Heytea Answered Lisa's Unpaid Photo With a BOGO. Answer Your Fans That Fast.

In July 2025, Lisa from Blackpink posted a photo of herself in a Ferrari in Beverly Hills. A Heytea matcha sat in the cupholder. Nobody paid her for it, and nobody from Heytea was in the car.

Heytea's answer was fast and cheap. It ran a buy-one-get-one on its matcha, fans started calling it the "Lisa Drink," and MediaPost reports that many locations sold out within hours.

On October 15, about 15 months after that photo, the two made it official. Lisa and Heytea launched a global collaboration built on Heytea's Mango Coconut Sticky Rice drink, a nod to her Thai roots. In the U.S. it runs for three months in Heytea's stores (there are more than 45 of them), with a $3.99 add-on for a sticker plus a pin or keychain. Chen Hao, Heytea's vice president of public relations and communications, said the collaboration "didn't start in a meeting room" and that "it started with an organic moment."

Heytea did it in the right order

Most brands run a celebrity deal backwards. They pick a famous name, negotiate for months, pay for the post, then hope the fans care. Heytea had the fans first. The customers named the drink. The contract came last, after a year of people ordering something they'd already nicknamed.

You won't get Lisa. You can copy the BOGO. It was a fast, cheap, specific answer to something a customer did on her own, sent while the photo was still moving.

A recording studio in Chicago wanted a fridge

I ran Topo Chico's U.S. social starting in 2013. On May 5, 2017, a recording studio in Chicago wrote to the brand's contact address with the subject line "A Topo Chico Fridge! WHAT!?" They'd seen an Instagram Story of somebody's office with a Topo Chico fridge in it, and they wanted one too. Nobody asked them to write. The brand had already shipped the same person a case of Grapefruit Topo Chico, and she said it went fast.

The email got forwarded to me on a Monday afternoon. I answered that night: "The studio appears to be legit. If we have a refrigerator available for them, I'd recommend it."

In February 2019 a small tech company in East Austin turned out to be big fans of the brand, with influential people coming through its office every week. It was outside the marketing plan. I didn't wait for a plan. "I ran to HEB yesterday and bought 12 cases of Topo with limes, lemons, a cutting board and a paring knife," I wrote to the client, and I'd delivered it to their office that morning. They were "already thrilled with the brand."

I asked the client for a real fridge. The 12 cases did their work the next morning. The fridge ran on corporate time. March 19 came, four weeks later, and I was still emailing to ask where it was.

The fast, small answer is what the fan remembers. The big official thing is nice when it shows up. I've written before about how that account grew with no paid influencers, and this habit was a big part of it.

What a small food or beverage brand should do this week

Find the unprompted mentions. Check tagged posts, untagged photos of your product, reviews and DMs every day. Search your brand name and any nickname customers use on Instagram, TikTok and Threads. If you already run social through the comment section, add this to the same daily pass.

Decide the yes list before anyone asks. A case of product. A discount code for that person's followers. A repost with credit. A BOGO on the exact item in the photo. Write it down so whoever runs your social can ship the case without waiting on a sign-off.

Answer inside 48 hours. A reply two weeks later is a thank-you note.

Use the customers' name for it. Fans called it the "Lisa Drink," and Heytea let that stand. If your regulars have a nickname for your product or an order hack, put it on the menu board, in the caption and on the sell sheet.

Sign the contract last. If someone has posted your product for free for a year, that's the person worth paying. It's the same logic as rewarding the fans you already have before you rent new ones, and it's an organic social media strategy you can run with one person and a few cases of product.

If you're vetting a food and beverage marketing agency, ask what they'd send a fan inside 48 hours and who has to approve it. If the answer involves a committee, keep looking.

Building that fast-answer system is part of the organic social work I do for a handful of food and beverage brands. If your fans are posting you and nobody's answering, DM me.