The best way to understand Chagee is to walk into one of its 6,000+ stores.
Not because the tea is extraordinary—though the numbers suggest it is, with its signature BO·YA Jasmine Green Milk Tea alone selling over 600 million cups in 2025. Chagee's brand isn't built on a single hero product, but rather on the entire consumer experience.
Wide-format stores, thoughtfully considered spaces, attentive service, and a cup so deliberately designed that loyal customers have compared it to carrying a Dior accessory. The brand ensures that its teahouses function as a "third space"—somewhere between home and work, anchored by the ritual of taking the time to enjoy tea.
As a brand, Chagee is a bet that tea can do what coffee has done for a generation: a daily habit, a cultural touchpoint, and a lifestyle badge all at once.
This vision was also Eugene Lee's mandate. Lee, who has been named in multiple editions of Campaign Asia-Pacific's Power List, rose from senior marketer to international CMO overseeing all markets outside the US over his 15-year career at McDonald's. There, stewardship was the job. Meanwhile, at Chagee, it's to define the brand, especially as it expands to markets like South Korea where there is no name recognition to lean on.
In an interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific, Chagee's APAC CMO talks about building a global brand without a legacy name to lean on, why Chagee does almost no traditional advertising, and what it really takes to make the world's second-most-consumed beverage feel exciting again.
1. You spent 15 years at McDonald's, one of the world's most iconic brands, before making a bold move to Chagee. What surprised you the most stepping from a mature brand to a fast-scaling challenger?
At McDonald’s, the “brand bible” is already written; such is the nature of an 80-year-old brand. My role there was to act as a guardian and steward of that playbook. At Chagee, however, our “bible” is still being written, and I feel incredibly privileged to be helping write the chapters.
During my interview, the founder told me, “Eugene, I’m not an expert in international markets, so I trust your experience and judgement to bring our brand to life.” And he has truly stayed true to that promise.
What stood out to me most is the level of empowerment the leadership gives to the people they hire. It’s incredibly refreshing to be given real autonomy to determine how the brand grows and shows up outside of our home market.
2. How much of the brand’s marketing strategy is actually design-led rather than product-led? Some people compare the Chagee cup to a Dior cup. What’s the story behind making the cup itself a status symbol people want to be seen carrying?
Tea is the second most-consumed beverage in the world, yet it hasn’t experienced the same lifestyle elevation that coffee has. Globally, tea is still often perceived as traditional—sometimes even a little old-fashioned—something associated with older generations rather than modern culture. Chagee aims to change that.
Our focus is on the entire experience. From beautifully designed stores that reinterpret traditional tea houses, to technology-driven brewing methods that modernise preparation, to bold marketing and meticulously crafted packaging—every element is designed to elevate tea culture into the 21st century. The cup naturally becomes a large part of that experience.
3. You've led agency relationships at McDonald's across all of its markets outside the US, and now you're building partnerships from a very different position. What, to you, defines a strong agency partnership today? Has your lens changed since then?
At its core, a strong client–agency partnership comes down to trust. Over the years, I’ve seen many agency relationships break down, and it almost always traces back to the same issue: both sides have lost trust and confidence in each other.
Agencies should be treated as partners, not suppliers. They should be welcomed into the business as an extension of the team, not simply given briefs and expected to deliver on demand. And when that trust exists, both sides stop wasting energy second-guessing each other—that’s when the best work and magic start to happen.
4. The BO·YA Jasmine Green Milk Tea has reportedly sold hundreds of millions of cups. Most brands constantly play the speed game in product launches, but Chagee seems comfortable pushing a few hero products. What’s the strategy here?
While many beverage brands rely heavily on a constant pipeline of limited-time offerings (LTOs) to generate excitement, Chagee takes a different approach. We believe in building strong hero products within a core menu that customers can return to regularly—weekly, or even daily. Today, our top three products account for close to 70% of our product mix, which we’re very proud of.
As a result, around 60–70% of our annual marketing windows are dedicated to our core menu. The goal is simple: drive penetration with new customers through awareness, while increasing frequency with existing customers through strong recall and habit-building.
