Exploration and innovation, bringing the brand to life

Exploration and innovation, bringing the brand to the market comprehensively

—— Special Report on the 13th Customer Reunion of Beijing Kang贝尔 Food Co., Ltd.

From August 2nd to 5th, Beijing Kang贝尔 Food Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Madajie Food) held its 13th annual customer reunion at the Jiuhua Mountain Villa International Conference Center in Beijing. The conference, marked by unity and friendship, concluded with enthusiastic orders. Madajie Food highlighted several new candy products and supplemented its offerings of jelly and fruit cakes. Through continuous innovation in candy, Madajie Food has made significant strides in the candy market over the past two years. Simultaneously, to fully achieve brand localization, Madajie Food has invested considerable effort in channel maintenance and end-consumer engagement. Madajie Food is poised to achieve remarkable success during the peak candy season following August!

Product innovation, focusing on sweetness

The original attributes of candy—sweetness and happiness—have made this market, especially the market for domestic candy brands, increasingly concentrated on the two major consumption markets of festivals and celebrations. How to enhance the leisure attributes of candy and extend the sales season as much as possible has become a key consideration for more and more domestic candy brands. This year, Madajie Food has further deepened the "sweet spot" attributes of new products in the development of loose candy products. This year's new products mainly include several characteristic products—brown sugar plum, brown sugar brittle candy, half-sugar nougat, tangerine peel soft candy, and hawthorn soft candy. Among them, brown sugar plum and brown sugar brittle candy inherit the compatibility characteristics of brown sugar and other candy flavors from last year, achieving a transition from candy to snacks and leisure foods by perfectly combining brown sugar with brittle candy and plum candy. In particular, the three new products—half-sugar nougat, tangerine peel soft candy, and hawthorn soft candy—further weaken the original attributes of candy while further enhancing the taste attributes of northern characteristics such as tangerine peel and hawthorn, further strengthening the leisure attributes of candy.

With the increase of new products, in order for consumers to accept them quickly, it is necessary to do a good job in terminal display, so that consumers can see and buy them anytime and anywhere to truly promote new products and achieve successful promotion. Therefore, Madajie Food also has strict requirements for terminal display in various markets: loose products should have at least 12 display bins, and specific products displayed should be flexibly controlled in each region, but they must be the company's main or relatively popular products; display props can be the company's counters, supermarket floor displays, or shopping carts, etc., and have clear price tags and eye-catching promotional information (when there are promotions). The display requirements for bagged products are that a store can have a display stand of more than 1 square meter, an end display, a set of shelves, more than two hanging nets, more than two side cabinets, more than 10 hanging strips or surrounding piles, or a display wall back, or column wrapping; special stores (chain convenience stores, campus stores, gas stations, etc.) must have at least three single-product displays on two layers (at least three display surfaces for each single product), and have clear price tags and eye-catching promotional information (when there are promotions). Through product innovation and strengthening terminal display standards, more consumers can understand the true meaning of Madajie brand upgrade. By strengthening terminal display standards and comprehensively improving the brand's terminal appearance rate, the true promotion of the brand and products can be achieved.

Channel drive, service is the key

With competitive new products and standardized terminal display requirements, channel traction is essential for truly driving sales of new products. At the same time, the important factor that truly motivates channel enthusiasm is service—the various support and cooperation provided by manufacturers to distributors, that is, the enterprise's service capabilities. In order to fully cooperate with the launch and stocking of new products, Madajie Food has been putting 34 delivery trucks into 116 prefecture-level cities in 15 provinces including Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, Shandong, Liaoning, Jilin, and Shaanxi since February 2012. Through the on-site operation of delivery trucks, 217 agents have developed 2346 outlets, accumulating 1068 days of stocking operations, and achieving an increase in direct sales of more than 2.6 million.

In order to effectively cooperate with local distributors in building key stores, Madajie Food also jointly builds "Madajie Happiness Stations" with local distributors. In each market, 1-5 key stores are selected for substantial investment to create "Madajie Happiness Station" brand image stores, shaping the Madajie brand image high point, creating a good sales atmosphere for Madajie products, and driving sales growth in surrounding markets. In mature markets, Madajie Food will also strongly support agents with experience in operating bagged products and the ability (development and maintenance personnel, delivery vehicles) to expand campus channels, gradually developing campus stores in the jurisdiction to promote and sell Madajie 70g Jingdou and other bagged products. At the same time, Madajie Company will strongly support agents with experience in operating catering channels and the ability (development and maintenance personnel, delivery vehicles) to expand catering channels, gradually developing catering stores in the jurisdiction to promote and sell Madajie 150g sucking jelly and other products.

Through the company's series of service policies, Madajie Food has further strengthened its support for distributors, and the synergy between manufacturers and distributors has been comprehensively strengthened. At the same time, starting from August, the company will implement the assessment principle of "inventory management is essential for winning, display is key" to promote team members to carry out a nationwide 10,000-store display improvement campaign to strengthen service to distributors.

Brand localization, interaction is the key

As everyone knows, the true localization of a brand is to establish direct brand awareness and sustained market purchasing power among consumers. In order to further shorten the distance between the Madajie brand and consumers, the company will launch various forms of Madajie jelly interaction and communication activities nationwide.

During the "June 1st" Children's Day, Madajie jelly products seized the opportunity of festival consumption and launched the "Happy June 1st, Sweet Madajie" promotion activity in cooperation with some supermarkets or kindergartens nationwide, with more than 40,000 consumers participating in tasting and purchasing. At the same time, following the principle of "doing market in the off-season and sales in the peak season," starting from April 15, 2012, "Happy Moments, Madajie Adds to Happiness" candy promotion activities were launched in nearly 500 KA or BC stores in more than 20 provinces and cities including Xinjiang, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Beijing, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Guangdong, and Guangxi, laying a solid market foundation for peak season sales. Before the opening of the much-anticipated London Olympics, nearly 500 stores in Shanxi, Fujian, Hunan, Hubei, Shandong, Northeast China, Shaanxi, and Sichuan successively staged "Madajie Cheers for China—Enjoy Life, Win the Championship" consumer entertainment and interactive promotions. Through free tasting and promotional purchases, the sense of distance between consumers and the brand was comprehensively shortened.

Following the principle of product promotion being entertaining, emotional, and interactive, Madajie Food will also launch larger-scale consumer interaction and promotion activities in October to help local distributors achieve real terminal sales. On New Year's Day, at the beginning of 2013, the company also plans to launch a large-scale promotional activity of "focusing on attracting eyeballs"—"Hundreds of Cities, Thousands of Stores, Tens of Thousands of People" brand promotion and product tasting—to lay a good foundation for the Spring Festival peak sales.

Reprinted from "Sugar, Tobacco and Alcohol Weekly", Author: Qiang Chaoxian