Text | Jiang Xiaoqiao
For Chinese, there is no more important collective memory than the New Year. But now every New Year's Day, "the taste of the year has faded" seems to have become a common pity for the Chinese people.
Behind this, it is actually the confrontation and integration of traditional culture and modern lifestyle, which has become a topic that people have been pondering.
But in fact, not only the New Year, many traditional Chinese cultures have actually experienced "light" moments. The inheritance is not real, traditional culture is difficult to sustain under the impact of foreign culture and emerging culture, and traditional culture cannot attract contemporary young people...
Now, everything is changing. By showing traditional culture and the media and expressions loved by modern people, especially young people, it not only revitalizes tradition, but also allows young people to see the historical process and the beauty of traditional culture more intuitively in addition to boring textbooks.
All this is driven by the changes of the times, the guidance of officials, the exploration of business, and the endless creativity.
The new vitality of traditional culture
In the past year, Henan Satellite TV has become a "king fried" that exports traditional culture to the world.
Starting from the "Tang Palace Night Banquet" that broke the circle at the Spring Festival Gala, the Tang Palace girls who "walked out" from the Henan Museum brought the neon feathers of the Tang Dynasty, and with the help of VR technology, the national treasures such as "Women's Good Owl Zun", "Jia Hu Bone Flute" and "Lotus Crane Square Kettle" were moved to the stage one by one, bringing 2 billion plays, tens of millions of bullet screens, and 5 hot searches.
The following Lantern Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival magic night are also amazing. Netizens' evaluation is, "Henan Satellite TV killed crazy", "Is this kind of immortal program I can watch", "Henan Satellite TV, everything is hard".
The slightly boring traditional culture in the public stereotype is performed in such a colorful and diverse form, and what is more rare is that while pursuing novelty and visual effects, traditional culture has not lost its original thickness and simplicity, and there is also a kind of cultural introspection based on the ideas of the new era.
For a long time, the market has not figured out the right way to create new cultural products that can be accepted by young people. But in recent years, traditional culture has seen more and more new ways of expression.
Not only are traditional cultural programs such as "Tang Palace Night Banquet" and "National Treasure" stunning netizens, but in terms of movies, in recent years, there have also been "The Return of the Great Sage of Journey to the West" and "The Demon Child of Nezha" in China, which are based on traditional Chinese cultural stories, integrate Chinese classical beauty in the artistic picture, and conform to the phenomenon-level national comic films of Chinese's unique cultural interests in the expression of content themes.
At the dramatic level, one of the Top Ten Famous Paintings in China and a long-scroll silk color painting created by Wang Ximeng of the Northern Song Dynasty, "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", was put on the stage of the stage play.
At the level of cultural creativity, the Forbidden City, Dunhuang and other national tide cultural and creative products, in the process of traditional culture from simple goods to creative products, have built their own cultural and creative business map and an industrial chain that adheres to IP values and open interaction. Since then, they have continued to develop innovative and iterative cultural and creative derivatives, making the 600-year-old Forbidden City and the 1600-year-old Dunhuang become younger than ever.
Undoubtedly, after the accumulation of traditional culture to a certain level, the essence of the output has a complete world view and values, and has its own vitality.
To help revive traditional culture, what can Chinese enterprises do?
When the promotion of traditional culture finally explores a feasible way out, the next step is to enrich, perfect and continuously evolve through the market.
Time magazine in the United States has paid attention to the changes in the emotional identity of Chinese young people for traditional culture - "Contemporary Chinese young people, on the one hand, choose their favorite contemporary trend culture with their own personality, and at the same time understand and inherit China's 'traditional culture' in their own way." ”
At the same time, the report also pointed out that the revival of traditional Chinese culture is a systematic project from the temple to the individual. Among them, naturally there is also a boost from commercial civilization. The rising sense of cultural self-confidence and cultural identity is projected into the field of consumption, and the national tide is the most obvious example.
In the past few years, the consumer sector has blown a national tide. In addition to the hanfu that has become popular, the cultural and creative products of the museum that have broken the circle, the special cultural and creative ice cream that has become the standard of major scenic spots, there are also liquor, lipstick, furniture, home appliances, electronic products jointly named by the national tide... For young consumers, buying domestic goods, using domestic products, and drying domestic products have become a new way of daily life, and commodities that integrate traditional Chinese cultural elements have increasingly become consumer fashion.