LTOs can create short bursts of excitement and traffic, but once the product disappears—often within four to six weeks —the customer engagement disappears with it. A core-menu-first strategy, on the other hand, helps convert trial into long-term loyalty and builds a much stronger foundation for sustained growth.
Think of Apple who built an extraordinary business around a focused set of iconic products. That’s very much how we think about building the "modern teahouse."
5. Break down your marketing mix – how much of it is creator-led, experiential, design, digital? Which channel is doing the heavy lifting for brand equity, and where are the biggest challenges?
We do almost no traditional advertising—no TV, no radio, and not even YouTube ads. Instead, Chagee is a social-first brand. All of our marketing mix is driven through social platforms, creator collaborations, experiential launches, and highly designed physical touchpoints—from our stores to our packaging.
During my time at McDonald’s, traditional media and large-scale digital buys like YouTube and Facebook were dominant in the media mix. At Chagee, I’ve seen how a social-led ecosystem can generate equal and sometimes even greater levels of excitement, cultural relevance, and customer engagement.
The biggest challenge, however, is that social media moves incredibly quickly. To stay relevant, the brand must constantly be present in the conversation and continue delivering fresh, culturally resonant moments for consumers.
6. The CMO role has changed dramatically in the past few years. What part of the job has become the hardest and least understood?
With the rise of performance marketing, almost everything marketing does today is tied back to ROI and immediate revenue impact. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; businesses need to deliver results. However, performance marketing tends to be short-term focused, often encouraging behaviours such as heavy promotions, discounts, and purely functional messaging.
For a CMO, the real challenge is maintaining the balance between brand and business. But if companies focus entirely on promotions and functional benefits to “win the head,” the brand risks becoming commoditised, where customers simply chase the cheapest option with the best deal.
That’s where brand building plays its role—by winning the heart. Strong brands create emotional connection, loyalty, and long-term preference. In today’s environment, one of the hardest and least understood parts of the CMO role is convincing the entire organization that sustainable growth requires both delivering short-term performance while consistently investing in long-term brand building.
7. Name a brand—not yours—with a customer experience you genuinely admire. What about their approach impresses you most?
One brand I’ve always admired is Red Bull. What’s remarkable about Red Bull is how it transformed what is essentially an energy drink into a global phenomenon. Instead of focusing their marketing on the product itself, they built an entire universe around the idea of pushing human limits, from extreme sports to music, gaming, and even owning and operating the Red Bull Formula 1 Racing team.
They have remained incredibly disciplined in their brand positioning. If you look at their social channels across any market, you’ll never see product advertising. Instead, their content celebrates athletes, culture, and the spirit of adventure that defines the brand.
Over time, Red Bull stopped being just a beverage company. It became a cultural platform that represents a mindset and a lifestyle that people want to be part of. The lesson for me is powerful: when a brand stands for something bigger than the product it sells, it creates a much deeper and more enduring connection with people.
8. Tell us something people might not know about you?
Growing up, I used to play in a punk-rock band. I played bass guitar, sang, and even had neon green hair for a while after high school. We performed quite regularly around the Malaysian rock music scene, and at the time, I genuinely thought my future would be in the music industry.
Life took a different path, but in many ways, the spirit is still the same. Marketing, much like music, is about creativity, energy, and connecting emotionally with people. So while I’m no longer on stage with a bass guitar, I like to think I still get to live a little of that rock-star spirit through the work I do in branding and marketing.
9. What keeps you up at night as a CMO?
To be honest, I sleep quite well. But if there’s one thing that stays top of mind, it’s how quickly ideas can be copied with the tools we have at our disposal today. A product launch or marketing campaign that once took months or even years for competitors to replicate can now be imitated and rolled out in a matter of days.
I actually see this as a positive challenge for marketers. It forces us to create work that is truly distinctive and deeply rooted in the brand’s DNA—ideas that feel so authentic to the brand that if someone else tried to execute them, it simply wouldn’t feel right. In today’s landscape, the best defence against imitation isn’t speed—it’s authenticity and originality.
Source: Campaign Asia-Pacific
