New tea drinks are teaming up with athletes. Is welcoming the Olympics their only goal?

The 2024 Paris Olympics is coming soon, and many milk tea brands are looking for Olympic athletes to cooperate with them. Why do new tea brands join hands with athletes? This article will show you the reasons.

Heytea recently invited a new friend to collaborate - former Chinese women's football player Zhao Lina.

HEYTEA×ZHAO Lina

The reason for inviting well-known athletes to promote at this point is not difficult to guess. The Olympics are coming, and every brand wants to take advantage of the opportunity to get a piece of the pie.

But from the overall development process of the new tea beverage track, working with athletes is not just to take advantage of the Olympics, but also a health strategy behind new tea beverages.

1. Athletes become the new tea drinker

Spokesperson marketing has always been firmly on the marketing strategy list of major brands due to its advantages such as boosting sales, increasing brand awareness, providing brand positioning, and penetrating different circles. This is no exception for new tea brands.

In new tea brands, spokespersons no longer appear as "spokespersons", but as "brand ambassadors", "experience officers" and other roles , which may only target a certain product or product line . Judging from the selection of "ambassadors" invited by new tea brands in the past two years, their focus is gradually shifting from celebrities to athletes .

This is exactly the case with Heytea’s collaboration with former Chinese women’s football player Zhao Lina mentioned at the beginning of the article.

Coincidentally, Bawang Cha Ji also chooses athletes as promoters of its brand concept. In May this year, it announced that tennis player Zheng Qinwen would become Bawang Cha Ji's "Health Ambassador". In June, Bawang Cha Ji invited seven champions, including Liu Xiang, Wang Shun, Zheng Qinwen, Jia Yifan, Wang Ruimiao, Chen Qingchen, and Liu Qingyi, to serve as "Health Ambassadors".

Bawang Tea Princess "Health Ambassador"

Cha Baidao invited basketball players Yang Shuyu and Yang Liwei to serve as brand ambassadors.

The Hundred Ways of Tea×Yang Shuyu and Yang Liwei

Shanghai Auntie and Chinese women's volleyball world champion Zhang Changning serve as light fruit tea recommendation officers.

Shanghai Auntie×Zhang Changning

All the well-known new tea brands are inviting athletes to serve as experience centers and brand ambassadors, but is this really just because they want to take advantage of the popularity of the Paris Olympics?

In the video of Zhao Lina "interviewing" Heytea, she revealed several pieces of information that the brand wants to tell consumers:

① As an athlete, Zhao Lina also likes to drink milk tea. Sports, health and the happiness brought by milk tea are not in conflict ;

② The three major impressions that HEYTEA hopes to leave on consumers are “delicious, healthy, and genuine quality”;

③ Zhao Lina herself continues her role as a football player – goalkeeper, and becomes the health goalkeeper of HEYTEA users.

Bawang Tea Princess not only created a series of creative peripherals around "Health Ambassador" Zheng Qinwen, but also cooperated with the sports and fitness APP Keep to carry out health activities in many cities across the country, leading consumers to experience the charm of light sports such as rugby, frisbee, pickleball, and cycling.

Bawang Tea Princess carries out marketing activities around Zheng Qinwen

Shanghai Auntie and Cha Baidao have launched ambassador peripherals and endorsed various low-fat and low-sugar products as athlete ambassadors.

New tea brands choose athletes to serve as various image ambassadors, not only to take advantage of the Paris Olympics to break out of the circle, but also to spread the health strategy of new tea drinks and enhance consumers' awareness of new tea drinks .

Brands always consider many factors when choosing spokespersons. Identity, popularity, target audience and brand positioning are inextricably linked. Athletes represent labels such as "sports, fitness, and health" , which is one of the reasons why new tea brands choose to cooperate with them, and it is also a sign that new tea brands have entered the healthy involution .

2. Healthy internal competition, multiple product standards

According to the "2023-2024 Annual Development Report of China's Tea Beverage Industry" released by Canbaodian, the market size of new Chinese-style tea beverages reached 193.3 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 15.7%. It is expected that the market size will be close to 250 billion yuan by 2025.

The continuous expansion of the market size means that the competition space is constantly shrinking. Brands urgently need to change their thinking and launch new products that consumers like in order to expand their market share.

The "2023 Ready-to-brew Tea Industry Market Opportunity Research Report" released by Magic Mirror Insight shows that contemporary young people suffer from health anxiety, and young consumers' pursuit of health has forced ready-to-brew tea companies to innovate their products in many aspects.

The major tea beverage brands lived up to expectations and launched various low-sugar and low-calorie products.

For example, the GI value of Bawang Chaji's new Huatian Oolong is 32 < kiwi fruit, and the calories in a whole cup are about the same as a guava. "0 artificial flavors added to the tea base, 0 trans fatty acids in the whole cup, 0 creamer in milk" and other data are also intended to make milk tea lovers who are afraid of getting fat feel more at ease when drinking.

