Tetley spills the tea on its plans to engage Gen Z
Australia's tea category has long played second-fiddle to the nation's obsession with coffee, however, the team behind iconic tea brand Tetley are on a mission to elevate the brand and the entire category. The Drum spoke to Divya Shrivastava, Head of Marketing ANZ, Tetley and Jody Elston, Chief Strategy Officer, 303 MullenLowe about the brand's plans to create a new legion of tea drinkers.
Tetley Tea is positioning tea as a catalyst for Gen Z to share gossip, secrets, controversial opinions, or exclusive news in a major new brand platform.
The move, which is being described as a "seismic shift" to the iconic tea brand, Tetley is embracing the pop-culture expression in a bid to attract 18-35-year-olds to help reinvigorate the tea category.
The platform, which launches this week across film, outdoor, radio and social media, is the first work from 303 MullenLowe since winning the account last year.
It's a significant brief for the 180 year-old-brand which has long traded on its British heritage and catered to its older tea-loving audience.
“Our brief was to take Tetley by the string and unceremoniously yank it out of an arguably stuffy tea category, moving the brand away from the familiar world of wellness, tea cosies and quaint hill country plantations," says Bart Pawlak, chief creative officer 303 MullenLowe.
The brand found fertile new ground in the most unlikely of places, Jody Elston, chief strategy officer at 303 MullenLowe told The Drum.
"While bubble tea, chai and herbal infusions are bringing new fun and excitement to tea, mainstream black tea is in decline and full of the same old-fashioned safe brands. Yet 303 MullenLowe discovered a surprising untapped playfulness in the Tetley brand’s DNA that could also appeal to younger folk.
"One loyalist summed it up well… “Tetley is non-alcoholic prosecco because there is just something that happens when I have my girlfriends over for a cuppa. The real goss comes out that they’d never tell me in a café with other’s ears around.”
Elston says this insight served as the inspiration for positioning Tetley alongside the booming market of non-alcoholic drink brands as "the healthy social lubricant that gets people bonding like no other".
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The fact that 'spill the tea' has become an established part of the vernacular also helps, says Divya Shrivastava, TATA head of marketing ANZ for Tetley.
"‘Spill the tea’ is already in the vernacular of many young Australians for when they’ve got significant or exciting news to share, so it was the perfect way for Tetley to deliver to this need with new irreverence."
"Our strategy is to focus on a type of human connection that people, both young and old, arguably love to indulge in most – the exchange of gossip, news, secrets, revelations, and all things overheard. A type of connection that the ritual of making and consuming tea created the perfect moment for. In this way, we are elevating Tetley and the tea occasion to be highly social and relevant again," says Shrivastava.
Relevance is a significant challenge for Australia's tea market in general, as a nation of coffee obsessives, tea has long been relegated to second-billing.
"Unlike coffee, tea has little social currency for this highly social, ‘young and free’ audience," admits Shrivastava.
However, this presented the team with an opportunity to not only bolster the Tetley brand but also elevate the tea experience through this new brand positioning.
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"The premiumisation of coffee is an incredibly successful story. From the growth of café culture and fancy coffee machines at home to café quality beans at Woolworths, Nespresso pods and barista quality at McDonald’s, coffee has been elevated everywhere," says Elston.
"But the fact is, unlike coffee which is used more as an accelerant while on the go or even alcohol with its consequences that are being increasingly shunned by younger Australians, tea has the unique power to make people pause and be more present. Making Tetley famous for this moment is the way to cut through."
The creative work aims to mirror the target audience's own "O-M-G moments" with 303 MullenLowe creative leads Katie Moore and Nick Sellars drawing inspiration from Instagram and Facebook moments.
“In our film and poster work our irreverent approach was designed to compete for our distracted audience’s attention and convey the power of tea to totally immerse those sharing it, in the moment. TL;DR — no matter what’s brewing, we made Tetley synonymous with spilling the tea.”
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With the brand positioning clearly focused on the new target audience, is there a danger in alienating the brand's older and extremely loyal customers?
Shrivastava says “The challenge for us was to find a way to reinvigorate the Tetley brand and in doing so reposition the entire category in the minds of younger audiences – without alienating our loyal 55+ customer base. The result is a brand platform with a tonality that is unfamiliar in what can sometimes be a conservative tea category, and as such it quite effortlessly elevates Tetley out of the clutter.”
Elston says, "Les Binet argues that fear of alienation by marketers is often misplaced because real people don’t have strong opinions about brands, and habits of regular long-term users are hard to break.
"Even so, our insight for Tetley is universal. Inspiration for Tetley’s new positioning came from the way older drinkers were using the brand, yet it could be brought to life with a disruptive tonality that built new relevance with younger consumers. It’s also easy to type-cast what older people will and won’t respond to. This is the baby boomer audience we’re talking about who is all about liberation. They’re not afraid to have fun too," adds Elston.