We mock the coconut trees, think the coconut trees are soil, and joke about the decline of the coconut trees... From a marketing perspective, we should not ignore the story behind this national brand with annual sales of 4 billion yuan.
With the final announcement of Coconut Tree - the advertising slogan "drink from childhood to adulthood" does not violate the advertising law. The hot topics of coconut trees have come to an end. The voices of various debates on the Internet are almost all about the pun attributes of this advertising slogan, the product design of coconut soil, and the affirmation of the taste of coconut trees...
We mock the coconut trees, think coconut soil, and joke about the decline of coconut trees... From a marketing perspective, we should not ignore the story behind this national brand with annual sales of 4 billion yuan.
1. The achievements of the coconut tree are worthy of recognition. People only admire the brightness of blooming and do not allow it to be contaminated with a little sludge. Otherwise, they will attack it in groups, but ignore the history of how this seedling rushes out of the thorns and grows into flowers. Today we will not talk about the soil and beauty of coconut trees, but look at the essence through the phenomenon - identifying the key decisions that coconut trees have grown into heroes in the 30 years since the large-scale disappearance of domestic brands, and making the right key decisions. Using copper as a mirror can correct your clothes and hats; using history as a recommendation can tell the rise and fall.
In China, successful brands always have a kind of trouble, that is, there are always some people who always keep putting their shoes on the brand openly and secretly. Always strive to make the brand meet all your preferences: quality, cheap, voice, and interest in the times...
If you are not an entrepreneur and have no business pursuits, then just laugh it off after reading it. If you expect to master the strategic path of rapid brand growth, it is recommended that you do not rush to sneer at the coconut tree. After all, the coconut tree has not only not become a cage and abandoned child for international tycoons in the thirty-year beverage transformation tide, but also has become a towering tree in the coconut milk category.
Indeed, the packaging of coconut trees is somewhat contrary to the aesthetic of the times, and the communication strategy is neither in line with cognition nor full of filth. But after 30 years of baptism of coconut trees, can they reach more than 4 billion today? Is it really only relying on these tricks?
The answer is: It is impossible, especially in the fiercely competitive beverage industry.
2. The fruit-producing beverage brand that cannot grow up
Before talking about coconut trees, let’s talk about the history of the disappearance of Chinese beverage brands. Compared with the international century-old brand led by the United States, the Chinese beverage brand Handan has only left less than 30 years of history. In essence, my country's food and beverage industry has a big gap with developed countries such as Europe, the United States, and Japan in terms of product quality, production management, business model and brand marketing level.
In China, beverages were never a mass product before the establishment of the port. Even soda prepared with seasonings was a rare thing that only the "rich" of that era could afford. Today, the production process, industry standards and marketing methods of many mainstream beverage brands in are the products of many generations that have been eliminated in developed countries.
And abroad has long been a different scene. For example, in Australia, zero-added 100% pure juice (the juice content of mainstream Chinese juice brands is between 30%-20%-10%-5%) is cheap and healthy, and parents are encouraged to drink as boiling water for children. The Chinese are doing the opposite: urging children to drink less and more boiled water, which is the "result" worthy of collective reflection in China's food and beverage industry. Why
? Because everyone thinks that milk is not afraid to buy it for children, let alone drinks. When it comes to asking children to drink more drinks, their heads shaking like rattles, it means that the first perception of the drink is unhealthy, and it is related to various additives and some thrilling negative rumors.
We can see the source of cognition from several cases where several beverage brands were acquired, hidden, marginalized, bankrupt, and even disappear.
(1) The brand that plays with fire and self-immolation
Sanlu was once a dairy manufacturer in China. It was developed from infant milk powder to dairy beverages in the entire chain. After the melamine incident broke out, it was permanently banned.
(2) Brands that expand confidence blindly and expand the brand and extend the brand to die
Rising Sun, LeBaishi , Tianoh, Coconut Wind.There are also many brands that launch so-called "innovative products", which are in the opposite direction of consumer demand and will not grow up or live long. In the eyes of many companies that focus on marketing and neglect R&D, there is no concept of category at all. In their eyes, any product is just a prop for monetization. With a wave of the big whip, it does not care about the reasons why consumers buy or do not buy it. After three months, it will not sell and replace the next product. This cycle is like this.
