LINIEE became popular with its "little yellow duck doll", and brand peripherals have become a new trend among young people?

The tea brand successfully attracted young people and enhanced brand awareness and loyalty through creative peripheral IPs such as ugly cute ducks and exquisite badges, combined with long-term updates and topic marketing.

In the field of brand marketing, the tea beverage market is one of the most competitive arenas. Brands not only regard cross-border collaborations with various IPs as standard, but also offline activities such as music festivals and check-ins are also booming.

While other brands are trying to attract consumers' attention, LINIEE, which specializes in hand-beaten lemon tea, has successfully cultivated a large number of fans through various "trendy" ducklings, and started a trend of collecting ducks and "comparing ugliness" on social platforms.

Objectively speaking, Linli's model of giving away a small toy when buying a drink is not a new marketing method, but Linli has given the surrounding ducks a trendy element through a variety of duck shapes and increasingly ugly changes. While inspiring consumers to continue to collect ducks and discuss duck shapes, it has also allowed Linli to take a "uniquely ugly" route.

1. “Ugly Duck” becomes the new traffic code for brands

But don’t get me wrong, the reason why Linli is said to be “ugly” is not because of prejudice against the brand, but because Linli’s ugly duck has been recognized by consumers, and even developed new ways of brand interaction. For example, customers need to go to a Linli store and say a code such as “It’s cold, please warm me up” to the clerk in order to get the corresponding ugly duck.

The duck dolls at the Morketing colleague’s workstation (it seems like they are running out of space)

In addition, many stores have hidden codes that allow the store to give away duck accessories such as butterflies and headbands. Just collecting all styles of accessories requires consumers to continue to contribute to sales for the brand.

According to Linli's founder Wang Jingyuan, he himself did not expect that Linli's little yellow duck would have such potential today. At first, Linli gave customers little yellow duck dolls just to appease customers' emotions while they were waiting for drinks. The cost of the little duck dolls was controllable and it also had a good symbol. For those customers who like lemon tea or little yellow duck dolls, Linli, a tea brand, has become a more competitive choice.

The duck dolls Linli gave out at the beginning were the most classic yellow ducks, which were in line with everyone's perception of yellow ducks. But as the brand developed, the monotonous yellow ducks were no longer enough to meet the needs of consumers, so Linli started to make changes to the color and shape of the ducks.

For example, little ducks in various colors that are more colorful than the rainbow are launched to form popular dopamine color schemes; and more combinations are formed by accessories such as straw hats and musical instruments. Consumers also have to frequently visit the store to collect duck dolls with different instruments in the band (saxophone, trombone, trumpet, guitar...).

In Morketing's opinion, to some extent, Linli's consumers consume not for drinks, but to satisfy their hobby of collecting or to enjoy the fun of collecting ducks of different series into sets. From this perspective, consumers' enthusiasm for collecting duck dolls can even be regarded as a substitute for buying blind box toys such as Pop Mart.

Later, the duck dolls in the forest broke through the species restrictions and appeared in more and more bizarre styles such as panda duck, kitten duck, Guangdong roast duck, etc. Logically, contemporary consumers should not buy dolls without good looks, but in fact, the duck dolls in the forest have shown a trend of "the uglier the more people love them". A quick search on Xiaohongshu will show a lot of sharing and complaints about the ugly duck in the forest, and a competition for the ugliest duck has been launched in the comment area.

Linli Marketing Director Su Chang has previously stated the importance of the duck IP in brand development. She said that the duck IP does not require additional education costs and the cost is controllable. The franchisees of the brand are willing to give it away and can afford it. Moreover, these distinctive ducks can be exposed frequently whether they are placed at home or at work, thereby deepening the brand impression in the minds of consumers.

In addition, consumers' enthusiasm for the little yellow duck will also extend to more peripheral products. Take the duck water gun and duck-duck hole shoes launched by Linli as examples. The former achieved a 50% marketing growth on the day of launch, while the duck-duck hole shoes, priced at 48.8 yuan, received over 300,000 pairs of pre-orders in the first three days of launch.

It can be said that both the "collection" gameplay and the discussion about the ugliest duck shape have brought a lot of brand popularity and brand effect to Linli. When the duck doll IP becomes a topic that consumers talk about, it will naturally bring continuous exposure and vitality to the brand.

2. How to create peripheral IPs that young people like?

As we mentioned above, buying drinks and giving away peripherals is not a new marketing method. It is a basic marketing operation for many tea brands. But if there is one thing that can leave a deep impression, besides Linli, it must be Bawang Tea Princess, or more precisely, the limited badge given by Bawang Tea Princess.

