With a follower increase of 2.93 million in 30 days, how did Luckin Coffee and Mixue Ice City become traffic black holes?

In the current fierce competition in the tea and coffee market, brands are constantly seeking traffic acquisition and brand differentiation through content innovation, matrix account layout and joint cooperation. From TikTok to concerts, major brands are exploring new content formats and marketing strategies to attract consumers' attention and increase brand awareness. This article will explore the implementation effects of these strategies and future development directions.

Shan Weijun, CEO of Shanghai Auntie, once said: "New tea drinks have several characteristics. The first is capitalization, the second is chain operation, and the third is online operation."

Specifically speaking of onlineization, in addition to traditional channels such as Meituan and Ele.me, more and more tea and coffee brands have begun to deploy content platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. Among the major content platforms, Douyin, which is competing head-on with Meituan, is undoubtedly the top priority for tea and coffee brands, which can be verified by the number of accounts deployed by brands and the intensity of live broadcasts.

There are at least 70 corporate-certified Douyin accounts of Mixue Bingcheng with more than 10,000 followers. In the comment section of Douyin, you can see Mixue Bingcheng franchisee accounts wandering around and leaving messages everywhere.

The Douyin account of "Cha Baidao Official Fan Account" has as many as 10.66 million followers, making it the only official Douyin brand account among tea and coffee brands with over 10 million followers.

It is worth noting that although many tea and coffee brands have tried influencer distribution, according to statistics from Xinbang's Douyin data tool Xindou, Luckin Coffee has cooperated with a total of 4,656 influencers in the past 90 days, and Shanghai Auntie has cooperated with a total of 8,195 influencers, but most of the brand sales on Douyin are still contributed by a few official brand accounts.

If you want to study the traffic methodology of tea and coffee brands, their Douyin official brand accounts are excellent samples.

Recently, Xinbang has made an incomplete statistics of the 20 most prominent tea and coffee brands in China. By combing through and studying their official Douyin brand accounts, I have summarized some traffic methodologies for tea and coffee brands.

01 With 2.93 million followers added in 30 days, how did the tea and coffee brand make money on Douyin?

From the rollout of joint ventures, live streaming, IPs, and new products, the tea and coffee industry has been extremely competitive in recent years. Specifically, in terms of tapping into Douyin, tea and coffee brands have three main actions:

First, Mixue Bingcheng surpassed 2.1 billion thanks to store number exposure, and Guming gained nearly 3 million fans thanks to large-scale live broadcasts

As the industry has developed to this point, matrix accounts have almost become standard in the industry, and tea and coffee brands are no exception. Brands including Mixue Bingcheng, Luckin Coffee, Shanghai Auntie, and Starbucks have all deployed multiple matrix accounts.

The difference is that the main force of the Mixue Ice City matrix is ​​franchisees. Except for the three accounts of "Mi Xue Bing Cheng", "Mi Xue Bing Cheng (official group purchase)" and "Mi Xue Bing Cheng Snow King" which are directly owned by the brand, most of the Mixue Ice City accounts are opened by brand franchisees across the country.

According to statistics from Xindou, without considering the number of followers of the accounts, there are at least 5,879 Mixue Ice City-related accounts on Douyin that have undergone corporate certification. Although these accounts do not have many followers, and the number of online viewers of daily live broadcasts is mostly between dozens and hundreds, they have covered local users with their huge number.

Relevant data from Douyin shows that from January to August 2023, the total transaction volume of the matrix accounts of Mixue Bingcheng's regional stores exceeded 100 million, there were more than 20 accounts with transaction volumes exceeding one million, and the overall brand exposure exceeded 2.1 billion.

Most of Luckin's matrix accounts are directly owned by the brand. Accounts such as "Luckin Coffee", "Luckin Coffee Flagship Store", "Luckin Coffee Group Buying", and "Luckin Coffee Flagship Store Live Broadcast Room" each have their own responsibilities, and are responsible for offline stores, e-commerce, group buying and other business segments.

The account with the most fans is "Luckin Coffee" with 5.17 million fans. This is the account with the richest Luckin video content, uploading content including "Luckin Small Theater", "Luckin DIY", "Lucky Club", etc. It is also the main force of Luckin live broadcast sales, and started the daily broadcast mode early. According to Xindou data statistics, in the past 30 days, the cumulative number of live broadcast viewers of "Luckin Coffee" has reached 47.11 million.

It is worth noting that unlike brands such as Mixue Bingcheng, Luckin Coffee, and Kudi that implemented daily broadcasts early on, some brands prefer large-scale node-based live broadcasts, and usually plan themed live broadcasts in conjunction with brand events and major promotion nodes.

In March, May and June of this year, "Shanghai Auntie Fresh Fruit Tea" held a four-day live broadcast every month with the core of "50% off for all items". Recently, tea and coffee brands have started a price war, launching low-price flash sales, 9.9 yuan discounts and other activities. The staged large-scale live broadcast of "Shanghai Auntie Fresh Fruit Tea" is to cope with this low-price competition.

