Rebranding of Palace Museum’s Reputation: A Case Study of “Palace Lipstick”
故宮IP口碑的復新歷程分析：以故宮限量口紅為案例
Introduction
On February 18, the Palace Museum opened to the public at night for the first time in 94 years. After the announcement was issued, the tickets for the February 19th (Lantern Festival Day) were quickly snatched up in the afternoon of the 17th. The Palace Museum, once again, showed its effective marketing ability to the public. In fact, The Palace Museum has already made many efforts in rebranding by developing new series of product, that is the "Palace Museum Literary Creation（故宮文創）".
Similar to other entrepreneurs, who take more emphasis on consumer experience and consumer needs nowadays, museums, as important cultural and educational institutions, have also actively sought to rebrand in recent years from "self-centered" such as collections research and protection to "viewer-centered" which not only revolves around the essence of visitor needs, iterates the form of exhibition and promotes deep cultural experience, but also encourages “visitors” to transfer to “consumers”. This paper will firstly discuss the whole process of the Palace Museum rebranding with background of the literary creation’s industry. Then I will bring a representative case, “Palace Lipstick”, and analyze the division of related stakeholders. Thirdly, I will discuss three main strategies that Palace Museum used and effectively improve its corporate reputation, that is precision marketing based on product differentiation and the brand essence, balancing between “traditional” and “modern” and reasonable crossover marketing. Finally, I will come to conclusion with suggestions which is, rebranding could not be achieved in a short term. It must fully consider content, products, channels, consumers and cooperative partners.
Background
In this part, I will first discuss the whole background of the literacy creation industry, then introduce the specific commercial process of Palace Museum Cultural and Creative Center (TPMCCC).
Firstly, in the sight of whole industry, on March 20th, 2015, the Museum Ordinance （《博物館條例》）was officially implemented, which made it clear that museums could engage in commercial activities, excavate the connotation of collections, and integrate cultural creativity, tourism and other industries. In May 2016, "Some Opinions on Promoting the Development of Cultural and Creative Products in Cultural Heritage Units"（《關於推動文化文物單位文化創意產品開發的若干意見》）was issued, which further pushed the development of cultural creation（文創）industries into the "fast lane". Besides, according to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the added value of Chinese culture and related industries has been increasing continuously. In 2013, the added value of culture and related industries was 2135.1 billion-yuan, accounting for 3.63% of GDP. In 2016, the added value of culture and related industries exceeded 3 trillion-yuan, accounting for more than 4%. In 2017, it approached 350 billion yuan, reaching 347.22 billion-yuan, accounting for 4.20% of GDP. From 2015 to 2017, the added value of cultural, creative and design services industries was 495.3 billion yuan, 584.3 billion yuan and 697.5 billion yuan, respectively, with annual growth rates of 13.5%, 18.0% and 19.4%. (Statistics, 2017)
Secondly, in the sight of the Palace Museum itself. In 2008, the Palace Museum Cultural and Creative Center (TPMCCC)（故宮文化創意中心）was established and stationed in tmall.com, one of the representative of B2C in China's E-commerce platform (Admin, 2015) in 2016. In 2013, the sales volume from TPMCCC was 600 million yuan, then increased to nearly 1 billion yuan in 2016 and 1.5 billion yuan in 2017. (Jing, 2019) The products of TPMCCC include headphones, fans, luggage tags, tapes and so forth (Pic 1). What’s more, TPMCCC not only carries out self-innovation to launch those literacy creations, but also joins other brands to launch various series of cooperative funds, such as such as custom-made moon cakes, limited bottles of NongFuShanQuan（農夫山泉）, Palace Museum jewelry, etc. By the end of 2016, the Palace Museum has already launched 9170 kinds of literacy creation’s products. (Zhu, 2019)
Pic 1
Series of products launched by TPMCCC
Target Consumer
According to the user data of the Palace Museum, the main consumer of the Palace Museum's literary creation are people aged 25-34, in other words, who were born in 80s or 90s. They have been entered the workplace for a short time, highly praising new things, hot topics, Internet-based language and fashion products. (Jing, 2019)
Stakeholders
The stakeholders of TPMCCC include consumers, employees, suppliers, distributors, cooperative partners, government regulatory agencies, analysts, media and research centers. In the next part, I will analyze the specific division of main stakeholders with the case study.
