Online celebrity milk tea, involved in the entertainment storm

Wen | Xiao Gu Dong

With the arrival of beginning of autumn, the old stalk of "the first cup of milk tea in autumn" has revived again, which not only reached the top of the hot search list on social platforms, but also directly led to the upsurge of selling major tea brands.

According to the take-away data of Meituan, a total of 150,000 milk tea shops participated in the beginning of autumn Milk Tea Carnival this year, and sold more than 40 million cups that day, reaching a record high after beginning of autumn last year. Among them, the sales of Chabaidao, Guming, Auntie in Shanghai, Xicha, CoCo Keke, Shuye Xiancao and Yihetang exceeded one million cups, while the sales of Honey Snow Ice City reached 12 million cups.

To some extent, "the first cup of milk tea in autumn" is not only a youthful lifestyle, but also a collective marketing of tea brands. Not only is the "first cup of milk tea in autumn" popular all over the network, but tea brands such as Mi Xue Bing Cheng, Rui Xing, Shu Yi Shao Xian Cao are also frequently searched for news about donations, endorsements, joint names, etc., and naturally they are involved in a round of entertainment storms.

The 2022 New Tea Research Report issued by China Chain Store & Franchise Association shows that the scale of new tea is expected to reach 104 billion yuan in 2022, and the total number of new tea stores is about 486,000. In 2023, the market scale is expected to reach 145 billion yuan, with a compound growth rate of nearly 20% in three years.

With the rise of the milk tea track, milk tea brands began to exert entertainment marketing, tapping the fan economy with the help of star effect, or inviting stars as brand spokespersons, such as badminton celebrity and Malaysian Datuk Willa Li Zongwei as spokespersons for Bawang Tea Ji Malaysia brand, so as to establish a deeper emotional link with Malaysian consumers, or inviting popular stars as recommenders when launching new products, such as when the tea official announced the brand new products, namely, red bayberry, Zhizhi bayberry, and the synchronous official announced "Yangmei". It is not difficult to see that the brand of milk tea, like other brands, cares about the artist’s nationality and the current popularity.

Summer is the hot season of milk tea, and many milk tea brands try to further enhance the attention of new products by cooperating with artists. When the book also burned grass to announce new products, it also announced the brand ambassador in a suspense way. Sharp-eyed netizens recognized Wang Churan at a glance. At this time, Wang Churan’s popularity was greatly reduced because of his role as Xu Qin in My Fireworks on Earth, and various negative topics were derived from netizens’ pouring oil. Therefore, the book also burned grass, which attracted resistance and eventually ended with the brand withdrawing related materials.

It is not uncommon for milk tea brands to overturn with artists and celebrities. There have been precedents before. In August last year, Cha Baidao officially announced that the bottom spicy child became the spokesperson of the new red raspberry series, and took photos before and after his cross-dressing. However, netizens didn’t pay the bill for this, and there were a lot of bad reviews for a while. For this "ugly" hot search, the spicy child himself also ridiculed himself, saying that he should be the first person in the "ugly" hot search. This situation was staged again in July this year. Cha Baidao announced that the legendary e-sports player TheShy became a good tea experience officer of Cha Baidao, which also caused many netizens to question, such as "There are so many excellent e-sports players in China, and Cha Baidao is a China brand, why should we choose a Korean as a spokesperson" …

In contrast, Rui Xing and Zhang Wanyi, who came out of the circle because of the explosion of Sauvignon Blanc, cooperated to promote Lanyun Tieguanyin and won a lot of praise. This stems from the fact that Zhang Wanyi won a good national reputation with the role of Chen Yannian in The Awakeing Age in the early days, and now she is known as the first person to enjoy the actor’s bonus with her excellent interpretation of the role of the tortoise in the summer explosion drama Sauvignon Blanc. It is naturally popular for artists with both national reputation and word of mouth to get new business. Even Ruixing, who is at the forefront because of the large amount of ice, has successfully taken this opportunity to pull a wave of goodwill, which further shows that choosing a good partner is the key for milk tea brands to enter entertainment marketing.

With more and more brands of milk tea, the market scale is growing, and the trend of homogenization of categories and products is becoming more and more obvious. At present, the breakthrough way of milk tea brands seeking differentiation by cross-border joint names has also been normalized. As far as recent actions are concerned, they can be roughly divided into three categories:

First, cooperation with state-owned enterprises reveals a trace of contrast in seriousness. Recently, Mi Xue Bing Cheng announced that it will jointly launch China Post’s first green store in China, and more outlets will be selected after the pilot. Topics such as "Mi Xue Bing Cheng entered the establishment" and "Mi Xue Bing Cheng turned green" have sparked heated discussions on the Internet.

In addition, because Michelle Ice City and Rui Xing became a group of tell it to the judge on the social platform earlier, they fell in love and killed each other in a strange way. This time, the joint name of Mi Xue Ice City and Rui Xing has spawned new stalks, such as "Dear Rui Xing, when you read this letter, I have been compiled" and "Dear Rui, when you saw this news, I not only entered the party exam, but also went deep into the grassroots". Such words continue to be screened in the comment area of related news.

