The archive · Marketing & Growth · Product decision · 2018
Maxam and White Rabbit's milk-candy lip balm sells out in seconds, resold at 200 yuan
Maxam packages its new lip balm as an oversized White Rabbit candy — 920 sets vanish in seconds and the crossover becomes the year's template.
Maxam (美加净) · White Rabbit (大白兔)
What it had to solve
Maxam, Shanghai Jahwa's hand-care leader, was entering the lip-care category in 2018 and needed a breakthrough for a market crowded with foreign brands — something that was simultaneously a product statement, a traffic driver for its Tmall store, and a conversation starter.
How it works
In September 2018, Maxam (美加净), the established hand-care brand of Shanghai Jahwa (上海家化), was entering lip care with a new 'Shike' (时刻) series and needed attention for an unfamiliar category. Its partner agency INCRE (英瑞达) proposed a crossover with White Rabbit (大白兔), the well-known milk candy of Guan Sheng Yuan (冠生园): a limited-edition lip balm that looked, smelled and unwrapped like the candy itself.
The product was engineered to evoke the candy's memory: a red-white-blue-black wrapper identical to the candy, a twisted opening, milk essence in the formula, and food-grade plant oils to keep it a genuine lip balm rather than a novelty. Packaging and scent carried the explanation, so the campaign could avoid long copy and rely on nostalgia.
The release was sequenced as a leak-and-rumor campaign: on September 3 a Weibo user found the product's regulatory filing, beauty and video KOLs amplified packaging 'spy shots', and from September 6 mainstream outlets from CCTV and Xinhua to Eastern TV joined in. Hundreds of media mentions turned a product launch into a national story before a single sale.
When the 920-set pre-sale opened on September 20 at 78 yuan for two, it sold out in seconds. A 20,000-piece restock the next day at 80 yuan sold out within three minutes. Resellers listed sticks above 200 yuan, monitored exposure passed 250 million, and the case won the 2018 Tmall Golden Makeup Award and an annual creative-crossover prize. The result showed that nostalgia plus scarcity can make a 3-gram product the year's marketing event.
Why it lands
- The product translated a taste memory into a new category, so the wrapper and scent did the positioning instead of an ad.
- Two national heritage brands gave the story authenticity that foreign collaborations could not claim.
- Scarcity was built in: a small first batch turned a lip balm into a collectible, and resale prices became free news.
- The social-first sequence — filing leak, KOL coverage, mass media, then pre-sale — compressed a full campaign into three weeks.
What it did
The first 920 sets (78 yuan for two sticks) sold out in seconds; a 20,000-piece follow-up batch at 80 yuan for two was gone within three minutes. Resale listings climbed past 200 yuan a stick, monitored online exposure exceeded 250 million, and the product won the 2018 Tmall Golden Makeup Award and an annual creative-crossover prize.
What you can take
A heritage brand's strongest asset is the taste memory people already carry: moving that sensory memory into a new category does the positioning, packaging and PR at once — if the product delivers it.
Since then
Maxam (美加净) kept restocking and ran another White Rabbit (大白兔) pre-sale before Double 11 to pull traffic to its Tmall flagship, and the product sold through multiples of the original plan. The format became the template for China's heritage-brand crossover wave. Shanghai Jahwa (上海家化) had already tested crossovers like the Liushen (六神) x RIO cocktail, and after the lip balm's success, 'national-brand x national-brand' collaborations became a standard playbook across snacks, drinks and cosmetics for years.
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