In July this year, "Gu Ming" held a two-day live broadcast titled "Original Fresh Milk Tea Health Upgrade Conference". Nowadays, pure naturalness is becoming one of the important promotional points of tea and coffee brands. "Gu Ming" hopes to convey its brand concept through live broadcasts such as tea traceability and on-site tea frying. In conjunction with the brand's overall marketing actions, this type of large-scale live broadcast can often quickly hit the user's mind.

According to the statistics of Xin Douyin, the live broadcast of "Gu Ming" attracted 12.17 million viewers. One month after the live broadcast, the number of fans of "Gu Ming" increased by more than 2.93 million.

With the help of the brand + franchisee matrix account layout, tea and coffee brands can often greatly improve their traffic acquisition capabilities. On this basis, some brands prefer to use daily broadcasts to ensure basic sales, while others prefer to use large-scale live broadcasts to create brand events.

Second, Luckin Coffee's new product became popular thanks to the black myth, and Overlord Tea Princess was promoted by Zheng Qinwen

Last year, the joint venture between Luckin Coffee and Moutai proved that joint ventures are one of the effective ways to help tea and coffee brands compete for attention. In recent years, joint ventures have indeed become a standard feature of major tea and coffee brands.

Since the beginning of this year, Guming has collaborated with "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" and "Love and Deep Space", Heytea has collaborated with "Love and Night" and "Flower", Yihetang has collaborated with "Longing", and Luckin has collaborated at least 18 times.

In June this year, Gu Ming teamed up with "Love and Space" to open theme stores in 14 cities across the country. Among them, the pop-up store in Shanghai's Linkong Park has triggered a wave of users queuing up. Some netizens posted pictures showing that the total number of orders for the pop-up store exceeded 8,000 cups in just over an hour after opening.

In August this year, Luckin Coffee launched the Black Myth Tengyun American coffee in collaboration with Black Myth: Wukong, paired with specially designed co-branded peripherals. On the day of the launch, Luckin Chief Growth Officer Yang Fei lamented in his WeChat Moments: "The peripherals across the country were sold out in seconds, and the system almost crashed. The male purchasing power overturned the team's cognition this morning." On the same day, Luckin Coffee's US stocks rose by more than 7%.

In addition to joint ventures, some brands choose to cooperate with celebrities, such as Kudi, which has Wang Yibo as its spokesperson, and Heytea, which has cooperated with Pamela. According to Growth Black Box statistics, because of the successful bet on Zheng Qinwen, in July this year, among the top brands in the ready-made beverage industry, Bawang Chaji's brand volume was far ahead.

Whether it is a joint venture or an endorsement, tea and coffee brands are ultimately trying to get new products.

Recently, Luckin Coffee officially announced Liu Yifei as its global brand spokesperson, more to promote its new tea product, Jasmine Light Milk Tea. In order to make a name for itself in the tea industry, Luckin Coffee also launched the slogan "Morning C Afternoon Tea (Morning Coffee Afternoon Tea)".

In March this year, Heytea invited Pamela to serve as the "Health Recommender" in order to use Pamela's healthy image to promote Heytea's brand concept of "light burden, real health", and launched 11 light burden products covering three categories: fruit tea, lemon tea, and pure tea.

With the help of IP collaboration and celebrity endorsements, tea and coffee brands can not only obtain more new traffic, but also increase users' sense of freshness about brand products, ultimately driving product sales.

Third, Snow King becomes the first IP in the tea and coffee industry, and Kudi and Tian Lala hold brand concerts

After all, collaborations and endorsements are about seeking traffic from the outside, and many brands have begun to try to create their own traffic.

The most typical example is the brand IP of Michelle Ice City, the Snow King. Since the official launch of the Snow King IP image in 2018, Michelle Ice City has invested a lot of resources, not only giving the Snow King a precise position, hobbies, and personality, but also tailoring derivative peripherals, CPs, and animation series for the Snow King.

On Douyin, the "Mixue Ice City Snow King" with 1.89 million fans mainly presents the cartoon image of the Snow King, and the protagonists of the "Mixue Ice City" with 3.66 million fans are mostly IP puppets of the Snow King. Through these videos, the image of the Snow King is so cute and charming that it can be said that it has been deeply rooted in people's hearts. As of press time, the cumulative number of views of the Douyin topic #雪王# has reached 3.89 billion. Mixue Ice City once said that this IP is the only super IP in China's ready-made beverage industry.

In addition to Snow King, many brands have also launched their own IP images, such as Cha Cha of Cha Baidao, K Ye of Lucky Card, and Co Zong of CoCo. However, compared with Snow King, which has a distinctive personality and a hit song, these brand IPs are less popular.

In addition to brand IP, tea and coffee brands also accumulate brand assets through different videos such as coffee knowledge, ordering guides, brand peripheral DIY, and plot clips.

