If a company wants to build a brand, it doesn't have that much capital and can't wait that long to slowly accumulate a brand. How can a brand achieve zero advertising investment, win with one move, and become a national big brand overnight?

This article shares with you the case analysis of the "Kuangdi Cup Pot" competition, which was exclusively named by Yanzhiwu and participated in the 11th Hua Hua Million Creative Awards in 2024. The Kuangdi Cup Pot case is a benchmark case where Hua and Hua changed the fate of their enterprises with a super symbol creativity.

On December 6th, the project leader of Kuangdi will be in Singapore to showcase the incredible creative power of super symbols. There is also a China Singapore Entrepreneur Forum, where you can honestly share practical experience from China and Southeast Asia.

Case Analysis of Kuangdi Cup Pot

In March 2023, when the founder of Kuangdi thermos, Mr. Lu Jinkuang, came to Hua and Hua, he asked a question: "How much advertising budget do I need to prepare to establish a brand

Huaban quoted and extended a classic passage from Jin Yong's "Kuihua Baodian" to answer: "If you want to practice divine skills, you must first go to the palace; even if you go to the palace, you may not succeed; you can succeed without going to the palace

The implication is that "to build a big brand, you must invest in big advertising. Investing in big advertising does not necessarily make you a big brand. Without investing in big advertising, you can still build a big brand

Because big advertisements also need to be tailored to different situations, such as the representative case of Hua and Hua, Tianqi Toothpaste. We created an advertising video with the slogan "take photos and shout out Tianqi loudly", and then advertised it to death. Then more end dealers or distribution channels began to show interest in Tianqi and purchased it in cash. Finally, it was sold all over the country, but this model had a historical background at that time.

When it comes to big advertising, Hua and Hua are truly ashes. Tianqi Toothpaste, Sanjing Blue Bottle, Golden Wine, Golden Partner, and so on are all representative cases of Hua and Hua. Hua and Hua are big players in the era of big advertising.

But now the media is very dispersed, and the price is several times higher than that of the past. Not every enterprise is suitable for the model of big advertising. You think that as long as you invest in big advertisements and hire celebrity endorsements, you can soar to great heights, but often the result is that the brand fails to succeed, loses all the money invested, suffers a major blow, and cannot recover for several years.

Although Mr. Lv has approached Hua and Hua to establish a brand and is prepared to invest heavily, we believe that Kuangdi is not suitable for the model of hiring celebrity endorsements and investing heavily in advertising. This model is 99.9% likely to fail for Kuangdi.

Even if Kuangdi invests 500 million yuan in advertising within 3 years, it cannot make consumers recognize the Kuangdi brand just because they buy thermos cups.

Hua and Hua's attitude is that "if you want to build a big brand, you must invest in big advertising; investing in big advertising may not necessarily become a brand; without investing in big advertising, you can still become a brand!" We are not unwilling to spend money, but unwilling to spend money as people imagine.

The fact is that we didn't spend a lot of money on the Kuangdi project, and even in a short period of time, we only used one move to make Kuangdi famous and popular overnight.

More consumers are starting to buy Kuangdi cups, and more distributors are willing to sell Kuangdi cups, achieving a miraculous growth of 33% in daily sales volume!

Just like the three words repeatedly stressed by Mr. Lv, the boss of Kuang Di: "win thoroughly!"

In this article, we will mainly focus on two aspects to analyze for you:

1. Let the 30 million people who buy Kuangdi cups every year know Kuangdi, remember Kuangdi, and love the Kuangdi brand:

1.1 Establish a brand symbol system to create the strongest stimulating signal;

1.2 The brand should first be established on meta media, and the products and packaging should be symbolized first;

2. Establish Kuangdi brand momentum and encourage more channel partners to sell Kuangdi brand products:

2.1 Develop dealer stores, create strong sales venues and brand display centers;

2.2 Use 1 million to become a star at the exhibition and expand into large wholesalers.

Project Background

Kuangdi is a cup and pot brand with a history of 27 years, located in Tangxian Town, Yongkang City, Zhejiang Province, China. Yongkang City is a famous hardware industry base in China and is praised as the "Capital of Hardware" in China.

Like many Chinese manufacturing companies, Kuangdi sells its products in the Chinese and global markets with excellent product quality and extremely low prices.

By the 26th year of operation, Mr. Lv, the owner of Kuangdi, has achieved an annual production and sales of 30 million cups, owned a 100000 square meter factory, more than 400 patents, and sold cups to nearly 60 countries around the world.

