Wallace
Background Introduction
In 2000, Wallace established its first store in Fuzhou, Fujian, China - Fuzhou Normal University Restaurant, positioning itself as an affordable Western-style fast food restaurant. By differentiating itself from McDonald's and KFC through pricing and distribution channels, Wallace obtained opportunities for development. In 2021, the number of Wallace stores exceeded 20,000, making it one of the largest domestic fast food chains in China. Wallace's business mission has remained consistent: to enable ordinary Chinese people to enjoy high-quality, affordable fried chicken burgers.
Strategic Direction
The key to marketing is to sell in large quantities the things we are most capable of. Initially, Wallace, like McDonald's and KFC, positioned itself as a "fried chicken burger" restaurant. However, as the supply chain procurement in this category grew with increasing scale, conflicts between Wallace and McDonald's and KFC became more intense, ultimately it would lead to a severe cost increase that make all key players to have lesser profits. Based on the enterprise game theory of Hua & Hua, we chose the unique and supply chain-advantaged whole chicken product of Wallace as a brand new category and hit product to create Wallace's brand value.
Super Sign (Figure 1)
As a Western-style fast food brand, Wallace's brand logo must meet the need to be easily recognisable and spread by people around the world. Therefore, the project team chose to privatize the modification from the first letter of its English name, Wallace, because the letter "W" is like numbers and animals and is a symbol that everyone in the world recognizes and is familiar with, regardless of language.
Based on Wallace's new category strategy "whole chicken & burger" proposed by Hua & Hua, a vigorous and imposing rooster image was added to the letter, and Wallace's Super Sign was finally created.
Brand Slogan (Figure 2)
Whole chicken with a burger, Wallace is delicious.
Brand Character (Figures 3-7)
Wallace's Wallace Friends are good brand characters and the most valuable brand ambassador for the brand, continuously accumulating Brand Equity that can generate interest from investing in brand characters even 50 or 100 years later.
The original intention of creating the avatars of Wallace was to develop the children's market by combining five classic products - "whole chicken, burger, fries, cola, and ketchup" - with cute little animals to create avatars such as "little white chicken, burger bear, cola rabbit, fries cat, and ketchup cat". This constructs the Wallace universe that belongs exclusively to the Wallace brand culture, and continuously enriches the original content of the Wallace family through blind boxes, small games, and gift peripherals, thereby gaining more attention and love from fans and creating more value for the brand.
Store Sign System (Figure 8)
The store front is like a larger version of packaging which needs to be designed with "Shelf Awareness." The "shelf" here is the street where Wallace is located, and we have to design the store front like a product on the shelf to make it stand out from all other shoppes on the street and attract consumers' attention. First, we catch the passers-by attentions with the Super Sign on the storefront and side signboards. Secondly, make them interested with our whole chicken and burgers by showing them the purchase reasons. Finally, through banners and posters which consist of the purchase reasons and purchase instructions, we continuously attracted the consumers to enter the store and make purchases. the IP family characters are used to enrich the store's atmosphere and create an immersive shopping experience for consumers. Currently, Wallace has over 20,000 stores, which is equivalent to 20,000 free advertising spaces. By fully utilizing the resources, it achieves offline super-spreading at zero cost.
Packaging System (Figure 9)
Each packaging is an advertising space 100% owned by the brand which will surely reach the consumers. For Wallace, packaging is not only a container for food, but also the most frequent point of contact with consumers. Millions of consumers come into contact with Wallace packaging every day, which has tremendous advertising value. Therefore, packaging not only needs to be designed according to its actual application scenarios, usage habits, packaging shapes, and food safety regulations, but also needs to reflect Wallace's brand value information: Super Signs, number of stores, and ingrediencies, etc.
Internal Roadshow (Figure 10)
Hua & Hua often emphasized that, "Without creativity, strategy is valueless; without skill, creativity is valueless; without execution, everything is valueless." Every business manager may have encountered situations where the headquarters formulated a good plan, but the regional execution was a mess.
To better assist clients with execution of marketing plans and let store managers in various regions to be executed our plans willingly with high quality, we have provided an complementary service for Wallace—Conference Planning Services.
Hua & Hua's internal roadshow is divided into four steps: theoretical training, plan explanation, execution instructions, and exhibition experience. After strategic proposals, the internal roadshow can help clients overcome execution difficulties, reduce internal communication costs, and work together to greatly improve corporate execution efficiency.
Brand Touchpoint Manual & Meta-Media Management System (Figure 11)
Brand touchpoint is to design all the points where the brand and consumers come into contact with the mindset of marketing. Every point where consumers come into contact with Wallace should be an advertisement. Excellent brand touchpoints create the most effective, cheapest, and even free advertising space for the brand, which can save a lot of advertising costs for the company.
New Store Opening Standard Operating Manual (Figure 12)
The opening of a new store is the most important promotion opportunity for a store and often lays the foundation for future operations. Hua & Hua has created a mature, verified, and self-selling super marketing materials for new store opening activities, which allows store managers to use them according to their needs during the opening and ensure the effectiveness of the opening activities.
Marketing Calendar (Figure 13-24) There are three major marketing events for Wallace throughout the year: Children's Day Chicken Festival, Winter Chicken Festival, and New Year's event.
Children's Day Chicken Festival (Figure 13-14)
Slogan: Good luck and happiness, whole chicken on Children's Day!
The Children's Day Chicken Festival is a holiday tailored for Wallace's children and young customers. We noticed that every "child" has a wish on this day, which is to be able to eat their favorite food, play their favorite games, and receive many gifts. Therefore, we embedded the brand into this Cultural Matrix and created a grand festival where customers can play games, eat fried chicken, and receive gifts, with the brand IP blind box figurines as the core purchase reason.
Winter Chicken Festival (Figure 15-20)
Slogan: Every winter should be accompanied by Wallace whole chicken!
The Winter Chicken Festival is a holiday created specifically to establish the "whole chicken category". In the Cultural Matrix of Christmas, people gather together on this night to eat a roasted turkey with their families. Therefore, we integrated the brand into the Christmas Cultural Matrix and made our product into the Christmas rituals to create more sales. This year, based on the opportunity of the Winter Olympics and winter sports, we created exclusive brand IP merchandise and mini-games, which ultimately led to the highest sales peak of the year.
New Year's event (Figure 21-24)
Slogan: Have Wallace and good luck all year round!
The Lunar New Year has become one of the most important marketing events in Wallace's traditional holiday marketing. During the event, we designed practical gifts to welcome the New Year, such as couplets, window decorations, and red envelopes, to promote "combo meal" sales. The "Little White Chicken Draws New Clothes" activity broke through the limitations of offline marketing and went viral online as well, received a total of 90,466 excellent illustrations. We believe in the future, more customers will participate in our "Have Wallace and good luck all year round" event.
