The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2021
Wanglaoji lets buyers swap 'Wang' for their own surname — X老吉 cans sell out
For CNY 2021, Wanglaoji printed customers' family names on its cans — 'Li老吉', 'Zhang老吉' — selling 179,880 cans in week one.
Wanglaoji (王老吉)
What it had to solve
Wanglaoji is a red-canned herbal drink whose brand promise is ji (吉, good fortune), and whose biggest sales moment is Chinese New Year gift-giving; distributors say the season can bring about 30% of annual sales. In early 2021, COVID rules kept many people from travelling home for the holiday, weakening that reunion-gift moment, so the brand needed the drink itself to carry a personal blessing across distance.
How it works
Wanglaoji's red cans of herbal tea are built around one word: ji (吉), meaning auspiciousness, and its biggest selling season is Chinese New Year, when the drink is bought by the box as a gift. In early 2021, pandemic restrictions stopped many people from travelling home for the holiday, cutting the reunion and visiting scenes where the brand normally sells. Wanglaoji needed a way to make a mass-market drink feel personal enough to be sent as a blessing.
The creative leap was to treat the brand name as a blank. Wanglaoji already ended in 'Wang', the most common Chinese surname, so the company let buyers replace it with their own: order a case printed 'Li老吉', 'Zhou老吉' or 'Zhang老吉' through a WeChat mini-program, and the can carries the buyer's family into the brand's good-fortune wish. The parent group later confirmed it had applied for dozens of 'X老吉' surname trademarks from February 2021 to protect the format.
The launch was layered across every channel a Chinese New Year gift moves through: celebrity ambassador posts and 38 influencers on Weibo, replies from nine other brand accounts, subway and street ads in ten cities, Kuaishou live-streaming and WeChat Moments ads that pointed straight back to the mini-program. Each customized case became user-generated content, since a box printed with someone's real surname is a natural thing to photograph for friends and family.
The results made the case a reference point for Chinese seasonal marketing. The agencies' award entry reports 179,880 cans sold in the first week with a single-day peak of 38,328, surname-can sales growing 113-fold, and 410,000 households ordering across the four-week season; CNR reported supply falling behind demand. The topic #王老吉姓氏罐# reached No. 3 on Weibo's hot list on 25 January 2021 and drew 230 million reads.
Why it lands
- A surname is the deepest identity marker a Chinese customer owns, so the personalization is instantly legible: the can literally says the buyer's family name.
- Ordering through a WeChat mini-program kept friction low and made every delivered case a piece of shareable user-generated content.
- Because each can named a real family, the product fit gifting at a distance precisely when lockdowns kept relatives apart.
- Trademark filings from February 2021 showed the idea was a lasting service line rather than a one-off packaging stunt.
- The commercial jump — week-one sales of 179,880 cans and a 113-fold increase — proved the novelty converted, not just trended.
What it did
According to the agencies' award entry, the surname can sold 179,880 units in its first week with a single-day peak of 38,328, surname-can sales multiplied 113 times to make it the top seller among the brand's custom-can products, and 410,000 households ordered custom cans across the four-week CNY season, covering about 30% of common Chinese surnames. The topic #王老吉姓氏罐# ranked No. 3 on Weibo's hot list on 25 January 2021 and accumulated 230 million reads, while CNR reported that supply could not keep up with demand.
What you can take
Find the element a customer already owns — their family name — and let it rewrite the brand name: the product stops being a commodity and becomes a personalized gift people photograph and send.
Since then
The surname can became an annual platform: CNR reported in July 2021 that Wanglaoji described custom cans as a core service and filed 'X老吉' surname trademarks plus occasion phrases such as 新婚大吉. A surname-totem edition followed in late 2021, and for the 2022 New Year Wanglaoji reran the format with totem designs for 115 surnames, added about 100 more surnames on 6 January, hit No. 1 in Tmall's daily beverage sales on 3 January, and by 10 January exceeded 100,000 monthly cases on Tmall with production stretched to about 20 working days.
Sources
- 王老吉「姓氏罐」，大吉大利过新年 (Wanglaoji Surname Can: a great-auspicious New Year) — award case entry
- 王老吉注册“新婚大吉”等商标惹争议 公司称发力定制服务 (Wanglaoji's trademark filings signal a push into custom cans)
- “姓氏罐+快手”VS“定制罐+央视”，王老吉、加多宝春节营销战开打 (Surname cans plus Kuaishou vs custom cans plus CCTV: the CNY marketing duel)
- 王老吉“山寨”自己！盗版都不敢这么狂 (Wanglaoji 'knocks itself off' — even pirates wouldn't dare)
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