Kuangdi Cup Pot from 26 years ago

Kuangdi Cup Pot 26 Years Later

With strong strength and appropriate timing, Mr. Lv hopes to build a brand that allows people to know about his Kuangdi. He hopes that everyone can buy a cup today to leave an impression on Kuangdi. So in 2023, looking for Hua and Hua has opened the road to brand building for Kuangdi.

The Kuangdi case started in April 2023 and was already referred to as the most difficult case by Huaban at that time!

In China, we have a term called 'neijuan', which means highly competitive. After conducting a series of brand management status diagnoses and terminal sales point observations on Kuangdi, we found that the cup and pot industry is really fierce!

Other Chinese cup and pot manufacturing companies, like Kuangdi, produce high-quality products and sell them at a low price. Even in a small shop of less than 20 square meters, there are over 1000 insulated cups as cheap as Kuangdi, with high competition between brands.

Actual situation of the terminal

The biggest problem with Kuandi is that people who buy Kuandi do not know that they are buying Kuandi, and people are very unfamiliar with Kuandi.

Mr. Lv sells 30 million cups every year, so there are 30 million people who buy Kuangdi cups. However, these 30 million people: firstly, they don't buy Kuangdi cups because they want to buy Kuangdi brand; Secondly, after they bought it, no one noticed that the brand of the cup they bought was called Kuangdi; Thirdly, he won't talk to his friends and says, "Look, I bought a Kuangdi thermos

Even dealers who have been cooperating with Kuangdi for more than 20 years would say to us during our interviews, "Give me any brand, I can sell it

In summary, Kuangdi's products have been launched, but the brand has not yet been launched.

After clarifying the current situation, Hua and Hua's starting point for formulating strategies is to make the 30 million people who already buy Kuangdi thermos cups for whatever reason remember Kuangdi brand first, and then identify Kuangdi brand to buy.

What does that mean? There is an interesting situation in our market where consumers first know your brand and then identify it to make a purchase. But in reality, what happened was that the consumer inexplicably bought your product and continued to use it, but he had no idea what brand of thing he was using.

So when we formulated the Kuangdi strategy, we had two goals:

1) Let the 30 million people who purchase Kuangdi products every year recognize and remember our brand;

2) Establish brand momentum in the industry and encourage more distributors to be willing to sell our products.

1

Make consumers remember the Kuangdi brand

Establish a brand symbol system and create the strongest stimulating signal

The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes had a famous saying: "Give me a fulcrum, and I can lift up the entire earth." This means that with a small fulcrum and the correct lever position, incredible power can be released!

Hua and Hua's starting move is to create a pivot for Kuangdi, using a super symbol to change the fate of the Kuangdi brand, and relying on a genius's creative poison to attract a "fierce counterattack".

Where did Kuangdi's super symbol come from? Why is it so valuable? Creative Kuangdi super symbol analysis, we need to start with Kuangdi's brand proverbs.

Design a catchy phrase to convey to consumers

In the initial stage of the Kuangdi project, our creativity needs to accurately interpret the concept of "insulation" in Kuangdi products. In the end, we came up with the brand slogan for Kuangdi: 'Kuangdi thermos, you'll burn your mouth tomorrow'.

We use the rhetoric of 'burning your mouth tomorrow' to emphasize the insulation performance of Kuangdi thermos - burning your mouth! My tongue is burning and painful! This is a scene with a mother body, and it is also a shared experience for everyone. And many thermos cups already have a "Be careful not to burn your mouth" warning posted.

On the one hand, this sentence utilizes the collective experience and subconscious of human beings, and on the other hand, it turns the originally negative "hot mouth" into positive publicity to prove the quality of Kuangdi thermos and spread our brand name.

Let's imagine if we don't use this rhetorical device, but just say 'Kuangdi thermos, how much will it reach tomorrow?' Will consumers react to this sentence? Consumers neither remember nor have a concept.

For a thermos, it's not that important how much temperature it can hold the next day. What's important is to create memorable moments - your mouth is so hot and swollen!

The rhyme 'Kuangdi thermos, will burn your mouth tomorrow' can create a sense of pleasure, and this pleasure can bypass consumers' psychological defenses. Consumers not only accept it, but also feel happy and can easily share it with others, making it easy to spread.

This also satisfies Hua and Hua's "broadcasting and transmission" theory - our creativity must be able to spread on its own after being broadcasted.

Create a super symbol to make the brand famous overnight

The key to creating a brand symbol lies in its strong correlation with the brand name or product attributes, such as the Kuangdi thermos and the word "hot mouth". If there is no strong correlation between our symbol creativity and "hot mouth", the creation of brand symbols would be meaningless.

