Understand the Opportunities in Changing Situations, Build the Upward Growth Path for Brands Going Global | Review of the 2024 Global Emerging Brand Digital Marketing Summit
[Yibang Original] In the new cycle of global economic structural adjustment, going global has increasingly been regarded as a "must" rather than an "option" by more and more Chinese enterprises. Whether an enterprise expands from the domestic market to the overseas market or starts directly from overseas, looking outward - seeking new growth from the larger global market - is the trend of the times that must be firmly grasped in the coming years. We have the motivation and more opportunities to stand out in the new cycle and complete the construction of global competitiveness that evolves from economies of scale to economies of value.
At the same time, after the rapid development of manufacturing value globalization in the previous stage, the threshold of the going-global industry and the comprehensive quality of practitioners have been continuously improving. Promoting the globalization of brand value has become the main task in the new stage. For enterprises in this field, growing upward - comprehensively building a scientific growth system from the dimensions of products, supply chains, marketing, operations, organization, and finance - is the only way to truly join the ranks of new global brands.
Centered around the theme of "Looking Outward and Growing Upward", the "2024 Global Emerging Brand Digital Marketing Summit" jointly organized by BeyondClick by Meet Intelligence, Ipsos, and Yibang Power was successfully concluded on December 19. Through 11 keynote speeches and 3 roundtable dialogues, more than 20 guests at the summit discussed the ways and strategies for Chinese consumer goods enterprises to step onto the global stage.
At the same time, the "2024 MeetBrands China's 50 Strong Emerging Consumer Brands Going Global" jointly launched by BeyondClick by Meet Intelligence, a sub-brand of Meet Intelligence Group dedicated to providing global marketing services for going-global brands, and Ipsos, was also strongly released. It not only aims to recognize emerging enterprises that have performed outstandingly in the field of brand going global, but also hopes to see through the list research how Chinese brands shape new global competitiveness with the help of digital tools.
01
Growing Upward - Going-Global Brands Need "New Competitiveness"
Chen Fang, the dean of Ipsos China B2B Research Institute, mentioned in her speech that in the first half of brand going global, Chinese enterprises could gain a foothold in the overseas market with their strong supply chains, mature methodologies, and abundant operational talent resources. However, in the second half, resolving cultural conflicts and establishing a lasting "sense of trust" among overseas consumers are the biggest challenges in building an evergreen international brand. At the same time, in the process of integrating into the global supply chain and market, the evaluation and disclosure of ESG mean high costs and green thresholds for enterprises, which may become a major bottleneck for brand going global.
Therefore, for going-global brands to succeed, they must have a clear understanding of globalization and adhere to long-termism. They need to establish effective connections with overseas consumers through product-driven and social responsibility-driven approaches to build trust.
Ren Guang, the Managing Director of Consumer Goods Going Global Fund of Jiayu Capital, affirmed the era opportunities faced by Chinese brands going global from the aspects of the growth trend of cross-border e-commerce, favorable factors in the overseas consumer market, national policy support, and the domestic and foreign capital market environment. He also shared how going-global enterprises can reduce costs and increase efficiency in pursuit of higher-quality development in the new era.
He pointed out that the first is to improve human efficiency. Calculate the per capita income by dividing the total annual income by the total number of employees, and set a benchmark value as a measurement indicator when the enterprise expands. But at the same time, in some key departments, it is necessary to dare to make over-allocation. The second is to reduce procurement costs and set a cost reduction target every year. In addition, when settling with suppliers, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the currency choice (exchange rate factor), the purchase price, and the payment period.
In terms of revenue growth, at the "trade" (i.e., trading) level, one is to expand product categories on the basis of doing a good job in a single category, thereby eliminating the off-season or extending to high-unit-price products. The second is that in addition to Amazon and eBay, some new platforms suitable for oneself can be selected to increase volume. At the "technology" (i.e., technology) level, after the enterprise reaches a certain scale, it must dare to invest in product research and development to strengthen the competitive barrier. At the "manufacturing" (i.e., manufacturing) level, many enterprises have started to build their own factories or invest in factories with partners from the original outsourcing production. This can not only have better control over product quality, but also keep the profits of the production end in their own hands.
