New Logic in Single Product Marketing: How to Sustain Success After Going Viral—Industry Experts Discuss Breakthrough Strategies

Reporter from 每经: Liu Mingtau Editor from 每经: Ye Feng

Since 2025, China’s liquor industry has entered the deep waters of stock-based competition. The operating logic of liquor brands has fully shifted toward refined management. The professionalization of single-product marketing has, as a matter of course, become the industry’s core lever for breaking the deadlock. At this critical juncture, on March 26, 《每日经济新闻》 held the 2026 Liquor Industry Innovation Think-and-Talk Session in Chengdu, themed “聚力向C 重构未来” (Align Force Toward C to Reconstruct the Future). At the event, more than ten industry heavyweights took the stage to discuss the path to solving the industry’s problems—from leaders of industry associations and executives from e-commerce giants, to leaders of baijiu brands and new retail unicorns, and from international beer giants to new players in baijiu based on sorghum. They jointly mapped out a way forward.

At this event, around the core topic of “the professionalization of single-product marketing,” the veteran liquor industry analyst Cai Xuefei dialogued with Sun Yi, General Manager of Carlsberg China’s catering retail and cross-beer category business unit; Gong Cheng, Executive Director and General Manager of the sauce-liquor sales company of Sichuan Liquor Group; Yang Ji, Executive General Manager of the research and development department of CITIC Securities and head of the Consumption and Food & Beverage team; and Wang Xinbiao, Chief Brand Officer of Guizhou Chun and Chief Brand Officer of Lingchuang Consulting. From multiple dimensions including scenario innovation, product value, the capital perspective, and brand operations, the four practitioners systematically deconstructed the underlying logic of how, in the new era, liquor single products go from “sudden viral success” to “lasting long-term success.”

Scenario Innovation: Returning to High “Quality-to-Price”

In the era of consumer sovereignty, scenarios have become the key carrier for single products to reach C-end customers and convey brand value. How to ensure that scenario innovation and single-product marketing form positive empowerment is a major question that liquor companies need to think through.

Taking Sun Yi’s example—the Wusu Barbecue City project—she shared practical experience in scenario innovation in the beer industry. She said that Wusu Barbecue City was not an accidental internet-famous project, but a result of the brand’s continuous exploration starting in 2022. The core is to build deep connections among the Wusu brand, the barbecue category, and consumers. On the other hand, the first principle of scenario innovation is alignment with the brand’s positioning. Wusu’s traits—“big strength, rich flavor, and hardcore”—naturally blend with the smoky, lively atmosphere of barbecue. In addition, interactive segments such as Sichuan opera face-changing allow consumers, while experiencing dining, to perceive a triple integration of product, scenario, and brand.

However, scenario innovation is only one way to empower products. To make a liquor company’s single product have long-term life, it is also necessary to break the trap of homogenization. By strengthening the single product’s core competitiveness, companies must reshape value.

In the view of Gong Cheng, Executive Director and General Manager of the sauce-liquor sales company of Sichuan Liquor Group, “In the era of consumer sovereignty, let the product itself become the core of marketing; return to the essence of brewing with pure grains; and meet consumers’ core needs with high cost performance—this is the fundamental reason a single product can achieve sustainable development.”

A reporter from 《每日经济新闻·将进酒》 noted that, to analyze single-product marketing more thoroughly, Yang Ji—Executive General Manager of CITIC Securities’ research and development department and head of the Consumption and Food & Beverage team—also offered his own answer from the perspective of capital markets.

Yang Ji said that although the baijiu industry today faces difficulties such as inverted pricing and liquor companies cutting prices to maintain volume, the capital market opposes the industry’s passive mindset of “enduring it.” Instead, it focuses on four core strategic layouts of liquor companies during adjustment periods. First is price layout: the scale and precision of how prices pull back. Second is category and channel layout: innovative moves targeting new consumption and new channels. Third is product line layout: how to use product lines that fit the situation to support price layout. Fourth is national expansion layout: whether to contract battle lines or focus on node markets. The effectiveness of adjusting these four layouts will, in three to five years, create huge gaps among liquor companies. And the core is upgrading “quality-to-price.”

Yang Ji also pointed out that the key for liquor companies to enhance product value is to significantly improve liquor quality. In recent years, popular white-label liquors have used base liquors brewed for 3~5 years, which is precisely the result of significantly improving quality. Liquor companies must break the entrenched thinking that “high-end liquor quality is exclusive to high-end products,” and make quality the core competitiveness of all single products.

Long-Termism: From Sudden Viral Success to Lasting Long-Term Success

In fact, in the market environment of stock-based competition, the liquor industry has never lacked single products that go viral overnight. What it lacks are “long-term success” single products that can survive industry cycles and achieve long-term development.

Many single products, when launched for investment invitation and promotion, are met with great fanfare, only to see no inquiries within just six months, falling into the predicament of “being withdrawn as soon as they are listed.” How can a single product get out of the curse of short-lived success and make the leap from sudden viral success to lasting long-term success? Combining practical cases from Yanghe and Guizhou Chun, Wang Xinbiao, Chief Brand Officer of Guizhou Chun and Chief Brand Officer of Lingchuang Consulting, pointed to a core—sticking to long-termism, and rebuilding single-product marketing logic through brand resolve and consumer-first intention.

Wang Xinbiao said that the key for a single product to break away from homogenized competition is to build brand value driven by two wheels: emotional value and product quality. Taking Yanghe Haizhilan as an example, in 2003 the product jumped from a regional liquor priced at a few yuan in northern Jiangsu to more than 120 yuan. Its success came from stepping out of a pure quality comparison and building emotional value with men’s sentiment, ultimately creating a super single product. As for Guizhou Chun’s 2025 release of the Guangpí liquor Shan Shui series, during an industry downturn half a year of sales reached nearly 200k cases. This is precisely the result of stacking quality upgrades on top of emotional value—explaining in depth the value of real years and the Xingyi producing area value, and building a “Chun liquor true culture” to form differentiation.

At the end of the dialogue, the four guests gave core answers on the future direction of professionalized single-product marketing. Sun Yi proposed that companies must completely abandon the mindset of “what the brand wants to do” and always think about “what consumers need.” Gong Cheng emphasized that letting products return to their essence and meeting consumers’ core needs with excellent pure-grain liquor is the foundation of marketing. Yang Ji said that the key to “going all the way to C” is to find the company’s core consumer group, and to make the current adjustments with a 3~5 year strategy as the goal. Wang Xinbiao summarized the logic of single-product marketing in three sentences: before product design, think clearly about “who it is sold to, what scenarios people drink it in, and how to beat competitors.”

From “channels first” to “consumer sovereignty,” China’s liquor industry competition logic has undergone fundamental changes. The viewpoints exchanged at this think-and-talk session make it clear to the industry that, in the era of stock-based competition, there is no shortcut to a single product’s success. Only by taking consumers as the starting point, deeply integrating scenario innovation, value reshaping, and long-termism, and polishing products through refined operations while connecting with consumption, can a single product truly make the leap from sudden viral success to lasting long-term success. This is also the core code for the liquor industry to reconstruct the future amid stock-based competition.

The Daily Economic News