250 beverage collaborations reviewed: FENDI and Moutai are hard to copy, the cute style loses to the sad style

In this joint competition that brought together 250 drinks, a unique combination of joint brands with FENDI, Moutai and others stood out. From brand power to consumer emotions, let us discuss this beverage joint brand and analyze the market power of beverage joint brands.

The Year of the Dragon is approaching, and the chain beverage industry has officially announced more than 20 joint cases in January this year alone. The four major brands, Nayuki, Heytea, Lelecha, and Luckin Coffee, are the most successful, each of which has cooperated with three IPs. Even Starbucks, the leader that has always been aloof, couldn't sit still, and officially announced that it would launch a new latte in collaboration with the IP of "Havoc in Heaven", which is also its first collaboration with a local IP.

This just proves the popularity of IP joint ventures in the beverage industry in 2023. According to incomplete statistics from Doujiao, in the past year, there have been more than 250 IP joint ventures in the tea industry, attracting more than 33 milk tea, coffee, and lemon tea chain brands to join the game. May and September are especially critical. On May 17, after Heytea and FENDI created the first big case that broke out of the circle, the IP cooperation of the top tea brands has accelerated significantly to compete for the summer. On September 4, Luckin Coffee Moutai's joint venture was very popular, and it changed the situation of joint contraction in the autumn and winter off-season, allowing industry players to open the book together in the fourth quarter.

The top players in the tea beverage joint venture circle have also changed accordingly. From the "three-strong competition" of Nayuki, Heytea, and Luckin in 2022, it has become a competition among more than 10 brands, and the joint venture styles and preferences of the top players have become clearer.

At the same time, with the surge in IP cooperation cases in the industry, the good days of the past extensive "consumers will pay if there is an IP" are no longer there. There are two major tea brands that are directly competing with popular IPs at the same time, and there are also competing IPs that have caused controversy by comparing the treatment of joint brands. Some cooperations suffer from "going viral but not selling well", and some brands are entangled in "making money but not having a good reputation"...

Fierce competition breeds more discerning users. In 2024, which is destined to be more competitive, how can we do a good job in IP co-branding? Doujiao analyzed 250 co-branding cases and interviewed a number of industry insiders to try to give the answer.

01 Mid-range milk tea, Luckin Coffee, and Starbucks have entered the market, and half of the joint ventures are just hovering around the passing line?

“The key to determining whether a collaboration is successful or not is sales.”

During the interview, many practitioners gave similar answers. A leading tea brand also told Doujiao that its IP joint venture, which had a good reputation and even became a hot search during the summer, had very poor sales and was internally evaluated as a failure. "Generally, it is divided into not meeting the standard, meeting the standard, exceeding expectations and selling out according to the sales of the corresponding product."

Substandard products often face a large number of stores and dealers "stocking up", with dealers bearing the material costs and brands bearing all the initial investment. It is not important whether the hot-selling products are hotly discussed in the public opinion field, but they are often accompanied by tight inventory and supply, urgent additional materials, and the initiation of secondary joint processes.

At present, there are relatively few cases in the industry that disclose the sales of co-branded products, but according to Doujiao, nearly half of the co-branded cases of many brands are only in the "just meet the standard" dimension. However, they are trapped in the overall industry atmosphere and have to continue to follow up and roll up co-branding.

Combining sales, social media popularity and co-branding frequency, among the 250 co-branding cases, Nayuki, Heytea, Lelecha and Luckin are clear first-tier players. Among them, Nayuki wins with more than 30 co-brandings a year and high frequency; Heytea has the most out-of-circle cases and creative support; Luckin's co-branding strategy of bringing hot products continues to advance. In April last year, Doujiao had a detailed explanation in the article "Tea Drink Co-branding Rating List".

