How does this launch add to coffee knowledge about brand partnerships?
Starbucks is releasing a League of Legends: Wild Rift gift box themed around the champion Seraphine, going on sale at stores nationwide on January 10. Buyers also get a chance to win a limited-edition skin tied to the 2023 Lunar New Year. It is the latest step in the chain's long-running collaboration strategy.
That strategy spans years and many product categories, including mugs, thermoses, stored-value cards and apparel, each launch drawing crowds of fans. For readers tracking coffee knowledge, the release shows how a coffee brand leans on game and IP partnerships rather than new drinks alone to stay in the conversation.
Starbucks has once again crossed over with a collaboration, this time targeting League of Legends: Wild Rift! Starting January 10, a mobile game gift box themed around the champion Seraphine will go on sale at stores nationwide, and buyers will also have a chance to win a 2023 Chinese New Year limited-edition skin. This is another new attempt by Starbucks on the collaboration path, continuing its years-long strategy of partnering with different brands and IPs. As a trendsetter for collaborations in the coffee industry, Starbucks launches different collaboration merchandise series almost every year, covering categories such as mugs, thermoses, stored-value cards, and apparel, each time triggering a buying frenzy among fans. This article sorts out the specific information about this collaboration, the development history of League of Legends, and the current state and trends of collaboration marketing in the coffee industry. For more specialty coffee bean information, follow Front Street Coffee.
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This move really makes people say they never saw it coming! Starbucks actually teamed up with League of Legends: Wild Rift. As a veteran player, I can't help but feel that Starbucks is provoking me: Is that all? You still can't take me down?
According to information released on Starbucks' official website, starting January 10, a mobile game gift box themed around the League of Legends character Seraphine will be stocked in stores nationwide. It officially goes on sale on the 10th! And buyers also have a chance to win a 2023 Chinese New Year limited-edition skin! Just for that look alone, I have to get a mobile game gift box no matter what. Carry it out during the New Year, and the festive vibe is instantly maxed out!
But seriously, isn't the main function of this phone bag to hold red envelopes during the New Year? I saw a netizen comment jokingly on social media: This is here to "rob" money, isn't it 😭!
League of Legends launched on overseas servers in October 2009, while the Chinese server opened in September 2011. It was developed by the American company Riot Games and is operated in mainland China by Tencent Games as an agent. It is a hero battle MOBA competitive online game. On its tenth anniversary, the official team released a new LOGO and revealed that more than eight million players are online simultaneously worldwide every day.
After more than a decade of development, this game has long accumulated hundreds of millions of players, annual revenue reaching billions of US dollars, and viewership for a single-season esports event surpassing 100 million. At 10 a.m. on October 8, 2021, the Chinese server of League of Legends: Wild Rift also officially launched!
Actually, Starbucks collaborating on merchandise is hardly the first time. As an industry benchmark among chain coffee brands, Starbucks was among the first to start product collaborations years ago, constantly trying to cooperate with different brands and resources in various forms.
Almost every year, Starbucks can be seen launching a different collaboration series, involving a very wide range of categories, including mugs, thermoses (bottles), stored-value cards, T-shirts, pens, and other daily items, and now it has extended into the mobile game field. Although the pricing is not exactly low, each time it still sends the corresponding fan base into a frenzy of buying (for example, this time I'm going to rush to buy too!).
In the past two years, "collaboration" has almost become a standard move in coffee marketing. In the past, collaborations targeted niche circles, but now they have instead become a popular trend. As collaboration formats continue to diversify, consumers' tastes have also matured, and since the internet has made information gaps smaller and smaller, people may have higher expectations when facing increasingly homogenized products.
What matters now is a collaboration playbook of rapid iteration and continuous novelty, and Starbucks has always maintained a clear strategy and steady rhythm in this regard. No matter what form the cooperation takes, as long as it can create a complementary effect rather than simply chasing social media hype, this coffee collaboration model may be able to carve out a different path.
Image source: Internet
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
