First of all, because of the "large number" of unfamiliar ice creams appearing in convenience stores, they were called "ice cream assassins". I put a lot of them in quotation marks, because whether it was based on previous media on-site inspections or personal experience, there w

Summary: Sky-high price ice cream monopolizes the market, do you believe it?

author | Luo Lizuan

Zhong Xuegao has been scolded on the hot search again.

has been scolded in hot searches since summer, has it become Zhong Xuegao’s fate?

This time last year, in a 2-minute interview video, founder Lin Sheng said, "It's so expensive, do you want it or not" when responding to the price of the most expensive ice cream at 66 yuan, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the majority of netizens and was scolded. Hot search.

The situation this year is even more tortuous.

First of all, because of the "large number" of unfamiliar ice creams in convenience stores, they were called "ice cream assassins". I put in quotation marks because, whether it was based on previous media field visits or personal experience, there were many ice creams in the convenience store freezer. The number of unfamiliar high-priced ice creams does not exceed the familiar affordable ice creams.

But this does not prevent many netizens from believing that affordable ice cream must be protected, so the "ice cream guard" corresponding to the "ice cream assassin" appeared. This term has also become a hot search, and it has been popular for insisting on not increasing prices for 13 years. A pack of snow lotus ice cubes only costs 5 cents.

At this time, Zhong Xuegao must appear. "If we don't eat snow lotus, our next generation will have to eat Zhong Xuegao", which has become a seemingly reasonable slogan.

The atmosphere has been heightened, but what really put Zhong Xuegao on the hot search was another message on July 2, "Zhong Xuegao does not melt at room temperature of 31 degrees for one hour." This has led many netizens to speculate that the ice cream does not melt because it contains preservatives, coagulant and other ingredients.

That night, Zhongxuegao’s official Weibo account @Zhongxuegao responded that the reason it melts and becomes sticky is because the main ingredients in the formula of this product are milk, cream, coconut milk, condensed milk, whole milk powder, iced egg yolk, etc. The product The solid content itself reaches about 40%. Except for some raw materials containing a small amount of water, no additional drinking water is added to the formula.

In other words, ice cream may remain solid at room temperature. The non-melting problem is not due to additives. The Shanghai Internet Rumor Refuting Platform and many KOLs in the food field also expressed similar opinions.

Ice cream does not melt, which is indeed a bit counter-intuitive. In order to verify (try) this statement, we also bought four Zhongxue Gao Sea Salt Coconut Coconuts from Lawson in Beijing.

After eating two control groups first, the experimental result is that after leaving it at room temperature (the room temperature in our office is less than 30 degrees, about 26 degrees) for half an hour, it seems to be slightly melted on the surface, and then it tastes better. A bit like cheese.

Zhong Xuegao’s before and after comparison of the melting degree

After leaving it for an hour, it was actually at room temperature of 26 degrees. It was obvious that the ice cream had melted, and the cool and refreshing taste of the ice cream was completely gone. It tasted very greasy.

Taken together, it is not accurate to say that sea salt coconut coconut does not melt, it just does not turn into water. Since Haiyan Coconut is conducting its second one-dollar campaign, a total of 34 yuan was invested in this experiment, with an average of 8.5 yuan per bottle.

In fact, there was no solid ice cream experiment last year, and there was no trending search for Ice Cream Assassin. However, under Zhong Xuegao’s trending search, there are still a large number of netizens scolding this internet celebrity ice cream. While everyone sincerely recalled the cheap and delicious food in their childhood, they accused Zhong Xuegao of "cutting the leeks if they were not delicious."

Perhaps Zhong Xuegao’s frequent “overturns” are not so much due to dissatisfaction with price and quality, but rather because the “Ice Cream Hermès” persona it established is too ostentatious. In the process of its attempt to transform from an Internet celebrity into a brand, Once a flaw is exposed, the original weapon for getting out of the circle becomes a sharp blade piercing the heart.

Another plot that is exactly the same as last year is that Zhong Xuegao still ranks first on this year’s 618 ice cream best-selling list. In fact, any healthy industry ecology requires products with various positionings from high-end to mass market. The popularity of this new high-end product not only benefits from innovation, but also comes from the young people's interest in "pleasant consumption" in the past two years. "The pursuit of.

This is a market that is still growing steadily. The Green Agriculture and Food Nutrition Professional Committee of the China Green Food Association and Yuan, the market size ranks first in the world.

At the same time, judging from the market share of the top five brands in total retail sales in 2021, Yili , Menglong , Kaidoo, Mengniu and Wufeng have a total market share of approximately 30%, The market concentration of is not high. In other words, there will still be various new products to find blank market positions. It is precisely because of this that Moutai ice cream entered the market this year.

As for sky-high price ice cream creating a monopoly, this possibility does not exist in a free competitive market. Cost-effectiveness has always been a solid advantage, and we have never seen high-quality and low-priced products on the market replaced by high-end brands.

