Picture source @Visual China
Text | Lifu Shihua
As a senior wine circle companion, I never drink. But in the past two years, when I passed by the duty-free shop, I would buy two bottles of Japanese whiskey.
Riwei’s price in duty-free channels is very good, and the counters of Yamazaki, Hibiki, and Hakushu Three Musketeers are crowded with people. This kind of grand occasion has only appeared in front of Le Cordon Bleu Martell and Napoleon xo at most. And now it’s Japanese whiskey’s turn to be rich and powerful.
Speaking of Riwei, I recently watched "Flowers", and it buried the branch line between Reiko and Night Tokyo very deeply. After the revision of
, the night Tokyo has obvious Japanese characteristics. The lights are on, the people are drunk and the whole wine cabinet is filled with Suntory whiskey, and the tipsy atmosphere instantly reaches a climax.
From Wang Manni’s introduction to the wealthy industry in “Thirty Only”, to the collection in He Han’s wine cabinet in “The First Half of My Life”, to the embellishment in Vanity Fair in “Flowers”, Japanese whiskey always fits the bill. Appearing in all kinds of weird movies and TV series at the right time.
But in fact, the popularity of Riwei in China began as early as ten years ago, and it has penetrated from the high-end catering circle into small street bars, all the way from the Chaoshan area to Beijing and Shanghai, and now it has become a mid-to-high-end circle. Wife's favorite.
How did Riwei rise in China? How did you make yourself more expensive step by step and eventually become a frequent visitor to high-end bureaus?
The answer is just fifteen words: catering creates scenes, culture creates awareness, and scarcity sells value.
Reiko please hold Japanese whiskey in hand Source: "Flowers" stills input picture caption
Japanese whiskey goes with Chaoshan cuisine? The scene is set, please take a seat objectively.
Riwei became popular in China around 2013.
Wine merchants all know that wine is shipped fastest in catering. The best way to penetrate the market is to first enter the catering scene with the same value, and then gradually reduce the dimensionality to enter nightclubs, commercial KTVs, KTVs and small bars.
日伟 also has this logic. Large wineries such as Suntory positioned themselves as high-end when promoting Riwei, so they focused on high-end catering circles as soon as they entered China. As a catering wine pairing, they only appeared in restaurants and bars with a per capita price of more than 1,000.
As far as catering categories are concerned, Riwei naturally gives priority to Japanese food. But if any foreign wine wants to sell in large quantities, it must be localized and find a suitable pairing with Chinese cuisine.
Can you believe it, Riwei’s partner turned out to be Chaoshan cuisine!
In fact, the entire whiskey category first became popular in southern China, especially in Guangdong.
This is directly related to the climate.
A person is nourished by the soil and water. People in cold areas love to drink strong liquor, especially Russians, whose alcohol content is higher than the last. This is because the climate is cold, and drinking strong alcohol can produce heat in people and warm the body quickly.
In warm areas, there are very few people who drink strong liquor. For example, you rarely see Cantonese people taking the initiative to drink Moutai. On the contrary, because the climate is humid and hot all year round, many southerners like to add ice to their wine because they don’t want to get too hot.
Flavored whiskey, which tastes better with ice, has naturally become the first choice for southerners. This is also the reason why Japanese whiskey is played from south to north.
focuses on controlled drunkenness, and uses movies and TV dramas to infiltrate
drinking scenes, but what about the motivation for drinking?
The Japanese use several movies to tell you.
Japan's cold start in Japan was largely attributed to the film "Lost in Translation".
In 2003, Scarlett Johansson, who still had the appearance of a girl, started an indescribable relationship with her middle-aged uncle Bill Murray, who was living in a foreign land.
The Suntory whiskey that appears throughout the film is the origin and catalyst of this relationship.
"Are you lonely? Are you bored? Let's have a glass of Suntory!"
Traditional Scotch whiskey mainly represents freedom, enthusiasm and romance in Western culture. But in the eyes of the strict and orderly Japanese, Japan's power is portrayed as a moment of drunkenness and romance. An option for occasional indulgence.
Therefore, in any scene, Riwei is restrained and restrained, only showing off for a moment at the end of the drink. This is the same reason why most people drink Riwei, to get drunk and enjoy themselves.The successful implantation of
Suntory has made other Japanese whiskey brands realize the importance of using culture to build awareness and promote new products.
So in 2014, the TV series "Masaka" based on the character Taketsuru Masataka, the father of Japanese whiskey, was broadcast on NHK Morning Theater. The sales of its whiskey brand Nikka directly increased by 124%.
The motivation for drinking is pleasure, but the reason for teaching you to drink must be business opportunities.
Source: "Lost in Translation" movie screenshots
Playing competitions, going to auctions, and packaging, from drinks to collectibles
A bottle of wine makes people without money want to buy it, and people with money want to hoard it. Why?
because it can package and position.
Where does the value of wine come from? From the people who drink it. The nobler the person who drinks it, the more expensive the wine is.
So what should you do if you want your wine to become more expensive?
is very simple, put a label on your wine, especially the label of the type of person your customer base aspires to be, and then let representatives of this type of people advertise and endorse you.
For example, when Wang Shi endorsed the 8848 mobile phone, the advertisement said, "I am Wang Shi, and I use 8848." At that time, Wang Shi was like Huang Zheng now. Successful people were all using 8848. If I wanted to be successful, I You should also buy 8848.
Japanese whiskey also plays this trick. From the very beginning, it has been based on the selling point of "the choice of successful people".
Japan's first whiskey distillery founded by Masataka Taketsuru and Shinjiro Torii, the first product advertisement is: "Wake up and stop blindly following imported products! Japan also has the world's highest standard of whiskey!"
This is not an inducement to learn from success. , what is it again?
Of course, what is more important than labeling is to implement the label so that Riwei can truly have value and represent success, from drinks to collections, from a buyer's market to a seller's market.
To this end, Japanese wine companies have mainly done two things: competing in the international whiskey evaluation system competition to endorse the professionalism of the wine; and going to auction houses to create scarcity and prepare for the investment and collection attributes of the product. .
For example, in the WWA (World Whiskey Competition), Riwei has won the best-related awards every year from the year the competition was founded to the present, such as the Best Limited Blended Whiskey. After
won the award, it became more famous, and the more vertical channels and influencers were willing to pay for it, and the price of Riwei also soared. For example, the price of a 25-year-old Baizhou can be sold for 13,000 euros (approximately 101,900 yuan).
As for the auction, anyone who makes wine knows that it is hunger marketing to control production capacity, to produce in limited quantities from the source to create scarcity.
日伟 has therefore become a collection with gift circulation and financial attributes. For example, at Bonhams' Hong Kong auction in 2020, a bottle of Yamazaki 55-year-old was sold for HK$6.2 million (approximately RMB 5.55 million), setting a record high for a single bottle of Japanese whiskey.
To sum up, Riwei’s market penetration path is a very successful brand textbook.
provides a reasonable outlet for emotions, a suitable scenario for marketization, and a qualified endorsement for valueization, which will naturally create a reasonable brand.
Yamazaki’s 55-year-old
was auctioned