喜茶的「我佛持杯」如何爆火出圈？

Heytea's new co-branded product "Meditating Arhat" has become a big hit. Starting from Heytea's innovative co-branded strategy, this article explores the operational logic behind its successful traffic conversion, and provides a reference for the brand's combined marketing. Let's take a look at what kind of marketing can trigger heat.

After Maotai Maotai became popular, Heytea directly asked everyone to “hold the cup of Buddha”.

What's the meaning?

HEYTEA has launched a new drink called "Buddha Latte", and has launched three specially designed cups and fridge magnets, with the themes of Silent Bodhisattva, Happy Arhat and Subduing Tiger Arhat. This product is sold in major stores and online platforms.

Official introduction: This latte is made from a mixture of Fujian century-old tea and Muzhen milk. I tasted it specially and it tasted very smooth, with the aroma of tea and a hint of milk. If you don't like sweet, you can use less sugar.

Search for comments from netizens:

Some people said that the rich milky flavor has become their favorite, and it tastes good even without sugar. Others praised the design of the cup, saying that after drinking it, they use it as an office water cup, which shows their attitude towards life.

Some netizens also put forward interesting opinions, for example, the people in southern Fujian do not litter after drinking. It is so funny.

However, I am more concerned about the success of this joint cooperation with Wu Yu Bodhisattva. What key factors have been mastered? Since its establishment, why has Heytea been obsessed with being a scumbag and frequently teaming up with other brands? What is the deep-level marketing strategy behind it?

1. What exactly is the Silent Bodhisattva?

The name comes from the understanding of a porcelain sculpture. This sculpture, now collected in the Jingdezhen China Ceramics Museum, is the work of Chinese porcelain art master Zeng Longsheng and is part of his "Underglaze Colored Eighteen Arhats" series.

I specifically looked it up and found out that its official name is "Meditating Arhat", a name with great depth. From the perspective of traditional art, it looks fat and serious, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, giving people a solemn and elegant feeling.

But when modern young people see it, they think it looks like a speechless face, so they gave it a new name, "Silent Bodhisattva". This name became popular during the peak tourist season in October this year.

At that time, some people made it into emoticons, and even jokingly called it "conspicuous package", which also stimulated the sales of a series of related cultural and creative products, such as mobile phone cases, mouse pads, and standees.

However, these things are not officially released by the Jingdezhen China Ceramics Museum, but because this emoticon package became popular, everyone thought the image was interesting and could be made into some fun things.

As time goes by, IP gradually enters everyone's field of vision. The reason for the joint name with Silent Bodhisattva is that it provides emotional value to young people.

Since the beginning of this year, work setbacks, unemployment pressure, difficulty in making money, and industry downturns seem to be hot topics that people often discuss when socializing. Faced with these challenges, everyone has begun to look for spiritual comfort and physical and mental relaxation.

Against this background, the temple economy has gradually gained popularity among young people and has become a new spiritual home. I forgot which month it was, but I remember there was a song called "Pray for a Good Fortune" on the short video platform that was very popular.

There is a verse in the song:

I bow three times and pray once in the temple of the God of Wealth, praying for a good fortune; I light a candle in front of the Buddha, put my hands together and pray for good things to happen. I am between work and my heart, can I burn incense? Can I do a magic between work and cooperation?

….

These lyrics express the desire of modern people to seek peace of mind and good luck in their busy work and life. It is also the demand for emotional value that has driven the development of cultural and creative industries around temples and the coffee industry.

Emotional release is a kind of "venting culture". Everyone has a lot of pressure to express and needs an outlet. This year, we have seen many brands use emotional marketing.

for example:

Consumer goods. In August, Haowangshui and Gong Linna jointly launched the single "Gong Lin Spicy", which was performed in Guizhou dialect. The song was created from the folk songs of the Buyi people in Guizhou. Haowangshui seized the homophonic pun of "Gong Lin Spicy" and injected a lot of emotional value into the brand.

Platform system. Tik Tok is labeled as young, free, relaxed and dynamic. The Galaxy Ark Music Festival held in Chongqing in September this year filled the city with emotional value, and the entire event brought more than 1 billion exposures.

To put it bluntly, young people are just about to shout to brands: Please drive me crazy.

Therefore, whoever can become everyone's mouth substitute will be more recognized. Heytea mainly sells to young people. The speechless Bodhisattva has become popular as an online emoticon package. Of course, young people like and care about it the most. This time, cooperating with it not only replaces the mouth substitute role, but also further strengthens the user's mind.

2. Marketing strategy of Heytea

Let’s put aside the supply chain and product strength. The second biggest factor for Heytea’s success is its innovative marketing strategy. It can be said that Heytea is a master in the entire beverage industry.

Why?

Heytea was founded in 2012, not to mention the decade from 2012 to 2022. In 2023 alone, there were 8 joint ventures, and from March to October, they were almost always CPs.

