The joint product of HEYTEA and FENDI has been all over the WeChat Moments. Is the popularity due to the “luxury feel”?

Recently, HEYTEA cooperated with Italian luxury brand FENDI to launch a new product: FENDI Joy Yellow. As soon as the product was launched, it was snapped up by consumers and was extremely popular in major stores. What kind of inspiration can this joint screen-sweeping event bring to brands? Let's take a look.

On May 17, HEYTEA collaborated with Italian luxury brand FENDI to launch a new product: FENDI Joy Yellow, as well as FENDI Litsea cubeba special blend and snacks that are exclusively available in the tea room at the FENDI "hand in hand" art exhibition in Beijing.

After the product was launched, many people started a rush to buy it, and the consumers who managed to buy it carefully took a series of pictures and posted them online. At present, almost the entire circle of friends has been flooded with the co-branded products of HEYTEA and FENDI. Even Lei Jun specially posted on Weibo to say that he also drank a cup of FENDI co-branded HEYTEA.

Judging from the data, once the official news of Heytea was announced, it was on the top 10 hot searches on Weibo within an hour. The number of views of the tweet quickly exceeded 100,000+, and netizens on the social platform also posted many notes, saying that Heytea was sold out.

At the same time, at 9:00 am on May 17, the product information of the co-branded product briefly appeared on the mini program and then disappeared.

When it was officially launched at 10:00, the mini program had to be manually refreshed multiple times, with each refresh lasting 15 seconds, due to the surge in traffic and bugs.

Less than 20 minutes after the sale started, the co-branded peripherals in many stores were sold out, and hundreds of cups of tea were waiting to be made. Some stores also suspended online orders due to the busy tea making. At this time, if you want to order a cup of limited special blend on the HEYTEA APP, it is almost normal to have a queue of 500+.

In fact, a closer look at the collaboration between HEYTEA and FENDI shows that HEYTEA has maintained its consistent texture in design, and used a theme cup that combines FENDI yellow and HEYTEA black. The FENDI and HEYTEA boy’s LOGOs are placed on both sides of the cup to reflect the collaboration.

Overall, this is indeed a collaboration that has brought both fame and fortune to both FENDI and HEYTEA. Although both parties are considered to be joint-branded enthusiasts in their respective fields, it is undeniable that this joint-branded collaboration is still extremely excellent. Even during the communication process with Morketing, HEYTEA’s internal staff also said: “ There are really a lot of people placing orders, and we really didn’t expect it to cause such a craze .”

1. From preparation to outbreak, bring the boom when both parties need each other

It can be said that this collaboration was not without warning. As early as May 12, several official accounts of Heytea had changed their avatars in advance. For friends who are familiar with the fashion field, this iconic positive and negative double logo design is hinting at which brand is about to emerge.

On May 15, Heytea published an article on its official Weibo account, announcing that it would launch the annual color "Joy Yellow", which, combined with the logo of this cooperation, naturally attracted a wave of traffic.

Similarly, on the evening of May 16, FENDI created a special Heytea tea room area at the "Hand in Hand Craftsmanship Art Exhibition" event held in Beijing, showing guests in advance the limited edition special blends and four baked products in collaboration with Heytea, which are paired with Yi Litsea cubeba spices and yellow fruits. They will be open to the public from May 19 to June 16.

Both parties have conducted a lot of pre-promotion for this joint event. In general, this joint event can only be said to be unexpected but reasonable, after all, both Heytea and FENDI can almost be regarded as fanatical lovers of joint events in their respective fields.

Needless to say, Heytea has over 16 joint collaborations from April to December last year , and the partners involved cover almost all areas that consumers can imagine, from artist Fujiwara Hiroshi, various consumer beauty brands, film and television IPs, games, e-sports, and even various platforms including WeChat, People's Literature Publishing House, Zhihu, and WPS.

In the fashion circle, FENDI’s love for collaborations is not like the usual “aloof” luxury brands. Perhaps to better attract the attention of young people, FENDI can almost be said to be the brand with the most frequent collaborations under LVMH, with partners including Rimowa, Fila, Beats, Bape, Gentle Monster, Porter, Nicki Minaj and celebrity Wang Jiaer .