Similar to the little yellow duck in the forest, Bawang Cha Ji also launched badges of various styles, including limited edition birthday badges (since the design of each region is different, customers in different provinces will get different birthday badges), graduation season badges, store anniversary badges, traditional festival badges, new product badges, public welfare badges, etc., which greatly satisfy consumers' collection needs.

It is worth noting that, unlike Lin Li's "ugly" badges, Bawang Cha Ji's badges are all about appearance, and all of them are very design-conscious. Take the recent Shanghai 1st Anniversary Limited Badge as an example, the dynamic quicksand process is added to the image of the birthday cake, which shows the exquisiteness and care in the badge design. To borrow a comment from an online comment, "The only drawback of Bawang Cha Ji's badge is that it is only available in Shanghai."

Therefore, after analyzing the marketing cases of Linli and Bawangchaji, Morketing concluded that brands should pay attention to the following three points when doing IP peripheral marketing:

3. Long-term and stable updates to maintain topic traffic

It is not enough to just give away peripherals. Brands need to maintain a long-term stable update of brand peripherals. The long-term significance is that consumers can get the same series of peripherals no matter what day they go to the store to shop. Imagine if the little yellow duck in the forest can only be obtained every Monday, then naturally it will not leave a deep brand recognition in the minds of consumers.

In addition, the iteration and update of peripherals is also one of the important factors in creating brand peripheral IP. In today's era of fragmented attention, in order to continue to attract consumers' attention, it is necessary to continuously create surprises, that is, to keep consumers fresh by updating and changing the peripheral styles.

At the same time, the freshness brought by the brand peripherals is also conducive to maintaining the long-term popularity of brand-related topics on social platforms. Every time consumers get a new duck or a new badge, they tend to share it on the platform, thus building a virtuous cycle of "from traffic to product sales and then to traffic."

2. There should be many styles of peripherals and the design should be attractive

In the two cases of Linli and Bawang Chaji, we can find that consumers’ “collection hobby” is a word that cannot be avoided. Although netizens self-deprecatingly say that “every generation has its own junk” and compare collecting brand peripherals to picking up junk, they still enjoy doing it.

User sharing on Xiaohongshu platform

Whether it is a group of dopamine ducks in different colors or a band of ducks holding different musical instruments, the essence of consumers' collecting behavior is to pursue the fun of collecting a series of toys into a set. Therefore, how to satisfy or even stimulate these people's desire to collect has become a problem that brands need to consider.

On the basis of long-term renewal of peripherals, the brand has two different routes in peripheral design. For example, the duck in the forest has gone from cute to ugly and interesting, while Bawang Tea Princess has always won the favor of consumers with exquisite badge design. Although these two styles are very different, they are actually both manifestations of attractive peripheral design.

Keep's medal shape

In fact, the medals of the sports app Keep are popular because of this. According to Morketing's observation, Keep's sports medals not only cover well-known IP linkage, but also include many styles such as Chinese style, two-dimensional, Disney, etc. The medal design is also very outstanding under the premise of diverse styles. No wonder Keep users are willing to buy medals even if they have to spend money (Keep users need to complete the sports goals in the APP and pay a registration fee to get medals).

3. Peripheral IP should be scalable and easy to obtain

For the IP peripherals of the brand, whether it is expandable is also an aspect that needs to be considered. Take the badge of Bawang Cha Ji as an example. Whether it is the store’s anniversary celebration or traditional festivals like Dragon Boat Festival, or even the charity activities participated by the brand, they can all be reflected in the badge design. From this perspective, the badge has even become an important window for Bawang Cha Ji to spread its brand concept.

In addition, when choosing to do peripheral marketing, in addition to creativity and design, cost issues should also be considered, and the threshold should be lowered as much as possible so that consumers can get it after each consumption. For example, the little yellow duck doll in the forest is cheap, so even the brand's regional franchisees can afford and are willing to give it away, thus avoiding the risk of inadequate store execution and consumers not being able to get the doll.

In Morketing's opinion, although everyone knows the classic marketing method of giving gifts when purchased, it is still rare to be able to use this routine successfully. The duck in the forest and the badge of the Overlord Tea Princess seem to be just small peripherals given by the merchant, but in fact they all have hidden social attributes. After all, in today's fast-paced society, marketing methods that can bring emotional value through social gameplay can naturally attract consumers' attention.

Author: Lumens

Source: WeChat public account: "Morketing (ID: Morketing)"