In March, it launched the "Cool Blackberry Mulberry" drink with Fujiwara Hiroshi; in April, it collaborated with the famous writer Su Dongpo to launch "Dongpo is Happy" to promote traditional culture; in May, it collaborated with the luxury brand FENDI to launch 4 limited desserts and the "FENDI Joy Yellow" special milk tea.

In June, it collaborated with the classic movie "The King of Comedy"; in July, it collaborated with the Jingdezhen China Ceramics Museum to launch the "Buddha Heytea Latte"; in August, it did not let go of its peers and collaborated with Luckin Coffee to launch the "Luckin Latte"; in September, it collaborated with the popular TV series "The Legend of Zhen Huan"; in October, it cooperated with the digital trendy toy collection platform Bohe.

…

I took stock and there are more. You may think that "cross-border" is nothing new, and that two brands are just using each other's users, but the continuous cross-border of brands should be understood in a different way. Let's think about an old question:

What is the core of the brand?

You may hear hundreds of explanations from experts, including precise positioning, unique values, continuous innovation, strong brand stories, etc. Each of them tries to capture different aspects of the core.

Of course there is no problem. However, in my opinion, the core of a brand is "social traffic purchasing power" , which comes from constantly meeting consumer needs. It can be simply summarized into one point of view:

If you can use various means to continuously and accurately attract social traffic (users) and establish long-term emotional relationships with them, you will basically grasp the essence of the brand core.

Continuous cross-border operations can be understood as a kind of deep insight and the use of social traffic strategies. Through this strategy, new user groups are attracted and existing consumers are consolidated.

Understand this and you will understand:

Advertising is only a basic sales method, such as seeding, promotion and bringing goods. Brands need to use social forces such as cross-border and topic discussion to reach group consensus and truly achieve growth with consumers.

At the same time, they can integrate their own values ​​and culture into it and make it a part of social culture. In this way, they can create a sense of ritual and tradition shared by the group and form a broad social consensus.

It's not clear enough, so let me give you an example:

Normally we drink boiled water and no one would ask why. But now I have a brand that specializes in selling boiled water, so I have to find a good reason to make people want to buy my water.

If I use the old method and advertise how delicious and sweet the water is, people will think I am sick. In the past, Nongfu Spring, Baishuishan, and Yibibao have not solved this problem.

Now it has been solved by Master Kong.

They chat with users in various social places about why they need to drink boiled water. Starting from April this year, for a full six months, their communication theme has been centered around "drink boiled water no matter what you do", covering scenes such as meetings, work, and ball games.

What’s even more impressive is that through Weibo marketing, the topic was turned into an Internet meme and a social issue. The topic is more powerful than the topic itself because it involves deeper and broader social concerns and values.

what does that mean?

Consumers not only know when to drink boiled water, but also remember the brand and strongly associate it with social values. Therefore, the appeal of a brand depends on whether it can create hot topics or use existing topics to constantly remind consumers of my existence.

In recent years, Heytea has been collaborating with other brands. On the surface, it seems to be providing emotional value and playing CP. In fact, the deep-level innovative marketing strategy is its deep insight into the reliable cause and effect relationship of user needs.

3. What is the advertising reach rate?

Traffic is the key today. Many brands often value digital marketing and care about every click and reach rate. Think about it: when an ad is pushed to you, will you really watch it? Most people are indifferent or just swipe past it.

Take me for example:

I like to listen to music when I travel every day. Many music apps have been revamped recently, changing the behavior of users opening memberships to purchasing attention time, which means that I have to watch ads.

In advertising nowadays, everyone looks at data. It seems impressive, but data is not a universal key and does not represent the secret to growth. New marketing methods and new sales channels are the same for everyone. If you can use them, others can use them too. They cannot be considered a competitive advantage and cannot form a solid moat.

Many companies have been studying what customers want and trying to innovate their products. The traditional approach is to make many types of products, mass-produce them, and then throw them into the market to see how they sell. This method is too random and costly.

Some brands also rely on big data.

Big data sounds great and can indeed help to identify some customer preferences, but in business practice, data is very abstract and hides a lot of background content. Generally speaking, content background is the key to product innovation.

If you don’t believe it, take a look at an example:

Back in the 80s at Walmart, they sold diapers next to beer.

At that time, many American mothers were at home taking care of their children, and often asked their fathers to buy diapers for their children on their way home from get off work. When these fathers bought diapers, they often took home their favorite beer. As a result, the sales of diapers and beer increased significantly.

This illustrates a very simple truth: relying solely on data-driven is not the panacea for tapping into user needs. Some things go beyond data, such as scene relevance, cultural relevance, and information relevance.

Brands need to slowly explore and see in what other scenarios users may use our products, so that they can truly understand the reasons and connections behind them. Recently, many brands have insight into these needs and have made obvious changes.

Similar ones are:

Babycare, an emerging maternal and infant brand, has upgraded its team (integrating public domain team and private domain team) into a "user ecological center" last year, and all its marketing has also undergone new changes.

