Lin Chen/Text
The trend of concentrating liquor consumption on top brands is often reflected in the fact that consumers pay more and more attention to the availability, familiarity, quality reliability and brand reputation of a brand.
“We must uphold the original intention of brewing good wine at all times… Keep the brand right, and care for the hard-won Chinese famous wine brands that have experienced the vicissitudes of history and hard-won like you care for your eyes.” At the 11th China Baijiu T8 Summit a month ago , Zeng Congqin, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Wuliangye Group (Co., Ltd.) once said so.
One month later, Wuliangye went one step further on the list of “China’s 500 Most Valuable Brands” released by the World Brand Lab. Its value ranks 16th, becoming the only “Best Performing Brand in 2022” in the liquor industry. At the same time, in the just-released “Brand Finance 2022 Top 50 Most Valuable Spirits Brands in the World” list, Wuliangye also ranked first in the brand strength index with a score of 89.4, and won the honor of the world‘s most powerful spirits brand this year.
With a number of honors, Wuliangye builds high-end brand attributes with extreme quality and cultural IP, and boosts product premiums with brand power; on the other hand, it continues to give stable feedback to employees and investors, and actively fulfills social responsibilities, demonstrating to the industry A positive cycle of how to “drop water and stone through” to strengthen brand power.
The brand value of Wuliangye has maintained double-digit growth for five consecutive years, and the brand value of Wuliangye has reached 364.619 billion yuan
On July 26, World Brand Lab released the 2022 “China’s 500 Most Valuable Brands” analysis report. It is reported that this year is the 19th year since the report was released. In 2004, the entry threshold was only 500 million yuan, and the average value of the top 500 brands was 4.943 billion yuan. In 2022, after 19 years, the selection threshold has been raised to 3.167 billion yuan, while the average value of the top 500 brands is as high as 61.946 billion yuan, an increase of 1153.21%.
Steve Woolgar, Chairman of the Academic Committee of the World Brand Lab and Honorary Professor of Marketing at Oxford University, said: “A brand is the image of a country, and I hope more people in the world can learn about China’s story through Chinese brands. In the past 17 years, I have witnessed the rapid growth of Chinese brands, some of which already have strong global influence, such as State Grid, Haier, Wuliangye, etc.”
In terms of different industries, the food and beverage industry is still the industry with the most selected brands, with a total of 84 brands selected, accounting for 16.80% of the total number of selected brands. Among them, Wuliangye, Tsingtao Beer and Moutai in the beverage category have once again become the leaders in the food and beverage industry. Since 2018, Wuliangye’s brand value has maintained double-digit growth for five consecutive years.
According to the “Brand Finance 2022 Top 50 Most Valuable Spirits Brands in the World” list released by Brand Finance, a global authoritative brand value assessment agency, on July 27, Wuliangye surpassed all other brands on the list with a brand strength index of 89.4 points. Become the world‘s strongest alcohol brand this year. At the same time, the brand rating continued to maintain the AAA level (the highest level), and achieved the fastest increase in brand value among the top five liquor brands in the list value.
Caijing.com has noticed that among the influencing factors of brand value calculation published by the World Brand Lab, product quality, innovation capability, product positioning, customer service, advertising and other factors constitute the driving force of demand, while brand market share, and Social media activity such as consumer communication, financial and hot word trends, customer satisfaction, ESG performance, industry thresholds, etc. have become the reference for the brand strength index.
This year’s “China’s 500 Most Valuable Brands” analysis report also pointed out that from the perspective of the marketing method of liquor brands, the industry has always used the taste, quality and functionality of liquor as the incision when building a brand image. However, with the shift of consumers’ attention, contemporary liquor brands should take the brand’s cultural story as an entry point when marketing, in order to achieve differentiation, increase consumption scenarios and user stickiness, and enhance user loyalty.
Responsible for users, employees, investors and society, Wuliangye creates a model for brand ecosystem development
At present, Wuliangye is making every effort to build a world-class enterprise with continuous, stable and high-quality development in the five-in-one of “ecology, quality, culture, digital and sunshine”. It is building a model of the brand ecosystem and establishing a benchmark for brand building in the Chinese liquor industry. In the analysis report of “China’s 500 Most Valuable Brands”, Wuliangye, Haier and China FAW were selected into the “China Brand Ecosystem Development Cases” in 2022.
As the cornerstone of China’s liquor brand, Wuliangye’s quality has never been slack. Its complete life-cycle quality control model of “from a seed to a drop of wine” has created a closed-loop quality control system for the entire industry chain.
Among them, the construction of the “3+3” innovation system, which is to be strengthened, includes making good use of the three national innovation platforms of the National Liquor Product Quality Supervision and Testing Center, the National Enterprise Technology Center and the International Joint Research Center for Alcohol Quality and Safety. It will actively create the National Liquor Industry Innovation Center, the National Liquor Brewing Key Laboratory, and the National Grain Engineering Technology Research Center for Brewing to seize the commanding heights of industry innovation. In addition, Wuliangye is strengthening the research on key core technologies such as microbial fermentation and pit aging, seeking greater technological breakthroughs, further improving the rate of Wuliangye famous wines, and creating a good quality ecosystem.
“Wuliangye adheres to ‘grading selection, selecting the best among the best’, finely identifying the differences in the color, aroma, taste, and quality of the original wine, and through ‘picking the head and removing the tail’, ‘quality and quality wine picking’ and ‘combining altar by quality’ and other precise In operation, professional technicians with rich experience taste and pick the original craft wine, and subdivide the original wine grade strictly according to sensory, physical and chemical indicators, so as to ensure that the base wine with the best taste and quality can be used for the production of ‘Wuliangye’. The ratio of the original wine that can produce Wuliangye in all original wines is called the ‘famous wine rate’. With the improvement of the age of the cellar, the famous wine rate will continue to increase, up to 50-60%.” Wuliangye introduced this.
