Luckin Coffee's New Biluo Zhichun Latte Featuring Lu Xianren as Ambassador Criticized?! The Reason Is Actually...

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Controversy Around Luckin's New Launch

Recently, Luckin's new product has been heavily criticized, and the reason surprisingly lies with the product's recommender, its spokesperson. Looking through the comment sections of several posts about the new product, the controversy comes down to two points: why hire a male model for International Women's Day on March 8, and why spend big money on a relatively unknown model as an endorser?

Those two points led to other complaints netizens argued about: new products keep getting more expensive, and if there is money to hire an unknown model, why not use it to issue more coupons?

Luckin's Spring-Themed New Product

Back to the product itself. This time Luckin's new "Biluozhichun Latte" launched on March 6, themed around spring, when everything is in full bloom. Alongside floral-flavored drinks like many other coffee brands, Luckin also introduced a tea-coffee series this year and invited male model Lu Xianren as its spokesperson.

You may not have a deep impression of Lu Xianren, but most people have probably seen his videos, in which he turns readily available materials into all kinds of high-fashion garments and uses the mountains as his runway.

Because of his persistence, passion, and innate sense of fashion, he quickly drew the attention of the global fashion industry and was invited to walk at Paris Fashion Week, quite an inspirational story.

Luckin invited Lu Xianren as spokesperson because in his mountain runway shows he perfectly combines nature with fashion, which aligns well with the tone of this new tea-coffee product, so they brought him back to nature to shoot the endorsement photos.

Controversy and Backlash

Coincidentally, two days after the launch came International Women's Day on March 8. Most netizens therefore believed the new product had been launched specifically for the occasion and were very dissatisfied with Luckin's decision to hire a male model, causing significant backlash.

Although Luckin's intention in inviting Lu Xianren was simply to match the nature-and-fashion theme, the online controversy was too intense. So on March 8, Luckin invited Gao Ye, who played the "sister-in-law" role in the TV drama "The Knockout," to be a one-day spokesperson, and made small bouquets from spring-season paper bags to wish all women a happy holiday.

Netizens remained dissatisfied, though, with sentiments like "Wouldn't it be better to make everything 3.8 yuan or issue 3.8 yuan coupons?" and continued dissatisfaction with the male-model endorsement.

In previous launches, Luckin's new products generated strong discussion, but this time few netizens evaluated the drinks themselves. Instead, more people felt the posters were disrespectful to women or that the prices were too high, taking advantage of loyal customers.

Many who tried the new product mentioned that after drinking it in the morning they stayed awake all day, and urged Luckin not to launch beverages with such high caffeine content next time.

Luckin is really having a tough time.

Image source: Internet.

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