"Only by giving up can you gain," Chairman Ge Wenyao said as he encouraged the brand managers of Six Gods. After clarifying the brand positioning, Interbrand and the Six Gods brand management team began to study the direction of product extension. Through extensive research on consumers' summer lifestyle, it was found that consumers' skin needs in summer go far beyond just coolness. There are many other needs such as comfort, itch relief, sweat stopping, refreshment, and even whitening, sun protection, and antibacterial effects. Six Gods products have only touched a small part of these needs, leaving a lot of space for Six Gods to expand. These needs at both physiological and psychological levels can be summarized as the experience of comfort and freshness after solving problems. The future image positioning of Six Gods can completely be a refreshing experience rather than just coolness. This way, the principle and direction of product extension are clear.
The new season's advertisement of Six Gods is more eye-catching. In order to restore a sense of fashion, Six Gods has unprecedentedly adopted a star strategy in TV commercials, using two generations of film and television stars as spokespeople: the young-old pairing of Siqin Gaowa and Bingbing Li. This not only brings warmth to the home but also accurately conveys a fashionable signal. Coupled with the new spray-type flower water developed by Six Gods over a year, the result of a refreshed appearance is unsurprising. This advertising effect also opened the door to the rural market for Six Gods. Those traditional products of Six Gods that urban consumers are already very familiar with are still new to many rural consumers. The main information channel for rural consumers is television, and the advertisements of Six Gods undoubtedly awakened this dormant market. Li Jun said that consumers never need to be divided into urban and rural people. Just like Coca-Cola, the soda sold in cities and rural areas is the same.
After more than a year of integration, starting from the second half of 2004, the Six Gods brand began to exert efforts in brand building, scientific research development, channel expansion, and advertising communication. The first eye-catching appearance was in November 2004 when Six Gods bid 50 million yuan for CCTV advertisements at the 2005 CCTV advertising bidding event. This figure is equivalent to the total market promotion costs of Six Gods in the past few years. Moreover, Six Gods also invested tens of millions of yuan in advertising fees on local stations as complementary cooperation.
The original core assets points such as family sharing and traditional Chinese medicine theory still have value in terms of relevance, differentiation, extendability, and credibility. It's just that in the past few years, there has been a lack of integrated communication in communication strategies and product claims. Whether it's shower gel or flower water, they were just busy dealing with competitors' attacks without emphasizing the personality of the brand itself according to changing circumstances, failing to create unique attractions different from most brands.
In 2003, Shanghai Jiahua invited the brand consulting company Interbrand to diagnose Six Gods. The diagnosis concluded that the summer characteristics of the Six Gods brand are both aspects that differentiate Six Gods from all other personal care brands and also restrict Six Gods from developing into many opportunity markets. However, in the daily chemical market where homogenization is quite severe, only those brands with product features and brand personality truly succeed.