by Dale Buss
Lipton is going back to basics, in a way, to add new aroma to its U.S. tea business with thefirst marketing campaign behind its staple black-tea products in America in nearly a quarter-century.
Lipton—the biggest name in tea globally, at over 100 countries and 100 years old—also has held on to its lead in the US CPG dry-tea market for decades, despite essentially having ignored its basic black teas in a marketing sense.
Now, the Unilever-owned brand has launched a campaign aimed at getting US tea consumers to "Drink Positive" (a play on "Think Positive") and to appreciate the uplift that tea can give them. It's also a move to increase the number of tea-drinkers by skewing younger.
The integrated campaign by DDB New York includes TV, digital (liptontea.com, its US Facebookpage, Instagram and Twitter) and a visual refresh by making the iconic Lipton packaging a more vibrant shade of yellow.
Millennials are the target audience, so the campaign imagery is (mildly) hipsterish with sepia tones that suggest a trendy photo filter (Instagram, Hipstagram). The campaign's launch TV spot, "Uplift Your Day," is described as, "Lipton rejuvenates the hot tea ritual by showing young people drinking tea and feeling uplifted, great, full of life and inspired through real life moments.
"All the benefits in our Lipton black tea give them a pause and the uplift they're looking for," Alfie Vivian, VP for American refreshments at Unilever U.S., told the New York Times about the millenial focus.
The brand refresh comes as a major competitor turns up its tea business, with Starbucks trying to claim the cutting edge of the market with its expanding investments in Tazo and Teavana teas — and standalone stores for both sub-brands.
Tazo, for instance, just debuted a packaging makeover in tandem with Starbucks bringing the brand its first retail store, in Seattle. The new packaging began appearing in November, featuring astreamlined typeface that removed the "goth" look from before.
Starbucks' first Tazo store "rolled out carpets of chamomile to invite [consumers] into a journey of tea discovery," as Tazo's website puts it. Visitors can blend their own teas using the same ingredients mixed by Tazo in its formula, hold tea-tasting parties and sample "teaware" such as coasters, spoons, kettles and flavor-infused sugars.
What Starbucks is trying to do with Tazo, arguably, is to mimic much of what Teavana already had accomplished as a retail "teahouse" brand before Starbucks scooped up the company late last year.
It'll be interesting to see how Starbucks differentiates Teavana and Tazo and, presumably, gives them complementary roles in a growing "emerging-brand" portfolio that also includes Evolution Fresh, La Boulange and Seattle's Best Coffee — just as Lipton, a global tea powerhouse, ramps up its presence.
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