(3) Brands
Tycoon Fruit Tea, Arctic Ocean, Hachinoji, Masahiro, Zhenzhen and various seasoning drinks that are naturally eliminated by health needs.
(4) "creative drinks" that violate cognition and deviate from consumer needs
, such as purple, coffee cola, beer tea, K-ke, season 5 and various strange drinks.
(5) The imitation brand
Fenhuang Coke, Nico Coke, Tianfu Coke, Asian Soda, Arctic Ocean, Bawang Temple, Lebaishi, etc.
"Poor quality, products cannot keep up with the needs of the times, low brand operation level, random expansion, violation of cognition, acquired, hidden, and random development" is a label that is lingering on the deceased and about to be eliminated in Chinese beverage brands.
delve into the reasons behind it. How can the word "backward" be completely summarized? Leaning behind step by step, domestic beverage brands are on the surface, which lags behind foreign brands in technology, safety standards, production processes, management, and capital capabilities, and are essentially the result of the collective low energy of brand marketing and operation capabilities.
In short, many domestic beverage companies generally do not have the ability to continuously innovate and reconstruct their value as consumption upgrade needs and awareness improve.
There are a large number of brands with different standards in each category, which is very chaotic. There are a lot of phenomena of using inferior coins as good coins and driving good coins as bad coins. The frequent food quality and safety accidents have made consumers generally lack the most basic sense of trust in domestic beverage brands. The blind pursuit of entertainment-oriented beverage marketing has hindered people's correct understanding of the nutritional, convenience and functionality of beverages. The entire beverage industry has long been trapped in the survival circle of weak demand, weak value awareness, low consumption stickiness, and low frequency consumption. The elimination rate of old brands is high, and the survival rate of new brands is low. It is common to have a misalignment between brand capabilities and customer needs.
Seeing this, we believe you have already expressed some respect for the standing of the coconut tree.
3. The difficulty of coconut trees is like growing cherries in the desert
First tell you that the brand marketing of the coconut juice category is very difficult. Why do
say so? Because the essence of a category is the customer’s demand, whether the category can be bigger depends on how many people need the category’s value.
For example, when choosing shampoo, the demand for softening hair drives consumers to choose shampoos that can solve the problem of softening hair; the demand for fuel-efficient cars will drive consumers to choose Japanese cars; the demand for bleeding gums drives potential consumers to choose toothpastes to prevent bleeding gums.
So the degree of need, the pertinence of value, the breadth of demand, the stability of demand, and the frequency of need directly determine whether a beverage category is easy to make? How large can it be done? Is it very substitutable?
This is an analysis of the demand level, and the popularity of category value cognition: many categories have inherent value cognition, and the energy saving, reliability, off-roadness and comfort of cars are all valuable cognitions. Tangerine peel has cognition of digestion, cognition of dryness and phlegm removal, and urinary dysfunction.
If demand is the mother of the category, cognition is the father of the category. A curse that has never been broken is circulated in plant protein drinks: "The north cannot cross the Yangtze River, and the south cannot cross the Yellow River." Only six walnuts in the
plant protein drink have become super unicorns that are both north and south. The difficulty of coconut milk is that consumers cannot remember when to drink it, and they cannot find a value fulcrum that can be leveraged in their cognition. The only thing that can be done is to constantly consolidate the delicious taste and increase the consumption scenarios in the base area. Of course, it also includes constantly trying out the dirty functional demands such as "white, tender and plump, drinking from childhood to adulthood".The dispensable weak demand of
means it is difficult to expand the sales area and consumer groups, and customers do not know when they need it, so it is difficult to generate high-frequency purchasing behavior. The low-value cognition and consumption habits firmly restrict the pace of coconut milk going north.
Coconut juice has been like an orphan without parents since its birth, running alone into the Gobi Desert to grow cherries. Then the question of torture the soul is here! It is so difficult, how did Coconut Tree achieve this today?
