Gong Wenxiang: A Successful Case of Agricultural Products Branding.

The entrepreneurs of the old bee farmer brand honey have almost no self-owned funds, no extensive promotion and no self-built sales network. They only rely on the creativity of product planning to generate internal source power, and rely on pure natural sales to spiral up and develop themselves. Entrepreneurs invested 500,000 yuan through bank loans. In the past five years, they not only gained 5 million yuan of net profit from entrepreneurial returns, but also created opportunities for competitors to bid 6.5438+million yuan.

The value of the case of the old beekeeper lies in that it is completely different from the successful case of products that flood the market and need a lot of money, and promotion is the first driving force. Only relying on the brand charm of product positioning as the first driving force of product sales has become a case that small entrepreneurs in the field of agricultural small products can copy or learn from.

With the rise of agricultural industrialization and commercialization in China, more and more high-quality agricultural products are put on supermarket counters, and marketing techniques are increasingly applied to the field of agricultural products. A typical case of successful marketing of advanced agricultural products abroad is kiwifruit in New Zealand, which is successfully packaged with fruits with little difference in nutritional components from kiwifruit in China. Other products include Sunkist orange, American raisins (big grapes) and Thai fragrant rice. Most of them are established by the relevant departments of the local government through market-oriented operation.

However, the reality faced by many small entrepreneurs in the field of small agricultural products in China is that apart from the advantages of local agricultural products resources such as high-quality honey, preserved eggs, lotus seeds, kiwifruit and jujube, entrepreneurs hardly have much venture capital, so they have no money to promote them on a large scale, set up sales teams, and even dare not want to enter large stores with high admission fees. They think that the successful cases of foreign agricultural products similar to kiwifruit in New Zealand make them feel classic but not easy to learn from. The successful business cases of Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart they read in textbooks made them feel out of reach. Domestic marketing magazines are full of a large number of successful cases of health care products, cosmetics and other industries promoting the market through extensive marketing, and there is little practical reference value for them.

The dream of most agricultural entrepreneurs is that after I deeply process agricultural products, people will purchase them and then they will put them in supermarkets and shopping malls. Without any promotion, people will continue to buy my products, with less investment, greater output and self-rolling development.

Therefore, I have been looking for a successful case of "less input and more output" agricultural products entrepreneurship around farmers' friends: an example of actually starting a business and actually making money under roughly the same conditions as them. For a while, I saw the old bee farmer's honey products in large-scale stores such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Baijia, and the brand name and packaging were classic at first glance. It is a success that a small agricultural product in Jinggangshan can be placed in these super stores, and I found that it has never been promoted after observation. I intuitively feel that this is a valuable case for thousands of small entrepreneurs in the agricultural product industry. Later, I had an opportunity to discuss this case with Mr. Chen Taizhi, one of the founders of the old beekeeper brand, and Mr. Heima, the packaging designer of the old beekeeper brand, a famous domestic brand design agency.

First, choose projects that can sell goods naturally.

Gong Wenxiang: Half of the success of the honey project of the old beekeeper is due to the success of the project selection. How did you first consider entering the traditional agricultural project of honey?

Chen Taizhi: First of all, Jinggangshan area is rich in honey resources. Many farmers make a living by keeping bees. The environmental pollution here is not serious. Jinggangshan has the reputation of "green bank" in 800 miles, so I thought of starting a business with local materials. In fact, many bosses of health care products and pharmaceutical companies in Jiangxi started by selling honey, such as the famous Huiren Group CEO and Jiangxi Guangenhe Pharmaceutical Company, which produces Meiyuanchun oral liquid. Honey industry has a low starting point. Suitable for people with little money to start a business. In addition, this small product industry is not noticed, and the competition is much weaker than other industries. Health products must be widely publicized before they can be sold. Because the function of honey products no longer needs education and promotion, it is natural to sell some goods.

It is impossible for small entrepreneurs to conduct formal market research, but good business intuition and judgment become the starting point for entrepreneurs to succeed. Several other friends and I started to enter the honey market on 1998, mainly considering that health care industry and China were at the turning point of declining from the peak at that time. With Zhu San as the representative, health care industry was in a crisis of credibility, and quite a few people no longer trusted the concept health care products. A considerable number of consumers will return to traditional health foods, such as honey and ginseng, which have a thousand-year-old health care tradition in China. In addition, there is no real leading brand in the whole honey market in China, which is full of miscellaneous brands and simple and low-level. However, only a few century-old honey brands such as Shanghai Guanshengyuan and Guangzhou Baoshengyuan in China have failed to shape their brand images. All these give us opportunities.

