In the field of food, many Internet celebrities are actively exploring the business model of "personal IP + brand", but very few can come out. Food experts such as Ono Office, Mizijun, and Langweixian, which were popular in the early years, still focus on the monetization model of advertising. Although the advertising ceiling is low, they have not easily set foot in their own brands.

What really advanced content e-commerce is Li Ziqi, who has suffered from the controversy of the "Kimchi Incident". She is one of the pioneers of domestic high-quality personal food brands.

As the largest IP of Weinian Technology, Li Ziqi has used more than 100 videos on YouTube to accumulate more than 10 million fans. He was also selected as the most influential Chinese business woman in the future list of "Fortune" last year.

As one of the top ten new brands of domestic products going overseas, its brand is being rushed by the public.

In 2019, the single-product snails and lion powder alone sold 3 billion. Other products such as lotus root flour, brown sugar ginger tea, rice cakes, etc. have also achieved annual sales of 20-80 million orders, with a cumulative sales of about 300-500 million.

Recently, Li Ziqi entered Ele.me to strengthen offline channels. Its products cover multiple categories such as casual snacks, brewed beverages, and convenient fast food. There are 10 first batch of takeaway stores in Shanghai.

It is not accidental that Li Ziqi’s team uses pastoral marketing to create phenomenon-level IP; Wei Nian focuses on high-quality IP to expand brand R&D, marketing communication, e-commerce operations, supply chain and other in-depth management capabilities, which are worth studying. Focusing on how Li Ziqi’s IP goes from 0 to 1, breaking through the subdivision of the track, there is a set of underlying logic supporting it.

ONE

Create the underlying logic of personal IP

The core of the explosion of the Li Ziqi brand is the insight into human nature and the internalization of civilization as a boost to product power.

Li Ziqi’s team leader, Li Xiaodao, once said to the author that they have reached an internal agreement that Li Ziqi has "non-copyability", and the key to creating an IP is to find a group of people that he can represent, the best is The prototype that can be found in film and television dramas, Cheya Culture uses personal charm and spiritual appeal to establish a "group high consensus". Take Li Ziqi for example, she represents a kind of "pastoral lifestyle" and "escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou." Echoes.

Back in the 1950s, Campbell studied cultures all over the world and found that no matter what kind of nation or civilization, the myths told have a common system-the hero model. Most of the heroes initially refused to get out of their comfort zone. After they stepped out, under the leadership of their partners, they passed through all the way, gained a sense of inner accomplishment, and finally brought the achievements back home.

Li Ziqi’s personal experience of “beating workers” is very similar to Campbell’s mythical heroism, and conforms to the collective imagination of the public, and this imagination is related to the subconscious and collective unconscious of the public, and can transcend nationality and language, and arouse the common sense of the viewers. Affection and identity.

This means that the content itself is not the core, and whether the personality charm behind the content is accepted and recognized by consumers is the most important.

For example, Monkey King, an all-powerful figure, represents the public's yearning for the courage to resist unreasonable. Nezha is the public's resistance to the oppression of feudal patriarchy. Therefore, China's most classic IP is the role of resistance. Weinian Technology found a person who fits Li Ziqi's real experience, called the "naive". The core of this image is to return to the basics, to have no desires, no worries, and no worldly mind.

Coca-Cola's polar bear is also an image of a "naive", but Coca-Cola is a young innocent, and its advertisements are all about sharing love, happiness, and beauty.

Li Ziqi still believes in a beautiful image after experiencing social ravages. She not only has the gift of self-confidence and optimism, but also has an extra layer of wisdom. On the contrary, most people in reality feel helpless in life, and no matter how innocent their hearts are, they cannot withstand the pressure of reality. This makes the public more firmly yearning for innocence, and the IP model of the naive is easier to gain sympathy from the target group.

After understanding the subconscious plot of the public, Li Ziqi made a large number of videos with the same tonality and put them on the Internet. He collected the fragmented time of users with simple and appetizing videos, and quickly gained the love of a wide range of users. Li Ziqi also gradually Established a deep connection with users.

This connection enhances the differentiation and sustainability of Li Ziqi's IP. After users have such a psychological foundation, it is possible to build a brand.

