/PRZWT/In the 2026 Spring Festival marketing campaign, Yanjing Beer performed exceptionally well. Using its core flagship product U8 as the core, a series of marketing activities centered around the word "release" were launched. This initiated a systematic brand campaign, achieving a double harvest of publicity and sales, and also completing a value upgrade from strategy to execution. It closely adhered to the basic positioning of a national brand, promoting an upward transformation to "youthful and high-end".
Yanjing Beer's Strategic Preparations: "To Make a Splash" and "To Create a Warm Atmosphere"
The Spring Festival marketing campaign begins with seizing the opportunity to occupy consumers' minds in advance. For Yanjing Beer, which has been deeply engaged in the Spring Festival marketing event for a long time, the challenge lies in how to avoid consumer fatigue in terms of aesthetics and achieve effective communication.
This year, Yanjing Beer has set its breakthrough point on emotional marketing. A series of "heartwarming copywriting" posters were widely spread on social media early on. Phrases like "Stay home and daydream", "Power up for love", "Shine in the spotlight"... precisely captured the complex emotions of contemporary young people before and after the Spring Festival: the desire to detach from workplace fatigue, the sweet anticipation of family reunion, and the realization of self-worth. This is not a simple information bombardment or advertising indoctrination, but rather a kind of empathetic dialogue based on profound insights.
It is particularly important to note that Yanjing Beer uses U8 as an "emotional carrier" to convey these collective emotions and personal wishes, laying the foundation for all subsequent marketing actions. When consumers see the same "send" character at the railway station or in the commercial area, it not only evokes brand recognition but also triggers an emotional resonance of a knowing smile, quietly achieving "mindset positioning".
The digital character "Xia Fa" has made its debut. To achieve youthfulness, one must break boundaries.
During this Spring Festival period, the launch of the brand digital character "Xiaofa" of Yanjing Beer has become a new communication paradigm for the younger generation, and it is a major highlight.
"Xiafa" is not merely a virtual figure; it is an embodiment of the brand strategy. Its design is based on the connection between "U8" and "fa", achieving a leap from a product symbol to an intelligent brand personality. At high-speed railway stations and in outdoor advertising, Yanjing Beer sends out blessings with "Xiafa"; on Yanjing Beer's social platforms, interactive topics such as "#Celebrating the Festival with Yanjing U8 - Good Fortune Will Be Delivered" are posted... As "Xiafa" continues to undergo technological upgrades, this will also become an important part of Yanjing Beer's intangible brand assets.
The launch of the digital character "Xiaofa" has broken through the traditional one-way dissemination model relied upon by fast-moving consumer goods, creating a customizable, interactive and derivative brand digital asset. It itself has also become a topic content and social currency. This marks that Yanjing Beer has continuously advanced its young-oriented strategy and has entered a new stage of co-creation and co-play. It has also become a new benchmark for brand building in the industry.
By leveraging scenarios to enhance and implementing value delivery, we aim to promote a well-structured high-end approach.
Apart from modernization, another major development strategy of Yanjing Beer is to achieve high-end positioning. This high-end positioning is not solely based on price, but rather supported by scene experiences and value perception. In the Spring Festival of 2026, Yanjing Beer's high-end strategy focused on "space expansion" and "value reinforcement", advancing in two directions simultaneously.
Choosing to hold the "Good Fortune Is Here" theme exhibition in Times Square, New York, holds significant strategic symbolic meaning. This is not only an international exposure, but also conveys key information to the domestic market: the "Chinese New Year" culture carried by Yanjing U8 demonstrates global expression confidence and scale, and strongly promotes the internationalization process of the brand.
At the "value realization" level, Yanjing Beer focuses on deeply penetrating high-value offline scenarios. During the Spring Festival travel rush, one can see the presence of Yanjing U8 in everything from waiting halls to headrest towels and luggage racks on high-speed trains. It is deeply associated with concepts such as "returning home for reunion" and "starting a career". At the core dining terminals and supermarkets, through the design of unified "good luck打卡points"， arranging display stands， customizing Spring Festival couplets， giving out red envelopes， etc.， physical touchpoints for offline purchases are established to promote sales.
Play this "game" of cultural marketing well and make the folk customs "trendy"
As a national brand, the Spring Festival marketing campaign of Yanjing Beer is rooted in Chinese New Year culture and is modernized and expressed accordingly.
"Fu" and "Fa" are both core expressions of the Spring Festival culture. Yanjing Beer ingeniously utilized the homophonic relationship between U8 and "Fa" to carry out cultural upgrades. Its brand connotation expanded from "getting rich" to multiple dimensions such as "development", "departure", and "illumination", which better aligns with the value propositions of today's young people, giving new life to traditional cultural symbols.
In terms of execution, Yanjing Beer combines with various regional and characteristic annual customs, such as temple fairs, lantern festivals, and local special celebrations, and conducts personalized interpretations. It naturally integrates into the local Spring Festival customs and becomes an integral part of the "yearly flavor", promoting the symbiosis of the brand and culture.
Reconstruct the discourse framework, shifting from "national" to "ours"
Returning to the 2026 Spring Festival marketing campaign of Yanjing Beer, we established a deep psychological connection with consumers through "emotional preheating", achieved communication breakthroughs through the digital character "Xiaofa", leveraged international landmarks and core scenes to enhance brand image, innovatively interpreted folk culture to lay a solid foundation of value, and jointly served the strategic goal of "youthification and premiumization". This successfully restructured a systematic brand discourse system.
The Spring Festival marketing campaign of Yanjing Beer has proved that the revival of a national brand is not a simple replication of the past, but rather requires the use of contemporary language, technology and aesthetics to communicate with the new generation of consumers, and jointly build a brand future that belongs to "us". This operation of Yanjing Beer not only brought a sales breakthrough for U8, but also achieved a leapfrog development through brand value innovation.
