Dongyu Zhou Was Unable To Cope With The Midlife Crisis.

Victoria s Secret, the world's leading underwear brand, is filing for bankruptcy and has entered the liquidation process. The S Moreover, it plans to permanently close about 250 retail stores in North America in 2020. This lingerie giant, which has been active for more than half a century, is no longer really sighing.

Carefully combing its performance in recent years, we can easily find that in addition to recent years, the image of public opinion is very worrying. According to foreign media reports, there are long-standing problems such as sexual harassment, materialized women and body humiliation in the interior of the company. However, the lack of innovation, brand aging and marketing frustration of the products themselves make the international underwear giant go down.

The impact of the epidemic overwhelmed the last straw.

Last month, LBrands announced its first quarter earnings. Its sales fell 37% to $1 billion 654 million, a net loss of $297 million. Prior to that, the sale of the company has declined for four consecutive quarters and three quarterly losses. In fact, as early as February, LBrands tried to sell it for $525 million, but it failed because the buyer gave up the offer.

Under the influence of the global epidemic, the impact of physical retail industry in all countries is self-evident. The British Retail Association announced that in May, retail sales in the UK dropped by 80%, and the rent cost that could not be waiver led to a shortage of retailers' capital chains, and it could not be spared. Such an economic environment has become the last straw to crush the secret. However, the internal and external troubles of Wei Ming had already appeared before the outbreak.

Lack of product innovation, loss of users and hearts

When we look at the product from the perspective of product managers, it is not difficult to find that the products of Wei Ming have been unable to meet the multi-dimensional needs of today's consumer groups.

1, fail to grasp the new consumer trends, user insight is not in place.

In the book "product thinking", it is mentioned that "users' needs are not created, they are users' need to solve existing problems."

With the development of society and economy, the consumption crowd is constantly iterating. Now the group buying underwear is not the female users half a century ago. Economic and social development as well as the iteration of consumer groups also bring new consumption concepts and cognitive changes, which create new demands for new users in multidimensional.

Consumption concept: with the development of the economy and the progress of society, and the awakening of women's self-consciousness, the consumption concept of the female population has also found earthshaking changes -- from "pleasing" to "pleasing oneself".

Health awareness: underwear is no longer purely sexy for the new generation of female users. As a close fitting garment, whether it is tailoring or material, "comfort" has become the number one demand.

The recognition of beauty: the definition of "beauty" in the whole society is more and more inclusive. In other words, we no longer demand women to achieve certain specific body standard, but endow beauty with more possibilities. However, the lace and other elements that have not been changed for half a century have exposed their lack of insight into the new consumer groups and lack of innovation in their products.

2, user experience also exposed problems, can not meet the current needs.

When we design underwear for modern female users, we should start from the subjective judgment of users when using products, and help them solve specific problems. We analyze the four dimensions from user experience "usability", "ease of use", "stability" and "beyond expectation".

Usability: that is, users can achieve the purpose of anticipation. From the point of view of the industry, the underwear of the Wei Mei is still designed to please men, which is quite different from the new generation of consumers. From this point of view, the usability of the products is not as good as expected.

Ease of use: the "user cost" refers to the cost of obtaining the cost of the product. Wei's underwear in its official flagship store of Tmall, at a price of several hundred yuan, is also considered at a high price in the industry. After all, the positioning of underwear is still biased towards consumer goods. The reduction in repurchase brought about by low ease of use does not match its product positioning.

Stability: that is to reduce the probability of unavailability. This point is based on the praise rate of Tmall store. The quality of the underwear is pretty good, but there are many comments on the quality of its underwear.

Beyond the expected experience: this layer of non users must be, and the additional products such as the "secret show" can be listed on this level.

From the experience level, usability and ease of use are more important than the other two items. Though the products of Wei are not worthless, and even some aspects of experience are worth noting, they still lose quite a few buyers. This is applicable to all industry giants, no matter how thick the "family property" is, and the need to follow the times and adjust their product positioning and product form in a timely manner.

Brand transformation is more difficult.

Product aging brings brand aging.

Why do we say so? In the book "creating brand", the brand thinking in the past is "brand awareness" as the most important index of brand; but nowadays, "brand loyalty" and "brand reputation" have surpassed the status of popularity. However, a series of problems, such as the aging of the products, will inevitably reduce the loyalty and reputation of consumers to their brands.

