How Tea Brand from China Rode the Trend of Paris Olympics 2024?

Paris Olympics 2024 has clearly created an arena for brand from China out of its racing courses and stadium.

On the sports field, athletes competed for the golden medals fiercely; while off the field, brands leveraged all they have to gain attention of and convert the Olympics’ audience. As the first Olympics after the pandemic, the Paris Olympics did not only bring over 15 million tourists to Paris, but also became an must-won battlefield for Chinese tea brands as they aspire to expand into global market.

Among these brands that wanted a slice of the cake, some have gained momentum by attracting huge amount of traffic, others have achieved tremendous sales, and some have propositioned their brand value through the spirit of sports, earning a good reputation.

Let’s take a look at how they achieved it.

Heytea’s Pop-up Store in Paris during 2024 Olympics

The Olympic buzz has reached the banks of the Seine, with coffee on the left bank and Heytea (喜茶) on the right bank.

On July 5, Heytea officially opened its pop-up store Heytea Sports Tea Room in Paris. Located on the right bank of the Seine river, at 10 R. Bréguet, 75011 Paris, Heytea has become the first bubble tea brand from China expanding into the French market, also a pioneer of Olympic marketing for Chinese tea brands.

As the first step of Heytea’s brand expansion in France, the pop-up store served as a prominent first touchpoint for consumers.

To elevate its brand spirits with the Olympic value, Heytea did not only promote four of its classic tea products, but also combined Chinese aesthetics with Paris Olympic elements. They launched sports badges, tea bowls, and other peripheral products to provide a modern Chinese tea culture experience and create a joyful and aesthetically pleasing sports watching environment in their tea room.

On the first day of its opening, the pop-up store’s sales exceeded EUR 10,000, and two types of sports badge were sold out.

On social media, some famous Chinese athletes, such as Zhao Lina, Bao Chunlai, Wei Qiuyue, and Liu Xiang, visited the store and shared their experience across their social accounts, and some consumers also bought Heytea’s sports badges as a gift to Chinese Ping Pong athlete Sun Yingsha. These engagements on social media helped to generate a long-tail marketing effect for Heytea.

In addition to leveraging the Olympic marketing effect internationally, Heytea has also launched Olympic-themed campaigns domestically.

On July 26, Heytea officially launched its co-branded campaign Winning the Championship with Joy (喜悦夺冠), with ANTA Championship – a premium product line of sports apparel brand Anta (安踏). With the release of a new fruit and vegetable tea drink called Championship Winning Slimming Bottle (夺冠纤体瓶) and its over 4,000 tea outlets participating this campaign, Heytea has sold over 1.6 million cups of the Championship Winning Slimming Bottle domestically during the Olympic period, making it the top 3 popular products by product sales.

In both international and domestic markets, Heytea has spent a significant amount of budget on its store and products, in order to create a strong brand image and mainly focused on the long-run. Furthermore, the co-branding with ANTA Championship created a synergy between domestic and international Olympic marketing strategies, promoting the brand awareness to the next level.

CHAGEE, another Tea Brand from China, Betting on Zheng Qinwen

Similarly, CHAGEE (霸王茶姬) has also opened a store in Paris. However, compared to opening a store, what really made it stand out was betting on Zheng Qinwen .

In April 2024, Zheng Qinwen became CHAGEE’s first “Health Ambassador.” At that time, Zheng Qinwen was not a Olympic gold medal winner yet, hence, was not well-known to the public. Compared to most brands that flock to popular celebrities, CHAGEE’s choice was unconventional but maybe more commercial-savvy.

The reason lies in the fact that tennis, as a sport with a broad global audience, has commercial value that is unmatched by other sports. Tennis players can participate in professional tournaments almost continuously throughout the year, and when they earn a tournament, they also bring extensive media exposure to their associated brands.

In Forbes’ 2023 list of the highest-paid female athletes, 9 out of the top 10 are tennis players.

Furthermore, as a bubble tea brand, CHAGEE has always promoted “health” as one of its unique selling point. Zheng Qinwen, as a young and energetic tennis player, perfectly matches this healthy and energetic brand image.

Apart from making the right choice, CHAGEE also followed up Zheng Qinwen’s match results with a series of marketing campaigns swiftly:

• On August 1, Zheng Qinwen defeated Swiatek 2-0 in the women’s singles semi-final.
• On August 2, CHAGEE tweeted a congratulations post and gave away 250,000 coupons for free cups.
• On August 3, Zheng Qinwen won the championship of women’s singles tennis in Paris.
• In the early morning of August 4, CHAGEE posted on social media congratulating their “Health Ambassador” Zheng Qinwen on winning the gold medal.

In addition, on CHAGEE’s ordering app, the background has also been changed to Zheng Qinwen. This agile and conversion-focused action sparked desire of millions of netizens to ‘Buy a cup of CHAGEE tea to celebrate’ for Zheng Qinwen.

This year, great efforts has been seen from CHAGEE in opening more stores and running large scale marketing campaigns, which have always been clearly built around its brand value – CHAGEE is ‘Chinese tea’ and ‘healthy’. Their Olympic marketing has been proven to be the most successful marketing efforts so far.

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