Introduction:When the well-known tea chain brand Mixue Ice Cream & Tea subtly serialized the short story “Snow King Sells Coffee in Ancient Times” on its order receipts, this creative move not only successfully captured consumers’ attention but also sparked a wave of “chapter-chasing” fever on social media. This article delves into the cross-time-and-space coffee-themed story and explores how the brand leveraged such a small detail as a receipt to create a viral marketing campaign, offering inspiration to both coffee and beverage businesses.
Recently, Mixue Ice Cream & Tea quietly launched a serialized novel titled “Snow King Sells Coffee in Ancient Times” on the receipts provided in-store, generating widespread discussion and active chapter-chasing among consumers and netizens. This creative story, centered around the brand’s mascot “Snow King,” is divided into 20 chapters and randomly printed on the paper receipts customers receive when purchasing drinks.
It is understood that many customers, upon receiving their receipts, discovered densely packed text at the bottom — turns out to be captivating chapters detailing Snow King and his companions traveling back in time and running a coffee shop in an alternate era. This novel presentation led many to take photos of their receipts and share them online, further fueling discussions on social platforms.
As more customers got involved, netizens began sharing the chapters they received in the comments section, exchanging missing parts with one another, creating a fun phenomenon dubbed “online chapter-patching.” Some joked that you didn’t even need to buy a drink — you could piece together the entire story for free just by “scraping together” bits from the comments, which quickly propelled the campaign to the top of the trending charts.
The content of the novel was carefully planned by the brand, centered around Snow King and blending elements of time travel and business management. Notably, at the end of Chapter 20, it specially states “The ending of the story is up to you,” inviting readers to use their imagination and participate in the creative process, thereby deepening interaction with consumers. The brand’s official team also collected screenshots of receipts shared by netizens, compiled all 20 chapters, and published them on official social media channels so that readers who couldn’t collect all the chapters could still read the full story at once.
According to staff at Mixue Ice Cream & Tea outlets, the campaign has been gradually rolled out since September 17. The chapters on the receipts are printed randomly, and as long as the store is operating normally and the printer isn’t out of paper or malfunctioning, customers have the chance to get one of the chapters when purchasing a drink. This random distribution method has also added to the fun of collecting and exchanging chapters among readers.
It’s worth mentioning that this is not the first time Mixue Ice Cream & Tea has printed festive greetings on receipts, but this is the first time the brand has used its IP character as the protagonist to launch a serialized novel. Staff revealed that this creative campaign came to a close on October 6 with the release of the final chapter, and starting October 8, receipts at some outlets have returned to the standard format, with no more novel content printed on them.
Although it’s not yet certain whether the brand will launch similar marketing campaigns in the future, the success of this one has shown the industry that even a simple paper receipt, when used creatively, can become a powerful tool for building emotional connections with consumers. For coffee or beverage brands, finding ways to deliver surprises in the small details will be an important marketing challenge going forward.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
