---
title: "Without Capturing the 'Business District' High Ground in a City, Brands Cannot Establish Themselves!"
description: "China's media landscape has become fragmented and pervasive, leaving consumers numb to traditional advertising. Brands and distributors must now engage consumers through experiential, in-person touchpoints. As urbanization advances, business districts have become hubs for consumer activity, offering ideal venues for brand awareness and product experience. This article discusses how brands and distributors can break into these business districts to build influence and drive sales."
author: "高级研究员 海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-10-19"
language: "en"
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# Without Capturing the 'Business District' High Ground in a City, Brands Cannot Establish Themselves!

> China's media landscape has become fragmented and pervasive, leaving consumers numb to traditional advertising. Brands and distributors must now engage consumers through experiential, in-person touchpoints. As urbanization advances, business districts have become hubs for consumer activity, offering ideal venues for brand awareness and product experience. This article discusses how brands and distributors can break into these business districts to build influence and drive sales.

China's media has long been fragmented and pervasive. For consumers, it has entered a stage of "numbness." In the past, shouting through the loudspeaker of CCTV could make a product sell well, but that no longer exists.
Consumers need media with warmth, need to experience products firsthand, and need to build cognitive fluency. So what should brand owners and distributors do, and where should they do it?
With the continuous advancement of urbanization, "business districts" have gradually become consumer hubs, offering everything from food and drink to entertainment, and are excellent venues for consumer awareness and experience. Today, I'd like to share some of my thoughts on how brand owners and distributors can break into business districts.
**Definition of Business Districts and Initial Work for Creating Model Business Districts**
**In core cities, it can be said that "those who win the business district win the city." Whether a brand has influence in a regional market depends on its overall performance in high-traffic areas.**
Modern business districts include KA (key accounts), CVS (convenience stores), MA (modern trade), restaurants, leisure and entertainment, and many other consumer venues, making them ideal for one-stop experiential services.
For distributors, a model business district must meet the following three principles:
**1) The model business district must have sufficient foot traffic density, and your product must meet the spending power of the majority of consumers.**
For example, if the average spending per person in the business district you plan to develop is a few hundred yuan, promoting a thousand-yuan bottle of baijiu there will not succeed.
**2) The model business district should include as many of your product's target channels as possible, so that future promotional activities can reach a wider audience.**
For example, if you are marketing a hip-hop style sparkling water, prioritize business districts with more venues like internet cafes, street dance studios, KTVs, bars, KA, CVS, MA, and restaurants.
**3) When selecting a target business district, you must have confidence and aim to make your product the number one brand in that district, surpassing competitors in both momentum and sales.**
The specific initial steps are as follows:
**1. Lock onto the business district and unify thinking**
Compile and compare all business district information within the region, and lock onto the initial development targets based on the three principles of model business districts.
The team should discuss collectively, instill the mindset, and understand what ultimate effect this will achieve and how it will impact everyone's sales and income.
**2. Address employee execution concerns**
The purpose of working on business districts is to use points to drive areas, focus resource investment, use advantageous terminal stores to drive disadvantaged ones, gradually erode competitors' market share, and ultimately suppress the brand's share to the lowest point. Discuss and predict the difficulties that may arise in this process and how to overcome them.
**3. Prioritize and designate stores**
Once the target business district is locked, the target terminal outlets are also locked. At this point, do not try to grab everything at once. The order of attacking terminal stores is:
**For already cooperating outlets, optimize visual merchandising to the best; for non-cooperating outlets, prioritize developing core outlets (with high foot traffic, large sales area, and comfortable environment); for non-cooperating channels, prioritize familiar channels to ensure smooth operations and prioritize efficiency.**
**4. Continuous offline activities and sustained buzz**
From the start of the business district offensive, brand promotion activities and consumer promotions should be conducted continuously, with as much momentum as possible, to support the advancement of the business district.
**Omnichannel emphasis on display to establish a high-end brand image**
**1. Modern trade channels are the face of the brand; they must be presentable**
Modern trade channels, especially KA hypermarkets, are the best windows for brand display. To comprehensively increase regional sales, the primary task is to make the brand deeply rooted in consumers' minds. Operationally, this means securing the first display position, sparing no expense if the budget allows, even at the cost of reducing regional media advertising budgets.
If the budget cannot support securing the first display position, then it is necessary to create multiple displays, exclusive displays, and vivid image displays within the store, making them large and eye-catching, ensuring that peripheral displays surround the first display.
In short, the goal is: **the first thing seen outside the store is the brand display, and inside the store, brand displays are everywhere. If not the first display, ensure multiple displays have an overwhelming advantage.**
