Japanese snack brand Pretz has released a set of two exclusive flavoured breadsticks on Douyin’s (Chinese TikTok) Super Brand Day, a brand-focused online sales event on the platform.
Capitalising on popular north vs south memes about cuisine and taste, the two flavours are distinctly northern Chinese ‘zhajiangmian’ with a spicy twist and classic southern ‘Longjing prawns’ with added osmanthus flavour. Alongside the flavoured breadsticks, the set comes with a northern style sesame paste and a southern flavoured osmanthus dipping sauce. Customers are encouraged to either go strictly northern or southern or use a wacky dipping sauce-breadstick combo to mix and match regional cuisines.
The release comes with a hashtag #就酱吧 百力滋#, a play on the fact that ‘that’s it’ and ‘dip it’ sound similar in Chinese. The topic gained over 2 million views and 113,000 engagements on Twitter-like platform Weibo. The post announcing brand ambassador actor Ding Yuxi’s unboxing livestream gained over 6,000 replies on Weibo. An offline pop-up event was held at Anfu Road in Shanghai that included a shop, games, stamp collecting and other interactive touchpoints.
The exclusive flavour came after instant noodle maker Baixiang released the Douyin exclusive coriander noodle this May, for Baixiang’s Super Brand Day. The noodle also banks on the meme about the love-it-or-hate-it nature of coriander. It included coriander juice-infused noodle, dried coriander leaves and stalks, as well as 5 whole freeze-dried corianders.
Brands in China create topical and unconventional flavours in an attempt to quickly gain public attention. A successful example is Master Kong’s Iced tea flavoured braised beef instant noodle that combines two of the brands best-known products, which was released as a part of its Super Brand Day on Tmall. The topic #康师傅冰红茶牛肉面# (#masterkongicedteabraisedbeefnoodle) has gained 800 million views and 350,000 engagements on Weibo since launch on October 13th.
