I do not eat much between meals, and when I was a salary-man, I rarely stayed late in the office, so I don’t have habit of eating supli-food (or energy bar). Fortunately (at least as of now), I don’t have to be cautious about my weight and thus am not sensitive to calories of what I eat.
Therefore, I am not sure if I have a license to discuss “Why SOYJOY sells so well?” but let me discuss that today, as it looks obvious to me that it sells.
Putting conclusion first, I suppose it is simply because the brand does very basic thing very right, which is “People buy food/snack because it looks/feels delicious.”
If you visit convenience stores to look for supli-food (energy bar) for your slight hunger, you would be stunned with its wide range of kinds and number of brands. At least, it surprised me, non-user of the category. And of course, many of them, or all the brands scream out on their package that how low the calorie is, how less it impacts to your weight (or seems to), how less you take excess things, or how much and easy you can intake required vitamins and fibers. I just remember the category is called “function food”
Among them, shinning is SOYJOY.
While it is largely due to its big space/good position on shelf as a leading brand, there is another fact grabbing your eyes.
That is, it looks delicious.
They try to tell you how effective in functions they are, as the entire category is for minimizing bad influence to health or taking something good to health.
Differentiation.
In the world of Marketing, you always and repeatedly get taught how important it is. It can roughly be defined as “I am different (from anyone else) in this aspect, and I am better, so that you should choose me (over others)” Maybe too easy/rough, though.
Often due to legal/regulations, direct and specific expression of “how and where I am better” cannot be made. Then, they instead utilize superiority of raw materials and ingredients, image of superiority of them, comparison to XX number of Lemon, XX thousands of pieces of peas, etc. Some say it is endorsed (or seems endorsed) by some professional figure, organization, or celebrity, which has health-oriented images.
As they try way too hard to be distinctive/different, they often forget the very important thing.
Differentiation/distinctiveness is after all an “excuse” for users to buy, not necessarily “the reason to buy”. People buy food as it looks tasty.
SOYJOY’s package design is very very well crafted, that is why it sells. It always puts tasty photo of ingredient fruit, and it always has a picture of what is inside, nicely baked and quite inviting. Choice of colors for different flavors is also well considered. The design may look a bit ordinary, but it is crafted right.
Of course, they do not forget to put important “excuse” as supli/function-food by telling you it is made of soy beans and use of fruit that has “good-to-health” images.
I believe SOYJOY is very good success case for in-the-store marketing.
(I recently saw their completely new TV commercial, but) I do not believe they needed the TV campaign using a lot of big celebs. The campaign certainly has contributed a lot to building awareness/popularity, but it does not justify dumping so much bucks… Well, they are such a big Company and it is selling that well, the waste cannot hurt them anyway, I guess. At least, I can tell you that they made Ad Agency, TV stations, and celeb offices very happy.
People buy food/drinks because it looks delicious.
People buy cosmetics because it looks making them beautiful.
People buy detergent because it looks washing dirt out.
That is truth, I guess.
Aren’t you in the maze of differentiation to forget the truth?
“O.”
