Tomorrow is the annual Mid-Autumn Festival. Whenever this day approaches, not only is the "moon bright and clear", wanderers look forward to reunion with their families, companies with good benefits give out mooncakes, and mooncake manufacturers and self-media influencers have also begun new attempts. So how is everyone selling mooncakes?

　　Case 1: Luoji Siwei (Logic Show).

China's hottest self-media personality and video talk show. Luoji Siwei follows the fan economy route, selling mooncakes in the name of "true love", with WeChat as the main sales channel. Current online data: since launching the "True Love Special Supply" mooncakes on July 18, as of August 20, the highest cumulative order received was only 70 boxes, and the top 20 combined didn't exceed 700 boxes. From this, total sales are estimated to be around 1,000 boxes, at a price of 199 yuan per box, with total sales of around 200,000 yuan.

Case 2: Huamei Mooncakes.

A traditional food company with 20 years of history, a "Famous Brand Mooncake" of the China Mooncake Festival. Huamei's approach to selling mooncakes is: sell mooncakes in a creative way, embracing the internet from the three angles of channel, marketing, and product, making mooncakes "speak". Its prices range from 128 to 200 yuan. Each product has a QR code. When you receive the mooncakes, scanning the QR code and entering the 12-digit code specified on the mooncake box allows you to see blessings from family and friends. Currently, Huamei's marketing is very successful; its self-produced video surpassed one million views within 2 days of launch.

Case 3: Daoxiangcun Mooncakes.

Like Huamei, it is a traditional Chinese mooncake manufacturer. Daoxiangcun represents most mooncake manufacturers: lacking effective ideas, mostly taking the "creative packaging" route and the "customizable" route, focusing on packaging and customization. Its sales channels remain traditional supermarkets and hypermarkets: centralized display counters in supermarkets, prices ranging from 100 to 200 yuan, and opening up bulk group-buy routes. Currently, retail sales of most traditional mooncake manufacturers are not optimistic, and they can only sell mooncakes in bulk to enterprises.

　　Case 4: Heima Liangju.

Heima Liangju: lecturer of Black Horse Open Class, chief male PR of Ruima Communications, fringe media person, and social marketing "wet poet" (a pun on "poet"). Heima Liangju's approach to selling mooncakes is: "Since you have to buy mooncakes anyway, why not buy my customized mooncakes?" Heima's customized mooncakes are priced at 128 yuan, comparable to other major brands, and are purchased through WeChat's Weidian (micro-shop). Heima's WeChat public account focuses on the technology industry, with about 30,000 to 40,000 followers, while his personal WeChat has no more than 5,000 friends.

Analysis

Self-media influencers sell mooncakes through their fan effect. Heima Liangju's fan base and influence cannot compare with Luoji Siwei, but he spends less effort and may gain more. Main reasons: 1. Collaboration with craftsmen; 2. The positioning is simply to give fans one more choice. Few bought Luoji Siwei's "True Love" mooncakes, mainly because "true love" cannot be overused; he had already used "true love" once when collecting membership fees earlier. As for those who buy Heima's mooncakes, half are driven by the real needs of fans, and the other half are drawn to Heima himself.

When traditional manufacturers sell mooncakes, most of their creativity is still spent on packaging, such as changing from paper boxes to iron boxes, wooden boxes, and environmentally friendly materials, plus buy-one-get-one-free and bulk group buying. This industry increasingly lacks innovation. Huamei's "speaking mooncakes", however, makes people's eyes light up. So how did Huamei do it?

First, in terms of channels, they focus on the three major platforms: WeChat, Weibo, and Weishi. Weibo is the communication channel, informing consumers how to participate in the activity; WeChat is the user platform for customizing and viewing blessings. There are QR codes on Huamei mooncakes. After scanning, users can see blessing videos sent by relatives and friends; Weishi is the platform for recording blessings.

On the marketing level: Weibo's activity is "Speaking mooncakes convey feelings better, I send blessings for my relatives"; WeChat's activity encourages everyone to share blessings to their Moments to win the "Tuhao Gold" award; Weishi's activity awards prizes based on the ranking of short blessing videos. Basically, Huamei tried all the most mainstream marketing methods on the three major platforms.

On the product level, Huamei mooncakes range from 128 to 200 yuan. Purchase channels remain traditional supermarkets, online stores, etc., while Weibo, WeChat, and Weishi are more for communication. Huamei mooncakes' biggest feature is being a well-known brand, a time-honored brand. Now they have added the biggest difference from other traditional mooncake manufacturers: "speaking". By scanning the QR code, when you receive the mooncakes, you can also see blessings from relatives and friends, which can be considered a small surprise.

Through this attempt, it's hard to say whether Huamei sells mooncakes or blessings. After all, mooncakes have a price, but blessings are priceless.

Summary

1. The internet is still the best channel.Whether it's the traditional manufacturer Huamei Mooncakes, or the self-media influencers Heima Liangju and Luo Zhenyu, everyone is inseparable from internet channels such as Weibo, WeChat, Weishi, and Youku. The role of the internet as a channel is increasingly obvious, but it is not the only channel. For example, for Huamei, the internet is the best marketing channel and may also be one of its sales channels, but its larger channels are offline, such as supermarkets and hypermarkets.

2. The fan economy has not yet undergone a qualitative change.Taking Heima as an example, even if 10% of his fans support him, that is only 3,000 * 120, or 360,000 yuan in income. After deducting costs and expenses such as Anan's handicraft work, Heima can hardly make much money. This trial is more of an attempt at the commercialization of self-media. Currently, the best way for self-media to monetize may not be traditional physical goods, but rather some virtual products, such as training and knowledge.

　3. The combination of traditional enterprises and self-media may produce different effects.Huamei Mooncakes and Heima Liangju in this article are each fighting independently, but there must be intersections. For example, although Huamei reached the three platforms of Weibo, WeChat, and Weishi, it still has to rely on opinion leaders to spread greater influence, such as having "Wakin Chau" record a video that gained 2 million views. Meanwhile, Heima chose to cooperate with the handicraft workshop Anan, which is actually a small traditional manufacturer. Suppose Huamei could cooperate with 1,000 Heimas, and not be limited to the technology field, that would be another way of embracing "internet thinking". The internet is not only a marketing role, but also channels, brand, and after-sales. In a sense, traditional business becomes higher, while the internet becomes lower. In the future, internet = future business, and the two are at the same level.

Source: SooTou Column