Herbal tea meets football: Can Wang Lao Ji and Erling Haaland 'beat the heat' worldwide?

The recent appointment of Norwegian football superstar Erling Haaland as global brand ambassador for WALOVI, the international sub-brand of Wang Lao Ji (王老吉), has generated significant global buzz.

The 195-year-old Chinese herbal tea brand, traditionally famous for its "heat-reducing" properties, surprised netizens when Haaland appeared across Instagram, Facebook, and Weibo greeting fans in Mandarin. The football icon concluded the video clip with the brand’s classic slogan, "Afraid of excessive internal heat? Drink Wang Lao Ji."(怕上火，喝王老吉。)

In tandem with the announcement, Haaland and Wang Lao Ji released a 30-second video featuring an adaptation of the Manchester City fan anthem dedicated to the striker. The rewritten, branded lyrics encouraged consumers to drink WALOVI during the summer heat, at barbecues, or while watching football. 

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Data from media intelligence firm CARMA revealed that the announcement drove a 214.6% surge in brand mentions, peaking at 50 million on the day of launch. The video garnered over 8.91 million views within its first 24 hours. While domestic Chinese netizens largely embraced the campaign, some labelled the catchy lyric rewrite as "brainwashing."

On international platforms such as Instagram, users expressed surprise, with several admitting they initially mistook Haaland’s Mandarin speech for an AI-generated deepfake. Despite the shock value, Dennis Wu, general manager, CARMA, noted that sentiment remained over 90% positive, heavily driven by praise for Haaland’s linguistic efforts and trending keywords such as "excessive internal heat" (上火), "barbecue,"(燒烤) and "culture" (文化).

From Chinese remedy to sports recovery 

Industry players MARKETING-INTERACTIVE spoke to deem the partnership to be bold and disruptive. Sunny Yeung, managing director and co-founder, Butter Creative said that the "low risk of dilution" made the partnership a success. While Western consumers may not know herbal tea, Haaland’s endorsement sparks instant curiosity and credibility, breaking cultural barriers faster than traditional ads as the ultimate international bridge. He said:

For the domestic market, the sheer 'shock value' of seeing a Western football titan such as Haaland speak Mandarin and recite a classic heritage slogan creates massive viral traction.

Meanwhile, Rudi Leung, director and founder, Hungry Digital said the interesting part aspect of the campaign isn't just that Haaland spoke Mandarin in the ad, but that he had to sell a very Chinese idea - "heaty" (上火) - a concept rooted in traditional Chinese medicine that is largely unfamiliar to Western consumers.

According to Leung, Wang Lao Ji's real challenge in going after the global market is translating a traditional Chinese wellness concept such as balance, recovery, refreshment and plant-based wellness, into universal terms that people everywhere can understand. 

Echoing his sentiment is Phoebe Chan, regional creative director, BBDO Hong Kong who said that the campaign is a smart first step to pivot consumption occasions globally by translating Chinese wellness logic into universal sports logic.

Instead of explaining “internal fire”, it reframes "cooling down" as athletic recovery, just as Haaland mentioned in the ad.  “Fire from hotpot isn’t something Western athletes would relate to, but the need to reset after pushing your body to extreme temperatures especially in the sun is,” said Chan.

She added: 

By positioning the drink as a botanical ice bath for elite performance, Wang Lao Ji transforms a traditional post-dinner remedy into a post-match reset tool.

However, with wellness ideologies taking over both east and west, the concept of “internal heat” may be more familiar to Western consumers today than years prior. "The gap is smaller than people assume," said Jacopo Pesavento, founder and CEO of Branding Records. This is largely because in recent times, Western sporting athletes have been moving in the direction of herbal and holistic remedies.

For example, elite athletes now drink beetroot juice, cherry concentrate, and herbal blends. This would have sounded strange five years ago, said Pesavento.

Haaland's job is to make a recipe from 1828 feel relevant to performance. When one of the fittest athletes in world football drinks it, you stop asking whether it works.

Fight the giants or start a new game?

The campaign gives WALOVI a stronger foothold with global sports audiences, broadening its narrative from health and heritage to one fuelled by celebrity endorsement and viral momentum. According to Michael Ashton, chief operating officer of Capel Group, this comes as food and beverage brands increasingly look beyond taste and convenience, leaning into functional and health-driven benefits to stay relevant.

However, Wang Lao Ji should not position itself against mainstream energy and sports drinks, cautioned Ashton. Instead, it should carve out a completely new "healthy, functional wellness" category, positioning itself as a drink for cooling and recovery with Chinese herbal roots.

Industry players also noted that Wang Lao Ji's opportunity lies in creating a new space: a modern herbal wellness drink rooted in Chinese cultural depth.  This could come in the form of positioning itself as a lifestyle beverage tied to the culture of sports enjoyment.  "By carving out a niche as a 'healthy, natural refreshment for sports lifestyle,' it can capture both the health-conscious consumer and the global football fanbase without trying to replicate Red Bull or Gatorade," said Butter Creative's Yeung.

In addition, traditional energy drinks tend to rely on synthetic ingredients, neon-led packaging and high-energy branding built around hype and short-term energy spikes. Wang Lao Ji, however, has an opportunity to disrupt the category as a plant-based alternative, bypassing the crowded pre-game energy market and more aggressively owning the recovery space, said BBDO's Chan. 

"Now is the best time to weaponise its product heritage, as Western consumers become increasingly obsessed with Eastern botanical wellness," she explained. 

Branding Records' Pesavento agrees, adding that WALOVI should position itself inside functional wellness, a space where kombucha and coconut water have already done years of consumer education, as well as own the natural, caffeine-free corner of it. Inventing a brand-new category from scratch is just as risky, as educating consumers from zero takes decades and significant money. 

The strongest positioning usually isn't invented in a boardroom. You dig it out of what the brand has genuinely been for two centuries.

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