2012年3月7日 星期三

Oreo biscuit 100 years

Oreo takes the biscuit for its China reinvention




Kraft celebrated the 100th birthday of its Oreo biscuit in Shanghai yesterday by turning the waterfront into a vast Oreo advertisement, painting the landmark Oriental Pearl Tower Oreo blue, plastering skyscrapers with multi-storey neon Oreo adverts and staging fireworks over the Huangpu river.

卡夫食品(Kraft)昨天在上海庆祝了旗下奥利奥(Oreo)饼干问世100周年纪念日,给地标建筑——东方明珠塔打上了奥利奥的蓝色,在摩天大楼上展示几层楼高的奥利奥霓虹灯广告,还在黄浦江上举行了一场焰火表演。整个外滩俨然成了奥利奥的巨型广告。

It was a celebration of one of history’s most successful global brands – and of how that brand has reinvented itself in China, where Oreo is the mainland’s best-selling biscuit.

这是为全球历史上最成功品牌之一举行的庆祝,也是为这个品牌在中国的自我重塑举行的庆祝。奥利奥已经成为中国内地最畅销的饼干。

The way Kraft has transformed this most quintessentially American cookie is a model for how successful multinational brands are approaching the China market, retail analysts say.

零售业专家指出,卡夫对这款最经典美国饼干所做的改造,为成功的跨国品牌如何进入中国市场提供了一个范本。

For what passes for an Oreo in China these days often bears only a glancing resemblance to the black and white sandwich biscuit first sold in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1912.

因为今天中国人眼中的奥利奥,与1912年在美国新泽西州霍博肯(Hoboken)首次问世的黑白夹心饼干之间,只是表面相似而已。

Since then, Kraft has sold 452bn Oreos, global revenues for the brand last year topped $2bn and the cookie has a Facebook community of 23m.

自诞生以来,卡夫已经销售了4520亿块奥利奥饼干,去年该品牌的全球收入达到20亿美元。奥利奥饼干在Facebook上拥有2300万名关注者。

But in a bid to please Chinese taste buds, Kraft has made an Oreo with Chinese characteristics.

不过为了讨好中国人的味蕾,卡夫制造出了具有中国特色的奥利奥。

Some changes are subtle. The original Oreo is less sweet on the Chinese mainland than in the US. Other changes are nothing short of revolutionary, at least for Oreo aficionados.

一些变化很细微,原味奥利奥饼干在中国大陆没有在美国那么甜。还有一些变化则足以称得上革命,至少对奥利奥的忠实粉丝而言如此。

Some Oreos in China are shaped like a straw, or like a wafer, and even the traditional round ones come in flavours such as green tea ice-cream, grape-peach, mango-orange and raspberry-strawberry. Kraft says some of these flavours, first developed in China, have since become global hits. Kraft calls it “reverse innovation”.

在中国销售的奥利奥有一些是棒状,有一些像是威化。就连传统的圆形产品也推出了抹茶冰淇淋、水晶葡萄加水蜜桃、甜橙加芒果、以及树莓加草莓等口味。卡夫表示,这些口味里,有一些是率先在中国开发,后来在全球成了热卖产品。卡夫把这种做法叫做“反向创新”。

Even the “birthday cake” Oreo introduced to celebrate the cookie’s centenary is specially engineered to taste like a Chinese birthday cake – not an American one, says Shawn Warren, Kraft Foods China president.

卡夫食品中国总裁肖恩•沃伦(Shawn Warren)说,就连奥利奥为庆祝百岁生日而推出的“生日蛋糕”,都经过专门设计,使其酷似中国生日蛋糕的口味,而不像美国的蛋糕。

Oreo, introduced into China in 1996, largely languished until Kraft made changes in distribution and advertising to boost sales – and created new flavours and tastes suited to the local market.