4. Coconut tree’s textbook-level strategic decision-making
1. Get rid of the specialty “knock” and get out of the comfort zone
First figure out what specialty is . What is the comfort zone of agricultural and sideline food brands, let’s take bitter buckwheat as an example. It has been happening in the past decade that the bitter buckwheat tea has truly formed a scale. It is popular in Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, western Hubei and other regions. Many brands have spent a lot of effort to promote buckwheat tea. However, most companies rely on specialties as the first driving force. This taste is a product that focuses on removing oil and relieving greasiness. From the perspective of demand, it has fast digestion to create a national brand.
But the first market that most companies can think of is to sell to the outside world through "special products". Combined with the regional tourism consumption, gifts and other markets, it is still very suitable for the first place to sell in market sales. However, the concept of "special products" may also be a "fatal" limitation that restricts the growth of bitter buckwheat, and no national big brand has been created so far.
Not only bitter buckwheat, but also many specialty breeding industries and deep-processed agricultural products rely heavily on specialty marketing models. How to find unique value beyond specialties, how to find cognition and consumption scenarios and sales channels that leverage demand. After many attempts and encountering setbacks, everyone returned to the warm embrace of specialties. Many brands have changed from the starting point of specialty products to habitual dependence, and it is difficult to extricate themselves.
, as the coconut in Hainan's first specialty agricultural product, has not escaped this fate. Whether it is coconut milk or a large number of side-to-people agricultural products, it still regards specialties as the first hematopoietic market. However, since its birth, it has strived to get rid of the hat of "specialty" and go out bravely. does not have this key decision. The overall scale of coconut milk is still hovering within one billion. . If you drink some coconut milk, you will have to wait for friends who are traveling to give it to you.
This kind of decisiveness is worth learning from by many companies. It is difficult for a company that seeks stability to look around the country from the beginning. We often say that the height of strategy determines the fate of the company. In the era when the flavoring agent can make fake coconut milk, the only coconut tree is the first to take "pure and zero addition" as its strategic foothold.
2. Focus on research and development, light on following, establish a technical barrier
changes its dependence on counterfeit products, develops the world's first product, and becomes a barrier for foreign drinks to build.
html Late 180s In the early 1990s, foreign-produced carbonated beverages were all the rage in the country, and coconut trees were once produced. However, as carbonated beverage giants such as "Liangle" implemented a competitive strategy of "short-term losses occupy the market and long-term monopoly to achieve profits", Coconut trees suffered steadily retreating. Seven of the eight major carbonated enterprises in the country have been dragged down one after another or been swallowed up by foreign beverages. This is the famous "Flooded Seven Army" in the history of beverages.During the founding period of the brand, Coconut Tree made many attempts on the road to product diversification. Now Coconut Tree Group has 16 branches, from natural mango juice to recently launched soy milk, calcium milk, herbal tea, and fruit juice beverages. In the past decade, it has launched more than 100 varieties of beverages.
After seeing the disadvantages of the follow-up strategy, he learned from his mistakes: "It is untenable to not develop your own products, not create your own brand, and rely on following the trend to imitate. Only by playing to your strengths and avoiding your weaknesses, based on Hainan's resource advantages, and developing a national brand with independent intellectual property rights can we enhance our competitiveness and compete with foreign beverages."
They have successfully developed more than 100 beverage products such as Coconut Tree Brand Natural Coconut Juice by implementing the reward policy of scientific and technological personnel.Among them, the leading product, natural coconut juice, was successfully developed after 383 unremitting experiments. The China Institute of Science and Technology Information searched many documents from countries around the world through international online searches, which proved to be "the world's first and the best in China." In 1995, it was awarded the "China Patent Invention and Creation Gold Award" and invention patent by Philippines , Malaysia , World Intellectual Property Organization, China Patent Office , and was designated as the only national confidential product in the beverage industry by the State Science and Technology Commission and the State Secret Service.
