Why Do Coffee Brand Promotions Put Gifts Before the Drink?
Starbucks, Manner and Luckin have all rolled out limited-edition merchandise with purchase, from a small wooden fish ornament to a Pudong Art Museum canvas tote and Christmas blind-box pins. The items are gift-only and never sold outright, and buyers order drinks mainly to obtain them. Attention shifts from the cup to the packaging.
In a single week at least three chain brands launched such campaigns, and the pace keeps accelerating. Trend-aware merchandise becomes a talking point the moment it drops, so collectors joke about drinking enormous volumes to complete a set, and some no longer weigh whether the coffee tastes good. For the coffee industry, the brand war increasingly looks like a design contest for promotional goods.
Recently, a wave of buy-one-get-one-free merchandise promotions has swept through the coffee industry, with brands such as Starbucks, Manner, and Luckin all rolling out limited-edition trinkets—from wooden fish ornaments to co-branded canvas tote bags and blind-box pins—drawing huge numbers of consumers to place orders just to get the freebies. This "gift-only, never-for-sale" promotional model has gradually turned the coffee brand wars into a design competition for merchandise. While consumers chase after limited-edition giveaways, their attention to the drinks themselves is fading. This article reviews recent buy-and-gift campaigns from various brands and analyzes the consumer psychology and industry impact behind this phenomenon.
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Nobody quite knows when it started, but the standard tactic coffee brands use to attract customers has become "spend a certain amount and get a limited-edition freebie." Take this week alone—at least three chain brands launched buy-and-gift campaigns one after another.
Starbucks rolled out a promotion where buying any two drinks gets you a small wooden fish ornament. This adorable-looking wooden fish quickly sparked heated discussion on social media, with many netizens downloading an app they normally barely used just to place an order, then snapping photos and sharing them the moment the item arrived, tapping the wooden fish and playing along with the "merit +1" meme.
Manner, meanwhile, partnered with the Pudong Art Museum to release a co-branded canvas tote bag. Its strongly artistic design attracted a large crowd of consumers—even overloading on caffeine couldn't stop their enthusiasm for ordering.
Luckin's Christmas blind-box pins were equally popular. The blind-box mechanism combined with holiday exclusivity led many collectors to joke self-deprecatingly that "you'd have to drink yourself into a giant to complete the set."
The pace of new buy-and-gift campaigns from various brands is getting faster and faster. As long as a merchandise item incorporates current trendy elements, it becomes a talking point the moment it hits the market. For some netizens who are keen on collecting brand merchandise, whether the coffee tastes good no longer matters—what they care about more is what the new limited-edition giveaway looks like. To get the item they want, they'll deliberately buy designated combo sets, and some even place repeated orders just to rack up extra freebies. Once they get the giveaway, they immediately snap a photo and post it to social media, unwittingly completing a round of publicity for the brand.
Brands, well aware of young people's "buy the casket for the pearl" style of consumer psychology, have all joined the "giveaways only, never for sale" promotional battle. What should have been competition over product quality and price has been forcibly turned into a contest of merchandise design.
Competition in the chain coffee market has reached a fever pitch, and the rat race keeps deepening. It's understandable that brands use co-branded IPs, buy-and-gift campaigns, and other tactics to boost their visibility and drive sales. But if this goes on, what consumers truly care about may no longer be the flavor and quality of the coffee itself, but rather what new freebies have come out this time around.
What do you think about the endless stream of "giveaways only, never for sale" campaigns from various brands?
Image source: Xiaohongshu
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