奥利奥最初引进中国是在1996年,但销售一直萎靡不振,直到卡夫为了提高销量而改革了分销体系和广告模式,还推出了迎合本地市场需求的新口味。

“Any foreign company that comes to China and says, ‘there’s 1.5bn people here, goody goody, and I only need 1 per cent of that . . . [is] going to get into trouble. You have to understand how the consumer operates at a really detailed level,” says Lorna Davis, head of global biscuits for Kraft and former head of Kraft Foods in China.

“有些外国公司来到中国后,心想‘这里有15亿人,太棒了,我只需要其中的1%就行……’抱着这类念头的公司肯定会遇到麻烦,你必须对本地消费者的习性有非常详细的了解,”原卡夫食品中国区总裁、现任卡夫全球饼干业务主管戴乐娜(Lorna Davis)说。

She says non-traditional Oreo shapes – long and thin, or rectangular wafers – are only a small percentage of the China market, with the bulk still taken by round Oreos. But introducing new flavoured fillings for the round biscuit was crucial to boosting its success, along with new Oreo adverts that “struck a chord with one-child families”, she says, creating an emotional attachment to the brand, in a country where big displays of emotion are rare.

戴乐娜表示,在奥利奥的中国销售额中,非传统的细长条或长方形威化饼干只占了很小的比例,圆形 奥利奥仍然占了绝大部分。不过她表示,不断推出新口味的夹心饼干,是圆形奥利奥越来越成功的关键因素。与此同时,在这个不习惯强烈表达情感的国家,奥利奥 打出了一系列“打动了独生子女家庭”的新广告,使消费者对这个品牌产生了一种情感依恋,这一点也极为重要。

Kraft is not alone in turning local adaptations into profit in China. Torsten Stocker, partner in the China practice of Monitor Group, points out that PepsiCo’s Lays potato crisps come in flavours including cucumber and blueberry.

凭借“入乡随俗”而在中国实现盈利的企业并非只有卡夫一家。摩立特集团(Monitor Group)中国业务合伙人唐仕德(Torsten Stocker)指出,百事公司(PepsiCo)旗下的乐事(Lays)薯片有许多不同口味,包括黄瓜和蓝莓等。

Mary Bergstrom, author of the upcoming book All Eyes East: Lessons from the Front Lines of Marketing to China’s Youth, says potato crisps are viewed as a “hot” food in China – where foods are classed traditionally as “hot” or “cold”, irrespective of actual temperature. So Lays added cooling flavours like cucumber to counteract that.

即将上架的新书《聚焦东方:向中国年轻人营销的一线经验》(All Eyes East: Lessons from the Front Lines of Marketing to China’s Youth)的作者——玛丽•博格斯特罗姆(Mary Bergstrom)表示,中国传统上把食品分为“热食”和“冷食”,而不管食品实际温度的高低,薯片就被认为是热食,所以乐事增加了凉性的黄瓜等口味, 以起到中和作用。

Yum! Brands’ KFC has become the market leader in fast food in China by selling foods such as rice gruel with preserved, or “thousand-year-old” egg along with their chicken buckets. Coca-Cola developed its popular Minute Maid “Pulpy” juice drink first to appeal to Chinese tastes, but it has since gone on to become a $1bn global brand.

百胜餐饮集团(Yum! Brands)旗下的肯德基(KFC)在中国除了有炸鸡全家桶以外,还销售皮蛋瘦肉粥等食品,以此成为中国快餐市场上的领头羊。可口可乐(Coca- Cola)颇受消费者欢迎的“美汁源”(Minute Maid Pulpy)果汁最早就是为了迎合中国人的口味而推出的,后来才发展成为年销售额10亿美元的全球品牌。

Starbucks and Häagen-Dazs have reinvented their entire business model in China, retail analysts say, eschewing the takeaway or home consumption model they use in the west to become dine-in venues in China.

零售业分析师称,星巴克(Starbucks)和哈根达斯(Häagen-Dazs)也在中国再创了一套全新的经营模式,没有沿用在西方实行的外卖或家庭消费模式,而是发展堂食的模式。

Additional reporting by Shirley Chen in Shanghai

Shirley Chen上海补充报道


译者/何黎

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