The sky is full of stars, and the moon is full of eyebrows.It was already midnight, and we were still talking, so we got up and drove out of the hotel. This is Shangrao City at the junction of Zhejiang Province and Jiangxi Province, an old city that is moving from silence to prosperity.Although the time has passed and everything is silent, there are still several steaming food stalls lined up on the edge of the fountain square in the city center. Those young people who have fun in the PUB regard it as a day The end of the game.We found a seat and sat down, randomly ordered some rice noodles and braised pork.The proprietress was very enthusiastic and asked us what else we would like to drink.

"Have a big bottle of Coke." Someone suggested. "Okay." The cheerful proprietress turned around and put a big bottle on the table. "Miss Boss, we want Coca-Cola." Someone spoke. "Coca-Cola? We don't have..." "Then Pepsi." "Pepsi? Not at all." The proprietress said while wiping the table, "We only drink Coke here." It was only later that I learned that in 2002, in Jiangxi, no matter which food store you walked into to buy Coke, the first thing the boss brought out was very Coke.After more than ten tests, we have confirmed that this is true.Coca-Cola's sales in Jiangxi have been stagnant, and Pepsi has a bottling plant in Jiangxi, but now their combined sales can't compare with Very Coke.

Is this unique to Jiangxi Province?At first we thought it must be.However, in the following months, in Shandong, Hebei, Sichuan and some places in the Northwest provinces, we encountered such situations time and time again.Our surprise gradually turned into curiosity, which turned into an interesting market research. At this moment, just as this manuscript is about to be completed, the National Beverage Production Statistics Table for the first half of 2002 came from the China Beverage Industry Association.We read such a line of data: Wahaha, 1.83 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 16.7%; Coca-Cola, 1.61 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 13.8%; PepsiCo, 760,000 tons, a year-on-year increase of 22.01%.

220,000 tons more than Coca-Cola! This is the first time in history that the total output of a Chinese beverage company has surpassed Coca-Cola, and it is also the first time that Coca-Cola has lagged behind local beverage brands in the global major consumer goods market.I don't know if this report will affect the stock prices of Coca-Cola in the US stock market and Danone Group (a joint venture partner of Wahaha) in the European stock market when this report is released. In 1978, when China bid farewell to the ten-year catastrophe and just opened its doors, Coca-Cola came to China immediately. Since then, this brown drink has been expanding and spreading in our ancient oriental country, seemingly humble but ambitious.However, Wahaha, which surpassed it today, was born ten years later, and it took 14 years to make its first can of drink—and it was a 100ml fruity drink for children.

When we received this fax, we were speechless for a while, unable to speak for a long time... In the past few years, we have been studying the operation form and performance law of China's consumer market.The market in China is so huge that it spans tens of thousands of miles from east to west, and the temperature difference between north and south is 50°C.In terms of population, it is 4.8 times that of the United States, 10 times that of Japan, and 21 times that of France.A market that is as vast as China has no reference to consider, no consumer groups to format, often makes people who try to conquer it feel at a loss, and sometimes lose the courage to challenge.

We often hear operators make such assumptions: If every Chinese buys one of my products, it will sell like crazy. In the past 20 years, there are no more than 3 brands that almost every Chinese has paid for, and it just so happens that Wahaha may be one of them. Now, if you send people to the Changbai Mountain Tianchi in the northeast, the foothills of the Altai Mountains in the northwest, the jungles of Hainan Island in the southeast, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the southwest at the same time, you just walk into a small chicken feather store and copy down all the product catalogs. You will find that there are no more than 3 brands that are repeated.

It just so happens that Wahaha may be one of them. Obviously, Wahaha has provided us with a very vivid, real and diversified marketing sample. In fact, we have been tracking this company for 12 years. When we first came into contact with Wahaha, it was a school-run company that had just attracted attention.The factory is located in an enclosed building under the Qingtai overpass in the east of Hangzhou. The workshop is small but clean. The door is often lined with delivery trucks with license plates from all over the country.It only has a transit warehouse of about 100 square meters, and the products produced are pulled away almost as soon as they come off the production line.At that time, it produced a kind of "children's nutrition liquid", and the advertisement of "drinking Wahaha, eating is delicious" had just been sung all over China.

In the ensuing ten years, China has experienced an era of wealth creation in which passion, huge profits and irrationality are wrapped up in each other.Wahaha, like all contemporaries, has suffered from upheavals and has grown from a humble school-run factory to the largest beverage and food company in China.By 2001, its total annual sales of beverages exceeded 15 billion bottles, which means that each person in the country consumes at least 10 bottles of Wahaha beverages on average every year.It's an eye-popping record. However, Wahaha is not the only thing that surprises people. Wahaha has become an "all-around player" in the beverage and food industry.It ranks No. 1 in sales in the fields of fruit milk, purified water, and eight-treasure porridge in the country. At the same time, it is involved in carbonated drinks, fruit juice drinks, tea drinks, pure milk, etc., and its variety is unparalleled.You must know that there are giant crocodiles in each of these fields, but Wahaha can enter and exit calmly in the turbulent waves with ease.What's the secret?

Wahaha has woven a huge marketing network in the vast counties, cities and towns.Its products can be sold all over China within one month, and the company's direct staff engaged in marketing does not exceed 3,000 people.In the rural primary market where business ethics are weak and the rules of the game are non-existent, how does Wahaha manage to ensure the safety of funds and the speed of marketing? Wahaha has production bases in more than 20 provinces and cities across the country, with a total of more than 200 production lines.What is surprising is that these factories only undertake the function of production and transportation, and their marketing is all completed by the Hangzhou headquarters.How does Wahaha achieve its efficient operation with such a complex freight allocation and different promotional arrangements between the north and the south?

Wahaha's annual advertising investment exceeds 500 million yuan, and a considerable part of it is concentrated on CCTV and provincial TV stations, which is inversely proportional to its network layout rooted in towns and villages.What is unique about its advertising concept?How does it understand China's consumer mentality and marketing laws? For everyone eager to win the market in China, this is some suspense full of temptation.In a sense, if you solve one of the mysteries, you may become a winner beyond the pack. Among the star enterprises in China, each has its own core value for survival and growth, such as Lenovo's brand, Haier's management, Vanke's culture, Wanxiang's strategy, and so on.Among the shining stars, the most eye-catching thing about Wahaha is its superb and smart marketing model.

This is the starting point from which we created this book.