(1) The profit of these products is already very thin;
(2) Generally, established enterprises are not idle in strength, technology and marketing management, and it is not fun to compete with these enterprises.
It is very dangerous to snatch food from the tiger's mouth, so isn't it wonderful to create a new product category and monopolize it? Red bull, Chengde Lulu and coconut milk are all the same. Their market followers have not found a good way to share new categories and open up markets. Not only do manufacturers make a lot of money making thermal underwear, but many of their dealers started with hundreds of thousands of yuan. It is no longer news to earn 100 million yuan a year. Second, communication costs are reduced.
Because the new category is new, the product itself has already carried distinctive, unique, unforgettable and beneficial marketing information, and the novelty has become the main point of communication and the attraction to consumers, just as it can talk. Is it necessary to teach consumers to drink more fresh oranges when they are on the market? Not at all, even before the arrival of other imitators, the benefits of drinking it were not mentioned.
Because fresh orange has created such a new category: fruit juice that is both thirst-quenching and nutritious, it is not as tasteless as pure water, nor as thick as pure fruit juice (see, there is more water in fruit juice here, which is a disadvantage), and there is no fruit-flavored drink mixed with "three essences" (saccharin, essence and color essence) that is beneficial to human body. Besides tasteless pure water and sticky pure juice, it gives consumers a happy choice. Sanquan has created a new category, quick-frozen jiaozi and glutinous rice balls are sold, and Sanquan doesn't have to tell customers that they must be cooked before eating. No one will eat Sanquan jiaozi like a popsicle, and the convenience it brings to people is not well known.
The first brand of a new category can usually leave a deep impression on consumers. The key to success is to create a new category, then put your brand on that category, and you will become the representative of this category!
(3) It is possible to do many things and live for a long time.
The brand value of Coca-Cola is $70 billion. Why does its brand reach such high value? If it is only related to the original product, it will not work anyway. At that time, there were flavored drinks such as Le Beer Dew, Root Beer, Ginger Juice, Orange Juice and Lemon Juice in the beverage market. Coca-Cola can develop into a big brand because it has created a new category called Coke.
The first brand can survive for a long time, and it is easy to maintain its leading position. Coca-Cola 1 18 has always been the first brand of Coca-Cola. GE 102 has been the first product of light bulb. Shu Jie has been the first brand of toilet paper for 80 years. Jianlibao, the brand that created the category of sports health drinks, still occupies the concept of sports drinks even though it has been "tossed" by Zhang Hai. Although its image is a bit old, consumers still have a good impression on it. There is still a lot of sales in the secondary and tertiary markets, which is the power of categories.
(4) It is a natural barrier to avoid competition.
The first is creative leadership. If your brand is the only brand in this category, your brand must be the leading brand. When competitors join in, it will strengthen your perception that you are the first.
As far as the product itself is concerned, Coca-Cola is just an easy-to-imitate sugar water, but it occupies the first place in the coke ladder in the eyes of the public, and therefore represents American values, which you can't replace no matter how realistic the brown water in the bottle is. This is why coke is always inferior to Coca-Cola in cities. Market rules have proved that it is difficult to establish a strategy with the help of quality differences. Quality is the lowest condition to participate in market competition, but it is difficult to form strategic differences.
When your brand is the first brand in a new category, it is generally regarded as original, authentic, pioneering and the best. When other brands invade your field, it is generally considered as imitation. Can you produce another cold medicine tablet with white and black now? Even if the country allows it, does anyone believe it? For a long time, Chengde Lulu has propped up the world with almost one product. This seemingly "extremely abnormal" phenomenon depends on the strength of the category, not other marketing secrets. In the eyes of consumers, it is almost impossible for Lulu to ruin the image of almond beverage experts when she matures. At best, it is harassment.
The cognition of leadership will produce a strong feeling that your brand is definitely the best, while your cognition of competitors is much worse. Second-tier brands are often forced to cut prices in order to expand sales, which is a helpless move. In this way, leading brands always have the dominant share, the richest profits and the most right to speak. Master Kong was the first person in Chinese mainland to establish the first brand of instant noodles. In Taiwan Province province, it is much more unified than it, but in Chinese mainland it has never surpassed Master Kong. This law is at work. 1972, Reese and trout put forward a famous positioning concept in the history of marketing, and they have been looking for and defining "key forces and rules in marketing and brand building". In 2004, Rees and Laura Rees put forward the definition of brand building, that is, the source of brand, which revealed the similarities of competition laws between business and nature. Category, a species in the business world, is the key force behind the brand, which declares that people's understanding of marketing has entered the category era from the brand.
Marketing in the category era pays attention to and emphasizes the essence that brand is the name or symbol representing category, and emphasizes the category development of brand and marketing, with the goal of leading a category as the brand development. Creating a brand-new category is one of the effective ways to create a brand. In terms of image or volume, Gree seems to be far behind Haier, but in terms of brand competitiveness, Haier is far behind Gree, and Gree can even be said to be the most potential brand in China's household appliances industry. Why can Gree be so powerful? Many people pay attention to Gree's unique channel model. Indeed, Gree's channel model is very special, but this is not the key to the strength of Gree brand. What makes Gree dare to challenge the channel giant Gome? Brand competitiveness, of course. Why can Gree have strong competitiveness? Because Gree focuses on air-conditioning category.
Gree may be the only home appliance company in the world that only produces air conditioners. In 2006, the domestic air-conditioning market shrank, Gree's sales increased by 20%, and the domestic market share reached nearly 30%. Gree brand has gradually locked in the air-conditioning category. One of the important indicators to test brand competitiveness is profit. In the case of collective weakness in the home appliance industry, Gree is the home appliance enterprise with the highest profit rate. In 2006, the profit exceeded 800 million yuan, and maintained a growth rate of 50% in 2007. As long as Gree's focus strategy remains unchanged, Gree will have the opportunity to become a representative of the global air-conditioning industry and a truly world-class brand.
There seems to be an element of luck in Mujiro's success. In fact, Xizhilang is the first brand to establish jelly category cognition in consumers' minds. Before Xizhilang, there were many regional brands in the jelly market, but none of them entered the minds of consumers. Therefore, relying on a good name and large-scale advertising, Xizhilang seized the category of jelly and once occupied more than 60% market share. Now Xizhilang is facing great challenges, not because of the brand, but because the category of jelly has shrunk. Many people have successfully established brands by following the laws and rules of categories, and more people have lost opportunities because of their ignorance of categories. Qingdao natives are typical examples. From a technical point of view, Qingdao Native has the opportunity to create a new category, because it goes further than pure beer in maintaining the freshness and taste of beer, and can maintain the original flavor of beer. However, the subsequent marketing activities completely killed this promising product:
First of all, there is something wrong with the naming of categories. The name "Native" is only an imitation of pure life, not a new category, which is not enough to distance itself from pure life.
Secondly, the whole marketing activity focuses on brand promotion rather than category establishment, and there is a major deviation in the communication direction. Yang li Ping, an original dancer, was invited as the spokesperson with the slogan "Original Ecology, Live Beer". The original has become the original ecology, and the characteristics of the new category have further disappeared; The strategy of adopting sub-brands instead of independent brands is doomed to Qingdao's initial failure.
A number of brands, such as Qipai, Taizilong, Yunyan Impression and Dongfeng Longka, all missed the opportunity to build a strong brand through category innovation, while brands such as Zhujiang Beer and JiuWang Mu ruined the opportunity to lead the category because they destroyed the brand's category characteristics.