Hermès in ice cream

With Zhong Xuegao’s brand awareness, it is not appropriate to be called the Ice Cream Assassin. Most of the black spots of this brand are “66 yuan a pop” and “love or not”.

66 Yuan for a stick of ice cream, which is naturally expensive. After all, most of my childhood memories are made of the Ice Factory, Green Mood, and Laozhong Street popsicles for 5 cents each, which cost 1 yuan a popsicle. Hi Ice Cream “is already considered a light luxury product of ice cream.

But in fact, the "Ecuador Pink Diamond" priced at 66 yuan a piece is only a limited edition released by Zhong Xuegao in 2018. Lin Sheng responded in the interview video that such a high price is because the raw materials are really expensive. One ton of Japanese grapefruit used in it costs 1.2 million yuan.

Such expensive pricing is rare in Zhong Xuegao’s ice cream family. When you open Zhong Xuegao’s Tmall flagship store , the cheapest one costs 113 yuan for 10 sticks, and the most expensive one costs 187 yuan for 10 sticks. Yuan, this price is certainly expensive for ice cream, but it is far less bizarre than "66 yuan a piece" sounds like.

What’s interesting is that in the ice cream market, there are many ice creams that are similar to or even more expensive than Zhong Xue’s. For example, and Luxue sell Menglong and Thousand Layer Snow ice creams for 16 yuan each, and Heytea popsicles for 15 yuan each. The price of Haagen-Dazs is more than twice that of Zhong Xuegao. Including the Internet celebrity ice cream Zhongjie 1946 and Madiel that Lin Sheng once created, both are ice creams with prices above 10 yuan.

But why is only Zhong Xuegao so criticized?

This is probably related to Zhong Xuegao’s consistently high-profile product strategy . Zhong Xuegao, which was only established in 2018, has integrated Lin Sheng’s marketing genes into its bones from the beginning. The name is homophonic with "中文字幕", and the shape is like a tile. It is born with the label of domestic product and a high success rate.

When Zhong Xuegao was first established, he invited a large number of Xiaohongshu KOLs to taste the products, and even brought ice trucks to the building where Xiaohongshu is located and distributed them to Xiaohongshu employees and KOLs to taste and ask them for their opinions.

And its first appearance in the industry that year was because of the 66 yuan "Ecuador Pink Diamond". The cost of this ice cream alone was close to 40 yuan. After 15 hours of being online, all 20,000 copies of the limited edition were available. It sold out and ranked first in the ice cream category. Zhong Xuegao was also named the Hermès in the ice cream industry.

has launched limited editions with high prices and unique tastes, coupled with high-profile social marketing, and adjectives such as expensive, high-end, and internet celebrity have become traffic labels that stick closely to Zhong Xuegao.

When Lin Sheng later publicly reviewed the incident, he mentioned that the two most important points were to create breakthrough products with scarce raw materials and unique flavors, and to launch tastings for Xiaohongshu and Taobao KOLs at the same time. . After

tasted the benefits, Zhong Xuegao continued to reuse his successful experience and released limited editions every season. It cooperates with various well-known or Internet celebrity brands such as Luzhou Laojiao , Martell , Three Squirrels , Nayuki's Tea , etc., and continuously launches limited co-branded models.

Lin Sheng concluded that if Zhong Xuegao introduces 30 products to the market, then 20 of them need to be limited edition topical products, which will be sold for one day; or if they are seasonal products, they will be sold for one season. All products can be produced in cycles, but cannot appear on the market at the same time.

This kind of limited-time hunger marketing has increased the scarcity of Zhong Xuegao in the market, and many flavors will be sold at higher prices after they are out of stock. For example, in the first half of last year, Zhong Xuegao launched three desserts, including "Zhi Mei Long Li", "Heni Cheese Cheese" and "Xing Yu Nian", with prices as high as 68-88 yuan. However, the weight of one dessert is 3-3 times that of ice cream. 4 times. During the sale period,

must be paired with basic ice cream just like Hermès distributes its products. Because there were only more than 20,000 boxes prepared, and after they sold out quickly, scalpers sold it to 199 yuan per box, which tripled the price. It made people sigh, "Is this really the Hermès in the ice cream world?"

In fact, Haiyan Coconut is also a co-branded model, belonging to the "Youth Series" jointly developed by Zhong Xuegao and the National Olympic Sports Center, but the pricing strategy is obviously different from the past. The current price of Jingdong is 68 yuan for 4 pieces. Because it focuses on low sugar, low fat and higher protein content, it is Zhong Xuegao’s best-selling product this year. Sales exceeded 20 million yuan in just 72 days after it was launched.

Ingredients list of Zhong Xuegao

The problem is that it is not that the general public wants to target Zhong Xuegao in many high-end ice creams, but that Zhong Xuegao has tightly tied the luxury tonality from the early days of his birth. It has used this highly topical character to complete its outings again and again, constantly refreshing the sales record of ice products online.

