Why did the Luckin Coffee sticker game upset customers?

Luckin Coffee launched a scratch-off sticker promotion with the character brand Xiaolan and His Friends, giving buyers of two drinks a limited sticker with a scratch area and a chance to win a free cup. Stores were set to give away 100,000 free coffees, and orders surged. The campaign backfired when employees at some locations held flashlights behind the stickers to read results before customers scratched them.

The design flaw sat in the coating itself: a thin scratch layer lets bright light pass through and reveal the printed result, so staff could identify winners in advance. Customers who noticed the trickery complained on social media. The episode shows that reward campaigns built on chance need coatings and procedures that keep the outcome hidden, or the promise of fair play stops feeling real.

Luckin Coffee recently launched a scratch-card sticker game in collaboration with "Xiaolan and His Friends." Consumers who buy two drinks get a limited-edition sticker with a scratch-off area, giving them a chance to win free coffee. However, after the campaign went live, employees at some stores used a flashlight to peer through the back of the scratch-off area and learn the winning results in advance, even "cheating" in front of customers, sparking consumer dissatisfaction. The article explores how this marketing campaign, while delivering a bit of everyday joy, also frustrated some customers due to design flaws and execution problems, and reflects on how brands can balance fun and fairness in reward campaigns.

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Young people all understand that "a pie falling from the sky" is nearly impossible in real life, yet they still hope that one day they might become that one-in-ten-thousand lucky winner. It is precisely this beautiful longing for the unknown that has made scratch cards a way for young people to pin their hopes on something, and playing scratch cards has thus evolved into a trend.

That said, most young people actually have a clear sense of their own luck, and the odds of getting rich overnight from a single scratch card are simply too low. So young people who play scratch cards mostly want to experience the stress relief and thrill of scratching off the coating. If Lady Luck really does smile on them, that happiness instantly doubles.

Luckin captured young people's desire for a little everyday happiness and added a scratch-card mechanic to the collaboration with "Xiaolan and His Friends" that launched just yesterday.

Unlike previous collaboration campaigns, this partnership with "Xiaolan and His Friends" did not include themed paper bags or cup sleeves. Buying two drinks only gets you one limited-edition sticker with an extra square in the bottom right corner. After customers receive the sticker and scratch off the coating, they may turn out to be a lucky winner, or they may just be along for the ride.

It is understood that Luckin's campaign will give away 100,000 free cups of coffee, so as soon as it launched, netizens rushed to place orders. The moment the sticker was in hand, they scratched off the coating to see whether they were that one-in-one-hundred-thousand lucky winner.

Netizens who won posted about their little stroke of luck that day, sharing their good fortune and happiness with others. For those who did not win, Luckin also left a blessing in the small square, so participants would not feel too disappointed.

But there were still quite a few disappointed netizens — not because they did not win, but because they were displeased by the actions of some Luckin employees.

Netizens pointed out on social platforms that Luckin's scratch-card sticker had a loophole: by shining a flashlight through the back of the scratch-off area, you could see the text beneath the coating. In other words, you could know the result before scratching it off.

As a result, many Luckin employees, perhaps out of curiosity, used this method to find out in advance whether the stickers in the store had winning prizes. Some employees even "cheated" in front of customers, causing consumers' good mood to plummet. Some consumers understood employees' curiosity about wanting to know the results, but did not approve of employees checking the winning results in front of customers, saying Luckin "should just focus on researching new products" and "if you can't afford to play, don't set up this kind of reward."

Scratch cards are like opening blind boxes — the main point is the feeling of revealing the unknown when you scratch off the coating. Whether the result is good or bad certainly matters, but for netizens who just want to experience the fun of a scratch card, the experience of playing matters more than the result.

The extra scratch-off area on Luckin's sticker was meant to add a bit of everyday fun for Luckin devotees and to give something back to customers. But when designing it, more thought should have been given to what would follow, to avoid cheating behavior like this, so that consumers can be treated fairly and accept any result, good or bad.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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