With its profound historical heritage and high-end brand image, Moutai has become a symbol of collective values; Bubble Mart, on the other hand, uses trendy toy culture as the carrier, and has quickly risen to become the favorite of the younger generation through emotional resonance and community power. This article will provide an in-depth analysis of the differences in mental strategies behind Moutai and Bubble Mart, revealing how they build strong brand influence and user loyalty in completely different ways.
As LABUBU becomes more and more popular and the market value of Bubble Mart is getting higher and higher, there are naturally more sunspots. Sunspots’ voices are mainly focused on: relying on hype, relying on celebrities (lisa), and a gust of wind.
I think these sunspots are really …… None of them were dark to the point.
In fact, Bubble Mart’s biggest weakness is what an investor told me 8 years ago: “It’s niche, and it’s difficult to sink to the third- and fourth-tier markets.” But this weakness, with the global success of Bubble Mart, is naturally solved: any product, as long as it is a global niche market, is large enough; Since it has gone global, the sinking third- and fourth-tier markets have become a pseudo-problem.
As for the points of the black spots: “hype” is the result rather than the starting point; “Celebrities” only play the role of amplifiers, such as the old grandmother in Spain, the little brother in the United Kingdom, the seven aunts and eight aunts in the United States, etc. who love Labubu, which cannot be because of Lisa in Thailand. As for whether it was a gust of wind? Judging from the current potential energy of globalization, it will be at least another 10 years longer than the original high fever.
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The root of this is that Bubble Mart’s mental management strategy has always been to cultivate first and then amplify, which is a “bottom-up” cultivation model, rather than a “top-to-bottom” indoctrination model.
The development and growth of Bubble Mart is not the mass communication model of traditional brands, but in accordance with the development law of IP, it has experienced the growth, cultivation and outbreak from “building a circle” to “breaking the circle”. Please see the picture –
In the influence structure of IP, from inside to outside, from small to large, there are deep fan circles, light fan circles, topic circles, symbol circles, and unknown circles. The real power of Bubble Mart and its IP is hidden in the “deep powder circle” and “shallow powder circle”, which is the basic plate, the part below the sea surface of the iceberg.
And the sunspots are actually in the “topic circle” and “symbol circle”, and what they see from here is nothing more than appearances and bubbles. Of course, the existence of the “black powder help group” is very important, and it has played a role in fueling the wave and even initiating whether the IP can get out of the circle. At the same time, the enterprise and IP themselves must have excellent strength, otherwise they may be subverted by the sunspots.
If you want to understand where the force of Bubble Mart comes from, you must investigate and study from its “underlying logic: mental strategy” –
It may be said that in terms of mental strategy, Bubble Mart is like a reverse Moutai.
The external performance of Moutai and Bubble Mart is actually very similar, such as a large number of enthusiastic fans, a certain belief, and the continued popularity of the second-hand market.
However, from the perspective of internal mental strategies, Moutai and Bubble Mart are actually completely opposite. If we regard corporate operations as an earth, then although they all have their own magnetic fields, one is located in the South Pole, one is located in the North Pole, one is the continent, and the other is the ocean. ”
Below, let’s talk in detail about the differences in mental strategies between Moutai and Bubble Mart, which is also the main content of this article.
In a word——
“Moutai is a collective value strategy”;
“Bubble Mart is an individual empathy strategy”.
This is a game of collective vs. individual, values vs. empathy, cultural matrix vs. emotional matrix.
Moutai’s value strategy is to “cast sacredness”. Through history, power, and rituals to build an unquestionable value scale, users need to bow down and look up to Moutai National Liquor.
Bubble Mart’s empathy energy strategy is to “return to the emotional self of childhood”. Use IP emotional symbols to instantly open up individual loneliness and let users become the center of the universe.
Moutai is like a bronze ritual vessel that carries values and etiquette, and Bubble Mart is like a magic firefly that brings you back to your childhood.