Therefore, when the public discovers that Zhong Xuegao’s character design of “scarce raw materials and high-end products” is actually watery, it is like seeing the famous lady from Xiaohongshu who has a white and beautiful character every day. In fact, she is carrying a fake bag. She used to show off her Personality is a powerful tool to get out of the circle and attract fans. At this moment, it has become the most worthy of attack and attracted the most firepower.

From Internet Celebrity to Public

In addition to people setting their standards too high, being scolded may also be the inevitable fate of an Internet celebrity brand in the process of constantly getting out of the circle.

In this wave of crusade against Zhong Xuegao, comments such as "It's not as cute as , and Northeast Big Board ", "Isn't the old popsicle and ice factory delicious?" and other comments abound. There was even a topic "How delicious is the ice cream for less than five yuan?" which directly reached the fifth place in the hot search.

These comments expressed anger over Zhong Xue’s high prices and alleged fraud. But from another perspective, it also shows that in the process of constantly leaving the circle, Zhong Xuegao has finally crossed over to a consumer group that does not belong to it at all.

Although it has been scolded badly, it is difficult to ignore. In the past three years, Zhong Xuegao's sales have grown at an average annual growth rate of 350%. In the just-concluded 618 Big Sale, Zhong Xuegao ranked first in the 618 Tmall ice category for the third year in a row, and simultaneously won the top sales of the Tmall fresh food category and the ice category of JD.com POP stores. Ranked first in sales. In addition, Zhong Xuegao also ranked first in Douyin ice cream brand self-broadcast sales, Douyin e-commerce rankings, ice cream industry hot hits list and recommendation list.

This shows that the fastidious Zhong Xuegao is very popular among a considerable number of people.

Who is supporting Zhong Xuegao’s growth? According to FMCG reports, consumers who buy Zhong Xuegao are mainly women aged 20-29, who are also the main users of Xiaohongshu.

This group of people has an economic foundation and is willing to pay more expensive prices to pursue individual trends and quality consumption. Zhong Xuegao, who is expensive and sophisticated and also sells limited editions, has locked into their consumption ideas trained by big names in beauty and skin care with one click.

From the perspective of market strategy, Zhong Xuegao followed the high-end trend route and also used the topicality and taste gimmicks of the product to find a blue ocean in the existing ice cream market.

In the first half of 2019, Zhong Xuegao also launched the secondary line Li Daju, which mainly sells for 6-12 yuan, but it was buried among the many cute and Qiaolezi , and failed to generate much buzz.

This may also reflect that Zhong Xuegao is not good at the affordable route that relies on offline channels and cost-effectiveness. He chooses to avoid the affordable ice cream market that is firmly occupied by old brands such as Yili and Luxue, and uses creativity and topics Getting out of the circle is the way to survive for Zhong Xuegaoneng.

But now Zhong Xuegao has passed the stage of settling down as an Internet celebrity brand. It sold 48 million ice cream sticks last year. What it has to consider now is how to cross the billion sales level and become a real brand. Popular ice cream brand.

The market size that e-commerce channels can cover is limited. After all, the threshold for spending hundreds of yuan to buy a box of ice cream is much higher than the threshold for spending more than ten yuan to buy one offline. Therefore, Zhong Xuegao in the 2.0 stage must not only continue to break the circle online, but also cannot give up occupying the broader offline market.

Starting in 2019, Zhong Xuegao began to expand his offline stores, and then settled in Convenience Bee , 711, Daily Fresh and other convenience stores and chain supermarket channels. But when Zhong Xuegao puts ice creams ranging from a few yuan to more than ten yuan in a freezer for all consumers entering the convenience store to choose, what it has to face is more intuitive and harsh competition. .

Therefore, after entering offline, Zhong Xuegao also began to encounter more and more complaints and abuses. In fact, the raw materials and cost price of the "Ecuadorian Pink Diamond" that was criticized this time were made public a few years ago. But why is it still causing so much controversy? In fact, it shows that Zhong Xuegao has finally reached those people who have never consumed it.

Lin Sheng once mentioned in "Randian·Fight to the End" that from 2019 to 2020, their users have been enlarged from one million to more than 20 million. Last year, they will clearly feel that users are responsible for them. The rating was higher than the previous year, which put him under a lot of pressure.

"The product is the same. Many people think that the more you sell, the better it will be. But no, it will bring a side effect called brand dilution." Just like the question Lin Sheng raised at the mid-year meeting: "Everything is different." He is doing well, but why is Zhong Xuegao becoming more and more mediocre in the eyes of the public? "

Accepting more and more scrutiny, controversy and demands is something Zhong Xuegao will continue to experience at this stage. To a certain extent, being scolded on hot searches in the summer can be seen as a necessary pain for Zhong Xuegao's expansion.