Recently, taking advantage of the popularity of short dramas, some brands have also tried to shoot short dramas. "Mixue Bingcheng" launched "The Snow King's Time Travel Diary", and "Nayuki's Tea" launched "Reborn as a Clerk in a Domineering Boss Short Drama". "Reborn as a Clerk in a Domineering Boss Short Drama" tells the funny story of the heroine who was reborn as a clerk of Nayuki's Tea and fell in love with the domineering boss. As of press time, the best episode of this short drama received more than 95,000 likes.

In addition, some brands have set their sights on this year's extremely popular concerts.

Cudi sponsored Zhang Jie's concert tour. Not only did it gain brand exposure at the concert, but it also launched limited-time themed stores, themed packaging, and limited customized peripherals in the concert cities, greatly stimulating the interest of young people.

Tianlala held music festivals in many cities as early as last year. In September this year, Tianlala will also invite stars such as Xue Zhiqian, Chen Chusheng, and Yu Wenwen to hold a music festival in Longhu.

In fact, as concerts become more popular across the country, more and more brands are trying concert marketing, hoping to reach more young people. Recently, Adopt a Cow held a brand music festival in Hangzhou, and Yuanqi Forest even set up a company to manage brand concerts.

Overall, with the changes in the external environment, competition among brands is becoming increasingly fierce, especially for tea and coffee brands whose products are becoming increasingly homogeneous. At this time, opening up a content battlefield and creating brand differentiation through content has become one of their options.

02 With homogeneity being obvious, how can tea and coffee brands stand out through content?

Although tea and coffee brands are already very popular, a closer look will reveal that there are some objective problems with the content of the official Douyin accounts of each major brand.

First of all, thanks to the huge franchisee system, tea and coffee brands have a natural advantage in building matrix accounts. However, currently only Mixue Bingcheng has mobilized the power of franchisees and increased its presence with franchisee accounts that leave messages across the entire network.

In addition, most tea and coffee brands have set up several matrix accounts themselves. Among them, the tea and coffee brands have only opened two blue V accounts, "TEADONG Fan Account" and "Teadong Fan Account Franchise Headquarters".

Whether it is Fan Deng Reading, which relied on franchisees to sweep the entire Douyin screen a few years ago, or the automobile industry that vigorously developed matrix live broadcast rooms, it has been proved that fully mobilizing the power of franchisees through a reasonable incentive mechanism and content training system is one of the effective ways to enhance brand potential.

Secondly, many tea and coffee brand accounts have fallen into a vicious circle of homogeneity.

In terms of live streaming, the upper half of the camera is various brand information, the lower half is filled with various products, and in the middle is the host who speaks very fast and constantly repeats discount information... For users, there is very little difference between the live streaming rooms of various tea and coffee brands.

In terms of short videos, tea and coffee brands prefer to shoot exquisite brand TVCs and short, flat and fast e-commerce information flow ads. As a result, there is a lack of interaction with users, the video comment area is mostly blank, and the number of likes is mostly in the double digits or even single digits. Although some brands try to follow the trend and shoot popular jokes, it is difficult to let go due to the restrictions of brand accounts.

Compared with establishing emotional connections with users and creating brand differentiation, tea and coffee brands are more focused on competing on products and discounts, and have failed to fully tap the content value of short videos and live broadcasts.

Perhaps aware of these problems, some tea and coffee brands have successively tried various content.

For example, Cha Yan Yue Se has tried to shoot a series of store exploration videos in the hope of attracting traffic to offline stores; CoCo has shot a series of videos called "Little Co's Trickster Diary" in the hope of enriching the personality of the brand IP. Including the short plays and concerts mentioned above, some brands are also following up quickly.

But unlike online celebrities and bloggers, brands need more than just traffic to produce content. They also need to help sell products and increase brand awareness and reputation. Because of different needs and resources, brands often need new content formats and production mechanisms. At present, tea and coffee brands still need more content experiments.

In terms of matrix, tea and coffee brands may refer to the automotive industry. The 2024 Automotive New Media Matrix Research Report shows that matrix marketing is becoming the main way for automotive brands to break through traffic, with the average number of accounts for a single brand exceeding 1,700.

Different from tea and coffee brands, automobile brands are exploring a three-dimensional account matrix of founder IP + executive matrix + employee/franchisee matrix.

In terms of short dramas, unlike the purely self-made short dramas of Mixue Bingcheng and Nayuki Tea, beauty brands such as Safeguard and PROYA prefer to cooperate with top short drama actors and professional teams such as Xu Yizhen and Wang Gege.

Many practitioners believe that high-quality brand short dramas can help brands reach 3A audiences and greatly increase brand exposure. Tea and coffee brands may try to increase their investment in short dramas.

In terms of joint brands, while joint brands have become a standard for tea and coffee brands, how to grab more valuable joint IPs? How to avoid the homogeneity caused by frequent joint brands? These have also become new challenges for tea and coffee brands.

Overall, from Luckin Coffee’s college student fashion show live broadcast the year before last, to the macho business war launched by major tea and coffee brands last year, to this year’s attempts at new content formats such as short plays and concerts, tea and coffee brands have already carried out rich content practices, but if they want to further tap the value of content, they still need to continue to iterate.

Author | Yun Feiyang Editor | Truffle