The Chinese tea brand Hey Tea, pioneer of “new-style tea”, has appointed the German fitness influencer Pamela Reif as its first official Healthy Lifestyle Advocate.
The partnership follows Hey Tea’s decision last year to publish comprehensive ingredients, nutritional value, and product origin information for 40 of its most popular products. Other tea brands like Chagee have since rolled out similar initiatives in response to an ongoing internet debate in China about whether it is good to drink bubble tea if you are trying to lose weight.
As part of the new brand partnership, Reif recommends five Hey Tea menu options as official healthy options, defined as “real fruit, real tea, no flavourings”. (The promotional material notes that no sugar should be added, as typically when ordering bubble tea you can choose your desired sugar level). Her selection includes the brand’s top-selling drink for five years running and one of the brand’s original beverage creations, the Very Grape Cheezo Tea (多肉葡萄 in Chinese).
Another low-calorie option is the Strawberry Mulberry-Noir Tea (酷黑莓柔), the result of a previous collaboration with the men’s streetwear label FRGMT by Hiroshi Fujiwara, the “godfather of streetwear”. The product saw Hey Tea hit its highest-ever single-day sales in a single store, reaching 2600 cups in one day.
The choice of Pamela Reif as sponsor is clearly targeted at those netizens concerned about the compatibility of weight loss and tea drinking. The ripped German influencer, who often sports a high ponytail and colour-coordinated athleisure in her social media posts, has amassed a huge following in China. Her accounts on Bilibili and Xiaohongshu boast over 11 million subscribers each, and she signed on to endorse Huawei’s latest smartwatch last year.
Reif shared the Hey Tea collaboration via her own Weibo account and even speaks a few words of Chinese in the promotional video. Writing in Chinese, the influencer told fans:
“I’m so glad I learnt about Hey Tea when I first came to China last year. As you all know, I always check the ingredients lists of the products I consume very carefully. I heard that Hey Tea became the first new-style tea brand to publish its nutritional content, so I am honoured to be Hey Tea’s Healthy Lifestyle Advocate.”
