To do a business or to pursue a mission? This is often the dilemma facing state-owned enterprises: whether to be national or global, this is often the fundamental issue for Chinese brands to extend themselves.
When speaking of this, Qin Fenhua, as the deputy general manager of the marketing department of Shanghai Jahwa United Co., Ltd., did not show excessive helplessness. Compared with other industries, the daily chemical industry itself belongs to a market with relatively low technical content and fierce price and channel competition. Our real advantage is our brand, and the source of brand competitiveness comes from the inner strength of us marketing personnel on the front line. Only the original brand core is not easily replaceable by competitors.
It can be seen that Qin Fenhua is relatively satisfied with the market performance of the Six God mosquito-repellent flower water he was mainly responsible for promoting in 2004. First of all, as a domestic brand, Six God has been alive for more than ten years, which is itself a thing to be celebrated; secondly, we are still the only domestic bathing brand among the top five, and the brand loyalty has once reached 72.8%, which shows that consumers recognize our efforts; on this basis, products such as Six God mosquito-repellent flower water have also won the respect of multinational competitors. I think this is especially significant for the Six God brand. There was news that under the joint attack of four brands, Olay, Safeguard, Rejoice, and CoolRider, which failed to curb Six God, Procter & Gamble had intended to acquire Six God. In response, although it expressed this tendency through various channels, Shanghai Jahwa firmly refused to sell.
This is an era of competition against time, and the only way to survive is to face the competition and use the market space to gain time.
Six God's trial
Counting with fingers, as one of the two earliest university students introduced by Shanghai Jahwa, Qin Fenhua has been working there for more than a decade. The first job was sales, which made Qin Fenhua deeply feel the huge impact released by the switch between planning and market. From being ignorant to hands-on, Qin Fenhua completed the evolution of personal market concept during the establishment process of the Six God mosquito-repellent flower water brand.
In the first two years after I joined Jahwa, its position in this industry was indisputable. At that time, industry statistics showed that Meijiajing accounted for one-third of the national market share in skin care products, and hair shampoo accounted for nearly 20% of the hair care market. Suddenly one day, Procter & Gamble and Unilever entered, making people feel that foreign capital was completely different: what is cosmetics, what is daily necessities, how to establish your brand, expand your channels, and carry out terminal marketing, you would feel that what you did in the past and what you see now are completely different things, although you have broadened your horizons, but it is very painful.
During the planned economy era, Shanghai Jahwa, like other companies, entrusted sales to department stores, and the director of the sales department was responsible for producing all products according to the plan of the department store, and the department store sold them wholesale, similar to today's OEM supplier, with no brand concept at all. The brand itself belonged to the Light Industry Bureau, the assets belonged to the state, and the so-called brand was nothing more than a trademark. Out of intuition about the changes in the large market environment, around 1990, Ge Wenyue, then in charge of Shanghai Jahwa, began to pilot direct sales. At that time, Qin Fenhua's job was to open retail counters in Shanghai. At that time, Shanghai's retail industry was just beginning to take off. Nanjing Road Golden Triangle No. 1 Department Store, Hualian Building, and Boutique Building were well-known in Shanghai. Shanghai Jahwa was in full swing at that time, and we could occupy one and a half circles in the three-circle island of the No. 1 Department Store cosmetic counter. However, after Procter & Gamble joined, it impacted the entire daily chemical market. Marketing personnel wore suits, ties, and carried computers, selling products to the general manager, department managers, and counter group leaders of No. 1 Department Store, entering the commercial terminal, while doing large media advertisements, and introducing new concepts, all of which were unheard of in the past.
It was introduced that Procter & Gamble had a famous "Yellow Fish Car Down Street Plan" in Shanghai at that time. Small trucks went down the alleys for promotion, bypassing department stores, continuously facing consumers for promotion and providing samples, and revisiting three weeks later. Round by round, it lasted for two years. While consumers gradually accepted Procter & Gamble's concept, it also advertised and expanded marketing channels on the periphery.
Faced with the formidable foreign competitors, Shanghai Jahwa realized that it must launch its own brand, and the first bottle of Six God mosquito-repellent flower water was launched in 1990. Relying on the distinct cultural connotation of localization to establish a national brand, Six God mosquito-repellent flower water relied on the special trust of Chinese consumers in traditional Chinese medicine culture. Once launched, Six God mosquito-repellent flower water, with clear product claims of anti-heat rash and itch relief, quickly won more than 70% of the market share of flower water. Six God is the name of a prescription used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat heat rash and other summer diseases, with the main ingredients being pearl powder and musk. According to this prescription, we combined the ancient prescriptions of medicine with modern flower water, creating an original solution for summer skin problems. Qin Fenhua believed that the day Six God mosquito-repellent flower water was launched should be recorded in the history of the development of Chinese brands.