After we have determined that the brand slogan of Kuangdi is "Kuangdi thermos cup, tomorrow it will burn your mouth", we need to think about how the creative symbol can be integrated with the brand slogan to interpret the concept of "insulation" and release greater signal energy!

In the end, we drew inspiration from the image of Tony Leung Chiu wai scalding his mouth in the movie 'East Meets West' and decided to concretize the shared experience of using a thermos, scalding his mouth until it swells. Huaban asked us to draw based on the stills from 'East Meets West'.

In the end, we creatively designed an extremely symmetrical "Hot Mouth Brother" symbol with a sausage mouth, amplifying the dramatic nature of the word "Hot Mouth" and creating a strong correlation between brand discourse and the symbol.

Hua and Huawei Kuangdi Creative's super symbol "Hot Mouth Brother"

Comparison of Kuangdi symbol before and after

Kuangdi Super Symbol "Hot Mouth Brother" Extended Application

At Kuangdi's first proposal in July last year, "Hot Mouth Brother" emerged victorious. Kuangdi's boss, Mr. Lv, spoke passionately on the spot and said, "I wish I could go back to the workshop right now and hurry up to make cups. It feels so great!" He even wanted to have Hot Mouth Brother appear at the Shanghai exhibition the next day.

Huaban and Mr. Lv, the two bosses, were so excited that they gave an intimate kiss on the spot.

Mr. Lv also made the decision on the spot and immediately applied it. We happily placed a billboard at the Yongkang High speed Railway Station in our headquarters to showcase our new brand image.

Kuangdi's advertising space at Yongkang High speed Railway Station

Under the decisive decision-making and execution of Mr. Lv and the strong execution ability of the Kuangdi team, the Kuangdi brand super symbol and brand proverb were fully implemented within two months, from the factory to the delivery truck, from the provincial general agent's storefront to the store shelves and product advertisements.

As soon as' Hot Mouth Brother 'was released, it went viral online before we could promote it. Whether it's the design circle or the cup and pot circle, 'Hot Mouth Brother' suddenly became popular! Netizens spontaneously started reporting.

When our highly dramatic slogan of "Kuangdi thermos, tomorrow we'll burn our mouths" and the super symbol of "Hot Mouth Brother" came out, the barrier between the public and it instantly disappeared. This is the creative power of super symbols.

With such concrete symbols, no matter who buys Kuangdi's products in the future, they can recognize and remember Kuangdi's brand symbol, which is the value brought by super symbols.

Meanwhile, compared to any other cup and pot brand symbol in the world, Kuangdi's logo "Hot Mouth Brother" has the strongest, most powerful, and most memorable signal at a glance.

No creative strategy equals 0, no craft creativity equals 0. The creative realization of Hot Mouth Brother is not easy. It's not enough to just have creativity, but also to have skills. The key to successful design is to put in a lot of effort.

In order to achieve the creative idea of "hot mouth", we need to make the mouth particularly prominent, so the treatment of other facial features and lines must be very simple. We even removed the nose of "hot mouth brother". From expressions, lines to facial features, constantly polishing until the 171st 'Hot Mouth Brother' was created.

171 drafts during the process of "Hot Mouth Brother" by Hua and Hua Creative Kuangdi

Hua and Hua Qian

Hua and Hua Hou

Symbols need to be born and nurtured. After the emergence of Hot Mouth Brother, General Lv asked Huaban, "What are we going to do next?" Huaban replied, "Do you think this brand has already been completed? No, it hasn't started yet!" We just have a foundation now, and the next step is "symbol stacking".

To this end, we have developed a series of action sequences with overlapping symbols for Kuangdi. Firstly, we will establish a brand on corporate meta media to make consumers aware of and remember the Kuangdi brand.

The brand first needs to be established on meta media, and the products and packaging should be symbolized first

Hua and Hua's meta media theory regards both the sender and receiver as media. Our meta media includes ourselves, our customers, our cups, cup packaging, our stores, store storefronts, and more.

Just like our cup has a sausage mouth, a hot mouthed guy, and we also have the phrase 'Kuangdi thermos, we'll burn your mouth tomorrow', so he's willing to tell others.

As a result, our receivers (customers) have also become our media, and we have transformed them into "senders" to spread the message on our behalf, thus initiating a traffic cycle.

