Company Website

www.fonterra.com

Company Introduction

Anchor, one of the world’s leading dairy brands, was born in New Zealand in 1886. Anchor’s product line includes pure milk, kid’s milk, milk powder, dairy foods, etc., and is sold in more than 70 countries and regions around the world. Over the past 100 years, Anchor has adhered to “grass fed” and cultivated true nutritional essence.

Product concept, highlights and added value

In August 2024, Anchor innovatively launched flavored cheese slices. With highly relevant flavors, diversified applications, and small packs, Anchor flavored cheese slices are designed to lower the entry barrier and drive market penetration in China.
Unlike ordinary “original” or “lower-fat” cheese slices in the market, Anchor’s flavored cheese slices leverage three innovative but well-known flavors among Chinese consumers - Sichuan Green Peppercorn, Thirteen-spice Crayfish, and Italian Tomato. These flavors were selected based on insights from Chinese consumers, particularly young people. Through highly relevant flavors, the series aims to encourage new consumers with no regular consumption habits to try the product.
Anchor has also made significant efforts to create more localized consumption occasions. The packaging highlights localized applications, such as Thirteen-spice Crayfish flavored noodles or Sichuan Green Peppercorn flavored cheese with spicy hotpot. The packaging even suggests eating the slices directly as snacks, thanks to their distinct flavors.
Additionally, Anchor launched a marketing campaign in September and October themed “Upgrade Dishes With Cheese Blankets”. The campaign leveraged a simple visual metaphor of “cheese topping” and collaborated with over 100 KOLs to develop 100+ simple yet delicious recipes.
To further reduce the trial barrier, Anchor flavored cheese slices were designed as a pack of five pieces, offering a low-cost option for consumers to try these unique products.

Product Images

Please briefly describe how your product communicates with consumers

The traditional communication strategy prioritizes product development first, followed by the marketing campaign. Once the product is developed and launched, the focus shifts to identifying the target audience, defining selling points, selecting distribution channels, and creating content. However, in a decentralized market and social media landscape nowadays, each consumer’s search results on platforms like Xiaohongshu or Douyin (Chinese TikTok) are highly personalized, making it increasingly harder for a product-first approach to engage effectively with consumers.
Recognizing that social platforms can better reflect the market and category trends, Anchor embraced these platforms and innovated its business strategy – creating new products based on insights from social platforms. With the marketing tools of Xiaohongshu, Anchor studied consumer trends in cheese flavors to support product innovation. Research revealed that hundreds of thousands of consumers actively search for cheese-related information on Xiaohongshu to learn about the cheese category. Based on these platform-driven consumer insights, Anchor responded swiftly and took just 25 weeks to develop and launch three innovative flavored cheese slices: Sichuan Green Peppercorn, Thirteen-spice Crayfish, and Italian Tomato.
After product development, Anchor meticulously refined its marketing strategy, creating a model that integrated platform characteristics with the unique appeal of its new products. Centered around the visually engaging concept of “Cheese Topping”, the campaign “Upgrade Dishes With Cheese Blankets” sparked a trend of culinary transformations. Partnering with food KOLs, the campaign showcased 100+ creative recipes and established versatile consumption scenarios that truly delighted consumers. Meanwhile, offline activities further expanded these consumption occasions, attracting new customers to the cheese category. Collaborating with the popular food brand “Two-Egg Pancake”, Anchor introduced three creative cheese-infused pancakes. Additionally, Anchor participated in trendy events such as the Shanghai Bread Festival and JD Flavored Market, introducing its products to a wider audience and providing immersive consumer experiences.
The “Upgrade Dishes With Cheese Blankets” campaign, which ran from September to November 2024, achieved over 68 million impressions and 860,000 interactions within two months.

Product Images

Ingredients List Photograph

Launch Date

2024-8

Target Consumer

Anchor satisfies the needs of existing users and attracts new customers, especially Gen Z, by offering innovative flavors, thereby promoting the popularization and long-term development of cheese.

Weight/Volume per Pack

83g

Price per Item

12.9元/袋

Storage requirements

冷藏（0-4℃）

Marketing Area

nationwide

Distribution Channels

电商 E-commerce

Market Performance

Since its launch at the end of August 2024, the Anchor Flavored Cheese Slice series has been listed on major online platforms such as JD, Taobao, and Douyin, as well as in over 4,000 offline stores, including RT-Mart, Hema, and Metro. By the end of the four-month launch period, flavored IWS achieved 47 MT sell-in, with annual sales projected to reach 100 MT.