**2. Secure high-energy point-of-sale visual merchandising and establish standardized channel displays**
High-energy terminal outlets (stores) require displays that are novel, distinctive, and eye-catching, but other channels require standardized displays; otherwise, it will be impossible to establish a unified cognitive framework for consumers, inevitably affecting display effectiveness.
For example, if you operate beverages, in traditional circulation stores, do case-cut displays, cooler displays, and shelf displays. In the restaurant channel, do large-area stacked displays and liquor cabinet displays behind the cash register. In the nightlife channel (bars, KTV), do illuminated shelf displays.
**Product display is the best advertisement for the brand, allowing close contact with consumers, building awareness through physical perception, and thereby generating transactions.**
It should be noted that with too many brand advertisements today, the best way to create consumer awareness is to build an excellent product IP, but creating a super IP requires many conditions, and success is uncontrollable.
**The simplest and most effective method: standardized, consistent across a thousand stores, repeatedly reinforcing consumer perception.**
**3. Promoters must be present next to displays**
In my view, **floor stacks and shelves are silent brand images, while promoters are vocal brand images. The combination of silent and vocal is a qualified vivid display.**
In target business districts, especially during high-traffic times, what truly attracts consumers are the promoters next to floor stacks and shelves; it is also the promoters who truly convey product information to consumers, and it is the promoters who build relationships through transactions.
Therefore, **pay attention to the selection (height, weight, attire, image, temperament, etc.) and training management of promoters to ensure consistent and accurate information output.**
**New product interaction and building private domain traffic**
The mainstream demographic in business districts is young people aged 18-35. They have strong acceptance of new things and are the main force in consumption awareness and spending power, making them the best audience for launching new products. Many brand owners organize large-scale roadshows in business districts for brand communication.
**1. New product interaction to create an experiential atmosphere**
Business districts are the best landing point for new products, and new products are also the best takeoff point for business districts. When promoting new products, brand owners invest more comprehensively than in other products. With sufficient ammunition, it is easy to deepen consumer awareness and instill the brand. A combined interactive model is recommended:
**Large-scale roadshows** (can be combined with the business district, increasing consumer participation through interactive games) + **multiple experience promotion counters** (one person per counter with multiple free samples) + **key in-store promotions** (experience + purchase with gifts), **ultimately creating a city card for this business district and this brand.**
**2. Leverage media resources to build private domain traffic in business districts**
The stronger the brand, the stronger the trust endorsement it provides to consumers, enabling "worry-free purchases." Building a brand image is not an overnight task, but combining online media to build private domain traffic can accelerate brand strength. Recommended operations are as follows:
**1) Traffic drives traffic**: If there is a celebrity endorsement, display the celebrity and product bundled extensively in the business district. **2) Content drives traffic**: Differentiate the product through culture and other empowerment, and bundle it in promotions. **3) Search drives traffic**: For example, if a product is an official Olympic sponsor, attract consumers to search for information through free sample activities to gain traffic. **4) Social drives traffic**: Brand mixers and interactive events within the business district are the best venues.
These are the unique attributes of business districts. **The essence of business is traffic; fully exploiting it and converting public domain traffic into private domain traffic is one of the most important means of building a brand.**
**Return to basics and do the foundational work well**
I have said a lot above about business district layout and atmosphere creation. To do well in business districts, you must also have solid skills and do the foundational work well, including visit and distribution, display maintenance, brand promotion, customer maintenance, and rebates. Two key points are:
**1. Strengthen distribution rate**
The distribution rate should be high, striving for 100%. For tough accounts, develop a store-by-store plan and break through one by one, leaving no dead ends.
**2. Ensure after-sales service**
Do not allow expired products; handle near-expiry products promptly. Achieve zero negative reviews across a hundred stores, and let word-of-mouth spread.
These two points are easy to understand. **The ultimate goal of business districts is to bloom in the city center and radiate to the entire region. Terminal store owners are also regular customers of the business district. If they see products everywhere in the business district and have a pleasant cooperation experience, then route sales personnel will find it twice as easy to promote.**
**Finally**
**All core cities have business districts. Business districts are the result of reasonable layouts by government urban planning and real estate companies, ultimately serving the regional population. They are the window of the city and also the window of the brand.**
**If brand owners and distributors capture the consumer base in business districts, they essentially capture the mainstream consumption orientation of consumers.**
By seizing business districts as a breakthrough to occupy the city, and then radiating to surrounding consumer groups from the business district, achieving networked interaction of points, lines, and areas, they can ultimately rapidly improve the overall distribution rate and market share in the regional market, achieving the goal of brand dominance in the region.
**Are you "watching" me?**


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