The slogan of Nayuki’s new Forest Guanyin milk tea is “Fujian high-fragrance oolong tea plus sweet milk, 0 flavors, 0 creamer, good tea and good milk, melodious floral fragrance, like sunshine shining through the forest, one sip of relaxation and comfort”. It also emphasizes the taste and raw materials of the product while emphasizing the addition of no unhealthy ingredients .

When searching for tea brands such as Gu Ming and Hey Tea on Weibo, you can see the word "healthy" in large letters, which widely publicizes the brands' insistence on product quality.

Weibo search display page

Consumers' "health" requirements for new tea drinks are divided into three standards: raw materials, sugar content and taste.

In terms of raw materials , non-dairy creamer has fallen out of the echelon in consumers' minds, and real raw materials such as real milk and real fruit have become the first choice. In 2012, Heytea used real milk as the base, and in recent years, the trend of "healthy upgrade" of milk base has been more obvious. According to Red Can Big Data, among the new products of freshly made beverages in the first half of 2024, 75% of the new products use raw milk and dairy products as the milk base, and the number of new products using plant-based milk also accounts for 24.1%.

With the increasing popularity of scientific knowledge on health and fat loss, low-sugar and low-GI drinks have become more attractive to the public. Nowadays, major brands offer options such as half sugar and no sugar when ordering, taking care of consumers' multiple choices of sweetness; some brands even pay attention to consumers' requirements for sugar and replace fructose with natural sugar substitutes.

In terms of taste , consumers have higher requirements for freshly brewed tea. As we all know, it is difficult for healthy food to remain delicious, but when new tea drinks were first introduced, "good taste" was a crucial consumer motivation. Today, consumers want tea drinks to be both delicious and healthy, which also puts higher demands on brands.

The change in consumer perceptions and the internal driving force of brands have led to the current involution trend of new tea brands. Of course, after ensuring the health index of raw materials, ingredients and taste, brands should think more about how to convey this information to consumers.

3. How to do a good job in "healthy" marketing

Paying attention to consumer needs, assessing the situation and grasping marketing nodes, new tea brands have launched various new products with different tea bases and raw materials, and invited athletes to cooperate to label their products as "healthy". However, these practices are still far from enough for brands.

New tea brands are becoming more and more healthy. Brands such as Heytea and Bawangchaji have created a variety of healthy marketing methods with their unique advantages. However, according to existing information, many tea brands are still out of the game and have not yet responded to the "healthy" trend of new tea drinks.

TOP has sorted out the health marketing actions of new tea brands from 2022 to 2024, hoping to provide an idea for major brands.

The development history of new tea beverages towards health

Judging from the brand actions of new tea drinks to become healthier in the past two years, publishing the ingredients and calorie values ​​is an important measure .

Bawang Tea Princess not only became one of the first batch of "Nutrition Choice*" health labels in China, but also launched the product "Health Calculator" online, making the "Product ID Card" physical, allowing consumers to more intuitively feel the sincerity of healthy tea drinks .

health label; health calculator; product ID card

Heytea announced the raw materials of its products in 2023, and recently released a declaration on sugar control in fruit tea, "Healthy and Delicious, Scientific and Sustainable", confirming the "4 Reals and 7 Zeros" healthy tea drink standards . That is, "real tea, real milk, real fruit, real sugar" are used as raw materials, and the products meet the requirements of "0 creamer, 0 flavors, 0 fructose syrup, 0 non-dairy creamer, 0 hydrogenated vegetable oil, 0 trans fatty acids, 0 instant tea powder", and announced that all Heytea's freshly made drinks on sale meet the above standards.

HEYTEA's "Four Truths and Seven Zeros" Healthy Tea Drink Standard

In addition, the marketing of new tea beverage brands always depends on joint cooperation, but choosing the right partners can also carry out effective and healthy marketing.

As early as March this year, Heytea invited top fitness blogger Pamela Life to serve as its "Health Recommendation Officer" and jointly launched a series of 11 "Light Burden Recommendations" drinks, and published the test reports and raw material information of the drinks .

HEYTEA×PAMELAA

When Bawang Cha Ji chose athletes as brand ambassadors, it cooperated with the sports and fitness APP Keep to launch various activities to establish a link between [health] and the brand in the minds of consumers . It is worth noting that in September 2023, the brand started cooperation with Keep to output strong minds to consumers.

In general, new tea drinks have shown a trend of large-scale store closures and large-scale price cuts in recent years. In addition to launching various free-of-charge and buy-one-get-one-free activities to deal with price involution, brands are now facing a trend of health. How to create a unique healthy tone in the market competition is still worth considering for new tea drink brands.

Author: TOP

Source: WeChat public account "TopMarketing" (ID: 1082248)