It is worth noting that after the joint venture between Heytea and Fendi became popular in May, Lelecha and Chabaidao showed a significant momentum of catching up last year. Before May 17, both companies only launched one joint product, but since June, they have entered the market with an average of two joint collaborations per month to grab traffic. Among them, Lelecha's Loopy joint venture and Crazy Man packaging, and Chabaidao's "Undetermined Incident Book" and "Jian Wang 3" traffic are all quite hot.

"After the joint collaboration between HEYTEA and FENDI in May, many tea brands couldn't sit still, and the acceleration in the second half of the year was obvious. Some brands quickly switched from testing the waters to regular collaborations. The core logic is very simple. Everyone doesn't want to be the best, but no one wants to fall behind. " Lao Xia, a senior practitioner in the tea industry, told Doujiao.

According to him, with the expansion of SKUs of various brands, the possibility of attracting accurate consumers simply through signature products has become increasingly low. "In terms of products, everyone copied me and I copied you. Two years ago, there were barriers to the creativity of cheese, mulberry, sesame paste, coconut, lemon, and durian, but now they are gradually disappearing. Then, Cha Yan Yue Se, which is now focusing on coffee and lemon tea, cannot compete with each other in terms of products."

At this time, it is particularly important to rely on the potential of co-branded IP to gain consumer recognition and establish a barrier that the brand is young, fun, and playful. In 2022, Heytea led the way, and Nayuki, also a high-priced tea drink, actively joined Kaijuan in order to avoid the cognitive lead of core competing brands in the same track. Therefore, Lelecha's large-scale follow-up in 2023 is more like a forced defense.

On the other hand, while rolling up the joint brands, a number of high-priced tea brands have also started a price war with their low-priced products launched in 2022, spreading the threat to mid-priced brands such as Shanghai Auntie, Yidiandian, CoCo, and Chabaidao. Especially in the first half of 2023, a large number of joint new products of Heytea, Nayuki, and Lelecha were controlled at around 15 yuan, which attracted a lot of market attention. In order to avoid the loss of user share, many brands have no choice but to follow up on the IP joint side, directly launching a new round of internal competition among mid-waist milk tea brands.

After more than half a year of competition, Doujiao found that at present, Chabaidao and Shanghai Auntie have occupied a certain user recognition with the help of circle IP, while Xiaodian, which is determined not to roll back, is much more passive. In November last year, it even encountered a "bankruptcy storm" in the public opinion field.

"In fact, Yidiandian had a round of internal discussions on whether to launch a joint marketing campaign last year, but in the end, they decided to do independent appearance updates and research and development first." A person close to Yidiandian told Doujiao. It is reported that Yidiandian tried to use original design last year to increase the speed of changing the outer packaging, launching flower appearances on festival nodes such as March 8, and there were many original designs and gifts featuring cats and dogs. "But this kind of creative appearance has great disadvantages in scarcity and traffic management. Whether it is negotiating cooperation with channels or consumer discussion and secondary creation popularity, IP joint appearance can crush original design."

To a certain extent, this also explains the ultimate reason for the internal circulation of IP collaborations: as the number of new users slows down and price wars deepen, the collaborations initiated by leading players have evolved into a normalized marketing method, and those who lag behind will fall behind.

Just like Luckin Coffee, after competitors such as Kudi joined the price war and started the joint venture, Luckin Coffee's joint venture speed has also increased significantly since the fourth quarter, and it launched three joint ventures in January this year. Starbucks, a representative of overseas high-end coffee chains, has launched a joint venture with domestic IPs for the first time this year. The relevant person in charge of Costa also clearly stated to Doujiao in January this year that there will be more cooperation plans in the joint venture in the coming year.

02 A summary of the pros and cons of 6 major categories of IPs, the tea beverage joint king subverts the traditional advantage IP

From the perspective of IP types, different types of partners have gradually shown stable characteristics, affecting the choice of different beverage brands. According to the common IP types, Doujiao also divides the joint brands into 6 categories.

