On 18 June, Molly Tea (茉莉奶白) launched a collaboration with the hit otome game Love and Deepspace. Otome games centre on romantic storylines with fictional male love interests, making them fertile ground for fandom-driven marketing.
The collaboration – they’re calling it Love Leaves No Blank Spaces (爱不留白) – builds on the game’s five male protagonists. Five limited-edition drinks are introduced, each featuring bespoke packaging with one of these heartthrobs splashed across the front.
Employees have even taken to Rednote to complain about the relentless workload
Since launch day, they’ve been swimming in orders. Employees have even taken to Rednote to complain about the relentless workload. By almost every measure, the collaboration has been a runaway success. That success was the result of some very careful strategy on the part of Molly Tea, and a stroke of pure luck.
More than licensed merchandise
The campaign marks the first time Love and Deepspace has featured all five male leads in a single bubble tea collaboration. The novelty of bringing the full cast together being the fuel for flames of enthusiasm among the game’s largely female fanbase.
Alongside standard collaboration items such as branded cups, paper bags, cup sleeves and PVC card holders, the campaign introduced a more… umm, creative… collectible: water-reactive cards – coated with a special finish so that they change when wet, revealing the characters’ muscular bodies as their shirts disappear right before your eyes.
Careful planning and a twist of good luck
Part of the collab’s success lies in the effort that Molly Tea pumped in. Its mini-program was updated with in-jokes for users. Its staff were trained to recognise the game’s characters. They even went as far as implementing a set of rules to dictate how the collaboration would run. This all points to the fact that Molly Tea had a good idea of how to play the deeper notes of fandom. They weren’t simply licensing an IP.
Molly Tea didn’t script the collaboration’s biggest moments
In spite of all that effort, the campaign’s biggest viral moment was unexpected. It came through – of all things – delivery riders, when customers began sharing screenshots and videos of couriers, teeing off jokes about them transporting the heartthrobs right to their door. Memes did the rounds with lines like ‘The bag is broken, but the man inside is fine’ and ‘Do you want me to deliver you a husband as well?’
The jokes spread well beyond the game’s existing fanbase, turning routine takeaway deliveries into social media content and drawing in crowds beyond the collaboration’s initial reach. So, what does all this teach us?
The Dao View: Molly Tea can teach us all something with their Love and Deepspace collaboration
China’s biggest licensed collaborations increasingly succeed because they are designed for communities. Love and Deepspace is built around forming romantic relationships with fictional male characters. Its players, in turn, have exceptionally strong emotional attachments to its cast.
Molly Tea recognised that simply printing popular characters on cups would not be enough. Instead, every touchpoint was designed to reward fans, from collectible merchandise to staff training and even playful copywriting. The resulting user-generated content wasn’t driven by influencers or paid media.
Molly Tea didn’t script the collaboration’s biggest moments. They came from fans and the delivery riders who became part of the experience. That viral moment may have looked like a stroke of luck, but Molly Tea had picked, planned and pulled off the kind of collaboration that would allow it to happen. Success in collaboration doesn’t come from borrowing the most popular IP, but understanding the community behind it well enough to give them something worth talking about.
