Business success

In August, milk tea brand Naixue joined hands with the Harry Potter movie series to promote a themed beverage with packaging featuring scenes and characters from the films.

After seeing the co-branded promotion, a woman from Guangdong province, 25, who calls herself Qiu, bought the drink and "immediately decided to transform the brown, plaid-patterned packaging with the Harry Potter English logo into a handbag for one of my friends, who is a Harry Potter fan," she said.

"I didn't want to waste such fabulous and high-quality packaging. It deserves to be further developed to become more useful," she said.

Harry Potter-related products, such as toys and water bottles, can be pricey. "But the handcrafted upcycled bag from the co-branded business was affordable and met the preference and needs of my friend," she said.

In other words, co-branded promotions have provided fans of IPs with easier channels to collect IP-related products while stimulating consumer spending, she added.

"It's a successful business," said Xiaogezi. "Milk tea by itself is not considered important, as many consumers desire co-branded packaging with logos or designs, and relevant gifts such as cotton bags, keychains and stickers."

According to Kamen, a media portal focusing on China's beverages sector, 231 co-branded marketing campaigns took place among 22 mainstream beverage brands in 2023.

Specifically, cartoon-related co-branding promotions took up the largest share with 61 percent, while TV drama and computer game co-branding tied for second with 17 percent each.

The IPs that brands select, along with emotional value or chemistry stimulated by co-branding, have become critical factors for consumers' purchasing decisions, effectively promoting sales growth, Kamen said.

Naming co-branding a norm in the market, it noted that the strategy has also become a golden channel for many brands to awaken dormant users and expand potential ones.

Zhu Danpeng, an independent food and beverage analyst based in Guangzhou, once lauded the co-branding campaigns, saying, "It's a good marketing strategy and an inevitable trend, especially among younger generations."

However, he emphasized that regardless of the business promotions, the essence of catering consumption should always be the products and services themselves.