The 2021 Morketing Brand Summit was held in Shanghai on March 13. Themed "NEW," the summit aims to discuss the features of the next winner in China’s new consumption market.
The 2021 Morketing Brand Summit
China's consumer market is undergoing an unprecedented reformation, in which a number of new brands skyrocket with brilliant market performance. In 2020, C-Beauty brand Perfect Diary's parent company Yatsen became the first domestic beauty group listed on the United States stock market. With a four-year history after establishment, beverage company Genki Forest’s market value exceeded 14 billion yuan.
2021 is the year of more heated competition between established and new brands. As the market is re-shaped by the new generation of consumers, new trends, and new channels, the next winner would be those who can stay current on the market transformation and advance with the times.
The summit has invited decision-makers of many outstanding brands, including Unilever, Minzo, Budweiser, L'Oreal, ffit8, Mars, and Yongpu Coffee, to exchange their views about the future opportunities in the Chinese consumer market. Many decision-makers have highlighted young people’s core position in brands’ future transformation and development.
Why young people?
According to Nielsen's report on the Debt Status of Young Chinese Consumers1, China's post-90s/00s currently account for about 23% of the total population. The post-90s/00s generation, witnessing China’s soaring economic growth and stronger global clout, is both open-minded and patriotic. They are a critical in shaping the consumption landscape of China and even the world in the next 5-10 years.
This generation attach great importance to the idea that "everyone is an individual," so they are more personalized in consumption and are unwilling to compromise. They pursue the dual needs of practicality and spirit and highlight their unique styles. They are easily attracted by novel things that will bring them freshness and diversified experiences. These traits are building a new consumer market.
Traditional and established brands should keep innovating and iterating to catch up with the latest trends. For new brands, most of which are developed for the young generation, they should consider how to last their appeal and keep staying relevant in the market. The days when brands had the initiative to instill brand awareness into consumers have gone. The future consumer market is where brands communicate and grow with consumers.
How will brands do?
L'Oreal
As a multinational conglomerate, L'Oreal has strategized to gain more young people’s traction. It finds that Chinese people affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, especially the young group, have been increasingly dependent on online activities such as e-commerce live-streaming and shopping. It has launched online makeup trial and beauty consultant services as a new attempt to enhance cloud-based service. According to L'Oreal, 3,500 products from 13 brands under the group have been available for online makeup trials, serving 20 million consumers. It has also built a team of over 6,000 online beauty consultants engaged in group chat, live-streaming, and other customer services. The compny also tries to beef up its e-commerce live-streaming team, with more than 100 full-time live-streamers online every day.
Besides optimizing services, L'Oreal innovates its products after gaining insights into Chinese young consumers’ new demands. It has launched the anti-hair loss series under its haircare brand Kerastase, aiming to address Chinese young people’s hair loss problem. It also cooperates with the brand’s spokesperson Wang Junkai (Karry Wang, born in 1999) to produce a theme song to draw more attention from the young group.
Kerastase’s spokesperson Wang Junkai
Budweiser
One of the new trends Budweiser sees in the Chinese consumer market is the rise of the female economy. Young women have become significant drinkers of alcohol. Their needs are varied. They drink for taste, feeling, emotion, sociability, and status. Female-friendly flavors such as plum, osmanthus, litchi, peanut, persimmon, fermented glutinous rice are innovative directions for future alcohol beverage development.
ffit8
Chinese protein food startup ffit8 aims to solve Chinese young people’s needs to dine in the future by developing convenient protein-fortified food products for them.
To reach more young people, it launched a co-branding beef-flavored protein bar with China's first hip-hop TV show, The Rap of China (中国新说唱). It also rolled out the Sichuan hot pot flavor by collaborating with the pop-culture reality show Fourtry (潮流合伙人). The collaboration helps ffit8 gain popularity in the hip-hop and streetwear circles and boost its social media fame. Ffit8’s latest co-branding product is lychee-flavored protein bar with the Palace Museum under the “China Chic” (国潮) tide.
Chemlinked has an article about ffit8. Click here to read.
Ffit8 also innovates its distribution channels to get closer to young people’s consumption scenes. The brand has made its products available through multiple retail formats, including Sams, 7-Eleven, Yitiao, Ole’, SUPERMONKEY, ITO YOKADO, CITIC Bookstore, Bravo, and CITYBOX, covering bookstore, gym, convenience store, and boutique supermarkets.
Yongpu Coffee
According to Yongpu, coffee is a blue ocean market in China, and the core growth driver is young people. This brand chooses co-branding to expand its presence in the coffee market targeting young people. Since its establishment, Yongpu has co-branded with more than 400 brands, from illustrators and designers to popular IPs such as the movie Better Days. These collaborations have helped this new coffee brand quickly capture young people’s minds and substantially increases its sales. In 2020, Yongpu Coffee’s sales reached 100 million yuan, a fivefold year-on-year increase.
