Tuhina Anand
Advertising

Move over colas and coffee, it's tea-time

The Tea Board of India is getting into an aggressive mood and promoting tea as ‘the drink with the most’

After the Indian poultry industry (National Egg Coordination Committee) and the dairy industry (Operation Doodh), it’s now the turn of the Tea Board of India to seek to popularise the consumption of tea.

A Tea Board of India source says, “While drinking colas and coffee is seen as hip and happening, consuming tea is seen as old fashioned, which is why it gets a cold shoulder from most youngsters.”

The source adds, “With coffee shops mushrooming in most big and even small cities, coffee has risen to the status of a cool drink for the youth. In all this, though tea is not really losing its ground, it does need to communicate its benefits to its ‘future consumers’.”

The source reveals that the need to advertise tea arose from maintaining a balance in the demand and supply chain and making the beverage relatable to ‘future consumers’.

The idea is to reposition the brand as a healthy drink, which is both lively and natural. There are many drink options available to young people today, in the form of colas, coffee and juice. Amidst such competition, though the humble ‘chai’ still enjoys preferred beverage status, the board feels it cannot sit back and relax. Therefore, its game-plan is to tap into tea’s inherent strengths and remain top of the mind.

Talking of the strategy behind the TVCs, Sharmista Dev, general manager, Ogilvy & Mather, Kolkata, says, “Tea is a universal beverage with a penetration of over 90 per cent. However, when it comes to the imagery, it does not have the same image as colas or coffee, especially among the youth. The objective of the campaign is to change that attitude and create a more upbeat image for tea amongst the youth (16-22 year olds).”

Dev says, “The route we have taken here is to position tea as the real drink for real people. The point emphasised is ‘real people’ – the kind of people who are tea drinkers and the kind who are definitely not tea drinkers (as illustrated in the TVCs). The first step for us was to try and bring in a change in attitude; once we did that, the rest would follow.”

The series of three commercials created by O&M with the tagline, ‘Chai Piyo, Mast Jiyo’, highlights the personality of tea drinkers.

Explaining this, Sumanto Chattopadhyay, group creative director, O&M, says, “If one were to ascribe a personality to tea, one would come up with words like wholesome, warm, down to earth and real, and if we were to project that personality on to the tea drinker, we would describe him or her as ‘real’, too – as opposed to pretentious. These contrasting personality types form the basis of our creative idea.”

He continues, “An important distinction here is that youthfulness is taken as a state of mind in this campaign rather than as an age bracket.”

Chattopadhyay draws an interesting parallel when he says, “Though gold is seen as an Indian buy – something that every Indian buys – we see a plethora of gold advertising. This is because there has been aggressive marketing from other quarters like diamonds and platinum. In such a scenario, though gold remains a leader in the category while shopping, it cannot sit back and ignore competition. This is what led to adding a contemporary shine to jewellery advertising. Tea is in exactly the same scenario.”

The agency has other ideas, too, centering on the same theme, but would not divulge any further details. The Tea Board is looking at using on-ground activities to take the campaign forward. But why are its efforts so erratic? The Tea Board source reveals that all publicity campaigns are guided by the availability of funding and the market situation.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!

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