近十年首次焕新！乐事为什么要把一颗土豆送上C位？

This article provides key information on Lay's first systematic brand refresh in a decade, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Core actions of the refresh: The new packaging centers the core ingredient, potato, to highlight the brand's focus on real, natural raw materials. It adds ribbon and wood grain elements to elevate the overall texture of packaging, alongside a new brand proposition "Make every moment count, let it Lay" that responds to consumers' emotional needs.

2. Industry context driving the refresh: Currently, more than 70% of consumers actively research ingredients and origin before purchasing food, and 80% use snacks as a source of emotional comfort. Consumers now value both natural ingredient quality and the emotional value of snacks, and Lay's refresh aligns with this broader consumer trend.

3. Lay's foundation for the refresh: Leveraging PepsiCo's more than 30 years of supply chain accumulation in China, the brand operates multiple local farms, carefully selects potato varieties adapted to local conditions, and combines traditional farming experience with smart agriculture to control quality with high production precision. Production facilities are located close to farms to shorten transportation links and guarantee freshness.

Lay's brand refresh serves as a reference case for brand upgrading in the food industry, with key takeaways on brand marketing and consumer trends summarized as follows:

1. Current consumer trends in the snack industry: 71% of consumers conduct in-depth research on ingredients and origin before purchasing food, and more than 80% use snacks for emotional relief. Consumers now hold two core demands: "valuing quality of real raw materials" and "needing emotional companionship", and the overall industry is shifting toward greater quality transparency.

2. Key takeaways from Lay's refresh strategy: Rather than only updating packaging superficially, Lay's integrated its scattered quality narratives across all production links onto packaging — the most frequently exposed consumer touchpoint. It converted its abstract supply chain advantages into a visible, perceptible quality experience for consumers, while updating its brand proposition to respond to emerging social emotional needs.

3. Core direction for brand upgrading: Brands must adapt to changing consumer demand, convert quality advantages into differentiated consumer positioning, build solid competitive moats, and highlighting real raw materials effectively captures consumer mindshare.

Snack sellers can draw key insights on industry trends and growth opportunities from Lay's brand refresh, summarized as follows:

1. Current industry changes and opportunities: Consumers are making increasingly rational snack purchasing decisions, with sharply rising attention to ingredient quality and quality transparency. At the same time, the emotional comfort function of snacks is growing in importance. Both directions represent new growth opportunities, and products aligned with these demands are far more likely to win consumer preference.

2. Actionable takeaways to learn: Brands should convert their own product quality advantages into content that consumers can see and perceive, and prioritize placing this information on close-to-consumer touchpoints such as packaging, to quickly build differentiated positioning. This approach delivers far better results than vague quality marketing claims.

3. Risk warning: Leading brands have already started capturing consumer mindshare around the "real ingredients, quality transparency" positioning. If sellers fail to adjust their products and communication strategies in line with this trend, they will likely lose consumers. Sellers need to adjust their operations in step with industry changes to seize this new demand window.

Lay's brand refresh clarifies changing demand direction for food factories and offers insights for digital transformation, with key takeaways summarized as follows:

1. Changing demand for production: As consumers place higher requirements on real raw materials and consistent quality, end brands are raising requirements for upstream quality control capabilities from factories. Factories need to build complete quality control systems starting from the raw material end, to meet the demands of brands and consumers.

2. Insights for digital transformation: Lay's potato farming already integrates digital agriculture, using tools such as multispectral imaging drones and intelligent crop monitoring platforms to control quality throughout the entire production process, and achieves extremely high processing precision. Factories can follow this end-to-end digitalization path to improve consistent product quality and reduce production errors.

3. Commercial growth opportunities: Factories can consider locating production bases close to raw material growing regions to shorten raw material transportation distances. This not only improves efficiency from harvest to processing, but also reduces carbon emissions, aligning with the industry's current green development trend. This positioning helps factories win more cooperation opportunities with leading brands and enhance their own competitiveness.

Lay's brand refresh reflects new trends in the snack industry and core pain points of brand owners, providing directional reference for food industry service providers, with key takeaways summarized as follows:

1. Current industry development trends: The snack industry has evolved from early-stage competition around flavors and traffic marketing, to competition centered on quality and trust. A growing number of brands now recognize the need to convert supply-side quality advantages into perceptible consumer positioning, while also needing to update their brands to meet consumers' changing emotional demands.

2. Core pain points for brand owners: Many brands with long-term supply chain accumulation face the problem that "their quality advantages cannot be perceived by consumers", making it difficult to build differentiated positioning barriers in the current competitive landscape. They urgently need professional solutions to help complete their brand upgrades.

3. Solution directions for service providers: Service providers can develop offerings around brand visual upgrading, consumer positioning research, and quality traceability content creation, to help brands translate their supply chain advantages onto end consumer touchpoints. They can also develop related technology and marketing services to meet demand for quality transparency, matching the needs of brands undergoing upgrading.

Lay's brand refresh reflects new demands from consumers and brands, offering relevant insights for platform merchants' investment attraction and operations, with key takeaways summarized as follows:

1. New demands in the current market: Consumers increasingly prefer snack products with real ingredients and transparent quality, while brands have demand to upgrade their positioning and capture consumer mindshare aligned with this trend. Platforms need to adjust their operation strategies in a timely manner to adapt to these new demands.

2. Optimizable operation directions for platforms: In merchant recruitment, platforms can increase the introduction and support of brands and products that prioritize raw material quality and have established supply chain advantages, and allocate preferential treatment to these products in endcap display and traffic distribution. Platforms can also create dedicated marketing campaigns centered on "real ingredients, quality snacks" to align with consumer demand and drive category growth.

3. Risk mitigation directions: Platforms need to screen out products that overmarket quality concepts without actual quality backing, guide platform sellers to develop toward higher quality and greater transparency, and prevent low-quality products from eroding consumer trust and damaging the platform's reputation. Adjusting platform rules in line with industry trends is key to maintaining platform vitality.

Lay's first brand refresh in a decade is a typical case of FMCG snack industry upgrading, providing a great deal of valuable information for industrial research, with key takeaways summarized as follows:

1. New industrial development trends: Chinese consumers are making increasingly rational snack purchasing decisions, with their focus shifting from brand and flavor to upstream raw materials and product quality. The competitive logic of the snack industry has changed, shifting from marketing-driven to quality-driven growth, with "ingredient transparency and quality visualization" emerging as the new competitive direction.

2. A new brand upgrading model: Leading brands, leveraging long-term supply chain布局, integrate quality narratives into packaging — the high-frequency end consumer touchpoint — to complete a systematic upgrade spanning product to brand proposition, while responding to consumers' dual demand for quality and emotional value. This model provides a new path reference for industry brand upgrading.

3. Insights for industrial research: Changing consumer demand is forcing upgrading across both the industrial and brand ends. Long-term accumulated supply chain capabilities are becoming brands' core positioning moats, and "putting ingredients front and center" will become a common choice for many food brands going forward. This case provides a new sample for research on brand upgrading in the FMCG industry.