Lessons Learned: Rethink Your Asian Drink

TL;DR: Back in 2016, I helped launch the “Rethink Your Asian Drink” campaign to raise awareness about the high sugar in boba and other Asian drinks. The goal wasn’t to end boba, but our messaging got muddled and the media jumped on how it was an “anti-boba” campaign. That alienated shop owners, some of whom slammed doors in our faces. Fast forward to today, many shops offer customizable sugar levels, showing progress. Lesson learned: messaging matters, and you need to build with, not against, the communities and businesses you’re trying to influence.

I was recently at a boba shop and was happy to see laminated signage that encouraged customers to select their sugar level: anywhere from 0% to 200%. Yes, I feel semi-diabetic even typing out 200% sugar. Listening in to the folks in line in front of me, it felt like they were deciding between 25% and 50%. 25%, wow!

Take a few steps back to 2016 and modifying the level of sugar in your boba and other tasty Asian drinks was not advertised. I remember clearly a boba shop owner asking me why he would ever want to lower the sugar level and make his drinks taste bad; "you don't succeed as a business by making things taste shitty for your customers." It was much less a question and much more a f you to the campaign.

Back in 2016 I was a part of a coalition of groups pushing for a "Rethink Your Asian Drink" campaign. I was the Director of the API Obesity Prevention Alliance (APIOPA), a nonprofit group focused on addressing upstream issues related to worsening API health (obesity, diabetes, hypertension). Our small/mighty coalition saw the explosion in popularity of newer Asian drinks. You weren't just getting a milk tea boba like in the early 2000's; you were now choosing from many different coffees and teas, and throwing all sorts of chewy goodness to go along with it. This was on top of all the tasty childhood drinks bought at Asian markets.

The campaign was initially simple; there's a lot more sugar and calories in your yummy Asian drinks than you may know, and you should be more aware. We were not campaigning for an end to boba. We were definitely not campaigning for any type of boycott of local small businesses. Yet, we didn't stay on message because there were so many tangentially-related points to be made. Our messaging got confusing/lost until the point of where the media reinterpreted our message for us; it became a campaign against boba, not a campaign for more educated nutritional choices.

A few examples of this messaging below. As I reread and watch these links, it's just a major Homer d'oh for how much we needed to tighten up the messaging:

Nextshark shared it's 'horrible for your body":

Health Experts Warn That Boba Tea is Horrible For Your Body

Boba milk tea (Bubble tea), the drink that has grown increasingly popular in the United States and many parts of the world, may not be as safe as previously thought. Different versions may include a variety of added ingredients, however, the main components are mostly kept: milk, tea, tapioca pearls and a very large dose of added sugar. And while the tapioca pearls in the drink contain vitamins, minerals such as iron, magnesium, phosphorus and potassium that are all good for the body, the sugar content alone should make boba drinkers reconsider keeping the beverage in their diet, health experts warned.

NextSharkRyan General

ABC 7 came and covered our press conference:

Lesson Learned: Work through your campaign messaging thoroughly with a diverse set of partners in advance. And by diverse I mean even the ones who may not seemingly be on your side. In this case, our coalition of health-focused organizations had met and developed the Rethink Your Asian Drink campaign. Missing were people who work in the Asian drink business (boba shop owners, staff, and suppliers). Consciously or not, we left a core constituent out of the room.

The boba shop that now has 0% to 200% sugar options? When I went to speak with the owner in 2016, they were immediately defensive. "Why are you attacking our business? There are other foods way worse than boba." That was the initial response from many boba shops we targeted to try to take part in offering lower sugar level options. Doors slammed in our faces before we could even try to reframe the conversation to what we were hoping to achieve. Once the ABC news story came out, people didn't read the nuance; it was further concretized of what our campaign was really about.

When our seemingly anti-boba agenda got into the Chinese newspaper, I remember my mom calling me and jokingly sharing that she can't be seen around me anymore because I went after boba shops in our community.

So what happened after? How did we get to the point where boba shops now almost all offer some sort of sugar-level adjustment at no cost? It's hard to say. The coalition, while pushing hard, did not really make ground in having businesses adopt advertising sugar levels. If they did, they certainly did not do it alongside our original campaign. The coalition was comprised of many different health nonprofits, and like all things nonprofit, funding changed and folks had to refocus (this seems like another Lessons Learned post another day). I heard recently that the campaign got new legs, but I don't know enough to share more. See image below.

While the outcome is more clear, it's the process that I reflect on now. Campaign messaging, especially in the realm of an untouchable like boba, requires much more forethought and planning. Don't get caught up in how many clicks, stories, and coverage you initially can get. Clicks and coverage aren’t campaign wins if the community feels attacked.