Gong Wenxiang: China has a large population, a large market and many entry points. Many small entrepreneurs have embarked on the road of simple imitation and following the trend for financial reasons, and some have embarked on the road of counterfeiting, such as the "fake milk powder" that appears now. Some entrepreneurs with a little money have embarked on the investment route. In other words, short-term profits can be obtained by launching the market through large-scale and wide-ranging promotion. The old beekeeper did not take the above-mentioned entrepreneurial route, but developed and expanded with product source manufacturing as the first driving force for enterprise development. How did you cut into this cake for honey, a "small product and big market" product?

Chen Taizhi: Our initial consideration in starting a business is to find a blank spot in the market, and innovation can succeed. Before starting a business project, I saw many packages of honey products. The jar is flat, the words are crooked and the color is not good. It can even be said that there is no successful packaging in the whole honey market in China. I think this is a good opportunity. I must try my best to make the best packaging in China honey industry. In addition, when I went to Guangzhou, I found that honey products were rarely seen in large shopping malls. There were products that were not subdivided in the honey market at that time, such as honey brands that were not aimed at white-collar workers and were accepted and liked by them. I keenly feel that these are the entry points of the market.

Gong Wenxiang: Good business opportunities have been discovered, so how do you solve the problem of start-up capital?

Chen Taizhi: Most people start a business by financing first, and then planning to produce products, and we do it the other way around. Before looking for funds, we have good product planning and the best packaging. We invested less than100000 in the packaging design, and all our planning ideas for this product were condensed in this packaging. Then we took the packaging samples to find a bank loan and talked about the market prospects. Talk about the difficult situation that a large number of local beekeepers can't sell honey. Because the government departments are very supportive of agricultural industrialization projects, and several of our shareholders have always been people with good credit, the most important thing is that people in the bank like this package very much and think it will sell well, so they make an exception and lend us 500 thousand without any guarantee or mortgage.

Different from those successful enterprises who talked about the history of revolutionary struggle and had miraculous experiences, we all came naturally, naturally and even easily: relying on this kind of product packaging that can sell goods naturally and develop by ourselves, from a debt of 500 thousand to a net asset of 5 million now, from a small workshop to a modern standard factory building covering an area of 20 acres. Marketing is selling goods, and selling goods is the last word. If the product does not depend on a wide range,

Second, the product positioning that can sell goods naturally

Gong Wenxiang: According to my survey of friends around me, I found that the buyers of old beekeepers are mostly white-collar women, and there are many repeat customers. Can you say that your target customers are white-collar women in large and medium-sized cities?

Chen Taizhi: It is not so much that we unconsciously regard white-collar women as our main consumers, but rather that these white-collar women actively choose our products, and they have become loyal customers of honey farmers. Unlike those "hot spots" and "fashions" planned by merchants, we have not planned any product concepts, nor have we boasted any functional benefits of honey, but our products cater to the fundamental needs of this group of people, so they have market vitality and are natural.

Gong Wenxiang: The factor behind catering to the fundamental needs of white-collar women is that the old beekeeper is the first brand in the honey market in China to upgrade honey products from the functional physical level to the psychological and cultural level. Before the appearance of old beekeepers, these picky customers were completely dissatisfied with the psychological and spiritual aspects of honey consumption. When they look at those rustic packages that have no aesthetic taste, they know that this is not the product they want. When old beekeepers appear, they will be pleasantly surprised that this is the product they need, and this is the brand that can satisfy their happy emotional and spiritual experience. So the success of the old beekeeper seems easy and simple, but it is inevitable: because it is the first product in China honey market to meet the high-level spiritual needs of customers. Moreover, this spiritual feeling is not reflected through extensive publicity, but through the form of communication, that is, the exquisite packaging and display of the old beekeeper's products themselves.

I want to confirm, except for product packaging, are other marketing methods such as channels, prices and promotions basically product positioning strategies for white-collar workers?