Programs: Case Study of “Palace Lipstick”
Specifically, since 2017, TPMCCC has begun to focus on the cosmetics industry. One of the reasons is that the cosmetics market keeps growing considerably in China. According to the data of China Business Industry Research Institute（中商產業研究院）, the cosmetics market in China reached 361.6 billion yuan in 2017, with an annual growth rate of 10%. It is expected that in the next five years, the composite growth rate will be maintained as 12%. By 2023, the market scale of China's cosmetics industry will exceed 65 billion yuan. (Statistics, 2017)
As early as April 2017, one Taobao's online store named "the Imperial Palace Taobao" (“故宮淘寶”) began to enter the cosmetics industry and put forward the design of “palace wall” lipstick（宮墻色口紅）, “glory jade” eye shadow（點翠眼影）, “flower & painting & bird” eye shadow（花畫鳥眼影）, “imperial jade” cheek blush（皇帝玉璽腮紅）, “ice crack” nail polish（冰裂紋指甲油）and so forth as shown in Pic 1. However, it took a year and a half to conceive and act.
Pic 2:
"the Imperial Palace Taobao" (“故宮淘寶”)’s product in 2017
Here are two main reasons for TPMCCC to choose lipstick as the main product. Firstly, in the field of cosmetics, lipstick has the unique characteristics of low unit price, high profit with wide customer base. Besides, according to statistics, the total sales volume of lipstick online market in China in 2017 is about 6.326 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 12.81%, and more than 3 million women buy 5 lipsticks a year, in which young urban groups born in 90s become the main consumer (Bilibili, 2018), which mean lipsticks could be more directly link the lives of modern young people. As a partner of the Palace Museum's creative lipstick, Yang Jun, general manager of “Run Baiyan”（潤百顏）, also said in an interview, “In the category of cosmetics, lipstick is indeed the most popular and affordable product for consumers. By this way, it could somehow encourage young people easier to promote national culture and spirit when they use lipsticks” (Can, 2019)
Secondly, lipstick is a commodity whose inner paste and outer shell are inseparable, which, like perfume, could give designer more space for bottle shape designing. This commodity structure features could also make the product have both ornamental value and collection value.
In this rebranding program, stakeholders have different divisions. I will main discuss the distributors, employees, suppliers and cooperative partners as below.
Distributors. The distribution of the Palace Museum lipsticks focuses on online e-commerce, in which the main distributor is Alibaba. The Forbidden City, such a large IP, the reason that it can rebrand so lightly and successful, except for TPMCCC’s attempt to grope in recent years, it is based on the complete resource conditions provided and supported by Alibaba in entrepreneurship development, encouragement of originality, originality protection, marketing, manufacturing, data, finance, sales and so on. Take originality protection as example, since the products are launched and landed on the Internet platform, the risk of copying the IP licensed products of the Palace Museum is naturally great. But in practice, there are almost no obvious cases of plagiarism. This is due to the property rights protection mechanism of Alibaba because Ali has now launched the original protection system including "electronic certificate", "complaint protection" and "IP commercialization" to provide solutions for original businesses.
Employees. The marketing of the Palace Museum could not separable from its biggest "celebrity": Shan Jixiang（單霽翔）, president of the Palace Museum. His personal image is deeply bound to the cultural IP of the Forbidden City. Shan Jixiang won the “Annual Cultural Figure” （年度文化人物）at the "Influencing China" Honor Ceremony（影響中國榮譽盛典） in 2018. Besides, "The Imperial Palace Taobao" (“故宮淘寶”) , the coffee shop in the Palace Corner and the palace themed hot pot have also become hot topics under his responsibility. On February 17, Shan Jixiang said to media when talking about the palace lipstick, "The only problem with the palace lipstick is that it can't be bought. Although 900,000 pieces have been produced urgently, the supply is still in short supply." Shan himself has already become a large-flow IP. Such a key opinion leader like him, who could represent positive brand’s image and own a hot topic as well, is a good driving force for the rejuvenation of the old brand. (Mian, 2019)
Suppliers & cooperative partners. TPMCCC chose one manufacturing companies as major supplier and cooperative partner, named Run Bai Yan（潤百顏）, which is the sub- brand of Huaxi Biology（華熙生物）, a well-known supplier of hyaluronic acid raw materials. Huaxi Biology has also provided raw materials for many international luxury brands, which is professional in cosmetics industry.
Analysis：Why could the Palace Museum effectively rebrand and improve its reputation?
After I discussed the whole picture of industry and the case of the Palace Museum lipsticks, here I will analysis the reason why the Palace Museum could effectively rebrand and improve its reputation.