Hua and Hua see everyone as potential media for Kuangdi and try to transform them into Kuangdi disseminators. It doesn't matter if you don't buy Kuangdi's products, even if you don't buy them, they can still spread the message for me. So, we need to fully utilize meta media without spending a lot of money.

And the product is our biggest free media, when the customer holds the cup in their hand, they have to know it belongs to Kuandi. So first, we need to make Kuangdi's cup symbolic. We will apply Hot Mouth Brother to Kuangdi's products.

Hua and Hua Qian - Kuangdi Cup Pot Product Logo Applications are Various

Hua and Hua Hou - Fully developed and revitalized product meta media

In the store, we found that the display of thermos cups often dazzles people, making it difficult for brands to stand out. Therefore, the store owners will use product packaging as display props and stack them in the store. So, packaging itself is not only a prop for terminal display, but also an important part of product experience.

So we developed the "Packaging Metamedia" to make packaging no longer just a simple packaging, but a "talking" advertising space. At a glance at the packaging, you can tell the reason for purchasing this cup.

Whether placed behind cups, on shelves, or stacked on the ground, the Kuangdi brand symbol can quickly attract attention, greatly enhancing the brand's display advantage.

We even registered 'Hot Mouth Brother' as a trademark and applied it to our packaging, maximizing our investment and accumulation of Kuangdi's brand assets. Consumers communicate with us through the process of opening products and packaging boxes, as well as the daily challenges they face during use.

Kuangdi's new packaging, the process of opening the packaging is also getting to know Hot Mouth Brother

After one year of implementing the symbol system we established for Kuangdi, Mr. Lv told us:

After the update of the Kuangdi brand, the gap between us and our competitors has widened. Kuangdi's brand symbol even established the brand's pricing power. Originally, it was a bit difficult for us to sell cups for more than 30 yuan, but now we can also make cups for 60-70 yuan. In terms of price, we are selling more and more. Our distributors can earn more, so they are more willing to sell Kuangdi's thermos cups

Establishing a brand itself does not require too many fancy actions, the key is to exert absolute creative power at the pivot of strategic victory. Sometimes it's just one move to win, it depends on one battle.

2

Establishing Kuangdi brand momentum

Make more channel partners willing to sell Kuangdi brand products

As a channel driven brand, wholesale markets are our main battlefield, and every brand store of Kuangdi is our 'battle fortress'. We influence retailers by packaging wholesale market stores, as retailers need to purchase goods from our stores.

Therefore, we will redevelop dealer stores as strategic products, design stores as product packaging, and create the largest sales and brand showcase arena.

Packaging development wholesale market store products to attract retailers

Super symbols on the storefront make them the most eye-catching and attractive trading ground in wholesale markets, allowing customers to make money as well. When you enter the wholesale market, the first thing that catches your eye is the eye-catching Kuangdi thermos door.

Treat the storefront as an advertising space and grab the retailer's attention in just one second.

Hua and Hua Qian - Various Doors

Hua and Hua Hou have a unified layout

Walking into the store, you will find that we have transformed the original shelves into "glowing posters", with Kuangdi's logo, the image of Hot Mouth Brother, and corporate endorsement all shining there, making people involuntarily want to enter the store and explore the truth.

Eye catching stores and shelves

Not only that, we also placed commercial district advertisements around our stores and wholesale markets, and even created a "brand check-in wall" to make Kuangdi's image low-cost and ubiquitous.

Kuangdi commercial district advertisement

Kuangdi IP Celebrity Check in Wall

In the construction of Kuangdi brand, although we do not have enough resources to place advertisements on a large scale, we strive to maximize the signal energy of each meta media.

We abandoned the traditional VI manual thinking and did not do "logo moving". Instead, we started with a small bottle sticker, a packaging, a shipping box, a label, a poster, a storefront, a shelf rack, even a tote bag, a welcome carpet... We made every meta media play an unexpected role.

Over the past year, we have developed our stores one by one, tailor-made for Kuangdi's customers. The six provincial flagship stores have undergone comprehensive renovation, and 2260 store advertising media have been developed.

We maximize the signal energy of every store and every piece of meta media, accumulating a brand for Kuangdi and finding a sustainable platform for cultivation.

Through the store's meta media project, we help Kuangdi find and establish a brand position. But the next challenge is to think about how to help Kuangdi expand its channels and attract more distributors.

Become a star at the exhibition with 1 million and influence large wholesalers

As a channel driven enterprise, Kuangdi needs to continuously develop new channels for sustained growth. However, Kuangdi always faces the problem of insufficient motivation in high-end channel development.