Shen Chengang, the founder and CEO of Meet Intelligence Group, analyzed the three stages of the international development of Chinese brands and the core competitiveness required in each stage in his summit speech. He said that in the first stage, it relied on production capacity and e-commerce sales capacity - this is a very strong combination of capabilities in the past 10 years. But in the new stage, the requirements for product R & D capabilities and brand communication capabilities are getting higher and higher - R & D can enhance the competitiveness of enterprises, differentiate themselves from other brands, and also better carry out brand communication. The key point is to fully understand user needs, grasp changes in consumption trends, and carry out integrated marketing.
"Going further up to the third stage of brand internationalization, when the enterprise scale is larger and it has to face stronger global competition, at this time, it is not only necessary to have production, R & D, and brand communication capabilities, but also global management capabilities and digital operation capabilities - it is necessary to see the changes in data globally in real time to make faster decisions and adjustments." Shen Chengang said.
Wu Yulin, the Senior Director of Business Development in China of The Trade Desk, mentioned that the big gap in the leap from emerging brands to benchmark brands is the mental influence. From the perspective of brand marketing, there are two ways to improve mental influence and upgrade from brand marketing 1.0 to brand marketing 2.0:
One is to expand the brand exposure reservoir and focus on mainstream media. In the brand marketing 1.0 stage, it mainly relied on advertising platforms such as Google and Meta as the main promotion force. These immediate conversion-type advertising channels can indeed help brands quickly establish consumer awareness. However, as the brand going global enters the 2.0 stage, the immediate click-conversion advertising channels can no longer meet the needs of brand going global. Brands need to open up their own marketing channels and display brand image, brand concept, and brand values on multiple channels such as CTV smart TV large screens, audio, and digital out-of-home advertising DOOH.
The second is to change the single-channel measurement system of click attribution. According to the post-link tracking data of the DTC industry, 82% of advertising conversions come from users who are reached but do not click immediately. This shows that although the exposure of advertising, product information, and brand information may not immediately be converted into clicks or purchase behaviors, it has a profound impact on the mentality of the target consumers and their perception of the brand. Therefore, brands need to change the practice of using only click attribution to measure the value of media channels and establish a brand marketing system of exposure attribution.
In addition, finding the right path to counter homogeneous competition is also one of the keys for going-global brands to build "new competitiveness". For this reason, in the morning of the summit, Liu Chen, the co-founder of Yibang Power, had an in-depth conversation with He Ding, the founder and CEO of Qian'an Technology Ohuhu, Wang Peng, the brand director of Baseqi, and Chen Bo, the co-founder of ELEGOO.
In He Ding's view, the most important thing is to focus on occupying the user's mind and preventing users from comparing prices. Because once the user recognizes your brand in their mind, their mentality will change. As long as your price is within their psychological tolerance range, they will not buy other cheaper products. Then how to occupy the user's mind? Generally speaking, it is to have a unique positioning in the competition. Conduct in-depth user insights, dig out the pain points of users, and based on the pain points of users to make meaningful differentiated solutions.
Wang Peng pointed out that the most important means to get out of involution is to focus on users. From the product side, even if the threshold is low, there is always room to create better value for consumers. From the marketing side, it is necessary to make precise placements for the target population, rather than "casting a net to see how many fish it can catch". In addition, it should be understood that what you provide to consumers is not just the product itself, but a series of services. Therefore, it is necessary to get rid of the inertial thinking that selling the product is the end.
Chen Bo believes that involution and non-involution is a dynamic balance. When your company's resource endowment is in line with the current development cycle and has a relatively good competitive position, then you are involuting others, and vice versa, you are being involuted by others. ELEGOO's experience is to provide more value to users in a non-price-decreasing way, that is, to provide users with products and services that exceed their expectations at the same price dimension.
02
Category Breakthrough - Achieving the Advancement from Product Expression to Brand Expression
He Songsong, the Partner of Ries Category Innovation Strategy Consulting in China, gave a vivid speech on "How to Achieve a Global New Brand through Category Innovation" as the opening guest in the afternoon. He pointed out that today, Chinese enterprises are facing two major strategic opportunities: One is the great iteration of consumption concepts, which will give rise to a large number of new category opportunities; the second is that China is about to become the largest economy in the world, which will give rise to the opportunity to create global "Chinese" new categories. How to seize these two opportunities? The answer is category innovation - "I don't want to be the same as you, and I don't want to be a little better in performance than you. I want to be different."
He Songsong used the strategic metaphor of three seeds to explain: The first seed (the category creator) falls and, for whatever reason, it sprouts first, obtaining most of the sunlight and moisture, and grows rapidly; the second seed (the follower and imitator) falls and it lands close to the first seed, unable to obtain sufficient nutrients, and finally withers; the third seed (the opposite brand) falls and lands far away from the first seed, and finally sprouts and grows.