As a unique presentation in the modern consumption landscape, guochao's creativity comes from excellent traditional culture, absorbing and integrating modern public aesthetics. The beautiful quality of these "national tide" products with Elements of Chinese Culture and Chinese Characteristics meets the inherent needs of young people in the new era, and highlights the inherent cultural self-confidence and cultural consciousness of consumers. The rise of the national tide is a contemporary reflection of young people on traditional culture, and a new way of life is formed underneath it.
Economist Ren Zeping once analyzed that the elements of the national tide are brand, culture, and new consumption. "Guo" refers to domestic products, that is, products independently designed and developed and produced by Chinese manufacturers, and "tide" is the trend and conforms to the development trend of the times. Simply understood as the brand is the carrier, culture is empathy, new consumption is the trend, these elements are integrated together, in line with the times to export traditional Chinese culture.
More and more Chinese companies are beginning to recognize that brands and products can be a cultural container in addition to business achievements. Just as the Spring Festival approaches, we can already see that many brands are breaking the traditional New Year's marketing routine and creating new cases of integrating traditional culture and popular culture.
Taking the three squirrels as an example, the nut leader, which was once commented by the People's Daily as "successful amway consumers have developed a good habit of eating nuts and become the next domestic leader", has been trying to promote the application of Chinese elements in the commercial field, and through products, animations, peripherals and other forms, to export traditional culture to consumers.
In the design of the "National Tide Blind Box" of the three squirrels classical Xiangrui series, the three squirrels respectively wore sweatshirts in the shape of Xianglong, Fushi and Linglu; in the animation of "Three Squirrels of China Trip" released last year, the three squirrels led the audience to tour the beautiful mountains, rivers, lakes and seas of the Chinese land, and experienced the unique customs and folk customs of various parts of China.
On the occasion of the Spring Festival every year, the three squirrels will launch the New Year gift box and cleverly implant the color of traditional Chinese culture.
For example, the stunning combination of the previous "Three Squirrels chinese new year" new year gift box and traditional Chinese aesthetics, through the exposure of traditional cultural elements such as new year beasts and Kong Ming lanterns, let the atmosphere of the New Year jump on the "box" and receive a lot of praise. In addition to the innovation of outer packaging, Three Squirrels has also jointly created the "Red Squirrel Selection Gift Box" with the design brand Oriental Haoli, which not only contains the star products of the three squirrels, but also has distinct Chinese cultural characteristics of Li Shifeng and Spring League. The collision of culture and snacks makes traditional customs shine differently.
This year's Spring Festival, the three squirrels continue to take the cultural lead. In the offline scene, the three squirrels deepened the content around the concepts of "homecoming", "New Year's taste" and "new ideas", and integrated into the "New Year welfare" activities with traditional New Year flavors such as New Year goods, reunion gifts, New Year red envelopes, writing blessing characters, and New Year's greetings as the emotional cornerstone. The three squirrels hope to convey the core appeal of accompanying the owner to celebrate the New Year, make the New Year more interesting and "new", and enhance the user experience and brand sentiment.
At a time when many enterprises are still talking about corporate values and corporate culture, the three squirrels have begun to integrate the traditional culture at the national level into a part of the corporate brand IP, which not only opens up a farther vision, but also lays a farther layout for their future commercial value.
Why it is the most Chinese annual ceremony
Every year at the spring festival, the best traditional cultural carrier, the New Year gift is undoubtedly one of them.
Although more and more people are lamenting that the New Year is becoming more and more tasteless, this probably means that the joy gained from the festival day in the changing times is getting less and less. But New Year goods and New Year gifts are still an important part of the Chinese New Year. This is because the New Year Gift is no longer just an item.
Objectively speaking, the New Year gift is a magnifying glass of life changes. On the metaphysical level, Chinese gift exchange is embedded in a process called the "cultural construction of personality," which not only defines the boundaries of socially recognized people, but also helps to create a "thematic medium of social interaction in the local moral world." Only by understanding festivals and gifts can we begin to truly understand the core of traditional Chinese culture.