Firstly, TPMCCC accurately grasps the product differentiation and the brand essence. The main motivation of which the traditional Chinese elements represented by the Palace Museum could lead a huge expectation to consumers, is the top level of Chinese ancient culture, crafts, tastes and lifestyles. More than 1.8 million pieces of cultural relics and cultural symbols of the Palace Museum have been accumulated over 2000 years of historical relics in China, tempered by 600 years of palace life style, and developed and honed by imperial customers in Ming and Qing dynasties. The super IP value of Palace Museum cultural relics and cultural carriers is equivalent to the value of China's top cultural matrix. Based on that, the commercial value transformed from these cultural relics and cultural symbols has a very high starting point. It can be understood that everything condensed in the Palace Museum could represent the top design of ancient China. In other words, the Forbidden City could equal the value of China; the Forbidden City IP could also equal the treasure of Chinese design. (Can, 2019), which is the main difference for the Palace Museum Literary Creation to other commercial products. Besides, TPMCCC also makes clear what its main goal is. The purpose of making money is to maintain the operation of the Palace Museum and its fundamental purpose is still to spread Chinese culture. Museums are not used for business. Their first task is to inherit culture, to inherit the cultural relics of a nation or of mankind, and to connect people with the past.
Secondly, TPMCCC reasonably balances the style between tradition and modern. Not only in the case of lipsticks, but also TPMCCC tries to keep this basic balance in the whole rebranding process.
Specifically, the Palace Museum shows its youthful side, closes the gap with young people by selling popular products such as chocolate, coffee, pajamas, pays attention to the publicity of brand image, and makes the Palace Museum show the beauty of history to young people who are not familiar with Chinese culture, but yearn for it. In the other side, the Palace Museum is also shooting documentaries and variety arts, which help to enhance its brand image. It has not been over-grounded and commercialized. Also take the “Palace lipstick” as example, all six lipstick colors come from the national treasure of the Palace Museum. Their appearance draws inspiration from the imperial concubines' clothing and embroidery, based on the black, white, red, green and yellow and the patterns above are cranes, butterflies, red deer and bees. They are all tradition symbols of auspiciousness in ancient China. On the other hand, the Palace Museum lipstick has also applied 3D printing technology to produce texture of outer fabric and concave and convex feeling of embroidery. This combination makes this set of lipstick very "modern but oriental".
Thirdly, TPMCCC pays attention to integrated communications and crossover marketings. From variety arts to derivatives, from single product to combination of cultural institutions and creative industries, such as “National Treasure”（《國家寶藏》） and “Shang Xin Palace Museum”（《上新了·故宮》）, they also have obvious IP + attributes. The prediction of main business form of cultural entertainment IP in the future would include making influence online, obtaining popularity, and make profits through cross-border convergence of industries offline. In the case of TPMCCC, this logic could be proved effectively.
The Forbidden City, for a long time, has existed in our memory in a relatively closed state. Until these years, it began to enter the popular discourse through the window of literary products. The bravery of embracing the present is undoubtedly commendable. However, the overall level of development and management of cultural and creative products in Chinese museums is still not high. In an interview with the media, the president of the Palace Museum--Shan Jixiang also attributed the problem to the fact that "the whole industrial chain of China's cultural and creative industries has not been fully connected". Although the Palace Museum's literary creation has been highly praised, some consumers also point out that the quality of lipstick is not as good as expected, as well as the opening night of the Palace Museum mentioned at the beginning. Some media point out that the order on the spot is more chaotic, and the lighting effect does not well show this country's vicissitudes in the past century. (Nuan, 2019) Based on that, it should also be noticed that rebranding is not only a new era outlet, but also a great IP requiring patience and long-term investment. It is a complex process that tests the abilities and mechanisms of all parties, taking into account the inheritance, protection, dissemination of Chinese culture, as well as the continuous improvement and maturity of commercialization.
Conclusion
By analyzing the process of the Palace Museum’s rebranding from the case of “Palace Lipstick”, it could be seen as people born in 90s-95s has become the main consumer. (Bilibili, 2018) Based on that, it is necessary for old brands to rebrand and try to seize more of the target consumer's mind, in order to obtain greater brand influence and value, then to improve their corporate reputation.
From the Palace Museum’s rebranding, it could be illustrated that in the process of marketing innovation, old brands need to pay attention to maintaining "ingenuity" as well as building up the respect of consumers with moderate entertainment spirit. However, entertainment does not mean excessive entertainment and commercialization. Moreover, rebranding needs a long-term effort which should break through and be fully considered from content, products, channels, consumers and cooperative partners.
For the Forbidden City, in the information age, when the Palace Museum changed from a traditional museum to a super IP, how to balance its commercial value and cultural value, harmonize the tastes of both public and academics, is the topic that all previous Palace Museum managers have never faced. Over the years, the Palace Museum has become more and more popular. But the hotter it is, the calmer we should be. Similar to other literacy creation brands, this “rebranding” road to revival has just begun.
References
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