TWO

The "Long Term Way" of the Brand

As early as when Li Ziqi had only 300,000 fans, he was tapped by Liu Tongming, the founder of Weinian Technology. The "three visits to the thatched cottage" impressed Li Ziqi's bundled cooperation, and then he also received investment from Huaying Capital. Huaying Capital believes that only MCN institutions that can incubate consumer brands with content can really break through the ceiling, and Weinian may have to "do something different."

Later, Weinian Technology also took investment from platforms such as Sina Weibo, and the team was familiar with channel gameplay. It can not only make IP fans, but also not excessively consume the goodwill of the brand.

During the brand incubation process, Li Xiaodao, the person in charge of the Li Ziqi Division, emphasized, “Branding emphasizes positioning, so the brand needs to find its own position in the consumer’s perception.”

Li Ziqi's back traces the traditional Chinese culture for thousands of years. Its core is: poetic life, pastoral farming, non-hereditary inheritance, family. These cultures are endless, and these artistic conceptions are time-honored plots in the hearts of Chinese people.

Chinese people have had food culture and peach blossoms since ancient times. Li Ziqi's lifestyle is something that many people yearn for but may not be able to realize it. The public just thought of Li Ziqi's existence and her life, which satisfied part of the inner vacancy. Even foreigners who do not understand Chinese culture, after watching Li Ziqi's video, will feel that this is a very modern image.

And Li Ziqi is very restrained in advertising and endorsements. It is precisely because of this restraint that the brand has a tonality. Li Ziqi’s IP itself does not limit the category. The team considered that food has high repurchase attributes and is the easiest to achieve globalization, so it decided to use food as a cutting-edge in the early stage, and the brand is called "Oriental Food Life Home".

After clarifying its positioning, the Li Ziqi brand hopes to let everyone feel a poetic lifestyle through products, content, activities, materials and cultural and creative surroundings.

Pixar has a movie called "Spiritual Journey", the core is to show the poetic life, let the movie viewers feel the inner peace. Similarly, the public has used Li Ziqi brand products, although they still have to deal with the ups and downs in life. But I can remember for a moment that there is still Li Ziqi's poetic life in this world, and it is enough to experience it by myself once in a while.

THREE

Humanized food innovation

Twenty years ago, food belonged to "factory thinking" and focused on functionalization; now food is "consumer thinking", which focuses on emotional and psychological communication between products and consumers. In terms of product direction, Li Ziqi's team is very clear, to be a new traditional, slow-life products.

In product selection and product innovation, Li Xiaodao came to the conclusion that "traditional culture is fashionable and local cuisine is globalized". On the track of personal IP + homemade products, although Li Ziqi IP does not have a strong competitor, the team also faces different challenges and opportunities.

Li Xiaodao believes that there are two directions: First, the quality of originally good products gradually deteriorates with the passage of time, and the brand needs to be re-excavated and packaged to make young people like it. Second, certain foods that meet the tastes of the locals and are not necessarily accustomed to eating in other places, the brand also needs to repackage and research and develop to make the products popular. Li Ziqi's product vision is "Let the world fall in love with the taste of China".

Specific to products, such as zongzi, is one of the symbols of traditional Chinese culture. After disassembling the Zongzi of the Li Ziqi brand, the Zongzi leaves can be DIY, folded into a dragon boat, and placed at home as decorations, which can also enhance parent-child interaction.

There is also a local specialty such as snail noodles. The snail noodles on the market have a strong taste. For this reason, the team has developed flavors that are acceptable in other places. With marketing assistance, it has achieved monthly sales of 10 million bags in one year, successfully breaking the market. lock up. In addition, the Li Ziqi brand is accelerating the globalization of snail noodles, and now the world is slowly accepting Chinese-style snail noodles.

Another example is the case of lotus root noodles. In the past, people who ate lotus root noodles were concentrated in middle-aged and elderly people, and young people would not touch this category. After investigation, the Li Ziqi team added nuts and other condiments to improve the packaging value. Although the price is three or four times more expensive than pure lotus root flour, it has always been the number one lotus root flour category.

Now all walks of life are in roll, but the food in Li Ziqi's eyes cannot. As the "moat" of the brand, she still shows a slow life. Whether these crazily increasing sales and frequently-born explosive products can win word-of-mouth for a long time and go abroad is another matter.