From this perspective, we can see that consumers are paying more and more attention to the "cultural" attributes of the New Year ceremony and the Chinese aesthetic elements that naturally have emotional links in it – at the moment of the Spring Festival, there may be no New Year gift that is more in line with the essence of the Chinese New Year than nuts.
In the book "Forbidden City Banquet", which reflects the food culture of the Qing Dynasty, it is mentioned that even the Qianlong Emperor attaches great importance to the supper fruit box. The royal family also has the custom of Chinese New Year's Eve keeping the age, in order to express good wishes for the coming year, each palace should place a night fruit box and give each other to show blessings, the so-called "night fruit" refers to sweets including sugar, honey, etc., mostly dairy products, preserves, nuts and so on. Today, many of the traditions of the Qing Palace Chinese New Year's Eve have been incorporated into folk customs.
Why nuts? People like nuts, but there is actually a strong emotional element. From ancient times to today, the scene of the family-based gathering has not changed much, but the "irori" has become "television". During the holidays, families sit around drinking tea and chatting, peeling hazelnuts, and sandwiching walnuts – family tables without nuts and snacks are incomplete. Although today's living materials have become extremely abundant, and people's sources of nutrition have become widely available and accessible, the "fascination" with nuts and snacks in our genes has not subsided, not to mention that it can bring additional pleasure and obtain happy emotions.
And the essence of the festival is also joy. Zhu Xi, a scholar of the Southern Song Dynasty, described Chinese New Year's Eve in this way, except for the time of the new year, "When this time is not happy, then the sun and the moon will abandon me and go away."
People love nuts because of their health properties. On September 17, 2021, CBNData and Tmall released the "2021 Nut Fried Goods Industry Consumption Insight Trend White Paper", showing that as consumers' pursuit of quality of life gradually improves, the concept of health care is becoming more and more popular, and consumers' consumption structure is more rational, and they are more willing to spend money on relatively high-priced snacks - nuts. The "White Paper" shows that the nut food market ranks second in the scale of leisure food, releasing a market of 100 billion.
During this year's Double Eleven period, nut gift boxes became one of the most popular products on various e-commerce platforms, and the nut gift packages of only three squirrels on the Tmall platform reached 62% of the gift box market. It can be predicted that the most popular Annual gift this Spring Festival can only be a nut ceremony.
Among them, three squirrel nut gifts are undoubtedly the best - as of 2021 Double Eleven, the cumulative online hot sales exceed 33.41 million boxes, omni-channel explosive sales of more than 113 million boxes, and long occupy the throne of the top 1 of the whole network (Tmall, Taobao) nut gift package sales. In last year's New Year's Festival, the three squirrels sold 2.2 billion yuan in the omni-channel New Year Goods Festival, ranking first in the omni-channel New Year Goods Festival, and the sales volume of more than 7 million boxes during the Nut Gift Box New Year Goods Festival, ranking first in the category. During last year's Double Twelve period, three squirrels sold 1.62 million boxes of nut annual gifts, an increase of more than 144%, accounting for 40% of Tmall's share, setting a new record for double twelve nut gifts.
According to the survey results released by "Consumer Report", in the field of snacks or specialty brands, when it comes to "national tide", 47.1% of consumers' preferred brand is "three squirrels", accounting for the first place, enough to show in the hearts of consumers, three squirrel brands have been closely associated with the symbol of "national tide". Previously, in the "Baidu National Tide Pride Big Data" released by the People's Network Research Institute and Baidu, the three squirrels also listed the "hottest" domestic product vertical subdivision brands.
This year's Spring Festival, the three squirrels prepared nearly 20 nut gift boxes through multiple channels such as online and offline, which not only meet the diverse needs of consumers, but also facilitate purchases anytime, anywhere. Everything is just to let more Chinese be able to feel the joy of the New Year, just like the three squirrels this year's New Year festival "bring squirrel ceremony, happy New Year" SLOGN.
When we talk about traditional culture, what are we talking about? In fact, nian is the biggest tradition in China. Today, perhaps much of the taste of the year has disappeared from the lifestyle, but the emotions and cultural heritage contained in the annual ceremony will never die. Cultural inheritance is the ballast stone of China's social development and one of the ultimate meanings of commercial civilization. The three squirrels know this well.