Among them, art and culture IP, sentimental memory killing IP, and cute IP are all common cooperation categories that have appeared in the joint list of tea brands since 2022. In the past year, they have all faced common problems such as intensified internal competition, insufficient core consumption power, and lack of freshness, and have higher requirements for the creativity and IP potential of joint products. Looking at the ones that have gone viral in 2023, all of them are "volume kings".

Nayuki got the big prize of Jay Chou's Fantasy, Heytea's Mid-Autumn Festival Su Dongpo joint roll launched handmade lantern peripherals, and Nayuki teamed up with Magic Sakura to launch magic wand peripherals. In the future, the breakthroughs of these three types of content will face higher IP quality requirements and peripheral manufacturing requirements, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the entire cooperation cost and a lengthening of the process, making it more like a stock market.

However, brands, popular circles and youth pop culture IPs presented strong surprises in 2023, and deserve the attention of all beverage brands.

1. Brand

Whether it is Heytea and FENDI, or Luckin Coffee and Moutai, the two most popular cases of beverage collaboration in 2023 are both collaborations with "high-end brands". The same logic is behind this: leveraging the scarcity and mass influence of expensive brands to create a psychological premium for fast-moving consumer goods and ultimately achieve a peak in purchases. In particular, Luckin Coffee's collaboration with Moutai on the sauce-flavored latte reached 5.42 million cups in a single day, with sales of a single product exceeding 100 million yuan, setting a new sales record for the entire industry.

Doujiao observed that after the cooperation between HEYTEA and FENDI was released, MANNER also cooperated with LV's offline bookstore event IP and launched a co-branded canvas bag, which also became a small hit in the fashion and coffee circles.

"In the second half of the year, other tea brands were looking for people widely and even asked a large number of fashion media, hoping to cooperate with Kering Group, but ultimately failed. In the middle and late stages of the collaborations with FENDI and LV, there were cases of handbag speculation and high prices in the second-hand market. Many high-end luxury brands are not sure what they can gain from collaborating with affordable tea drinks, so they are very cautious." An insider revealed to Doujiao.

At the same time, it is undeniable that such cross-border cooperation has obvious marginal diminishing effects. A typical example is Luckin Coffee, which launched its second chocolate sauce latte with Moutai in January this year, but the traffic failed and the effect was not as good as before. Similarly, MANNER, which has frequently launched cross-border brand collaborations since June, has not had a second case of breaking out of the circle after cooperating with LV.

Therefore, many tea and coffee brands mostly target the Internet or catering partner brands, focusing on creative marketing. Among the 250 joint collaborations, this type of collaboration accounts for nearly 1/3 of the scale, which shows how popular it is. According to Lao Xia, most of these cross-border brand collaborations adopt publicity replacement cooperation or sales sharing, without having to pay upfront prepayment, and also have cost advantages.

However, Doujiao has observed that there are very few such brands that have crossed over. Take the oat milk brand OATLY as an example. In the past year, seven beverage brands have launched joint cooperation with it, but the effect is minimal. Similarly, the cooperation between Kudi and Dove, Nayuki and Dong'e Ejiao, and Ningji and 7UP also lacks popular memory points due to the conventional ingredients. On the cross-border side, the cooperation between Chabaidao and Baidu Netdisk, and Ningji and WPS are even more confusing.

Overall, as the most common choice for IP joint cooperation, cross-border branding has the highest requirements for marketing, which requires both the extraction of matching design elements and the breakthrough of creative ideas on the marketing side. A typical example is the cooperation between Luckin Coffee and Moutai, whose entire communication plan ensured the smooth success of the sauce-flavored latte.

If you only hope to avoid licensing costs in the early stages without looking for a suitable brand IP and preparing a strong marketing plan, then such collaborations can only serve to "make up the numbers" and it is better not to do it.

2. Popular circle IP

The so-called popular circle IPs have a strong and loyal consumer base, mostly ACGN works with high traffic and popular film and television drama content. Game IPs represented by "Genshin Impact", "Love and Producer", "Undetermined Case Files", "Shining Nikki", "Jian Wang III", etc., animation works represented by "Heaven Official's Blessing" and "Jujutsu Kaisen", classic novels represented by "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", and film and television works such as "Longing", "Lotus Tower", and "Fengshen" all belong to this category.

