Product breakthrough and advertising breakthrough are typical operation modes of successful enterprises in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and they are also the mainstream direction of marketing. Master Kong entered the instant noodle industry and grasped the mainstream direction from the beginning.
At that time, the mainland instant noodle market was polarized: one was cheap noodles produced by domestic manufacturers, which cost a few cents a bag, but the quality was very poor; The other pole is imported noodles, which are of good quality, but expensive, with a bowl of five or six yuan, which the average mainlander simply can't afford. Seeing this market situation, Wei thought: If there is a kind of instant noodles with good quality and low price, there must be a market. So I decided to produce this kind of instant noodles and gave this kind of instant noodles a resounding name-"Master Kong".
The name is given, the product grade is decided, and the next step is to determine the taste. How to develop instant noodles that meet the tastes of mainlanders? After tens of thousands of taste tests and surveys, Master Kong found that mainlanders have a heavy taste and prefer beef, so he decided to use "braised beef noodles" as the main product. Considering the consumption power of mainland consumers, the final price is 1.98 RMB.
At the same time, Master Kong's advertising campaign has also been fully rolled out. During the period of 1992, under the condition that the advertising awareness of domestic enterprises is not strong, Master Kong's annual advertising expenditure reached 30 million yuan. At that time, the cost of TV advertising in Chinese mainland was quite cheap, and it only took 500 yuan RMB to insert advertisements in CCTV prime time. In order to spread the slogan "Good taste is eaten" all over the country, in the middle and late 1990s, Master Kong spent more than 654.38 billion yuan on advertisements every year. Master Kong believes that "advertisements are like friends. If you don't say hello, people will forget you. "
Master Kong, with exquisite packaging and fierce advertisements, started immediately as soon as it was launched, setting off a buying frenzy. At the gate of Master Kong's company, there is even a rare scene where wholesalers queue up and order bags. Driven by the market, the production scale of Master Kong has expanded rapidly. After several failures, Wei finally tasted the sweetness of investing in the mainland for the first time.
The second secret of Master Kong's success in "fighting"
From 65438 to 0997, after the Asian financial crisis, China quickly transformed from a short-term economy to a surplus economy. The sudden change in the market has almost panicked all enterprises. This is the best time to test the adaptability of enterprises, because only enterprises that survive tenaciously in "adversity" are qualified to continue to operate. At this time, Master Kong made a major decision, decisively cut off the provincial "big households", shifted the market focus to cities, and set up control dealers in counties with cities as the marketing starting point. Master Kong was one of the first enterprises to make the decision to shift the focus of the market downward, and the first batch of enterprises all took great risks. Because the traditional "big households" have to be cut off, the market network of prefecture-level cities has not been fully established, and if there is a convergence problem, enterprises may close down.
The market center of gravity sinks, cutting off large households. This is the mainstream marketing direction after 1997, and Master Kong grasped the marketing direction again almost at the first time.
The Secret of Master Kong's Third "Battle"
Since 2000, Master Kong has started the second round of access innovation. This time, the access not only sank to the county market, but also realized the intensive cultivation of the access around the terminal. To this end, Master Kong invested $40 million in access within three years. At present, Master Kong is divided into five regions in Chinese mainland: southeast, northwest and central, with more than 300 operating outlets, nearly 5,000 dealers, 550,000 sales outlets and 0/39 warehouses.
In addition, Master Kong divided the whole country into 1500 small areas, and each area was under the responsibility of salesmen. Each salesperson is required to visit 80 retail outlets every day, understand their sales and needs, and feedback their requirements in time.
In order to provide support for intensive cultivation, Master Kong planned the production layout. There should be an instant noodle production base within 500 kilometers in diameter, and the freight should be controlled within 5% of the sales price to achieve the best combination of freshness, sales price and cost.
In the product structure of instant noodles, Master Kong started from the high end, extended to the middle end, and then extended to the low end, forming a take-all pattern. In terms of brand extension, Master Kong has gradually extended to snacks (ice cream), beverages and other fields, and has also achieved good results.
Experts reveal that the adaptability of enterprises is more important than becoming bigger and stronger.
Mr. Lu Taihong once said that the business and academic circles in China had a heated discussion on the proposition of "becoming bigger or stronger first". In fact, for the China market, the more important proposition is "whether to adapt to the environment in China". "Big" or "strong" is not enough to determine its success or market life in China market, but only the degree of adaptation or strain determines the fate of its company. For example, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Volkswagen, General Motors and Amway. Both companies have a high degree of adaptation to China, while Microsoft and multinational advertising companies have a low degree of adaptation to China. TCL, Huawei, Wahaha, Shuanghui, Netease, BBK and Amoi in mainland China are highly adaptable companies, while liquor, banks, Chundu and Lehua are not.
There is a bad atmosphere in China marketing circle, that is, summary mode. Every time a successful enterprise appears, it begins to sum up its own successful model. The day when the pattern is summed up is the day when it is out of date. With the model, the marketing work becomes simplified, that is, the model is constantly copied, regardless of whether the marketing environment has changed or not, regardless of whether the foundation for the success of the model still exists. Wu Zeng, CEO of Taiwan Province Group, once said: "It is true that during the period from 65,438 to 2005, the performance in the mainland market was very bad, with a loss of more than 20 million US dollars. In the process of China's expansion of the mainland market, Chen Kun's biggest mistake is: there is no' what song to sing in any mountain'! "
What song to sing on what mountain. This is actually a very simple truth. It doesn't seem to cost that much. It seems that you don't need to stay up to Mr. Wu's age to realize it. However, as long as you have a pattern in your mind, you will definitely not go to any mountain to sing any song. On the influence of Taiwan Province Province, Uni-President is far stronger than Master Kong, but Uni-President only sells the best-selling products in Taiwan Province Province to Chinese mainland, and Master Kong is trying to eat for thousands of people. The reason for this is that reunification had a pattern before entering Chinese mainland, but Master Kong didn't. Mr. Lu's words are indeed incisive enough, and the first success of an enterprise may require a model; There should be no fixed model or a contingency model for the sustainable success of an enterprise.
On September 17, 2004, the German Financial Times published an article entitled "The mixed prospect", and put forward the surprising conclusion that "the competitiveness of local enterprises in China is stronger than that of foreign enterprises". This conclusion not only surprised me, made me proud, but also made me think deeply: foreign companies have huge resource advantages, and often have the China strategy of "not making money within ten years". Why are local enterprises in China more competitive than foreign enterprises? There is only one answer in my mind: the market environment in China is very different from that in western countries, and local enterprises in China have stronger market adaptability. This gives us great enlightenment: China local enterprises, whose scale and resources are far less than those of foreign companies, have gained stronger competitiveness than foreign companies by relying on their high adaptation to the market. It can be seen that adaptability is the viability of enterprises.
Master Kong's successful process is already public information. The reason why this article takes the trouble to comb it again is to find out whether Master Kong has grasped the mainstream direction of marketing and is highly adapted to the environment at every turning point in the qualitative change of the environment.
It is risky for any enterprise to make such a judgment, even for GE, not to mention that Master Kong has only a history of more than 20 years. But we hope that through the study of sustainable successful enterprises, we can find their genes from success to success, not their experience. In my opinion, Master Kong is indeed an outstanding model of enterprise sustainable management.
Master Kong is an enterprise with high adaptability to market changes. Almost every time there is a major change in the market environment, Master Kong takes the lead in responding. Master Kong's market actions during the marketing reform period have almost become the vane of FMCG industry.