There is no difference between the two strategies, but the product of different mental soils caused by different eras and generational differences. Below, I will continue to interpret the differences between the two –
01 “45 degree angle” up and down
The “45-degree angle law” is a unique law that I proposed to examine marketing content from the perspective of consumers and communication content. (See image below)
IP egg fried rice/developed by Chen Gray
According to the “45-degree angle law”, there is a significant difference between traditional advertising content and new content marketing in communication logic. Traditional advertising adopts a “45-degree elevation” communication method, that is, a top-down, authoritative, and publicity communication model, usually relying on the support of authoritative media to strengthen the authority and persuasiveness of the brand. This communication method is often value-centered and needs to be strongly output from top to bottom to convey information to consumers.
New content marketing is the opposite, using the “45-degree depression” communication method, that is, a bottom-up, affinity, and suitable communication mode for self-communication. It pays more attention to IP, emphasizes emotional connection with consumers, and can gain wider dissemination and resonance on social media. Unlike traditional advertising, which focuses on values, content marketing tends to put emotions first, achieving more natural and effective communication effects by touching consumers’ emotional needs.
This contrast between “elevation angle” and “depression angle” not only profoundly reveals the essential difference between traditional advertising and content marketing in communication logic, audience relationship and core strategy…… It also reveals the significant differences between traditional brands represented by Moutai and other brands and new consumer platforms represented by Bubble Mart in terms of products, operations, marketing, and user communication.
The 45-degree angle law is projected in both:
The difference in mental strategy between Moutai and Bubble Mart can be regarded as a game of “perspective power”, and the 45-degree angle is actually a psychological contract between the brand and consumers.
Moutai is like a speaker standing on a high platform, conveying an unquestionable value statement to the audience with a 45-degree elevation angle.
Bubble Mart, on the other hand, completely reverses this perspective. When the mermaid skirt design created by the user is mass-produced into a limited edition, the relationship between the brand and the consumer becomes an intimate dialogue with a 45-degree depression angle. In the unboxing videos of Bilibili, which have received millions of views, the camera always maintains a level angle with the desktop, and the audience can clearly see the trembling fingers and suddenly dilated pupils of the unboxer – this immersive experience makes every viewer a participant.
In the “blind box to baby” tutorial on Xiaohongshu, users use Bubble Mart’s IP as a creative canvas, which is essentially completing the last link of the brand communication chain – the power relationship has been completely reversed.
The comparison of communication data makes the results of the two perspectives more obvious: Moutai’s promotional videos on CCTV can get hundreds of millions of exposure, but the derivative UGC content is less than 100; A single unboxing video of a hidden model of Bubble Mart on Douyin can generate thousands of Xiaohongshu strategy notes.
02 Different content narratives
The difference between the two narrative strategies in the temporal dimension is extremely significant——
Moutai uses the digital code of the “12987 process” (one-year cycle, two feedings, nine cooking, eight fermentations, and seven wine extractions) to solidify time into quantifiable traditional assets.
Bubble Mart, on the other hand, fragments time into countless moments of instant gratification – the 72-hour countdown to the release of the limited model creates a sense of urgency, and the hidden model has a 0.69% probability setting to create time density.
The former is like a solemn landmark in a museum, and the latter is like resetting the timer in a pop-up store. This difference extends to the product life cycle: the financial attributes of Moutai that become more valuable as they age, and the trend rhythm of Bubble Mart’s “quarterly new”, constitute two completely different time economics.
The choice of narrative carrier highlights the essential difference –
While Moutai’s narrative continues to be endorsed by national media, Bubble Mart’s story completes self-verification in the dissemination of user screenshot puzzles.
Moutai prefers those media forms with a sense of ritual: in the live broadcast of the national banquet, the wine bottle is always framed with the national flag; The documentary “Moutai Geography” treats the winemaking workshop with archaeological shooting techniques.
Bubble Mart, on the other hand, inhabits the emotional network of young people – Molly who winks in WeChat emoticons, and the workplace meme of “drawing hidden money is happier than raising salary” on Weibo hot search, and has even become a kind of subcultural symbol.
The most essential difference lies in the orientation of narrative control –
Moutai’s strictly controlled brand narrative is like a bronze cauldron, and each pillar is to support the central value. The fragmented stories of Bubble Mart’s laissez-faire are like wild vines, climbing freely along the cracks of social media.
This difference is exposed in cross-border marketing: when Moutai and the Forbidden City co-branded, they still insist on “cultural inheritance” as the only interpretation perspective; The cooperation between Bubble Mart and KFC actively encourages users to create parody content such as “Crazy Thursday Baby Metaphysics”.