Chen Taizhi: The main channel of honey for old beekeepers is big shopping malls. In the past, honey products were only sold in grocery stores and small supermarkets, so we decided to explore the field of big shopping malls. You may ask, how can we afford such a high admission fee for shopping malls? Because of our brand-new product positioning and packaging, dealers are optimistic about our sales prospects and are willing to invest in the development of large shopping mall channels. Of course, our price is the highest-end route. Our price is 20% to 30% higher than that of Centennial Honey, which gives dealers higher profit margins. We have hardly done any extensive promotion, and product display is the best publicity. Because our exquisite packaging is displayed in Wal-Mart, because exquisite packaging is displayed in Wal-Mart, some foreign bread brands actively cooperate with us to promote honey bread, because they feel that only the brand image of old beekeepers in China matches their foreign brand image; In Guangzhou, the new brand old beekeeper entered the channel of century-old brand Huang Zhenlong herbal tea shop with the brand image of "century-old honey".

Gong Wenxiang: It seems that high-end image products, supermarket channels, high prices and exciting displays are all aimed at the value orientation and strategies of white-collar customers. An attractive product will always be welcomed by customers. In the previous conversation, we mentioned many times the great role of old beekeepers' packaging. Let's ask Mr. Dark Horse to talk about how to create product charm and promote sales through packaging design.

Third, you can sell the image packaging of goods.

Dark horse:

At that time, the whole bee industry in China was in the background of outdated brand awareness and backward marketing methods. We are determined to make the appearance of the brand image of the old beekeeper become the highlight and landscape of the whole industry, bring excitement and fresh breath to the whole industry, and make the design have direct sales power. We have this ambition and the ability to achieve it. First of all, the brand name "Old Beekeeper" is a classic in itself. This name was jumped out of sleep by Mr. Chen Taizhi after thinking hard on the train. Brand packaging.

The strategy behind our design is to embody the following points in order to build product charm and promote sales.

Trust:

The existing mainstream honey products, such as the packaging image of Bao Shengyuan, only use the word "Bao" as the main communication element, but this image cognition is remote and superficial, which cannot explain the history. Even if your brand with the words "18" written on the package is established, it may not win the trust of consumers. Through the image of a self-sustaining old beekeeper, let consumers feel and experience that the "old beekeeper" comes from the deep mountains and forests. Trust leads to buying. Just like people buy vegetables, people prefer to buy vegetables sold by people dressed as vegetable farmers, which feel fresh, original and cheap. This is also one of the main reasons why old beekeepers can let consumers buy goods.

Humanization:

Honey products are perceptual products, and consumers are used to looking at the packaging, so they have the desire to buy improvisation. We decided to use graphic images instead of written language to communicate with consumers. We searched everywhere for the image of ancient beekeepers, got inspiration from the characters in Water Margin, and created a humanized and vivid image of old beekeepers. In order to reflect the direct relevance of honey, we asked the image spokesperson to take a beehive. Unlike many other brands, it does not directly express the image of bees. The image of beehive is similar to the artistic conception of monks in "the ancient temple in the deep mountains", which leaves consumers with imagination space and conforms to the design principle that strangeness produces surprises.

Design is also a sales force. Consumers like the humanized image of old beekeepers, so they will like this product and have the desire to buy it.

Fashion:

Products with ancient images should also reflect the flavor of the times and cater to the aesthetics of modern young people. When designing the iconic image of the old beekeeper, we abandoned the traditional painting techniques in China and adopted the expression form of German printmaking. The shape design of the packaging bottle is inspired by a Japanese coffee bottle which is very in line with the style of the old beekeeper, and it has become the first product in China market to package honey with a coffee bottle. Why a product with an ancient image will make young people like it is because of the appeal of fashion.

Details: Details produce product charm. When modern people buy products, they will think that all products are good when they see the details or packaging of the products are in place. They feel a product in an emotional way, and what can impress customers most are some exciting details. For example, we invited Mr. Lv Zhiqiang, the president of Maihuasan Calligraphy Research Association, who is famous for its roundness and beauty, to write these three words. For example, we adopted an innovative ancient phonetic notation format to express the pinyin of these three words. These design details will make consumers experience the brand culture and connotation of the old beekeeper, thus enhancing the overall brand image.