As the country with the highest level of acceptance of digitalization and new technologies, China's extremely high penetration rate of the Internet, especially mobile networks, among consumers has provided fertile soil for the digital marketing transformation of Chinese brands.
However, Lin Nianxiu, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, pointed out at the launch ceremony of the "Partnership Action" initiative that the 25% digital transformation rate of Chinese companies is far lower than 46% in Europe and 54% in the United States.
Digital transformation is not easy, but when crises such as the epidemic hit, we see that brands that have been deeply engaged in digitalization for a long time are more agile than other brands in transformation. Even when the restrictions caused the disruption of traditional supply chains and sales channels, Tsingtao Beer was able to achieve tens of thousands of registrations on WeChat to help distribute beer through a revolutionary distributor plan. This is the result of Tsingtao Beer's two years of preparation and the creation of a powerful O2O "new retail" strategy and digital framework.
Digital innovation is difficult for large traditional brands or institutions, but the Palace Museum has shown us how a Forbidden City with 600 years of history can be successfully renewed. After several years of hard work, starting from the whole network and mobile phone ticket purchase to solve the problem of crowded visits, to the "Palace Museum on the Palm", launching digital exhibitions, making "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" animated, or letting the emperor pose in a modern pose, to AR interactive games, and in-depth use of various social media platforms to spread the Palace Museum IP, whether on site or online, the digital Palace Museum focuses on solving audience needs and catering to new consumer psychology. The measures have made the Palace Museum go from being questioned by the public due to scandals to becoming the biggest Internet celebrity today. In the process of digitalization, "user-centric" is not just talk.
The Palace Museum's success in digitalization has not only benefited individual brands, but also enabled the public to better enjoy cultural baptism, and at the same time has driven large-scale practice throughout the museum community. During this year's Spring Festival, I wonder if you have also experienced "Cloud Tour of Dunhuang" on WeChat Moments, a digital project jointly created by the Dunhuang Museum and Tencent. It not only allows users to carefully appreciate the artistic treasures of thousands of years ago, but also allows them to "color" these murals by hand. Compared with the imperfect experience brought to tourists by offline measures to protect ancient murals, digitalization has cast a beam of light on the tour of ancient monuments. The once quiet museums seem to have fallen in love with using digital interactive experiences to get in close contact with the audience. "Cloud Tour of Dunhuang" gained more than 1 million independent users 10 days after its launch, which is equivalent to the number of offline visitors to Dunhuang in 2015.
In the field of fast-moving consumer goods, acquiring traffic and accurate audiences is what brands want to do most. The herbal tea brand Wanglaoji has been deeply involved in data integration marketing for many years. At the end of last year, Wanglaoji continued the "one item, one code" policy while launching its new product "Ya! Mango", and through the code scanning activity, its official account harvested a wave of accurate fans. In order to get closer to young people, Wanglaoji also launched a national Vlog competition on social media, implanted popular mobile games and integrated mini-programs and customized cans, expanded e-commerce digital supply channels, and used mini-programs to generate personalized New Year greetings videos. Through these big data-driven marketing, Wanglaoji applies data to omni-channel integration and plays a role in the entire operation, such as business district analysis and store management.
It can be seen that digitalization cannot be achieved in one step. Brands need to take it as a strategy and integrate the entire operation and marketing system to polish an ecosystem, especially the new "national trend" sports brand Li Ning. From "decline of aristocracy" to rise again, part of its digitalization strategy is to control the agile digital supply chain from R&D, production to circulation, use data and AI to optimize store inventory, and connect all online and offline, front-end and back-end data platforms as core support.
On the other hand, the industry has been focusing on Luckin Coffee's misfortunes recently. At the same time, some analysts have pointed out that Luckin's so-called digitalization is more like a simple "Internet +". The problem lies in the digital model of store operations and the systematic use of data. Frequent promotional pushes and app orders and store pickups have not actually saved store operating costs to a large extent. The lack of an enjoyable environment in the store has caused Luckin to lose white-collar workers who have a demand for "coffee socializing". With digitalization and data, but unable to use them well in physical store operations and positioning customer needs, it has only added to the embarrassment.
On the one hand, as a marketing booster and accelerator, digitalization cannot take over some irreplaceable functions, such as physical stores, at this stage; on the other hand, whether digital transformation makes the physical experience intelligent or superfluous is also a question that needs to be considered. The digital transformation of the automobile dealership industry has experienced such a painful lesson. When China's automobile sales experienced a turning point, dealers tried to achieve intelligent service and management through advanced digitalization. However, after entering the store, customers had to scan the code to place an order and sign a paper agreement at the same time, which was really unnecessary; the cumbersome back-end system added to the burden of the staff, further aggravated the cumbersomeness of the work process, and ultimately affected the customer's entire purchasing experience and the benefits of the enterprise. Nowadays, there are many such phenomena that digitalization brings double burdens.
Digital transformation is so difficult that according to a 2018 survey by Accenture, only 7% of Chinese companies can successfully carry out digital transformation . But there is a saying: Digital transformation may not be successful, but not doing digitalization is doomed to fail in the future.
Yin Jun, a researcher at Peking University, said about the urgency of digital transformation : "Although the epidemic has brought an impact on the economy this year, it can also be an opportunity for Chinese companies to upgrade to digitalization in an all-round way. Companies cannot regard this digital upgrade as a stopgap measure, but should press the fast-forward button for digital upgrades and regard it as a strategic choice to enhance their long-term competitiveness. I believe that after the epidemic, fully digitalized Chinese companies will help the Chinese economy unleash huge potential and contribute greatly to China's economic development."
It is also worth noting in this process that digitalization is not a "one-size-fits-all" approach, and it is even less likely to be achieved overnight. Not only do brands need to recognize the links in which digitalization plays a role and connect them internally, but the convenient environment created by the support of the government and the entire business community is also essential. As mentioned above, the "Digital Transformation Partner Action" has launched more than 500 service initiatives in the first batch, and platforms such as Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, and Meituan have all gathered, such as Tencent's "Digital Ark" plan and JD.com's "New Power Plan". They explore ways to support small and medium-sized enterprises in reducing the cost of digital transformation, shortening the transformation cycle, and increasing the success rate of transformation by sharing resources for free and creating integrated services.
The historical trend is irreversible, and the speed at which Chinese audiences are developing digital literacy makes it impossible for companies to wait any longer. Only by recognizing the reality and catching up with this wave of transformation, with the digital foundation laid in the early stage, can brands quickly change their strategies, especially when crises come, and recover a certain degree of sales losses, so as not to appear so unprepared in this modern business war.