It is reported that as early as two years ago, Ries Strategy Consulting was the first in the industry to release a category innovation report on the continuous growth of Chinese listed companies. Two insights in it still have strong reference value today: First, nearly 60% of the champion enterprises with continuous growth, their growth momentum comes from creating and leading one new category after another, and among them, 20% of the enterprises continuously innovate to create one new product after another, driving the growth of the enterprise at different stages; second, an average successful category innovation can recreate three 10-billion-level enterprises.
Insta360 is undoubtedly a benchmark for achieving category breakthroughs and successfully creating a new global brand. Chen Yongqiang, its co-founder and director, said that Insta360 has become the brand with the highest global shipment volume of panoramic cameras for six consecutive years and also the brand with the highest market share in the global panoramic camera field. For it, product power is the cornerstone of the brand, and the exclusive advantage formed by technology innovation-driven product differentiation is the fundamental of brand value. Therefore, through continuous R & D investment, the company has independently developed core technologies such as panoramic image acquisition and splicing, image stabilization, AI image processing, and computational vision, thereby building its own technological moat.
In terms of building global competitiveness, Chen Yongqiang introduced how Insta360 helps shape and upgrade the brand through "user co-creation": Insta360 launched the "Think bold" challenge, collecting creative ideas from global users and helping them complete video content. With the support of its global fund, many users have boldly realized their creativity with Insta360 products. For example, an old man in England put on a bee suit, bit an Insta360 panoramic camera in his mouth, and ran in the flower field like a happy bee. The global playback volume of this topic exceeds 860 million. These creative contents from users are precisely the best brand endorsement for Insta360.
Lin Yi, the person in charge of BeyondClick by Meet Intelligence, mentioned in his speech that ten years ago, Chinese enterprises going global mostly focused on the product itself, but now they need more brand empowerment. In shaping the brand mentality, enterprises generally face three major problems: insufficient local understanding of the target market users, insufficient channel reach, and insufficient emotional connection.
He pointed out that to solve the "insufficient local understanding of the target market users", it is necessary to continuously understand users and grasp the psychology of consumers through the optimal allocation of global resources; to solve the "insufficient channel reach to the target market users", many times it is about the continuous iteration of sales force, which involves the selection of channels, the optimization of creativity, etc.; to solve the "insufficient emotional connection to the target market users", it is necessary to improve the brand power through DSP/integrated marketing to improve repurchase and customer life cycle.
Bathing in the dividends of the times and relying on their own diligence and innovation capabilities, Chinese going-global enterprises can often quickly complete the accumulation from 0 to 1. However, how to go from 1 to 10 is a blind spot for many people. Focusing on this issue, Lin Yi, the person in charge of BeyondClick by Meet Intelligence, as the host, had an interactive exchange with Yu Jian, the co-founder and COO of SPEEDIANCE, Cheng Shuangli, the director of the C-end Business Department of Lexin, and Yi Liang, the brand director of els pet.
Yu Jian pointed out that the core team of SPEEDIANCE is from R & D and product background, and the core development logic is to polish the product and complete the process from 0 to 1, which also has a certain element of dividend and luck. But the next process from 1 to 10 requires a very professional organization and team. In addition, it is also necessary to find a replicable and scalable product or track to carry out an effective centralized attack. For SPEEDIANCE itself, it is necessary to continuously increase investment in its most core technology to form a higher competitive barrier.
Cheng Shuangli pointed out that there are two key points in the process from 1 to 10: One is the omni-channel layout, including the linkage of online and offline to cover more user touchpoints; the second is the refinement of operations + the scale of the supply chain. Because in the stage from 0 to 1, the growth momentum is very strong, there will inevitably be some extensive management methods, but next, the operation must be more meticulous, paying attention to the granularity of each port. At the same time, the supply chain must keep up, and even consider using a more flexible supply chain strategy to cooperate with the front-end sales.
Yi Liang pointed out that in the pet supplies track, which is becoming more and more involuted and the low-price competition is becoming more and more fierce, "focus" may be a better solution, including the focus of the market (next year, els pet will focus more on the US market and be an American brand) and the focus of the product (els pet is currently focused on making the smart cat litter box category). Then, on this basis, continuously iterate and innovate, launch new products, cover the high-end market, the mid-end market, and the low-end market, increase the volume to optimize costs and build the scale.
