Chapter 5 Article 11 Jianlibao: How did "Oriental Magic Water" change its flavor?

For quite a long time, Jianlibao has been the most well-known beverage brand in the Chinese market. 1984 is known as the first year of Chinese companies.During this year, companies such as Lenovo, Haier, and Vanke, which later became "China's benchmark enterprises", were established one after another.Among the bright stars, Jianlibao, born in Sanshui County, Guangdong, is the most dazzling one. In March of this year, Li Jingwei, director of the Sanshui Distillery in Sanshui County, suddenly set his sights on the 23rd Olympic Games to be held in Los Angeles, USA in August.He got information that the State Sports Commission will meet in June to decide what the designated drink for the Chinese delegation is.But at this moment, he has a new beverage that has not yet been launched on the market, and has not even been determined on what packaging and trademark it will be used for.

At this time, Li Jingwei was a 45-year-old middle-aged man.He lost his father in childhood and his mother when he was young. He grew up in an orphanage and became the deputy director of the Sanshui County Sports Committee as an adult. In 1973, he was squeezed out and sent to a winery in the county as the director.It was a workshop factory with only a few rice wine vats. After Li Jingwei went there, he worked hard and developed a beer production line. The strong beer produced gradually gained a firm foothold in the local area. In 1983, Li Jingwei went to Guangzhou on a business trip and bought a can of Coca-Cola on the street.It was the first time in his life that he drank this drink.It was at this time that he suddenly had the idea of ​​letting the company produce beverages.At that time, as Coca-Cola became increasingly popular in central cities in China, some small beverage factories had sprung up everywhere, and some even directly named "Coke": Tianfu Cola, which appeared in Chengdu, Sichuan, was the first Domestically produced cola drinks, Shaolin cola appeared in Henan, and West Lake cola appeared in Hangzhou.According to data, there were more than 2,000 beverage factories in China at that time.Li Jingwei, who was a cadre of the sports committee, thought of sports drinks in a "genius".By chance, he heard that Ouyang Xiao, a researcher at the Guangdong Institute of Sports Science, had developed a beverage that "can allow athletes to quickly recover their physical strength, and ordinary people can also drink it", so he took the initiative to ask for cooperation.Under the auspices of Ouyang Xiao, an orange-yellow beverage was developed, which has a very awkward name-"Extra Recovery Mixture Sports Drink".In fact, it is a drink with alkaline electrolytes.

The annual profit of the Sanshui winery was only tens of thousands of yuan. Li Jingwei dared to set his sights directly on the Olympic Games, which is really courageous. In April 1984, the Asian Football Federation will hold a meeting in Guangzhou. Li Jingwei wants to bring drinks to this meeting, so that he will have the opportunity to get in touch with people from the National Sports Commission.At this time, there is not even a shadow of what the brand of the drink is, what the trademark is, and what kind of packaging it uses.At that time, the factory already had a brand called "Sijiang", but Li Jingwei was not satisfied. He thought hard and came up with a new name - "Jianlibao", which sounded catchy and contained "health and vitality". health hints.Dr. Chen Xinjin, who participated in the product development, volunteered to design the trademark. He asked his brother who loves calligraphy to write the three characters "Jianlibao" on a piece of rice paper. Combined logo graphics.The birth of this new trademark was earth-shattering in the tide of commodities in 1984: the dot at the top of the word "J" is like a sphere, which is a symbol of ball games. symbol.On the whole, the shape of that character is like a gymnast or diver in a posture of flexing the body and abs.The entire trademark reflects the blood relationship between Jianlibao and sports.It stood out among the old and similar Chinese product trademarks at that time.

Another bold move by Li Jingwei is to propose packaging Jianlibao in cans.In the eyes of consumers at that time, cans were undoubtedly synonymous with high-end beverages.At that time, there was no can production company in China, and it was even more impossible for Sanshui Distillery to have such a canning production line.Li Jingwei ran around, and finally persuaded Pepsi-Cola Company in Shenzhen to manufacture Jianlibao for him.In this way, after a lot of fuss, 200 boxes of glamorous Jianlibao appeared on time at the AFC Guangzhou meeting, which aroused the amazement of everyone.In June of that year, Jianlibao undisputedly became the drink of choice for the Chinese Olympic delegation.Compared with all the drinks in the review, it is the only canned product, the brand image is naturally related to sports, and the taste, color and quality are impeccable.