From the perspective of timing, it is even more important. On the one hand, Heytea obviously needs a big enough cooperation to attract more attention. And FENDI, needless to say, opened a month-long FENDI Baguette 'hand in hand' craftsmanship art exhibition at Beijing Temple East Jingyuan, and launched a series of large-scale brand activities. Many relevant practitioners believe that FENDI wants to replicate the Great Wall fashion show that shocked the world in 2007.

After all, for FENDI at this time, nearly a century of history, cultural conception and craftsmanship, two iconic handbags, and the collaboration between family members and celebrity creative directors are all the core elements of FENDI's current success as a luxury brand. This art exhibition is almost a comprehensive display of FENDI's brand core elements, so it is not surprising that the industry compares this exhibition to the 2007 Great Wall Fashion Show.

It can be seen that the exposure that almost swept the circle of friends this time is exactly what FENDI and HEYTEA need.

2. Drinks? Not a new social currency

This time, the joint venture once again staged a case of buying the casket and returning the pearl. Although it is a milk tea, the taste is no longer the focus. The joint-branded materials and limited peripherals are the items that people really want to buy.

In fact, HEYTEA seems to have some fashion elements since its birth, and design and high-end feel seem to have always been the key factors that go hand in hand with HEYTEA's brand marketing. Looking back at the earlier collaboration between HEYTEA and "Japanese Zeus and stamp master" Fujiwara Hiroshi, the same is true. The high-end feel of the materials seems to have always been the key to HEYTEA's rapid breakthrough and screen-sweeping.

This is especially true for this collaboration with FENDI. Almost every consumer who purchases this collaboration will find ways to take a few good-looking photos, and then these photos will naturally appear on WeChat Moments, Xiaohongshu or various other social platforms.

The key to all this is naturally design, or perhaps to put it more bluntly, design that can bring a sense of luxury to consumers, whether it is the FENDI on the bottle or the careful creation of various details of the materials, such as imitating FENDI's classic double F design during the early preheating period, changing the logo to an inverted "Double Happiness" and drawing it on subsequent material badges.

Image source: Xiaohongshu @Minmi

In the end, this collaboration successfully became a new social currency in the circle of friends in an almost explosive and eye-catching way.

Of course, it is undeniable that luxury brands have always been aloof, restrained and not enthusiastic about joint ventures for a long time. Therefore, this unexpectedness, even like the copywriting circulating on many social media platforms: " Own your first luxury item in your life for 19 yuan ", is precisely this scarcity, unexpectedness and incredible feeling that makes people flock to this or.

As long as we look back at past cases of collaboration between luxury goods and various beverages, we can easily find that the collaboration between FENDI and HEYTEA to simultaneously launch products in nearly 1,000 stores across the country is extremely rare.

For example, the coffee brand Manner has also cooperated with LV, but this time the cooperation was only to customize coffee for the exit of LV's 2023 Spring Men's Fashion Show held in Aya, Qinhuangdao, and it was only sold in some stores in Shanghai and Beijing, and the time was only two days.

In addition, although in recent years many luxury brands seem to have lowered their stance and started to reach consumers through more popular methods such as tea or coffee, they often only have one store in a super first-tier city to enrich the brand experience, rather than directly launching in nearly a thousand stores across the country.

Therefore, the popularity of this collaboration seems to be expected.

3. Conclusion

If you ask now which luxury brand is willing to give up reaching a wider audience, the answer is most likely that no brand can.

For a long time, luxury brands have almost always stayed in megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and even more so, only in a few high-end department stores or shopping streets in the core urban areas of these cities. But recently, whether it is the opening of the first Chanel store in Zhengzhou, or Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xi'an and Chengdu, they all seem to have become new targets for luxury brands.

This incident has indeed brought great exposure to both brands, especially in this special period when both parties need traffic, exposure and attention. However, it is undeniable that although both brands have received unprecedented attention at present, there are still some issues behind these events that the brands need to think about.

Will the super-large-scale collaboration between luxury goods and mass consumer goods cause consumers to feel a sense of disconnection in their perception of the FENDI brand? As for HEYTEA, the booming events, congested mini-programs, difficulty in getting gifts, and even the sudden suspension of the collaboration are certainly strong proof of its popularity, but will consumers’ complaints also affect their recognition of HEYTEA?

Original title: Lei Jun posted a photo, which was all over the WeChat Moments... Is the popularity of the joint product of HEYTEA and FENDI due to its "luxury feel"?

Author: Innocent Roland, WeChat public account: Morketing (ID: Morketing)