What Does the Shanghai Auntie Poster Stunt Teach About Coffee Knowledge?

Fresh fruit tea chain Auntie Shanghai, which operates 5,000 stores, posted ten consecutive 'I don't want to work anymore' posters on its official Weibo from November 6. Employees and departments aired give-up style copy, drawing wide discussion. On November 11 the brand revealed the campaign was teaser marketing for its new Fresh Stewed Pear Series.

The posters borrowed a slacking-off meme that resonates with young workers, so the reveal landed with an audience already engaged. For anyone following coffee knowledge and beverage marketing, the episode shows how a tea brand can use everyday online humor to move closer to consumers before a product launch.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style) For more specialty coffee beans, please add the personal WeChat of Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee), WeChat ID: qjcoffeex Auntie Shanghai, a fresh fruit tea brand with 5,000 stores, recently posted ten consecutive "I don't want to work anymore" themed posters on its official Weibo, from frontline employees to management, from operations to design and customer service planning, with various departments expressing their "throwing in the towel" emotions, sparking heated discussion among netizens. Is this wave of operations a collective slacking off or is there something else behind it? On November 11, the mystery was revealed — it turned out to be building hype for the new product "Fresh Stewed Pear Series." This article will take you through the whole story of this suspense marketing campaign and explore how tea beverage brands can leverage young people's hot memes to get closer to consumers.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style)

For more specialty coffee beans, please add the personal WeChat of Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee), WeChat ID: qjcoffeex

Auntie Shanghai's official Weibo suddenly announced "we're done"? A fresh fruit tea brand with strong growth momentum and 5,000 stores nationwide — could it really be throwing in the towel? What exactly happened? Is it slacking off?

Recently, the topic of Auntie Shanghai "quitting" has been wildly shared across major social platforms. It all started on November 6, when Auntie Shanghai's official Weibo posted 10 consecutive "I don't want to work anymore" themed posters. The poster content was indeed full of a "slacking off" vibe, with give-up-style copy paired with text in various colors, from newcomers to senior management, from the operations department to the design department, and to customer service, planning, and other departments — all conveying the emotion of not wanting to work anymore, looking as if they were about to go on a collective strike!

This slacking-off meme combined with cathartic copywriting struck a strong chord and emotional resonance with young people in the tea-drinking and working masses. Many netizens said they deeply related: "Isn't this just a true portrayal of us workers? I also want to say I quit, but I don't have the guts."

Some netizens remained clear-headed, curiously guessing in the comments that Auntie Shanghai wasn't really "slacking off," but perhaps promoting its new product: "Could the new product be called Sugarcane? Could the new product be called 'I Don't Want to Work Anymore'?"

It wasn't until November 11 that Auntie finally gave her response: It's not "quitting" [gàn] — it's "quitting" [gān], because there's 「pear」 to nourish me! Many netizens then suddenly realized — it was to launch the new "Fresh Stewed Pear Series" products! At the end of that post, Auntie Shanghai also @-ed all workers, calling out: Rectify the workplace, Auntie will "nourish" you! Let's all tell our companies we're quitting [gàn] together!

One has to admit that this kind of creative marketing is indeed quite effective — proactively creating topics, building consumer anticipation in the early stage, leveraging netizens' "watching the show" mentality to attract a large crowd of onlookers, with the suspense stimulating consumers' curiosity and making everyone want to follow the subsequent developments.

Speaking of creative marketing, nowadays most creative marketing inspiration basically comes from the various fancy memes among young people. Every so often, a new meme pops up among young people, and a big trend has long swept into the tea beverage circle — that is the rise of keeping cardboard box dogs. Today's young people are trending toward placing "fierce dogs" made from cardboard boxes at their dormitory doors as guards, and many online posts feature photos with captions like "I have a dog now, I don't want to talk to people who don't have dogs anymore." As of now, the playback volume of "cardboard dog" related topics on Douyin has exceeded 200 million.

Before people even understood the meme, tea beverage brands had already jumped on board — Gu Ming, Shu Yi, Mixue Bingcheng are all doing it. Among them, Luckin is the "most competitive," actually making a cardboard deer, which earned 17,000 likes on Xiaohongshu. Luckin said, "Who still keeps dogs nowadays? With a little deer, I don't want to play with colleagues who don't have a little deer anymore."

Whether it's Auntie Shanghai, or Luckin, Mixue Bingcheng, Gu Ming, Shu Yi, and so on... these frontline tea beverage brands can pick up on any meme — you could say none of them miss out when it comes to hot memes, always maintaining high activity among young people. In the attention economy era, always pay attention to young people, join in whenever there's a fresh way to play — only by "playing together" can there be more marketing creativity.

Although in the past two years, young people's ideas can be said to "update on a daily basis," directly making the tea beverage industry exclaim "we can't figure it out" — but it doesn't matter if you can't figure it out, just join in. This can effectively close the distance between brands and their core consumer groups, making them feel noticed, letting them see the brand's "cute side," and the brand can thus gain more exposure.

Image source: Internet

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