In August 1984, the Los Angeles Olympic Games opened. It was the largest Olympic Games in history at that time, and it was also the first profitable Olympic Games organized by the people.The Chinese Olympic delegation achieved a "zero breakthrough" in the gold medal at the Games with Xu Haifeng's shooting, and finally won 15 gold medals. The number of gold medals is second only to the United States, Romania, and the Federal Republic of Germany, ranking fourth.The success in the Olympic Games has greatly stimulated the enthusiasm and national pride of the whole people, and as the beverage of choice for the Chinese Olympic delegation, Jianlibao has also received unimaginable attention.

In the women's volleyball final on August 7, the Chinese women's volleyball girls, who had become national heroes, defeated the host team, the United States, in three straight sets with unstoppable momentum, and achieved the great cause of "three consecutive championships". It used to be a national boiling event.On the "Tokyo Shimbun" on the 11th, Japanese reporter Yuga published a lace press release "Relying on "magic water" to quickly attack? 》, he curiously found that the Chinese women's volleyball players were drinking a drink that he had never seen before. In fact, Jianlibao had almost no sales in the Chinese domestic market at that time except for the Chinese Olympic delegation. He speculated that "Chinese athletes won 15 Olympic gold medals, probably because they drank a new type of sports drink with magical effects-Jianlibao."Obviously, this is a handwritten press release without any interview or verification.The substantial improvement in the performance of Chinese athletes has caused a lot of speculation internationally, and this is nothing more than a friendly one.Unexpectedly, a reporter from the "Yangcheng Evening News" accompanying the group interviewed saw this press release and rewrote it as ""Chinese Magic Water" Sweeps Los Angeles".When this "export to domestic sales" news was published in the Evening News, it was quickly and widely reprinted. The combination of "Chinese Magic Water" and "Oriental Witch" (nickname for the Chinese women's volleyball team) added a bit of mysterious pride to the already boiling Olympic fever. The psychological satisfaction of the nation.Since then, Jianlibao has become known to the world overnight.

Li Jingwei had good luck in this way. In 1984, Jianlibao's annual sales were 3.45 million yuan, which jumped to 16.5 million yuan in the second year, and 130 million yuan in the next year.In the following 15 years, it has been "the first brand of national beverage".At the peak of demand, Sanshui County was full of large trucks from all over the country to pull goods, and a batch of Pi Jianlibao's batches was fired to 20,000 yuan. The second time Li Jingwei made people shine was in 1987. In November 1987, at the 6th National Games held in Guangzhou, it was the first time that Chinese enterprises competed with foreign multinational enterprises.Jianlibao, which made a splash at the Los Angeles Olympics more than two years ago, is now in the limelight.In order to get the title of "Designated Beverage for the Sixth National Games", Jianlibao Company, which was already the largest beverage company in the country at that time, competed with Coca-Cola Company. 10,000 yuan, plus 100,000 yuan in drinks.The result, of course, is that Jianlibao got his wish, and Coca-Cola only got the right to specify the "Coke-type" beverage.This detail was talked about by media reporters at the time for a long time.During the competition, in the newly built Guangzhou Tianhe Sports Center, advertisements of Jianlibao were overwhelmingly printed on walls, spittoons and trash cans.The most exaggerated scene appeared at the closing ceremony. At the entrance of the venue that day, more than 200 staff members were required to wear all sportswear with the Jianlibao logo printed on it. They also gave free drinks to each of the 80,000 spectators who entered the venue. A can of Jianlibao drink.Looking at the circular sports field, there are Jianlibao drink cans dotted here and there, and it has become an orange-red ocean.

After the "Sixth National Games", Li Jingwei took advantage of the heat and held a national dealer order meeting. In just two hours, the order amount reached 200 million yuan.In the second year, sales amounted to 270 million yuan.The advertisement of Jianlibao also appeared on CCTV for the first time. The advertisement written by Li Jingwei himself was very realistic and catchy: "If you want to be healthy, please drink Jianlibao."