Why Old Fogey Brand Frequently Collapses: Times Have Changed, Adults
Sep 30, 2025| Why Old fogey brand frequently collapses: Times have changed, adults
Luo Yonghao's expensive and disgusting roast plunged Xibei's prepared dishes into a crisis of trust. But founder Jia Guolong's first reaction was not to reflect, but to threaten to sue the other party for not understanding catering. This attitude of teaching you how to be a good person allows consumers to accurately label themselves with the old brand label - after all, no one wants to spend money to buy a dad.
Xibei's car accident is never an isolated case. Yu Huiyong, Chairman of Baiguoyuan, said that business should educate consumers to be mature. Zhang Ligang, CEO of Aikang Guobin, roast that users' expectations for physical examination were too high. These entrepreneurs' domineering speeches conceal the same arrogance: turning business relationships into one-way indoctrination, replacing equal dialogue with arrogance and inexplicable superiority.
Of course, the market quickly backfired. The sales volume of Xibei pre made vegetables has plummeted by 40% month on month, and there are doubts about why they can teach me how to do things under the topic of Baiguoyuan. The times have changed a long time ago, and young people have long stopped following the father's taste marketing tactics.
The 2025 Interesting Lifestyle Report reveals the truth: the consumption of contemporary young people is undergoing a fundamental transformation. They are sober stingy people, with 77.7% of them prioritizing whether they truly need it. Clothing and beauty can be saved, but dining, travel, and spiritual consumption are never stingy. Xibei's pre made meal sets, which cost hundreds of yuan, clearly hit the minefield of premium not matching value. More importantly, emotional value has become a necessity. Young people buy trendy toys to relieve stress, while keeping pets is about finding emotional power banks. Even when eating, they need to consider the triple standards of quality, taste, and price.
How can brands get rid of the old flavor?
To tear off the old label, what a brand needs is not a superficial marketing packaging, but a thorough transformation of the underlying operational logic. These five directions are the key to breaking through:
1. Deep listening: Setting aside experience assumptions and entering into the real needs of consumers
The starting point of Old fogey Wei is often the brand defining its current needs with past successes. The first step to getting rid of it is to proactively let go of my sense of superiority in the industry and use multiple channels to penetrate consumers' real lives. Not only do questionnaire surveys, but also sneak into social platforms to watch their daily roast, observe their behavior and habits, and even establish user communication groups for direct dialogue - the core is empathy rather than review, to understand why they need, rather than judge what they need.
2. Equal respect: Tear off the label of educators and acknowledge the subjectivity of consumers
What young people dislike is not the brand's advice, but the negative attitude you don't understand. To respect consumers, we must first acknowledge their cognitive sovereignty. Do not classify niche needs as ignorance of the industry, do not interpret negative reviews as being too picky, and do not impose your product logic as the correct standard. True respect is accepting the diversity of needs. For example, accepting someone who cares about cost-effectiveness, someone who cares about experience, and someone who cares about emotional resonance; It is the value of acknowledging feedback, even negative voices, as signals of demand rather than opposing opinions. Let's take a look together and see where the problem lies instead of what you should understand.
3. Decision decentralization: Breaking the boss's will and allowing users to participate in brand building
I don't want you to think, I want the dominant decision-making that I think is the direct source of Old fogey Wei. The key to decentralization is to give some decision-making power to users: before product development, ask what functions you want, when optimizing services, ask if it is convenient to adjust in this way, and even ask what brand activity direction you are interested in. It's not about letting users completely dominate, but about avoiding a few people making decisions that are detached from the market - when the voices of users are integrated into decision-making, the products launched will not deviate from the needs, and the relationship between the brand and users will also shift from passive acceptance to active participation, reducing imposed aversion.
4. Cognitive iteration: Break out of the experience cocoon and keep up with changes in consumer trends
The underlying reason for the old Deng flavor is the solidification of thinking: I always feel that the logic of past success can also be used now, and I always feel that the needs of young people are still the same old way. But the changes in the consumer market are much faster than the updating of experience - for example, in the past, functional practicality was valued, but now emotional value is valued; In the past, we valued brand authority, but now we value individual resonance; In the past, we focused on large-scale dissemination, but now we value precise outreach. Cognitive iteration means actively breaking the inertia of what I did back then and regularly updating my understanding of young people: not labeling them as' Z generation loves internet famous products', not using the same standards we used to measure the present, but maintaining sensitivity to new trends, willing to admit that I need to understand more, so that the brand's thinking can keep up with the pace of users.
The dilemma of the Xibei people is never that they are not experienced enough, but that they turn their experience into a burden. The consumer market in 2025 has already proven that the essence of business is value exchange, not condescending education.
Young people do not reject brands, but rather refuse to be looked down upon; Not hating tradition, but hating rigidity. When brands are willing to squat down and listen, old brands can also become the new favorites of young people.
After all, the times always reward brands that understand me and eliminate adults who teach me.