With both sales and popularity soaring, how many male consumers have been attracted by Luckin Coffee’s collaboration with “Black Myth: Wukong”?

In the cross-border marriage of games and coffee, Luckin Coffee's joint event with "Black Myth: Wukong" not only achieved explosive success in sales, but also triggered phenomenal discussions in terms of volume. This article will explore in depth the strategy behind this joint event and how it leveraged the purchasing power of male consumers.

The sales driven by a monkey is “more reliable than 10 Father’s Days”. This is how Luckin Coffee’s Chief Growth Officer Yang Fei commented on the joint event between Luckin Coffee and “Black Myth: Wukong” in his circle of friends.

From the perspective of the joint venture form, Luckin Coffee's event this time is no different from previous joint ventures. In the joint venture event launched by Luckin Coffee on August 19, it released a joint product "Black Myth Tengyun Americano" with "Black Myth: Wukong" (hereinafter referred to as "Black Myth"). Consumers who purchase designated packages can receive a 3D limited poster grating card and a joint cup sleeve.

However, this seemingly ordinary collaboration became a complete hit yesterday. At around 7 a.m. on the first day of the event, all the packages that included poster-related peripherals were sold out in stores across the country. The ordering system almost collapsed. Netizens’ complaints about Luckin Coffee’s sold-out products and verification issues alone became a hot topic because of their popularity.

Luckin Coffee quickly issued a notice saying that a restocking plan has been formulated for the co-branded poster and peripheral products. CGO Yang Fei even admitted that "male purchasing power has overturned the team's cognition this morning."

1. How popular is the Black Myth co-branded with Luckin Coffee?

This is not the first time that Luckin Coffee has held an IP joint event. Why is it so popular this time? In fact, a large part of the reason for the success of this joint event is related to the joint object "Black Myth".

As the game most likely to become the first 3A masterpiece in China, Black Myth has attracted countless players since the project establishment stage. After years of waiting and anticipation, Black Myth was finally launched globally on August 20. Therefore, Luckin Coffee started the joint venture one day before the game was launched, which can be said to be the best time to choose, and the effect was even better than on August 20.

After all, as early as a month before the game was launched, there were endless jokes and memes about how players should ask for leave to play "Black Myth" on August 20. It is hard to say what effect Luckin Coffee will have if it really starts a joint venture on the 20th, because the male consumers who are most concerned about this joint venture are busy playing games on that day.

Some people may think that it is a bit exaggerated for workers to take Tuesday off to play a game, but judging from the real-time number of online players in the game "Black Myth", this is not the case.

At 10 am on August 20, with the global launch of Black Myth, the number of online players on the Steam platform soared like a rocket. In just one hour, more than one million players entered the game, and this is only the number on the Steam platform, not to mention that Black Myth was also launched simultaneously on Tencent's Wegame platform and Sony's PS platform.

Well-known masterpieces such as Elden Ring and Sekiro, which were often compared with Black Myth before, now seem to be completely inferior to the data of Black Myth. Within 2 hours of its launch, Black Myth not only topped the list of Steam's most popular games, but also had twice as many real-time players as the second place.

Black Myth has already ranked fourth in the global peak of online game users, and only three games ahead of it are PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Paloo and CSGO, and this is only the result of Black Myth within half a day of its launch. Moreover, Black Myth is not a free-to-play model commonly seen in domestic games. Each of the more than one million players is a paying user who has paid 268 yuan in real money, which has great consumption potential.

It can be said that with the game’s success in both media reviews and player satisfaction, Black Myth has not only secured its status as China’s first 3A blockbuster game, but has also achieved all-round success in terms of game reputation and sales revenue, becoming a phenomenal event in the domestic gaming industry and even in more fields.

The significance of "Black Myth" has surpassed the scope of "game" itself, which can be seen from the performance of the stock market in recent days. After all, no single-player game can have such a strong impact on the capital market.

On August 20 alone, the publisher of Black Myth, Zhejiang Publishing Group, directly hit the daily limit, CITIC Publishing, which participated in the publication of the Black Myth setting collection, rose by more than 20%, and Huayi Brothers, which is said to indirectly hold shares in the Black Myth production company through Hero Games, rose by more than 19%. Even just because of the launch of the co-branded controller between Black Myth and 8Bitdo, the third-party controller manufacturer Zhishang Technology also rose by nearly 8%. The milestone Black Myth has single-handedly boosted the gaming sector and created "Black Myth" concept stocks.

From this perspective, the reason why Luckin Coffee boldly bet on "Black Myth" to collaborate before the game was launched was not only because it believed that the game would be successful, but also because it had a keen sense of smell and could capture the huge topicality and potential for breakthroughs that the "Black Myth" IP could bring.

And judging from the results, Luckin Coffee obviously made the right choice. Luckin Coffee not only became the first co-branded brand of the "Black Myth" IP in the tea beverage market, but the two-way efforts of both parties also created a co-branded marketing activity that can rival Maotai's sauce-flavored latte. It must be said that the "Black Monkey" players must have given guidance behind Luckin Coffee's co-branding this time.

2. Is the birth of Black Myth a vindication of male spending power?

In this joint event between Luckin Coffee and Black Myth, in addition to the complaints and comments on social media and WeChat Moments about the shortage of peripherals for the joint event, there is another point worth noting, which is the amazing purchasing power shown by male consumers. In the words of Luckin Coffee CGO Yang Fei, "The purchasing power of men has overturned the team's cognition this morning."

The reason why I say this is that in the past few years, the idea that men have low purchasing power has been quite popular in the consumer market. Similar views appear every once in a while, and some are even supported by data.

A widely circulated screenshot shows that in the ranking of consumer investment and market value, young girls rank first and are the most valuable consumer group; while men rank last, even behind dogs, leading to the joke that men's spending power is not as good as dogs'.

But now, whether it is the enthusiastic pursuit of Luckin Coffee's co-branded peripherals by "Black Myth" fans, or the emergence of more than one million paying players in the game, many brands have seen the need to rethink this consumer power ranking.

The emergence of the phenomenal event "Black Myth" has, to a certain extent, reversed everyone's stereotypes about the male consumer group. For brands seeking growth, the consumption power of the male group is becoming increasingly valuable to explore.

In addition, according to the popular content on social media platforms, the most widely circulated articles about this collaboration include "Boyfriend: I finally understand how little girls feel when they buy celebrity co-branded milk tea" and "This collaboration with Luckin Coffee has driven the men in our store crazy!! I don't understand why". These contents mean that the majority of male groups do not lack sufficient spending power. As long as they can find products and content that they are interested in, male consumers will also have amazing spending potential.

Some people may say that it is not convincing that male consumers are chasing after Luckin Coffee, which costs only a dozen yuan, but in fact, men’s performance in many high-value products is also remarkable.

For example, the first Mobile Suit Gundam SEED gold accessories jointly created by gold brand Lao Feng Xiang and Bandai Namco were sold out after the release of the two models, priced at 880,000 yuan and 89,000 yuan respectively. Considering the gender ratio of Gundam IP fans, the buyers are likely to be enthusiastic male consumers.

We believe that when it comes to spending power, male consumers have always lacked money, not the reason to pay for products and brands. If the preferences of male consumers are accurately grasped, like the Black Myth IP or the Luckin Coffee collaboration, they will surely give brands that pay sincerity and respect a satisfactory return.

Text | Lumen
This article is written by the author [Morketing] of Operation Party, WeChat public account: [Morketing]. It is originally created/authorized to be published on Operation Party. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.