A foreign beverage also set up a factory in China to produce coconut juice to compete with them. In the end, it was eliminated by the coconut tree because its product quality was not up to standard.
determines whether a brand can succeed depends on whether the company has the idea of making quick money . The first step to steady progress is to establish its own competitive barriers. The Coconut Tree brand has fiercely competed with its domestic and foreign competitors with its "natural and pure" technological advantages, breaking through the siege of world-renowned brands, and its products have been sold to 35 countries and regions, becoming one of the few iron troops in China that can compete with foreign beverages.
3. Grasp the first consumption essence of coconut juice, occupying the first value of
, but technology alone is still not possible. technology can only serve needs, otherwise no matter how good the technology is, it can only be lying in the laboratory and cannot monetize . The idea of this strategy is ignored by many entrepreneurs. When we talk about "consumption essence" and "first value", why should technology serve these two indicators?
As we mentioned earlier, the essence of a category is the reference to demand. Each category has its own essential characteristics, and to some extent, the essential characteristics represent the value focus of consumers' concern. For example: The essence of walnut milk is a functional beverage that is beneficial to the brain. Its first value comes from people's understanding of walnuts' "brain-tonifying" one. If we treat walnut milk as a flavored beverage, it will erase its greatest market value.
Therefore, developing technical research around the needs of "walnut nutrition" and "convenience brain replenishment" is the first value that is most in line with the essence of consumption. For a coconut juice with weak demand and weak value awareness, the only first consumption essence that can be grasped is "good" and "healthy" . Healthy and delicious food comes from the value attributes of "zero addition, pure natural" "authentic coconut juice".
Zero Add pure natural authentic coconut juice is a position that coconut trees have strength and must stick to. Among the brands in the Later Jin Dynasty, some say "raw squeeze", and some say "first juice" cannot shake the th position of the coconut trees. Why
? Because people do not have so much demand for coconut milk (cognition) to divide , no matter how many attacks on coconut trees are in areas that consumers do not need, it will be invalid.
So, the coconut tree, which is at the center of public opinion storm recently, has drawn the essence of it in one sentence:
We clarify the logic: customers' first demand for coconut trees + natural zero-addition technology = good to drink. Thirty years of persistence can produce value precipitation in the market, but no matter how good the value is, it needs to be undertaken by an excellent brand name.
4. The brand name has a monopoly constitution
No matter how the coconut tree brand is finalized, we have to say that the word "coconut tree" has a monopoly constitution in the brand name.
"authentic" and "zero addition and pure" have two major associations: one is the origin and the source of raw materials. For a startup brand, if the name does not meet the first value of the product, it is difficult to buy when it cannot grasp the first demand of the customer for the category.
Assuming that the "six walnuts" of walnut milk do not use this name, and assuming that "Dafa" is used as the brand name, even if it spends a lot of money to promote it in major media, it will be difficult for consumers to agree that it is a real orthodox brand rich in brain nutrition. To a certain extent, the picture feel and natural association of coconut trees are in line with this rule.
A brand name can only serve a dominant and strong category. Similarly, packaging material strategy is also one of the difficulties that tests the operator's strategic decision-making ability.
5. Incubate the packaging material into visual assets
As a controversy for coconut tree packaging is earthen packaging material: in the beverage appearance that relies on a fashionable appearance, the coconut tree's silly, big, black and thick can shape forced many Virgos to death, but why hasn't the coconut tree been upgraded?
The answer is very simple, because after 30 years of persistence, the mission of iron can has long been incubated from packaging containers into the identification symbol of "authentic coconut milk" in the minds of consumers.
determines whether a category is truly accepted by the market. The symbolicity of packaging material recognition is an important judgment criterion:
Before consumers make purchase decisions, they judge the value of the category based on packaging and packaging material : Tetra Pak packaging material was originally named "sterile packaging" by milk brands. Over time, people classified Tetra Pak as an exclusive symbol of milk. Oak boxes are symbolized by wine manufacturers as "art, taste and identity", and oak barrels have evolved into the iconic packaging symbol for people to identify top wines.
visual symbols are both primary and secondary. As a beverage that needs to be preserved at room temperature, coconut juice, before people truly experience the value of the product, the extremely sealed iron can allows consumers to judge the basic attributes of the category from the packaging material: this is a beverage that has been sterilized by high temperature. At least from a hygiene perspective, we have a certain sense of trust in the category. The short-term purpose is to make the public feel at ease to drink.