From the broken wall linkage between Mi Xue Bing Cheng and China Post, to the continuous love and killing with Ruixing, these are all linked marketing in different fields. The former can enrich the brand opening methods, add new brand footnotes, and satisfy the public’s curiosity to a certain extent, while the latter can strengthen the normalized topic of the brand itself, attract the public to pay attention to the brand continuously, and have a good impression on the brand.

Second, the brand of milk tea and the drama series are jointly named, and they continue to innovate. During the summer vacation, Naixue’s tea was co-branded with "jade bone Yao", which not only launched a new co-branded product "Domineering jade bone Berry and Peach", but also launched a limited number of surrounding areas with Xianxia flavor, such as role stickers, character badges, cup sets and paper bags, which attracted fans to buy, but also set off a DIY trend and enhanced the long tail value of the linked surrounding areas.

Previously, it was also a great success that there was a joint name of Xi Tea and Meng Hua Lu. Not only were there many activities such as "Xi Semi-Covered Face" theme shops and flash flash, but also special drinks were launched, which sold nearly 300,000 cups on the day of launch, and exceeded 1.4 million cups in the first week. It can be seen that this cooperation not only brought fans an immersive offline experience, but also allowed new products to take advantage of the momentum of the drama fan traffic to break the circle.

The third is to cooperate with the second element and the e-sports niche circle. If "Riding the Wind and Breaking the Waves" invites Meiyi Liya to break the First blood of the second dimension, then the joint name of Chabaidao and the love reasoning mobile game "Undecided Book" is a typical Double kill. Based on the theme colors of Xia Yan, Zuo Ran, Mo Yi and Lu Jinghe in the game, four co-branded teas, namely, Yangzhi Ganlu, Peach Oolong Tea, Qingti Jasmine and Wuqi Mohei, were customized, and the surrounding gifts, such as co-branded cup sets, paper bags, stickers, postcards and PVC ticket stubs, accurately poked the fans’ psychology, and many stores burst orders. For this reason, employees also felt: "You can’t finish it."

The underlying logic of this series of joint gameplay is to use cross-border cooperation to drain the brand itself, or to satisfy consumers’ curiosity, or to poke consumers’ personal preferences, or to follow the fancy "hot" of entertainment hotspots, thus enhancing the online and offline sound volume of brands and products, laying the foundation for trend marketing, centralized exposure and accurate drainage.

The brand popularity brought by entertainment marketing is temporary, and the brand value brought by public welfare action is long-lasting. Recently, affected by the typhoon, extremely heavy rainfall occurred in many places, causing floods. Many brands such as Honey Snow Ice City, Chabaidao, Bawang Tea Ji, Xicha and Guming donated money to help flood control and disaster relief, ranging from tens of millions to millions. This kind of charity won unanimous praise from netizens, and the description of Honey Snow Ice City and Koga (referring to every snow treasure) in the remarks of Honey Snow Ice City touched many consumers. To this end, some netizens are understanding the donation list of milk tea brands, and bluntly want to support these caring brands with practical actions. A sentence of "buy them in the future" is enough to prove their intention.

In fact, the charity of milk tea brands has long been traced. Take the "Rural Children’s Playground" public welfare activity initiated by Meituan as an example. In the past year, more than 20,000 stores from milk tea brands such as Mi Xue Bing Cheng, Xi Cha, Cha Bai Dao and A Shui Da Bei Cha participated, and donated a few cents, some wool or even more from each order, resulting in more than 150 million love orders for building 202 rural children’s multifunctional playgrounds. In the past beginning of autumn, the US delegation launched the beginning of autumn Milk Tea Carnival, which also attracted hundreds of merchants to continue to contribute to this charity action, which also added the positive connotation of "drinking milk tea is doing charity" to "the first cup of milk tea in autumn".

Nowadays, the public welfare actions of milk tea brands are more organized and scaled up. On August 8th, nine new tea brands, namely Chabaidao, Guming, Mi Xue Bing Cheng, Shuyi Xiancao, Shanghai Auntie, Xicha, Yihetang, Modern China Tea Shop and Qifentian, jointly established the "New Tea Charity Fund", with an initial fundraising scale of tens of millions of yuan. It is reported that in the future, the foundation will focus on rural revitalization and industrial assistance to agriculture in underdeveloped areas, feed back upstream agriculture through the new tea industry chain, and at the same time, give consideration to student assistance and major disaster relief, and feed back society with tangible actions.

From this point of view, the milk tea brands involved in the entertainment storm have gained attention and flow among netizens’ heated discussions, and then converted them into purchasing power, which has promoted the sales growth of the brands themselves and word-of-mouth construction, and provided the possibility for actively practicing public welfare and giving back to the society, thus forming a closed-loop development of long-term brand growth.

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