeyoung and Saky are typical examples of this. The sales department handles consumer activities. Unsurprisingly, they all choose low prices as the best approach. In essence, your consumer activities are just folding promotional policies into discounts, aiming to get people to buy. You think that once they buy and use the product, they'll come back for more. Wrong. Consumers only care about your activities, which make them feel they've gotten a psychological bargain. This cannot solve the problem of brand positioning in consumers' minds. A true consumer promotion activity should consider how many consumers participate, how online and offline activities are combined, and how much information is conveyed to consumers. You might think this data is hollow and not as satisfying as sales figures. But I tell you, sales only represent your present, not your future. You might have good sales today, but die tomorrow. This is the result of sales departments doing consumer activities—turning good brand communication into low-price promotions. I often see colleagues from Seeyoung and Saky showing off their sales achievements at events, or someone buying hundreds of yuan worth of products at once. Those only show that there are many bargain hunters. It does no good for your brand communication or long-term development—so you have to keep launching new products and cutting prices, falling into a vicious cycle. A similar case is a beverage company that, when the concept of fresh coconut juice was hot, signed a first-tier movie star and invested heavily in advertising. This boosted distributor confidence and attracted many uninformed distributors to take on the product. With a series of moves, distributors paid 700-800 million yuan. At the end of the year, they calculated profits and felt it wasn't worth it. So they cut advertising in the second year, and stopped altogether in the third, relying only on low prices. The result was stagnant sales and declining profits. A Bit Foolish Master Kong In contrast to Seeyoung and Saky is Master Kong. This company is strange; many people hope it dies. But not only has it not died, it occasionally shows signs of revival with rising profits. Some say it's because Master Kong has good channel control. Is that really all? Can good channel control alone make consumers think Master Kong's rock sugar pear, iced tea, green tea, etc., are the most authentic? Can it make its Sauerkraut Beef Noodles ratio close to 1:1 with Uni-President's? Behind this is Master Kong's strong market promotion team, constantly educating consumers. Yes, they only do consumer education, not considering sales. Many companies can't understand that Master Kong only assesses the number of points and sessions of promotional activities each year, never sales. So if an activity is rained out, you have to make it up on a non-weekend day; Master Kong does the most product sampling; every time you see their activities, you feel they are "spending more than they earn," aren't they "foolish"? Even more foolish, they organize campus competitions like street dance contests, band selections, singer selections, and even marathons for instant noodles, giving the impression of "typical fools with money." Well, it's this fool, with such investment, only assessing the number of people influenced and participants. It turned PepsiCo from loss to profit; it made its copied products quickly win consumer favor; it made its new products quickly loved by consumers; it slowed the empire's decline and occasionally gave those juniors who look down on it a beating. This is the power of Master Kong's brand and consumer promotion. It likes the way you can't stand it but can't eliminate it. This article doesn't intend to stir conflict between sales and promotion departments, but to tell you that professionals should do professional work. The difference between great companies and opportunistic ones lies here. Of course, some companies do have promotion departments, but they have them open points and let sales do promotional activities, which I can't understand even more. Are you creating a new species by copying a cat but drawing a tiger? Without the special forces of the promotion department, companies can only rely on the infantry of salespeople to conquer the world, often suffering heavy casualties. You should know that modern warfare is no longer the era of infantry conquering the world; there's no chance for infantry to use bayonets, let alone block machine guns. The consumer activities your salespeople execute are just adding a bunch of damp and moldy bullets to the infantry. Placed there, they look intimidating (uninformed distributors might pay you and listen to your boasts). But when it comes to battle, they're all duds. What will be the final outcome? You can imagine. Source: FMCG Front Page (ID: nalanzt) The 2017 (3rd) FMCG + Internet Conference will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme "New Forces, New Ecology," inviting 1000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, and 100+ investment and financing institutions to jointly explore a new chapter of cross-border integration! Click the links below to review the highlights of the first and second FMCG + Internet Conferences: 2016 "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum -END-