Although beverage brands need to pay a relatively high licensing fee in the early stage when they collaborate with such IPs, the benefits are mostly very clear. In August 2023, Heytea collaborated with "Genshin Impact" and sold 3 million cups of drinks in 3 days, far exceeding the collaboration with FENDI, which shows the strong purchasing enthusiasm of users in the circle. It can be said that although the popular IP may lack attention at the public level, the strong purchasing power of the core IP is enough to ensure that the corresponding co-branded products will not be worried about sales.

But at the same time, most of the audiences for this type of IP have very high requirements for purchasing methods, IP treatment, etc., and at the same time they show obvious circle cultural attributes. Almost every time they cooperate with this type of IP, beverage brands face strong public opinion risks.

In 2022, the collaboration between Genshin Impact and Heytea was criticized by players for cutting leeks due to insufficient material preparation and purchasing mechanism problems, and the criticism became a hot topic; the collaboration between Light and Night and Shanghai Auntie was urgently stopped before it started due to improper management of franchise store employees and insults to players. In 2023, Gu Ming’s early cooperation with Lotus House was boycotted by the male protagonist’s fans because the images of three male characters were printed on the initial packaging bags, and the packaging was urgently replaced; Lelecha and Shining Nikki’s collaboration was besieged by a large number of players due to insufficient stock, and they urgently replenished the stock; Bawang Cha Ji’s collaboration with Grave Robbers’ Chronicles was even ridiculed because it violated the preferences of CP fans and peripheral aesthetics...

At the same time, players of the same type of IP also "compete" with each other in terms of treatment. For example, when Coco cooperated with "Love and Producer", some players criticized the drinks by referring to the level of peripherals when "Undetermined Case Book" cooperated with Cha Baidao. Obviously, once there are control problems in franchisee management, sales model, and peripheral production, this type of vertical cooperation will easily fall into the overwhelming criticism of IP fans.

Of course, there are also win-win cases in the industry. Last year, Chabaidao’s cooperation with the popular otome game “Undetermined Event Book” can provide a reference for the industry. In the early stage of the cooperation, the game production company miHoYo provided Chabaidao with a detailed “training material”. In addition to package information and activity scripts, it also clearly marked the minefields of a large number of players, requiring stores to pay attention to attitude, memorize character names, prohibit the evaluation of game content and characters, and even marked the word “respect” in red capital letters. At the same time, the purchase mechanism and peripheral quality control were also optimized.

It can be seen that even if there are natural barriers to circles, and even if "the two-dimensional world is inherently troublesome", as long as there is adequate early communication and preparation, it is entirely possible to gain a "high reputation" while making money.

"Currently, the most common problem in this type of cooperation lies in the purchasing mechanism. Because of the relatively expensive co-branded licensing fees, many people often make unreasonable settings in the early stages of the mechanism. Users need to buy 8 or even more drinks to collect the corresponding character peripherals. This kind of thinking is the result of not doing a good job of market research and underestimating the consumption power of IP." Lao Xia said.

Doujiao also concluded that for this type of IP licensing cooperation, beverage brands must have sufficient inventory on the peripheral side; at the same time, the blind box model, which is a taboo in multi-role cooperation, should be set to be selectable; the purchase threshold set by a single user should not be higher than 150, and it is best to be below 100 yuan.

3. Youth pop culture IP

This year, the industry has also seen a large number of joint ventures born out of insights into the popular culture of young people. The IP can be an emoticon, a buzzword, or a hot consumer trend.