In the long run, after 30 years of persistence in coconut trees, black pots have become an important packaging material identification symbol for people to judge the coconut milk category. Coconut trees, as the leading brand of coconut milk category, are naturally the biggest beneficiary.
6. The second biggest controversy about the salesman
coconut tree that makes the packaging into a shelf is earthy packaging. It is teased by people to use word-designed earthy packaging, which has been criticized but has never changed a lot. The 2019 New Year bell rang, and the coconut tree made "adjust" the packaging as scheduled. The bottle body changed the large font "30 years of persistence in Hainan Island " in the dense product information to "31 years of persistence in Hainan Island".
Public information shows that in 1957, Wang Guangxing, the head of the coconut tree, had his first job as an artist. A year later, Wang Guangxing joined the Haikou Canning Factory and spent 12 to 28 years old in the canning factory. During this period, he personally took the initiative and completed the packaging design of the coconut tree.
In fact, today's coconut tree is full of "listed product advantage information" and is not new. In the eyes of every founder of a company, the product is his own son. How can these advantages highlight the brand value without advertising investment? Packaging became the first breakthrough!
What makes coconut trees unique is that they express their product advantages in a straightforward text list, including black, white and yellow, which are almost "anti-human aesthetics". The earthy packaging is placed on the shelves and the competitor packaging immediately produces an extreme visual impact from the aesthetic.
So, what is the cause of the text list of coconut trees? The essence of
packaging is a dialogue between consumer demand and product value:
beauty is not the first value of packaging, but information dialogue is. You must assume that there is no penny for advertisements, and there are very few shopping guides who throw this packaging into the channel, and they must have the ability to convince the buyer themselves. Therefore, packaging design is often a work of redeveloping product value. Packaging design is used to define product value and design empowers the brand. Because packaging is responsible for being discovered, picked up, and purchased.
For brands without advertisements, packaging is the first strategy. The way humans know things is the same as that of babies. They rely on body senses such as eye viewing, ear hearing, nose smelling, tongue taste, and body touch to recognize things. Among them, eyes and ears occupy 80% of the sensory experience. In noisy stores, it is impossible to place a loud speaker and promote the value of products without getting tired of it, so the vision that impresses consumers bears all the sales responsibilities.
For example, when I buy laundry detergent, I am used to starting from my most urgent needs, such as the sweat stains on my clothes? Is the clothes yellow? Is it because the stains on the clothes are too thick and need to be effectively removed? Is it white clothes that need to be whitened? At this time, the packaging information of laundry detergent needs to provide sufficient product value information to impress me to choose it.
Similarly, in the early stages when coconut milk was well-known to customers, when there was no resources to promote and the brand was low, packaging became the only "advertising media" that could be used, and it was a media that did not have to spend extra money to pay for the media purchase costs. Therefore, compared to style and aesthetics, the text on the packaging becomes more important than the packaging, and the packaging must continue to enlarge the reason for purchasing.
Let’s sort out the self-promotion speech of the earthy coconut tree product, and you can see the clues:
- The first thing that catches your eye is the brand name. "Coconut tree" not only conveys the brand name, but also explains that the raw materials of the product come from nature;
- The second is that "30 years of persistence in Hainan Island" has strengthened the information of "authentic, classic, and old brands" to resolve consumption The trust and doubts in the hearts of the person; the third is "using fresh coconut meat" to specifically "coconut meat", which reminds consumers of the sweet taste of coconut meat, awakens people's taste memory, and induces customers to place further orders; the fourth is "fresh squeeze" is a craft description, which further awakens the taste memory, which means "the taste is the same as the coconut meat in your memory", which conveys a sense of fresh quality.
- 's fifth "no coconut milk and no flavor to be used as raw pressed" is a concrete description of the process, and it also strikes and implies that competitors are "fake fresh and unhealthy" products.
