Although Gu Biao is not familiar with the operation of most FMCG industries (including beverages), he still has a basic business common sense after surviving in two lifetimes:

The most valuable intangible asset in these industries is a brand. As for the technical content, that's really not much.

Patents don't build a moat here, and "top-secret formulas" in the form of trade secrets are useless.

Don't believe the mentally retarded stall inquiries that "Coca-Cola is so awesome by its recipe locked in the top-secret safe at the Atlanta headquarters."

Any beverage company with a grade of more than one billion dollars, it is actually very easy to test it, and the high imitation of 98% similarity ensures that consumers' taste does not detect the difference.

The reason why others can't copy that kind of success is entirely because the Coca-Cola brand is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the profit margin of Coca-Cola is not very profitable. It takes such a large scale, market capacity, and cost management and quality control that have been run in for many years to support this gross profit margin. Since others don't make money if they don't copy it big enough, it's better to give up and change to a differentiated market.

Gu Biao, a layman, can see clearly that "brand is the only effective moat", and people in the industry must be able to see it even more clearly.

Therefore, Gu Biao knows that "if you hold the ownership rights and interests of all trademarks and brands in your own hands and just authorize the right to use them to others", then this business will definitely not be able to continue.

Others won't work hard to help you promote, and you're afraid that your rights and responsibilities will be unclear, and you will end up marrying and working as a day job.

Just like in history, when Wang Laoji and Jia Duobao were still a family, if Chen Hongdao hadn't controlled Wang Laoji's trademark all the time, he wouldn't have spent hundreds of millions of dollars every year to promote this brand. It is nothing more than because one of the parties involved in this case is a state-owned enterprise, so after the person in charge of the state-owned enterprise who signed the contract with Chen is arrested, the state can sue for the invalidity of the contract......

Not much more to say.

In a word, if Gu Biao does not control a certain part of the brand, let the collaborators completely control it without any worries. Then he will be like the party who pinched Wang Laoji from the beginning, he was isolated from the beginning and became a lonely person, and all advertisements had to be paid for by himself.

……

"Well, I understand that your decision to leave the rights and interests of 'Red Bull' in Southeast Asian countries to Xu Shubiao is in exchange for him to accept the production technology required for capital injection, joint formulation, and joint research and development of concentrated syrup + bottling plant model.

Since publicity in the Chinese market is one of your important negotiation conditions, then I will work hard and fly to Bangkok first on the way back. Finalize the cooperation intention with Mr. Xu, and then release the promotional video in China, so as not to waste a bargaining chip. ”

After Han Ting understood Gu Biao's beverage brand layout considerations, she also made arrangements very quickly.

She just doesn't have that much imagination, and she still executes it very neatly.

The two chatted here, and the bak kut tea was finished, so Han Ting naturally packed up the takeaway plastic box and pressed the bell for the waiter to pour it out.

Han Ting poured a glass of water and rinsed her mouth, then continued the next topic with the cup.

"Let's talk about the premise you mentioned at the beginning - why do you think that the cultural and media value represented by the Red Bull brand will become more and more valuable in the future?

You say 'Red Bull represents a group of people who gamble and take risks', and in my opinion, this kind of person is a waste of life who has nothing to do, and I don't think this kind of person will have more and more influence in society in the future. The sports events and entertainment works that attract these people should not have a great future in the future. ”

Just now, when he was eradicating illiteracy, Gu Biao roughly explained what it was like to "Red Bull represents risky gambling on life".

The rhetoric he explained was nothing more than a hazy deduction and prediction of the phenomenon that he later saw as "Red Bull is most suitable for endorsing extreme sports and adventurous challenges".

However, the Chinese people in 1982 obviously couldn't understand why there were so many people in the world who were full of food and were looking for death. There is no mantra in this era, such as "I finally know why foreign countries have a small population".

The cultural differences are too far away.

Gu Biao was idle, so he didn't hesitate to give Han Ting an in-depth interpretation.

"You have to think of the problem this way: in the last decade or so, the explosion of productivity has been evident around the world. Now that our country has been open for four years, and the situation is so good, I have no doubt that in the next 30 years, the world will shift from an era of scarcity to an era of abundance and relative excess—you heard it right, and when I say 'relative excess', I mean the 'relative excess' that Marx said.

And a brand like Coca-Cola speaks for 'the happiness that comes with cheap deliciousness'. Red Bull endorses the happiness that comes from 'you are better than others'. The former is the confrontation between man and nature, and the latter is the confrontation between man and man.