Of course, there are also some changes to the problem of changing brand aging. For example, Dongyu Zhou invited China as a brand spokesperson for the Chinese market. It is obvious that the intention is to help the "secret sex" brand to eliminate the "stereotype" of "sexy" in the minds of the public, and win the favor of the Chinese market through repositioning. (especially under the influence of the epidemic, the global retail market is facing the risk of recession.

According to China's retail platform data, China has gradually become one of the largest apparel consumer markets in the world. The famous underwear brands, such as Canada's La Vie en Rose (rose life), have expanded to the Greater China region, showing the global outlook for China's underwear market.

Perhaps under such a background, the "Dongyu Zhou plan" came into being. In fact, since Dongyu Zhou endorsed RIO in 2018, his free and independent temperament can really add color to the brand. From the fans' crowd of Dongyu Zhou, the majority of the post-90s are in line with the expectations of the consumers.

But can Dongyu Zhou alone help save the secret? The answer is "hard" and very rare.

First of all, that is, the transformation of the "Wei" has lost the good time and the competitive products are catching up.

Under the background of China's market consumption upgrading, emerging brands, such as new domestic products walking in the forefront, replace traditional brands, and local brands have become the trend of replacing foreign brands.

In the four Chinese competitors, Ubras sold 8 pieces every 8 seconds from the beginning of 2016, and began to wait for the main comfort level to attack the new generation of consumers. This year, Ouyang Nana was invited to promote the social media as endorsement, and the official flag data of Tmall was up to 300 thousand on the same month, let alone the UNIQLO, which consistently dominated comfort and cost-effective. However, the upgrading and transformation of its brand is far behind that of local brands and foreign brands such as UNIQLO, which have been firmly established in China. Whether Dongyu Zhou can attract new consumers is still waiting for market data to speak.

Second, it is difficult to change the brand positioning by means of single endorsement.

Judging from the current market's comment on replacing endorsement, it seems that most users do not pay such a "Asian beauty". Another reason is that there is no systematic repositioning of the brand. It is hard to change the brand's inherent impression in the consumer's mind by shooting a "sexy definition" advertisement through a spokesperson.

We know that the definition of positioning in positioning is how to make your brand different from your potential customers. The occupation of users' minds is not an overnight effort. In an overly spreading society, communication is actually a difficult task. Once the user has left the first impression of the brand, it is very difficult to have the chance to change it.

In the past half century, "sexy" has been equated with "Wei", and what we read in the new advertising film does not seem to be the intention of "repositioning the brand".

Entangled in how to connect Dongyu Zhou with copycat and sexy, entangled in how to seize the hearts of Chinese consumers, entangled in not only to defend their original brand positioning, but also let the new positioning be integrated.

This makes the already difficult transformation of the brand more difficult. Naturally, consumers are more entangled than brands.

A great show is lost.

Some media commented that "the secret of success in secret is marketing and promotion, and its marketing and promotion is the" secret show ".

From the 12 million 400 thousand viewers in 2001 to the secret show that was suspended in 2019, over the past decade, many fans of the secret show have been disappointed and abandoned after the fierce chase.

In fact, it is also a secret show. Rather than spectators abandoning the secret show, Wei Ming himself abandoned the show.

The "superfine" and "angel wings" of the long, long legs and big breasts of a thousand years remain unchanged, and a single marketing way can no longer satisfy the new consumption people who are fastidious in their tastes, diversified in consumption outlook and diversified in aesthetic tastes.

If it wants to change and grow in the Chinese market, it will obviously be hard for localization marketing. But looking at all kinds of localization marketing channels in China, there are only 260 thousand fans in Wei Guan Bo. Opening the little red book to search for "Wei" keywords, compared with other massive brands of grass and trees, videos and videos, it is full of clearance information. The new consumer groups are highly dependent on and sensitive to the Internet after 95 and 00. Fast rising new marketing channels such as jitter, quick hands, and little red book are the most effective ways to "attack" the new consumer group, and there are no new marketing methods such as live broadcast, etc.

The next step is not clear. No one can guarantee that he will stay in the tide. Only when we are well aware of users, introduce new products in a timely manner, do not age brands and products, will they not be abandoned by the times and users. (barn entrepreneurship editor Wang Hui contributed to this article)