Before 1995, Six God only had a mosquito-repellent flower water product. At that time, Shanghai Jahwa continued to maintain the tradition of supplying goods to department stores, only taking a single-digit percentage of industrial gross profit, winning by volume; on the other hand, all marketing expenses were invested in the promotion of imitated brands with smaller scale, higher prices, and higher gross profits, starting to place advertisements in the media, and at that time, the advertising industry was strictly managed by foreign capital, allowing Six God to quickly accumulate fame.
However, since then, as the pioneer of local brands, Qin Fenhua still did not form a mature market concept, relying on preliminary market feelings to develop channels and terminals. As a non-joint venture Six God, it accidentally avoided the control of department stores, which was the key to our ability to compete with similar products later. In 1995, Six God believed that internal peace must come before external peace, preparing to unify the world, reducing prices by 40% at once, from more than nine yuan to more than five yuan, delivering a fatal blow to domestic competitors, and the market share quickly exceeded 70%-80%. Looking back, Qin Fenhua tasted the full value of brand marketing, realizing that the absence of any link would lead to the tragic exit of the company.
The future mission of Chinese brands
Starting from 1995, the market became increasingly open, and the state managed less and less. When Six God flower water succeeded, Shanghai Jahwa started considering what the second product of Six God would be?
Starting from 1995, we began to consider that for the brand to grow, relying on a single product line was insufficient. The flower water market reaching 70%-80% was basically saturated. At that time, we started to establish a market research department, but still mainly used the observation method, small, fast, and flexible for systematic decision-making. After visiting joint ventures, we found that they focused on rational data and market research methods, and from then on, I truly entered the world of marketing, as the boss said: Six God succeeded, it's not your success, you need to solve the next direction.
If we view Six God's dominance in the mosquito-repellent flower water market as a success in competing with domestic enterprises, then its rise in the shower gel field is a classic confrontation with foreign brands. As the brand manager of Six God at that time, Qin Fenhua began to play the role of the market research department, focusing on discussing two directions for extending Six God: shampoo and shower gel, with the former receiving even more attention than the latter. This was mainly because the hair care market had already been developed significantly by Procter & Gamble, making the cake quite tempting. Qin Fenhua explained, but we ultimately chose shower gel.
At that time, there was an important prediction: despite the low penetration rate of shower gels around 1995, the future potential was great. On the other hand, due to the intense competition in the shampoo market at that time, the possibility of a big bang was much smaller than in the shower gel market. Meanwhile, Six God mosquito-repellent flower water, as a summer product, extending to shower gel seemed more reasonable. After research, Qin Fenhua believed that consumer demand for shower gel had a certain seasonality, such as the need for coolness in summer and warmth in winter. Although shampoos also have differences, they are not very significant. This point strengthened our determination to extend the brand to shower gel and focus on promoting it.
In 1996, the Six God cooling shower gel series was launched, changing the game rules established by foreign brands like Lux and Safeguard, which segmented the market by function, and created a strategy of segmenting by season proposed by Six God. The new concept, along with consumer recognition of the Six God brand, propelled Six God to the top of the annual shower market after four years. In recent years, Six God has maintained the first place in the summer market and the top three in the annual market.
Since then, Six God has become popular, and various interviews hoping to share the brand's successful experience have been endless. Qin Fenhua frankly admitted learning to reasonably approach the market, although we cannot predict whether Six God will continue to maintain a successful brand image in the future, our generation has witnessed the continuous learning, innovation, and surpassing of Chinese brands. The success of the Six God series products, analyzed from the factors of marketing, on the one hand, lies in our finding the entry points with Chinese characteristics and using them as opportunities to cooperate with advertising and channel marketing, expanding the market within our reach; on the other hand, the unfamiliarity of foreign enterprises with this market indirectly provided us with the space to catch up in competition.
In conversation, Qin Fenhua has always been immersed in a strong sense of national identity, recalling Korea's past resistance to overseas cosmetics capturing their lipstick mountains and leaving their women colorless, thereby making people more deeply believe that behind Six God's success, it is more supported by the mission of perfecting the brand.
In January, Shanghai is cold and humid. The office building of Shanghai Jahwa, located in Yangpu District, which was a leading light of Shanghai's light industry over half a century ago, reveals everywhere the marks of history and the resilience of state-owned enterprises. A faint smell of flower water wafts from the product display room, so familiar, so invigorating.