Xiaohongshu was featured at the Food & Beverage Innovation Forum (FBIF 2024), one of the most influential F&B industry events in Asia. For the first time at the forum, the platform shared new perspectives and insights into the industry from the standpoint of marketing innovation.
Founded in 2014, FBIF is an opportunity for food companies to share and discover global product success stories, business and technology innovations, and future trends that will define the development of the food and beverage industry.
Given the progressive relevance acquired by Xiaohongshu in defining the purchasing behaviour of Chinese consumers, the Food & Beverage Innovation Forum invited the platform to the event to share insights relating to the marketing of the F&B sector and its evolution.
The innovative F&B marketing on Xiaohongshu
As a guide to life and a source of trends, Xiaohongshu has become the new battleground for brand marketing. On the platform, new trends and opportunities in the F&B sector are constantly emerging, such as “dopamine food”, “CityEat”, “daytime coffee” and many others. For brands, this is both an opportunity and a challenge, as they have to adapt to these changes and innovation has become a topic that companies need to think deeply about.
On the stage of FBIF 2024, Pei Xi, head of F&B planning and business operations in Xiaohongshu, gave the speech «Drawing new marketing maps with scenarios» dedicated to innovation in marketing and the “scenariozation” trends that are emerging in food consumption.
The consumption scenario is a collection of relationships, behaviours and emotions in a specific time and space, which more easily awakens the needs of consumers. Users on Xiaohongshu love to search and share various consumption scenarios.
From the need for recharging at work to emotional support to the allure of the outdoors, consumer needs are driving attention to tea, coffee and other energy drinks, emotional foods and drinks, and outdoor beverages. It is not difficult to see that the rapidly growing categories on Xiaohongshu are all related to special scenarios and emotional values. These distinctive scenario placements target the core needs of modern youth, touching the inner needs of consumers more deeply.
Scenario innovation to promote brand growth on Xiaohongshu
Many brands have begun to recognize the value of scenario marketing on Xiaohongshu, as an effective method to reach users, analyze their trends, and understand their needs, making marketing more precise and efficient.
Xiaohongshu highlighted its scenario marketing strategy of identifying trending scenarios, targeting new user groups and promoting successful products by combining individual products, trends and community needs.
By restructuring traditional scenarios and launching new ones, Xiaohongshu outlined the “double scene-led marketing model”, offering F&B brands a direction for marketing innovation. With the shift from functional needs to emotional and experiential ones, products with unique characteristics have a greater competitive advantage, capable of satisfying the diversified needs of users.
Restructuring of traditional scenarios
Reconnecting traditional scenarios to product categories, consumer needs and holiday events allows brands to emerge in new ways. For example, young people not only share their festive experiences on Xiaohongshu but also look for unique ideas on how to experience them. Xiaohongshu creates awareness of festive scenes before events, naturally integrating brands, making this strategy the most effective and sustainable to penetrate the market.
Innovation of native scenarios
Xiaohongshu found that native content scenarios are born with their tendencies and intrinsic attractiveness. Innovating these scenarios allows brands to leverage the popularity of native content to effectively achieve their marketing goals. Xiaohongshu also led the trends of six new emerging consumption scenarios.
For example, “Outdoor Escape” arises from the combination of outdoor elements with various product categories, creating new consumption opportunities. Other scenarios like “Mouth 007” and “Staggered Year” focus on moments in time, promoting seasonal products that add vitality to the market. These consumption scenarios offer more precise marketing directions and business opportunities for brands.
New IP event dedicated to F&B: FOTD
Every month, 120 million users search for recommendations on Xiaohongshu, making food one of the most popular categories with a 67% increase in publications in 2024 compared to the previous year. Precisely due to the growing popularity of foods among platform users, Xiaohongshu will launch a new IP event: FOTD (Food of the Day). Focusing on the most popular trending scenarios, the event will promote monthly marketing themes to help brands stand out, to become the benchmark of food consumption.
Companies can use scenario IP to quickly identify and position new emerging marketing scenarios, precisely target target groups and achieve efficient penetration of advertising investments.
Leveraging the Xiaohongshu ecosystem the advantage of the eCommerce cycle, integrating closely with the food and beverage scenarios, injects a powerful growth engine for the business, promoting rapid business growth. The three-dimensional interaction between brand, marketing effectiveness and business operations lays a solid foundation for long-term brand development.