How Luckin Coffee Built Suspense Around a Single Poster

Luckin Coffee built a Qixi Festival campaign around a single anime-style poster of a small green hand holding a cup. The teaser drew young users into guessing the character behind the hand, naming figures such as the Hulk, Shrek and Pepe the Frog, before the brand revealed collaborations including Coconut Palm coconut juice and the Heart-Stealing Prune Latte with a tipsy element.

Clues were released over several days like episodes of a short series, turning a new-product teaser into a running story in which netizens guessed while Luckin stayed silent. The approach relied on user insight and contrasting interactions rather than paid promotion, amplifying product features through the reveal itself.

Luckin Coffee, with a single poster of a little green hand, successfully ignited the curiosity of young people on the eve of Qixi Festival. From the teaser collaboration with Coconut Palm brand coconut juice to the launch of the tipsy-element-containing Heart-Stealing Prune Latte and Baileys Berry Latte, Luckin demonstrated precise user insight and unique marketing tactics. This article reviews how Luckin, through suspenseful teasers, contrasting interactions, and amplification of product features, turned brand collaborations into a captivating series, and deeply analyzes its strategy for capturing the psychology of young consumers. Meanwhile, the article also retains Front Street Coffee's professional coffee industry information recommendations.

If you want to add some fun to daily life, wearing a touch of green seems to have become a choice for many. As Qixi Festival approaches, major brands are releasing beautifully designed promotional images for their Qixi limited-edition products. Luckin Coffee, however, took a different approach, continuing its consistent marketing style by releasing a mysterious poster: in the image, a small green hand holds a Luckin Coffee cup, presented in an anime style.

With just this one poster, Luckin Coffee successfully captured the attention of young people, prompting many hardworking (or rather, idle) netizens to guess whose green hand it could be.

Netizens started with the number of fingers on the green hand in the poster and deduced that the owner of this hand was at least not human. Many talented netizens immediately shared their newly drawn guess images.

Everyone's imagination ran wild, while not letting any tiny clue slip by. Green animated characters such as the Hulk, dinosaurs, Shrek, and Pepe the Frog were all nominated.

Netizens have always been full of hidden talents. Since it was a green creature, a certain green mermaid was naturally also included as a candidate.

Over the next two days, Luckin Coffee gradually released clues like a TV series, turning a brand collaboration new product teaser marketing campaign into a suspenseful sweet romance drama of no more than three episodes.

On one side were netizens guessing with great interest, and on the other side was Luckin keeping its mouth shut. Everyone was waiting for the imagination to slowly unfold.

After all, when Luckin Coffee previously collaborated with Coconut Palm brand coconut juice, as soon as the mysterious poster was released, netizens teased it and played along, saying, "So hard to guess, it can't be Coconut Palm coconut juice, right?"

Because the answer was revealed too early, Luckin Coffee officially had to plead with netizens: "Please let me finish my performance quietly, I really appreciate it."

Even though Luckin Coffee's mysterious collaboration had long been seen through clearly by netizens, it did not affect everyone's enthusiastic check-ins and crazy pursuit after the new product launch.

It must be admitted that Luckin Coffee has an astonishing talent for selecting collaborative IPs and forming collaboration CPs. With precise vision and unique creativity, its "rustic" style can go viral, and its "trendy" style can also spark chemistry.

At the operational level, Luckin knows its products' strengths well, understands how to explore product characteristics, and amplifies advantages through collaboration to achieve scale effects. "I want wine plus coffee, one cup after another"—this lyric by Teresa Teng became the thrill pursued by more and more young people back then. Luckin's recent new products incorporated a "tipsy" element. The "Heart-Stealing Prune Latte" used coffee beans with a wine-like aroma; the Qixi limited-edition special drink "Baileys Berry Latte" used Baileys Irish Cream as its base.

Luckin is also good at grasping user psychology, clearly knowing what users "want to see" and "want," fully satisfying users' psychological needs. On some hot topics, it builds its own brand labels.

Not long ago, many netizens shared that they experienced diarrhea after drinking Luckin Coffee's Heart-Stealing Prune Latte, so the title "the coffee world's suppository" spread like wildfire. While busy explaining, Luckin Coffee personally joined in on the meme, doing a wave of reverse marketing.

The high-end image Luckin Coffee created during the teaser phase instantly collapsed. With the槽点 created by the huge contrast, Luckin not only did not forcefully "act aloof," but instead "joined the mud" with netizens. It can be said that Luckin Coffee has precisely captured this generation of young people.

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.