They pay more attention to customer group behavior. Social media promotion is basically based on social issues. For example, last October's Painless Day, they took advantage of the opportunity to launch a marketing campaign with the theme that "only 30% of mothers in my country use painless delivery, and motherly love does not need pain to prove it."

Not only does it speak for pregnant mothers, but it also provides a lot of professional knowledge.

A careful study reveals that most high-end car brands (Mercedes-Benz, BMW) are taking the issue route, because there are groups of topics behind the issues, and the topics are the voices of a group of people.

Therefore, the reliable causal relationship with user needs determines the strength of the brand. Most of these brands work hard at the "topic and topic" level.

4. Innovative Marketing Combination

Although I don’t have a set of CP association methods like Heytea, if brands want to emulate Heytea’s in-depth innovative combination marketing and improve users’ “purchasing power” in the long term, I have summarized three methods:

1. Combination of cultural and museum elements with entertainment

In the past few years, culture has gone beyond the circle, and in the past two years, cultural museums have become more popular. In fact, cultural museums are nothing new. In the past, there was the Forbidden City's "Yongzheng Cute", and later there was the Sanxingdui bronze mask that looked like the singer Zheng Yunlong, and the funny version of the horse stepping on flying swallow, but with more scene sense.

Why did it change from culture to museums?

First, after this generation of young people experienced the black swan event, most of them had a limited budget for traveling, and they began to pay more attention to actual experience instead of just reading books or looking at things on the Internet.

Secondly, going to a museum and seeing those ancient and unique things is like opening a door to creativity.

Cultural relics themselves have heavy historical attributes, coupled with super creative ideas. Once they are photoshopped into pictures and posted online and collide with real-life elements, they will have an Internet celebrity effect. In addition, the museum itself needs to strike while the iron is hot to promote, which will turn netizens' curiosity into a marketing opportunity for the museum.

Moreover, in the past two years, many brands have been in a state of internal competition, and everyone is trying to find ways to stand out, so consumption plus culture and art has naturally become a new path; every city and museum has a conspicuous bag and a built-in humor buff, and if you dig deep enough, you will definitely find many innovative points.

2. Surreal narrative mode

You can use various data analysis platforms to derive keywords from scenic spots and find out the differences. You can use Big Data, Feigua Data, Douchacha, and Kuaishou Data to see the development of related events and hot words.

If you really don’t want to go through too much trouble, just open Weibo or enter keywords in the search box of the short video platform, and you will see a lot of weird discussions. I often pay attention to topics that suddenly become popular or unexpected discussions among netizens.

For example, when the Sanxingdui cultural and creative products went viral, everyone made funny emoticons, and some people complained that the bronze mask was similar to chocolate. When the Gansu Museum's Horse Stepping on Flying Swallow went viral, a lot of people said, "Silly horses, what a bunch of wild horses."

These reflect a surreal storytelling style that expresses a new understanding of culture and history through humor and creativity.

In addition, there is a point in the book "Attention Merchants" that I think makes sense. The bottom line of all business activities is to capture people's attention, which is also the opening at the top of the funnel conversion. How much attention you can gain determines the final conversion results and also determines the efficiency.

3. Traffic equals familiarity + surprise

Whether the integration of cultural and museum products and brands can go viral mainly depends on the critical tension problem. The trick to making people eager for new things is to find the right sweet spot and the intersection between tradition. In other words, there must be both novel content that makes people shine and the familiar traditional flavor.

To put it in a simple formula, it is "unexpected + familiar = popular". There is a concept called Neophilia, which I think is the best way to describe it.

When a person sees something very novel or a new experience, even without any marketing attributes, he or she will still have a strong curiosity. This is also the key to people's desire to explore the unknown and their enthusiasm for new things.

You can imagine what will happen when the brand crosses over with the four great classics.

Combining with Dream of the Red Chamber may give birth to a product series full of classical beauty and deep affection; combining with Romance of the Three Kingdoms may create heroic themed products; and crossing over with Outlaws of the Marsh may bring about unique designs that show loyalty and righteousness, etc.

It is worth mentioning that when it comes to co-branding cultural products, brands should pay attention to the importance of "keeping the orthodoxy and innovating". What does keeping the orthodoxy mean? It means adhering to traditional principles (keeping the orthodoxy) while constantly seeking new ideas.

Therefore, in the process of innovation, we must avoid practices that directly subvert traditional values ​​and core principles, otherwise it is easy to overturn. Remember that socialization is the source of traffic and popularity. Only by grasping this source can we drive consumption power.

5. Conclusion

HEYTEA, the secret code of social interaction.

Marketing is moving from numbers to relationships. Only by starting from a social perspective and caring about user relationships can a brand flow like tap water.

Author: Wang Zhiyuan

WeChat public account: Wang Zhiyuan (ID: Z201440)