With the advantages of Luzhou-flavor production capacity and industry-leading brewing process, Wuliangye has more room for the creation of product matrix. On the one hand, it continues to consolidate the market core position of the eighth-generation Wuliangye thousand-yuan large single product, and at the same time strengthens the coordination of production and sales, it dynamically optimizes the delivery rhythm based on big data; on the other hand, it insists on developing the 2000+ liquor market and realizes the market of classic Wuliangye. breakthrough.
In response to the new consumer demand for personalization and fashion, Wuliangye proposes to keep close to the needs of the market, merchants and consumers on the basis of maintaining traditional ancient brewing techniques and unique strong-flavor liquor style, and improve product development, production and delivery. Accuracy and timeliness. This includes vigorously developing cultural wine, promoting the operation of Wuliangye old wine, and expanding the personalized demand market.
At the special event of “Old Wine at Home” on the eve of the December 18 conference last year, a group of Wuliangye old wines from 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005 were auctioned for 1.08 million yuan; The suit composed of Zhuang, Classic Wuliangye, 1999 Wuliangye and 1999 Wuliangye sold for 360,000 yuan. This activity has attracted Wuliangye’s attention in the old wine collection circle, and also left more value-added imaginations for Wuliangye standard products in the market.
However, the screening of consumer groups is not only stratified by product prices, but also needs the blessing of targeted scenes and cultural activities to increase the brand premium. In recent years, Wuliangye has successively appeared on high-end international platforms such as the Boao Forum for Asia, World Expo, APEC, etc., and launched “Forbidden City” and “Courtesy!” China” and a series of cultural IP projects, cooperate with Bentley to hold the Wuliangye Bentley China 2021 Golf Tournament, and continue to title the China International West Lake Love Rose Wedding Ceremony… Through the scene expression of different platforms and IP linkage, attract the attention of different consumer groups, Promote brand value enhancement.
Under the high brand culture, the refined channel construction that can be implemented also affects the brand’s recognition. It is understood that Wuliangye assists brand operators to set up “visit sales teams” to provide refined services to nearly 30,000 socialized terminals under the Wuliangye brand; The refined layout and healthy competition of nationwide supermarkets have been strengthened.
Looking back at the recent recovery of the liquor market, liquor companies with strong channel control tend to have an advantage. China Merchants Securities pointed out in this week’s research report, “High-end liquor is supported by its rigid demand and brand power, and the impact on dynamic sales is relatively small. Judging from the progress of the target completion, Wuliangye and others have achieved more than half of the time and task.”
The high penetration rate and convenient access effect of the terminal, as well as the quality trust, taste cultivation and cultural connotation extension over the years, provide an intuitive association for the high-end attributes of the Wuliangye brand, and also allow the brand to have a more flexible and effective way during the recovery of the industry under pressure. Resilient moving sales live. This C-end performance provides Wuliangye employees and investors with continuous and stable feedback expectations, and at the same time strengthens the brand’s own investment attributes.
At the same time, Wuliangye always regards inheriting and promoting the excellent traditional Chinese culture as its own responsibility, inheriting and developing Chinese liquor culture in the process of protection, and promoting it to the world. At present, Wuliangye has completed the revision of the “Wuliangye Laojiaochi Site Conservation Plan”, and the national evaluation of the winery has been completed. It has been approved for the repair and maintenance of the protection project of the national key cultural relics protection unit in 2022, and at the same time signed the “Consensus on the Joint Application of Chinese Liquor to the World Heritage”, and cooperated with the orderly to promote the application for the World Heritage.
It is reported that Wuliangye has paid more than 10 billion yuan in cash dividends in the past two years. It is the only listed company in Sichuan Province. Since its listing in 1998, Wuliangye has implemented 7 bonus shares, and 20 cash dividends totaling 61.3 billion yuan (including 2021). Annual cash dividends), which is 16 times the total amount of funds raised since the listing.
In the past seven years, Wuliangye’s dividend distribution ratio has remained at about 50%, with a total dividend of 48.386 billion yuan. The total annual dividends accounted for the proportion of the total dividends of listed companies in Sichuan Province. 40%.
Contribute to the regional economy and actively fulfill social responsibilities. Wuliangye closely follows the national goal of “carbon neutrality” and is the first in the industry to propose the development direction of “zero carbon wine enterprise”. At the same time, Wuliangye combines the construction of the ecological barrier in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River with its own high-quality development, and insists on “making every effort to protect the water quality of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River with the standard of brewing good wine”.
On the basis of the company’s continuous, steady and high-quality development, Wuliangye helps people’s livelihood projects. In recent years, the company has invested and integrated nearly 3 billion yuan in assistance funds, benefiting more than 150,000 poor people, benefiting nearly 1 million people, and all the targeted areas have been lifted out of poverty. It has donated more than 1 billion yuan in public welfare undertakings such as fighting the epidemic, earthquake relief, donating to school, helping the poor, helping the elderly and helping the young, and has been awarded the “China Charity Award” and “China Charity Award” by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the China Charity Federation for many times. Outstanding Contribution Award”.
Responsible for users with high-quality products and culture, responsible for employees, investors and society with stable performance and active commitment to social responsibility, and comprehensively enhance the awareness, friendliness and trust of the three words Wuliangye in the hearts of the audience. The main purpose of the operation of the Wuliangye brand ecosystem.