With the hot spell of summer, it comes the peak season for ice cream sales. Behind putting the spoon of ice cream into your mouth, it is noteworthy that most ice cream is usually sold in offline stores, as ice cream easily melts under summer’s hot weather. As the golden period for ice cream sales, summer is the time when the competition of ice cream brands is fierce. They keep creating new flavours, put their utmost effort in improving products from packaging design to meet the needs of customers, as to win the “summer battle”.
On April 12, 2021, the well-known British ice cream brand Wall’s posted a feed on Weibo, stating that “the official identification of #grew up with Cornetto# girl is found”. The official announcement welcomes the new brand spokesperson @THE9-Esther Yu, followed by the establishment of a lucky draw. This post also preheated the new cheese and chestnut flavour of Cornetto.
[Development history of Wall’s]
Wall’s is a famous British ice cream company, headquartered in the United Kingdom. While Wall’s (China) Co., Ltd. was established in 1993.
Miko's history began in 1905. Its founder, Louis Ortiz, who was only 15 years old, left Spain and came to France, selling his ice cream and hot chestnuts. Louis wished to live a better life. Therefore he equipped himself with skills in making delicious creamy ice cream at Rio Pas Farm and set off the road to France.
During the Second World War, due to the lack of sugar, the sons of Louis, who had taken over the business, had a whim of replacing sugar with fruit pulp to adapt to the situation.
This also explains why Wall’s ice cream had the flavour of figs in that period of time.
In fact, Wall’s was officially born a few years later. In 1951, Ortiz’s ice cream got an official name: MIKO, MI stands for milk, and KO stands for chocolate in French.
Since 1936, MIKO began to create the image of public entertainment into the brand, especially in developing a connection with movies.
In 1994, MIKO joined Unilever.
Wall's is an independent company. In 1922, MacFisheries was acquired by Lever Brothers Ltd, which is the predecessor of Unilever.
Wall's entered the Pakistan market in early 1995, and soon Lever Brothers acquired its largest competitor in Pakistan, which was the Polka Ice Cream.
Unilever has a very long history in ice cream production and it is the largest ice cream manufacturer in the world.
[Soaring ice cream sales in summer: Thanks to the Millennials as the main force]
According to the survey data, the double-line big data of an offline store showed that from July 1st to 15th, the total sales of ice cream in the store exceeded 200,000 pieces, which is an increase of 15% from the previous month. Among them, Lao ZhongJie Bing Gun, Yili torch vanilla ice cream, Yili Lao Bing Gun Bang Bing, Zhongjie Nuomici, Yili elementary school ice cream and other single product sales ranked top 5. Among them, Lao ZhongJie Bing Gun sold more than 20,000 in 15 days, while hundreds of thousands of pieces are sold monthly.
The data also shows that Millennials consumers are the main force in buying ice cream, and the peak consumption often occurs on Thursday afternoon. It is a common scenario that in the afternoon on weekdays, white-collar workers who work in the office often choose to buy an ice cream for dessert after buying lunch in a convenience store.
Approximately 1.5 million ice creams were sold in May, and 2.6 million ice creams were sold in June. Sales in June has increased by 77% from May. It is notable that cheap, classic ice creams are often selling well. The most popular flavours of ice cream are pure ice popsicles and creamy ice cream. Well-liked ice cream brands include Yili, Wall's, MODERN, The Arctic Ocean and Mengniu Dairy. Most of the ice cream products of these brands are priced between CNY¥2 to 5.
The prices that consumers can afford are also increasing. Improving the taste and quality of ice cream will become the trend of reform for ice cream businesses.
[Innovation of flavours of Cornetto]
When it comes to the innovation of flavours in the ice cream industry, we have to mention Wall's Cornetto. Ranging from the very chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, mango yoghurt, cheesecake, and taro milk flavour; to various mixes and match such as very chocolate + cookie milk style, Dark chocolate + vanilla, strawberry + blueberry, sweet peach yoghurt + mango, rum + tiramisu flavours, and even the rum flavoured ice cream cup appeared.
In addition, the brand closely follows the trend of desserts and the preferences of the audience, as well as also produce different packaging and flavours as highlights during different festivals. This time, in this collaboration with Esther Yu, Wall's Cornetto established a new flavour of cheese and chestnut. The thick cheese and salty aroma envelops the unique texture of chestnuts. Just have a try and you can say that you “grew up with Cornetto”.
It is worth mentioning that Wall's is able to keep up with the trend of young people, and it loves playing on words in naming different flavors of ice cream. The Chinese pronunciations of the flavours are the same as the slangs. For example, cheese and chestnut (just miss you), (vanilla) want to see you, super (chocolate) like you, and is your heartbeat quickened yet (berries), Busy (mango) in liking you. The homophonic wordplays aroused discussions and sharing among netizens, and many couples also buy Wall’s ice cream to express their feelings through wordplay.
As a fun and delicious product, it must be said that Wall's marketing is very successful.
