Circa 2004: A Complete Turnaround From Inventory Overstock to Festive Must-Have Souvenir
Background: A Quality Product With Zero Sales Momentum
A local friend who was in charge of product marketing came to me with his company’s cookie products, looking utterly distressed. The factory-produced cookies boasted great taste, yet were priced at only one-third of imported Danish cookies — 30 yuan compared to 100 yuan for imported alternatives. Moreover, they featured a festive red packaging favored by Chinese consumers. By all market logic, this cost-effective and well-packaged product should have sold extremely well.
However, the reality was the exact opposite: the cookies were dead stock.
Large quantities of goods piled up in the warehouse, leaving the entire team helpless and anxious. That night, we sipped Chaoshan kung fu tea and carefully analyzed the product, trying to pinpoint the root cause of the poor sales.
Insight: Affordable Pricing & Festive Packaging — Why No Purchases?
During our in-depth discussion, we identified the core problem: the product lacked a specific usage scenario, leaving consumers with no reason to buy.
Consumers purchased 100-yuan Danish cookies for imported premium quality and gift-giving prestige.
In contrast, the 30-yuan local cookies were cheap but poorly positioned. They were not casual enough for daily snacking, nor upscale enough for gift-giving. The product had no clear consumer application.
We stared at the bright red packaging for a long time and finally realized: the eye-catching red design was the brand’s biggest untapped asset.
Breakthrough: Position Cookies as Festive Ceremony Goods
Chaoshan region has deep-rooted folk customs. For all joyous occasions, locals traditionally exchange red-themed souvenirs during visits with relatives and friends. Weddings, newborn celebrations, birthday banquets, housewarming parties — a vibrant red gift box serves as both a traditional etiquette ritual and a symbol of decency and blessing.
Against this backdrop, we put forward a counter-intuitive marketing strategy:
Stop selling the cookies as ordinary snacks, and reposition them as exclusive festive ceremony supplies.
Abandon supermarket competition and target wedding studios — the most precise consumer group.
Implementation Step 1: Free Tasting to Penetrate the Hunger Scenario
Wedding photography usually lasts from morning till night, leaving couples with no time for meals and often feeling hungry throughout the shoot. Ready-to-eat, sweet and delicious cookies are the perfect timely treat for them.
We advised our client to deliver free cookie samples to local wedding studios for newlyweds to taste during shooting breaks.
The effect was immediate. Food tastes especially good when people are hungry. Couples were highly satisfied with the cookie taste and the festive red packaging, and many took the initiative to ask where to buy them.
Implementation Step 2: Red-themed Display to Activate Festive Consumption Mentality
Free tasting was only the first step. We guided the client to arrange neat rows of red cookie gift boxes at the front desks and display areas of wedding studios, creating a strong visual impact.
Rooted in local folk customs, Chaoshan newlyweds had inherent recognition: red equals joyous occasions and gift-giving.
Priced at 30 yuan, the cookies featured great taste, festive packaging and high cost performance. As wedding return gifts and souvenirs, they were decent, affordable and full of local human warmth, far more down-to-earth than overpriced imported cookies.
Results: From Dead Stock to Standard Festive Souvenir
New sales terminals: Wedding studios became stable offline sales channels. Newlyweds purchased cookies on-site after tasting, while studios gained extra commission income from consignment sales, forming a win-win model.
Word-of-mouth fission: The first batch of buyers presented the red cookie gifts to relatives and friends, triggering secondary communication and continuous order conversion.
Brand cognition reshaping: The product was redefined from a cheap domestic cookie to a professional festive exclusive souvenir.
Complete sales turnaround: The overstocked inventory was fully cleared, and product demand soon outstripped supply, requiring the factory to work overtime to fulfill orders.
Client Testimonial
“We used to only focus on price competition with peers, which made us increasingly unconfident about our product. We never expected that simply switching the usage scenario could revitalize the entire product. Consumers were not unwilling to buy — we just failed to tell them the right time and reason to purchase.”
— Marketing Person-in-Charge of the Cookie Manufacturing Factory
Case Insights
The product remained completely unchanged, yet a new usage scenario opened up a brand-new market.
In most cases, sluggish sales stem not from poor product quality or unreasonable pricing, but from the lack of an irresistible purchasing reason for consumers. Identifying the precise scenario empowerment is far more effective than millions of dollars in advertising investment.
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