A typical example is that Lelecha caught the "crazy" mental state of young people and launched a crazy man combination package, imitating the shapes of the commonly used emojis Aobai, Li Kui, Zhang Fei, and Meng Dan, and launched the "One Punch" series. Such creative content has no specific co-branded objects, which not only effectively reduces the cost of co-branding, but also uniquely hits the hearts of young people. Similarly, Nayuki's Tea and the Maluo emoji package co-branded, and Baifen Tea launched the "Hawthorn Heart" series, are all based on this.

Behind this is the popularity of mourning culture. The era of cuteness has passed, and contemporary young users have shown a stronger demand for weirdness. Just like the resurgence of Kuromi and My Melody in Sanrio in the past two years, the popularity of LOOPY, the "pink mouse" last year, is inseparable from the popularity of spoof emoticons. During the joint launch of HEYTEA and LOOPY, many netizens lamented, "It's cute, but it would be better if it could be a little meaner", "Why not use that glass licking expression!"

It can be seen that even when carried on a lovely carrier, young people are closer to a "crazy" heart.

However, this creative trend also places higher demands on the overall creative design of the joint venture. How to combine the generally low-quality, spoof-style emoji literature with the appearance of new products is something that every beverage brand needs to consider. Compared with Lelecha, which imitates the emoji to reshoot clear images, the elements and tones have a clear sense of design and occupy the entire cup body, and are closely integrated with the product, Nayuki, which simply sticks a Malo emoji in the middle of the bottle, is much inferior. In order to promote the Hawthorn series of 100% Tea, "Haoxin" was used as the keyword, but it was not direct enough and failed to achieve popularity.

Of course, in addition to emoticons, youth consumption trends are also a key consideration for many brands to launch IP joint ventures. Popular consumer hobbies such as Hanfu and LO outfits and popular trends such as pet content are the new favorites of beverage brands in 2023. In October and November, Shanghai Auntie successively launched cat beds and Hanfu-related peripherals in collaboration with Monet and Mamian Skirt, creating a strong presence in the youth culture circle. The joint ventures of coco and Brand, Yidiandian and Newton, and Nayuki and pidan also focused on pet supplies and launched a large number of peripherals.

"But this type of consumer cooperation also has a strong marginal effect. Currently, most of these co-branded products adopt a sales-sharing cooperation model. What brands need to think about is how to use co-branded elements to provide spillover value for cooperative products." Lao Xia said.

Take McDonald's cat bed product, which has been popular for two consecutive years, as an example. The secret of its popularity is that McDonald's "McGate elements" are an important part of youth popular culture. When consumers buy cat beds, they have a strong demand for the product. In contrast, Starbucks' cat bed giveaway activity launched in October was far less influential than the former due to insufficient "stem content". Similarly, the Shanghai Auntie's horse-faced skirt collaboration also faced the question of "not understanding where the purchase point is".

It can be seen that in this newly popular track, capturing the user's interest in consumption is only the first step. Internalizing the interest into product value and then marketing and creating buzz are the core of creating explosive products.

In general, after a year of "trial", the beverage industry has presented an IP "market" that is quite different from the traditional joint-brand market. Due to its relatively low customer unit price and purchasing mechanism, there are more restrictions on the types of peripheral products; due to the audience selection vertically aligned with the youth group, its demand for IP influence is also more focused. Therefore, in the traditional industry, cute popular IPs represented by Disney and Pokémon are not the preferred choice of the tea beverage industry. It is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out with safe cards, and outstanding content, unexpected ideas, and IPs for the youth circle are more secure.

For this reason, IP owners with creative ideas should focus on the youth culture track, those who are good at public relations can focus on vertical interest circles, and those with resources should aim at high-value brands. These three areas will have broader room for development in 2024.

Overall, 2023 is a key node in the beverage co-branding industry, directly driving the industry from the top competition to full bloom. In 2024, such internal competition will not decrease, but will only intensify.

"In the future, IP collaboration will become a must-have operation for entry into the beverage industry. This is a battle that is destined to last for 2-3 years, and it will not stop even if some players fall," Lao Xia said with emotion.

Author: Guo Jian

WeChat public account: Spicy (ID: ylwanjia)