On 18 September, HeyTea released an internal letter to its partners. Titled “Create a differentiated brand and products for users”, the letter declares that the competition in the tea industry has created homogeneous products that are draining interest from consumers, creating fatigue and saturation. The brand will create more differentiated products and branding activation and say no to “homogenous products and involution of low prices”. Involution (内卷) here means fruitless effort for competition’s sake.
HeyTea has recently upped its game in both products and marketing. Other than being Mooncake Day, Mid-autumn is also a traditional time to celebrate the harvest of crops. To celebrate the rice crop, HeyTea released a new drink that celebrates two rice crops from two origins on 16 September.
Named “Two Cities – Osmanthus Sweet Rice Wine” the new drink incorporates osmanthus-flavoured sweet rice wine, or jiuniang into osmanthus-infused green tea. The sweet wine is a traditional dessert, or sweet soup made from rice, in HeyTea’s case, rice from two origins, Wuchang, Heilongjiang and Huaiyuan, Anhui. A Mid-autumn lantern is also included in set menus. While not an IP collaboration, HeyTea is clearly exploring seasonal and regional campaigns that set them apart from the competition.
The letter also discusses not expanding for expansion’s sake and controlling the quality of branches. HeyTea’s expansion overseas is also proving that there is a shift in the chain of emphasis. Creative campaigns like the opening of its Paris branch during the Olympics and creative products like the “slimming bottles” are both experiments in differentiation.
The letter propelled the Weibo, China’s Twitter-equivalent, topic “HeyTea partner internal letter” to number 29 on the Hot Search list, with 22.56 million views. Some feel that HeyTea’s original high-end positioning has worked better and it’s nice to see variety in the market. However, others also feel that there might not be enough room for differentiation in the tea sector. It’s certainly interesting to see more innovative products and marketing, from HeyTea or anyone who follows the strategy.