People who are well-fed and well-fed are prone to emptiness, and if they want to feel pleasure, they can only be different from others, envied by others, and pretended to be forced in front of others. The more materially abundant, the more empty people there are. ”

When Gu Biao said this, his mind traveled through time and space in a trance, and he thought of many new social problems in later generations, and he couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

His expression fell in Han Ting's eyes, and it also caused a slight resonance, although Han Ting's insight was not enough to truly understand.

After the fugue, Gu Biao sighed divergently: "Sometimes I think that if we look at the 'happiness index' of the people, the next 15~20 years may be the era of the highest comprehensive happiness of the whole people." In the future, although the people will be richer and more materially rich, the overall national happiness will probably decline, and the relations between people will become more tense and hostile.

In fact, I don't want the Red Bull endorsement culture of 'making empty and painful people gamble their lives for attention and find a sense of existence' to become popular, but the trend of heaven is there, and no one can resist it. ”

"Why? Why do you feel that you will be richer in the future but unhappy?" Han Ting put down the cup and asked solemnly.

Gu Biao shrugged his shoulders and laughed helplessly: "When I was studying in the United States, I learned a lot of extracurricular common sense: the human brain is actually very cheap, and it is just an organ enslaved by biological evolution. In order for human beings to continue to forge ahead, nature has evolved the brain into a mechanism that can adapt quickly after material enjoyment is upgraded.

That is to say, for example, an American earns a monthly salary of $1,000 this year and rises to $1,500 next year, and he may be a little happy and immersed in happiness in the first half of the salary increase. But after half a year at most, he will feel that this is what he deserves, and the protective mechanism of the brain will cause the pituitary gland to no longer continue to secrete dopamine for the reason of 'I raised my salary to 1500'.

In a few years, when his monthly salary rises to 2000/3000, he will still secrete dopamine in the second half of each skyrocket, and then he will get used to it.

In the same way, a person who has not eaten enough will be happy for the first half of the year, and the next time he will be happy when he can eat meat occasionally, and then he will be happy for half a year when he is open to unlimited meat...... After making sure to live, each increase in new material comforts can only make your pituitary gland secrete dopamine for half a year, and then get used to it.

When there is no increment, Americans with a monthly salary of $5,000 and Americans with a monthly salary of $50,000 are actually living as materially miserable - of course, all of this is measured by dopamine secretion.

If only the above mechanism is working, then after the realization of a well-off life, having money is at most as happy as not having money, at least it will not be painful. But the fact is that once a person is satisfied with being well-off and idle, his attention will be so much that there is nowhere to put it.

A person who has not eaten enough food does not have the energy to pay attention to the people around him, and there are several percent poorer than him and several percent richer than him, so he has no time to suffer from comparison. His brain was numb with hunger. But once she is full, she will look for trouble, hope to be noticed, and hope to find that she is not at the bottom of society, then the contradiction will come, and her anger will increase greatly.

So from the perspective of dopamine, in fact, the most harmonious society, about 80% of the energy spent, can be fed and clothed, and there is no energy left to envy others and resent. Sixteen percent of people can eat meat, watch TV, and then whenever their minds are empty, they remember that they are in the top 20% of the world and feel superior.

3.5% of the people are rich, not only with fine clothes and food, but also with luxury goods, and occasionally show off in front of the 16% who are full of meat and have leisure. The last 0.5% of the top super elites are free from all low-level interests, they have so much money that they regard money as dung, and they just want to transform the world and realize their life pursuits. American neuroscientists have long studied that as long as humans find themselves in the first two percent of the environment they can observe, they are most likely to be satisfied and secrete dopamine.

For the poor, it is better to spend some time in leisure time than to play sports or cards, and it is enough to dissipate their energy. If they are more idle, they will remember how poor they are, which will stimulate them to struggle, but it will also bring pain and depression in dopamine production. ”

Gu Biao's previous life came from the era of oversharing the Internet, and although he made this money, it doesn't mean that he agrees with the benefits of that thing.

He knows that many times ignorance equals happiness. The reason why the social anger at the end of the 90s was not as strong as it was in the 2010s was not that the people in the late 90s had a better material life, but that they did not have so many incentives to remind them of how poor they were.

"It turns out that the United States and other countries have developed to this extent. According to you, the fact that their society is so hostile and that there are so many extreme people is caused by the excessive provocation and comparison of the mass media?"

"It's cruel? But that's the truth. If one day the Chinese are too full, sooner or later they will find ways to change their ways. As long as we are human, we are all slaves to dopamine. People of insight are, at best, more able to remind themselves of this than ordinary people. ”