Original title: Consumer Reports | Nongfu Spring’s sparkling water rubbed the “Fukushima” heat overturned, so fake Japanese marketing is so fragrant?
Reporter | Ma Yue
Nongfu Spring, which just launched sparkling water products this year, “turned over.”
The cause of the incident was that some netizens recently discovered that Nongfu Spring’s Dawn White Peach-flavored soda sparkling aquatic products emphasized that they were “produced in Fukushima Prefecture” during the promotion. For example, Nongfu Spring mentioned in the promotional copy of the product, “Dawn White Peach flavor, Dawn White Peach is produced in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.”
That’s right, it’s Fukushima, Japan, which has a “nuclear waste water crisis.” In 2011, nuclear power plants in the Fukushima area caused a serious nuclear accident due to a major earthquake. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, after the Fukushima nuclear accident, 54 countries and regions imposed restrictions on agricultural products in Fukushima and other places around the world. As early as 2011, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China issued an announcement banning Fukushima, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Miyagi, Yamagata, Niigata, Nagano, Yamanashi, 12 prefectures including Saitama Prefecture, Tokyo Prefecture and Chiba Prefecture import food, edible agricultural products and feed.
In this case, Nongfu Spring’s sparkling water emphasized “produced in Fukushima Prefecture” in the propaganda copy, which can be said to be quite frightening.
After the controversy arose, Nongfu Spring responded on June 27, stating that the dawn white peach flavor soda sparkling water product is a flavored beverage. Nongfu Spring listed the product ingredients in the product label ingredient list in accordance with the requirements of the national food safety standard. There are no ingredients imported from Fukushima, Japan in the ingredients of this product. The labeling of Nongfu Spring’s products meets the requirements of relevant laws and regulations without any error or misleading.
Nongfu Spring said that the Fukushima white peach is originally produced in Fukushima and has a unique flavor. It has been introduced in China in the last century. “Our research and development personnel have created products with a similar flavour to the dawn peach based on the unique flavor of the dawn peach, which is not related to the origin of the dawn peach.” .
But netizens do not buy it. Nongfu Spring’s above statement on Weibo has more than 12,000 comments. Most public opinion questioned Nongfu Spring’s first use of white peaches produced in Fukushima, Japan as a marketing gimmick, and immediately dismissed it after being questioned. The marketing is suspected of false propaganda.
Jiemian News noted that Nongfu Spring’s Dawn White Peach-flavored sparkling water is marked as Mainland China, and the specific ingredients in its ingredient list are natural water, xylitol, erythritol, sodium bicarbonate, and food flavors. This also means that the “white peach flavor” of this sparkling water has nothing to do with the fruit white peach, in fact its white peach flavor is blended with essence.
Brands like to label products as “Japanese” as a gimmick, not for no reason. In fact, the popularity of the whole white peach flavor in China is closely related to Japan.
The taste of white peach was first popular in Japan. Taking the white peach produced in Okayama Prefecture of Japan as the element, a series of candies, tea bags, beverages, biscuits and other products were derived, using female-oriented marketing and “seasonal limited” strategies. Later, this trend also spread to the country. Behind the rapid popularity is the strategy of imitating and copying each other between brands-in the beverage industry where product development is “involved”, it is necessary to run out of its own brand characteristics, while popular flavors Never give up.
We have reported that “White Peach” has now become the standard flavor of new products launched by the entire food and beverage industry. Related products have been launched, including Yuanqi Forest, Pepsi, Bubly Smile Bubble under Pepsi, and AH under Coca-Cola! HA! This trend even extends to food and dairy products, such as McDonald’s white peach-flavored ice cream and Qiaqi’s white peach-flavored melon seeds.
“Pseudo-Japanese” marketing is popular. It is more or less a speculative catering and misdirection of consumer psychology by brands, suggesting a more advanced and more aesthetic pursuit of lifestyle.
For example, in the early stage of brand promotion, Genki Forest used the words “気” on the packaging and the words “produced by Genki Forest Co., Ltd.” to expand the market, which was mistaken for a Japanese brand by consumers for a long time. The head of Yuanqi Forest’s marketing also told Jiemian News, “Earlier, we focused on Japanese brands because young people’s preferences were there. Young people like station B, two-dimensional, and Japanese culture. But now their preferences are more diverse. , We will further adjust our strategy.”
Genki Forest Sparkling WaterIn addition, the well-known domestic brand Mingchuang Youpin is also playing the edge of Japanese brands during its promotion.
Some netizens have summed up, flexibly use hiragana and katakana, limit the brand name to within 3-4 characters, and make good use of words such as “Saka”, “Kun”, “Teng”, “Chuang”, and “Sauce” with Japanese atmosphere. It basically constitutes a naming routine for pseudo-Japanese products.
“In the process of consumption upgrade, many popular products have been forgotten by consumers. To create product differentiation, many brands take the approach to highlight the uniqueness, particularity and iconicity of raw materials.” Food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng told the interface news.
Catering analyst Wang Dongming told Jiemian News that false propaganda behaviors abound in the beverage circle of the retail industry. Common methods include confusing the origin, brand, origin, function, and capacity of the raw materials.
Article 9 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People’s Republic of China clearly stipulates that business operators shall not use advertisements or other methods to mislead people about the quality, production composition, performance, purpose, producer, expiration date, and origin of the product. false promotion. Advertisement operators shall not act as agents, design, produce, or publish false advertisements when they know or should know.
For Nongfu Springs, in the increasingly competitive sparkling water market, the suspected false marketing rollover occurred during the promotion period of new products, which would undoubtedly bring losses to its sales and the goodwill of the brand itself.
Behind the scoring is more or less related to the impact of Nongfu Spring’s performance growth pressure and the acceleration of new product development. According to its 2020 financial report, Nongfu Spring achieved a net profit of 5.277 billion yuan in 2020, an increase of 6.6% year-on-year; operating income was 22.877 billion yuan, a decrease of 4.8% compared to 2019. Among its five types of products, the total sales of packaged drinking water, tea beverages, functional beverages, and fruit juices accounted for more than 95%, all of which showed varying degrees of decline in revenue, with year-on-year declines of 2.6%, 1.6%, 26.1% and 14.5%.
Nongfu Spring is also accelerating product development in the subdivisions of fruit juice, tea beverages, and soft drinks. Zhou Li, executive director and deputy general manager of Nongfu Spring, also said after the release of this annual report, “The speed of new products is much faster than before. In the early years, sometimes one product was launched a year, or one product was launched in two or three years, and now it is launched every year. Several products.”
The capital market is not optimistic about the development prospects of Nongfu Spring. Since the company’s listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in September 2020, the stock price has fallen all the way after it hit a high of HK$68.75 at the beginning of the year. So far, the market value has evaporated more than HK$280 billion.
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