At this point, the coconut tree can quickly awaken customers' taste memory through words alone, highlighting the authenticity of rejecting competitors. This is the cheapest strategic self-promotion tactic so far. Who wouldn’t want to use this low-cost promotion strategy? The simple and crude packaging of
coconut tree has long occupied the minds of users and has become a representative of authentic, real, safe and high-quality coconut milk. As for the packaging that does not change to the aesthetics of the times after the coconut tree is established, the reason is very simple, and the reason for purchasing coconut tree coconut milk is still strong. aesthetics cannot affect the sales of a product, but the text can be .
7. Focusing on the pulse of the times, creating topics to extend the vitality of categories,
The third controversy of coconut trees is the function of being sexy. Why did coconut trees turn from serious uncles to charming slutty?
The "righteous uncle" Coconut Tree, who has been in the industry for 30 years, also has a restless heart. Coconut Tree, which has just turned 30, is now in its thirties and looks like a brand that needs to return Huabei by itself. How do you understand the sentence
? In the above article, we mentioned that coconut trees are a brand of "planting cherries in the desert". Coconut trees that do not stay in the comfort zone of specialty products not only have to find food for themselves, but also have to shoulder the burden of long-term development of the category. However, long-term development means that consumers need to be noticed, remembered and purchased for a long time.
beverages are a rapidly changing industry. Every year, hundreds of new categories and new brands in China compete for three-foot shelves in the store, not including the traditional strong categories and brands of safe Taishan. As a category with low demand, low value awareness, and low frequency purchase, coconut milk naturally lives in panic every day. As the leading brand of coconut milk, coconut trees must have strong enough ability to extend the life cycle of coconut milk , otherwise they will enter the footsteps of iced black tea - being thrown into the cold palace.
Therefore, it is the motivation to withstand the pressure of China's "most earthy and most eye-catching" brand, and that the local topics such as whitening, beauty, breast enhancement, longevity, children's growth and even aphrodisiac are constantly being "made". Perhaps the head of Coconut Tree has already understood the principles of being extremely beautiful and being extremely earthy. Perhaps it is really about educating consumers to drink more coconut juice to have these functions, but the ultimate goal is only three: maintaining attention to the category and expanding influence; expanding consumption motivation and increasing sales opportunities; and maintaining the authority of the brand!
5. What should Chinese brands learn from coconut trees?
Coconut trees, which have not been killed by international brands, have continuously corrected people's almost distorted perceptions of the nutritional, convenience and functionality of beverages in the context of consumers' general lack of trust in domestic beverages, and strived to lead domestic brands out of the survival circle of high-end brand elimination rate and low survival rate of new brands. Although the method is eye-catching, it is a company worth learning from.
(1) Health is the king of business views
You attach importance to consumers' quality and health needs, and even if you are native, you can be understood as a "pragmatic brand". The core of the success of Coconut Tree lies in truly providing customers with healthy products that are beneficial to their bodies and minds. Marketing is just a superficial trick. Smart people will not and should not be blocked by these "sarcasms".
(2) Build the standard and do not make bad money
All international beverage brands entering China have all abandoned the strict standards of developed countries and turned to adopt secondary standards slightly higher than those of China's competitive brands. Coconut trees have built their own quality standards that are higher than international standards from the very beginning. This measure not only takes into account the company's core competitiveness level, but also tests the moral standards of an enterprise's social responsibility.
(3) Do not blindly follow, do not impetuous and practical spirit
actively walks out of the comfort zone of specialties, dares to try and make mistakes, dares to break through yourself; do not be shaken by the fog of trends, understands the importance of brand focus; knows how to grasp the core needs of consumers, and does not be abandoned by the illusion of image to create a long-term sales brand.
(4) Bravely assume the responsibility of expanding the category
The greatest value of coconut tree to the coconut milk industry lies in that it has achieved the branding on the market side, industrialization on the processing side, and ecologicalization of upstream industries, which has driven the upgrade of the entire industry. This is not just making coconut milk, but doing industry.
This article is originally published by @Yang Shuangxi Marketing to avoid detours and is originally published by everyone as a product manager. Reproduction of
is prohibited without permission from
. The title image is from Unsplash, based on CC0 protocol