The former is most concerned about the value dilution caused by the loss of narrative control, while the latter avoids the emotional cooling caused by excessive control.
03 Cultural totems and emotional symbols
The older generation of cultural people and content people are very pursuing “cultural totems” and “feelings”.
The so-called “cultural totem” is to rely on a strong and highly authoritative cultural matrix, borrowing or directly borrowing the iconic symbols in this cultural matrix, which is the totem of culture. “Feelings” are actually the combination of cultural values + emotions, requiring people to transcend the individual in their emotional pursuits and combine them with the big narrative.
Moutai interprets cultural totems into an almost religious symbol worship. From the golden relief of the pair of flying fairies on the bottle to the five big characters of “Kweichow Moutai” stamped on the wine label, every detail is undergoing intensive cultural coding.
This process of totemicization is not a simple brand design, but a carefully planned value crowning – when the iconic “Moutai red” appears on the state banquet table, when the news broadcast camera sweeps over the milky porcelain bottle in the banquet hall of the Great Hall of the People, this wine bottle has long transcended the function of a container and has become the physical embodiment of authoritative aesthetic culture.
This system is so powerful that some people ridicule that “drinking Moutai is not wine, it is the envious eyes of the people around you when drinking.” ”
Bubble Mart, on the other hand, plays emotional symbols into a mind projector for contemporary young people.
Bubble Mart’s symbolic kingdom completely jumps out of this heaviness, and its power comes precisely from the imperfect vividness. Molly’s eternal pouting seems to be ready to speak to the world; Labubu’s exaggerated grin is the emotional totem of contemporary young people who “smile on the surface and MMP in their hearts”.
These IP images have sufficient emotional blank space, as Molly’s designer Wang Xinming said: “Molly has no story, her story is written by you” – this blank space has become the strongest emotional projection screen.
When the office white-collar worker gives Skullpanda on the desk the line “Monday syndrome”; When college students compare the hidden money drawn to “lucky charms for postgraduate entrance examinations”; When every consumer is writing their own emotional diary with these elastic symbols, emotional symbols are like MEME memes, constantly being created, evolved and co-created.
The hunger marketing of those limited and hidden models is essentially creating a controllable emotional fluctuation: the ecstasy when drawing the hidden model, the chagrin when the duplicate model, and the social pleasure when exchanging them, together constitute an emotional experience that is more valuable than the doll itself. This ability to symbolize emotions is so accurate that some users say that “collecting Bubble Mart is like collecting specimens of one’s own mood at different times.”
Therefore, Moutai and Bubble Mart are both IP symbols, but the directions are very different.
Moutai’s symbolic pursuit is eternity and a sense of stability through time and space. The symbol of Bubble Mart embraces instantaneousness, stimulating the nerves of “having it now”.
04 “Hidden” and “Sunny”
Everyone can find this interesting phenomenon – people who buy Moutai don’t even “drink”, they “hide”.
The most important thing about Bubble Mart’s trendy play is “drying”. Through “sunning” to achieve socialization, emotional venting and community identity, each doll actually has a digital clone that can be copied infinitely.
The most intriguing thing is the “broken value” of the symbol – Moutai bottles depreciate once opened, while Bubble Mart players are keen to “change makeup” dolls.
The reason is obvious – cultural totems are of course used to “hide”, and emotional symbols are of course used to “dry”. One is cultural value first, and the other is emotional value first.
Behind this symbolic game is actually the wrestling of two social mentalities. The cultural totem system represented by Moutai relies on the inheritance of collective memory and requires a stable media voice as the soil for cultivation; The wave of emotional symbols that Bubble Mart controls is based on the uncertainty of individual emotions and requires highly mobile social networks as communication media.
The essence of the difference between the two is the epitome of the generational change of consumption: Moutai needs to integrate into the new context, while Bubble Mart needs to build a solid foundation in the frenzy.
Moutai represents the long-term accumulation of value from farming to the industrial age, relying on historical and cultural authority, but it needs to solve the problem of rejuvenation……
Bubble Mart embodies the emotional economy of the digital network era and the global emotional consensus of human nature, reaping the dividends of Generation Z with IP co-creation and community operation, but it still needs to be precipitated for a long time to verify sustainability……