Mr. Lv said, "Our mainstream channels at Kuangdi are mainly gifts and distribution, but department store super channels are also a very important battlefield. In the past, due to low brand awareness and low product added value, people did not look up to us

China's consumer goods channel system, like most markets around the world, is divided into terminal and distribution channel systems, while Kuangdi's original channel customers were relatively single.

So if we want to reach new consumers, we need to have new channels. So our first step is not to let more people who buy thermos cups know about us, but to let more people who sell thermos cups and channel partners know about us and be interested in us. This is the first step towards our success.

Marketing consists of two things: one is to make customers buy, and the other is to make sellers sell. We cannot afford to spend money on consumers, but we can afford to spend money on sellers. When our brand awareness increases, it naturally becomes easier to attract more customers. But we don't have that much money to advertise and attract consumers, so where is this opportunity?

The answer is, the exhibition.

I concentrate my advertising expenses on exhibitions and establish my brand presence in the core areas. For consumers, even if we invest 100 million, we may not hear the splash, but for sellers, we only need to spend 1 million to become a superstar at the exhibition.

At the Shanghai Department Store Exhibition in July this year, we designed and built a super booth for Kuangdi. Raise the ceiling to make it clear at a glance; Enlarge the Hot Mouth Brother symbol, extremely eye-catching; Create themed displays around products, making both brands and products the stars of the exhibition.

Not only that, we also make all exhibitors our promotional ambassadors. We have designed an exhibition specific shoulder bag as a core prop to be sent to exhibitors, and wherever you go, you can see people carrying Kuangdi shoulder bags. Some people even treat it as a daily shoulder bag.

Picture

At the same time, we also placed super atmospheric advertisements outdoors to create a powerful atmosphere; And linked with the advertising resources of Shanghai Pudong and Hongqiao airports, combined with brand promotion during the exhibition period, it can be said that the advertisement was "showing off its strength and momentum like a rainbow".

After the exhibition, many customers felt that Kuangdi must have spent a lot of money. Every friend asked Mr. Lv how much money he spent, and the results were unbelievably good.

President Lv smiled and said to us: "The 1 million yuan cast 10 million yuan. It was like throwing a 1000 kg stone in a pond, which caused huge ripples. Really, I stayed at the exhibition for two hours, and then went out with customers. I only said three words: 'win thoroughly', which was really win thoroughly at that time."

One million exhibitions have made Kuangdi a superstar in the thermos cup industry, became famous overnight。

The super symbol and super exhibition made Kuangdi overnight famous, becoming a "superstar" in the thermos cup industry, successfully attracting the attention of distributors and the market, and the brand influence instantly exploded. The supermarket and department store channels that Kuangdi couldn't enter before have now entered.

The launch of the Shanghai Department Store Exhibition has made Kuangdi's entire lineup bigger. Not only in China, but also abroad, more and more new and old customers are willing to sell Kuangdi.

A new dealer saw the grand scene of the Shanghai Department Store Exhibition and saw that Kuangdi was still expanding and in the charging stage. He also wanted to join in. Both industry insiders and outsiders are discussing the dissemination effect of Kuangdi exhibition.

This article summarizes

Without super symbols, there can be no super brand. Super symbols are the foundation of all brands. Just now we witnessed the birth of a super brand!

In just one year, Hua and Hua have won with a single move using super symbols, helping Kuangdi establish and accumulate a brand from scratch, and making Kuangdi famous overnight! Achieve a miraculous growth of 33% in daily cargo volume!

Create product and store meta media projects to help Kuangdi find and accumulate brand positions, and develop winning points that influence retailers; Focusing on exhibitions, leveraging large wholesalers, and successfully exploring new channels!

Previously, Kuangdi was indescribable and difficult to describe, with only the two words' Kuangdi '. The dealers who have been cooperating with Kuangdi for more than 20 years still don't know what it used to look like. And now, it has suddenly become a kingdom of brands!

Today, the name "Kuangdi", Kuangdi cups, Kuangdi hot mouth brother, and "Kuangdi thermos cup, will still be hot mouth tomorrow" cannot be separated anymore, because Hua and Hua made a move, and they became a whole, forming a brand that includes products, language, and symbols.

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Easter egg~! In the middle of the year, we came up with another super song and invited Teacher Jin Guizi to sing it. Before we suggested finding a third-party arranger to produce the song in advance, General Manager Lv had not even heard of the proposal and made a decision to produce it, unconditionally trusting Hua and Hua.

It is precisely this trust that has led to the creation of one battle after another. Let's take a look!