Our marquee tea brands, Tata Tea and Tetley enjoyed considerable success this year, extending their reach into new geographies, while developing newer alternatives outside their core portfolio in their existing markets. Tata Tea Premium in India and Tetley in the UK also underwent a restage this year with campaigns crafted to strengthen their market position and drive brand salience. Our category-defining coffee brand, Eight O’ Clock Coffee, in the US, is taking further bold steps to strengthen our competitiveness in a challenging marketplace.
Tata Tea Premium understands that India is a sum of many behaviours, cultures and idiosyncrasies. The brand’s deep awareness of regional tastes and preferences, and ability to tailor products is what sets it apart, making it Desh Ki Chai (Tea of the Country) in the truest sense. This year, the brand celebrated the diversity of India, shifting the spotlight from national to local.
We drew from our reservoir of regional insights and used unconventional, close-to-the-ground media choices to effectively target the major tea-drinking states of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab and Haryana. Right from the product packaging down to the method of communication, we crafted a restage campaign that was tailormade for each state.
We shortlisted the tea attributes that define the preferences of the consumers in the region and developed blends with a distinct flavour. We leveraged a 360-degree integrated campaign to unveil the new Tata Tea Premium editions and build excitement around the same.
We launched the ‘Tata Tea Export Portfolio’, comprising two of our iconic Indian brands Tata Tea Gold and Tata Tea Premium, with the hope that they delight the South Asian diaspora living in the UK and Europe just as much as they have done back home.
The art of conversation has shaped the evolution of the world. Yet, a hyperactive lifestyle and overt reliance on technology as a medium of communication has dealt a blow to relaxed and cosy tête-à-têtes. We believe that a cup of tea can be an enabler of one of life’s greatest pleasures – the power of great conversation. We wanted to remind people just how good it feels to sit down with someone for a chat and that our perfect blends are enough to get anyone talking. With this in mind, we launched an extensive rebranding campaign in the UK to encourage consumers to pop the kettle on. ‘Now We’re Talking’ is a celebration of the light-hearted banter between even the most unlikely of friends, such as a cat and a dog, as they relax and enjoy each other’s company over a steaming cup of Tetley.
In a move to disrupt the mainstream tea category and address a gap in the market for an authentic Indian chai experience, Tetley launched the ‘Ethnic’ range of tea bags in the UK. It comprises three all-time favourite flavours: Tetley Masala, Tetley Elaichi (Cardamom) and Tetley Ginger, providing British Asian consumers a taste of home in their daily cuppa.
Tetley is the #2 player in the mainstream black hot tea category in the US. With discerning consumers increasingly leaning towards premium products, Tetley expanded into an adjacent category this year, to launch a top-of-the-line range of refreshing black teas in the American market, known as Flavors of India.
These distinct, full-bodied blends of Delhi Ginger, Mumbai Masala and Kolkata Cardamom, take some of India’s oldest spices and flavours across the ocean to the US.
Supers 2.0 was launched to build on the success of Tetley Super Teas, Canada’s first line of teas fortified with vitamins and minerals. The range has now expanded to contain exciting and on-demand functional ingredients like Turmeric, Dandelion and Matcha to complement an active and balanced lifestyle. These ingredients are paired with tasty flavours like Apple & Cinnamon and Peach & Ginger.
Achieving a distribution of 82% in a country as vast as Canada and driving 25% of total category value growth, the new Tetley Super Teas range emerged as the top performing tea of all new teas launched this year. It was also awarded the 2019 Best New Product Award by BrandSpark International.
Eight O’ Clock Coffee celebrated its 160th anniversary in 2019, a remarkable milestone in the brand’s journey to deliver great tasting brews to Americans.
Originally conceptualised by the Great Atlantic and Pacific (A&P) Tea Company, it was one of the signature products when their first store opened in New York City. Through a consumer survey, A&P learned that 8 am and 8 pm were the most popular times to drink coffee and that is how Eight O’ Clock Coffee was born. It went on to be the very heart of the coffee industry, emerging as the number one coffee brand, a position it held for 30 years. Eight O’ Clock Coffee joined the Tata family in 2006 to strengthen our global portfolio of leading brands.
In the run up to its 160th anniversary, Eight O’ Clock Coffee released two new lines: Barista Blends and Flavors of America. Both the lines comprise of thoughtfully crafted coffee made with 100% Arabica beans that are uniquely roasted and blended with flavours.
Barista Blends gives consumers the chance to make their home the coffee house, while our master blenders literally brought to life the ‘Flavors of America’ through six star‑spangled creations, offering a new, unique way to discover the different American states in a refreshing cup of coffee.
Beyond large-scale launches, we are incubating new offering in hand‑picked retail outlets and introducing or re-introducing premium mixes for specific regions, to build credibility and drive additional sales in the highly competitive segment of private labels.
Eight O’ Clock Coffee collaborated with Walmart to provide an exclusive line of coffee blends, known as Great Value. Four seasonal variants were launched in the second quarter of FY 2019-20: Harvest Blend, Winter Blend, Pumpkin Spice and Peppermint Bark. We also successfully secured a portion (14 SKUs) of Wakefern, the largest retailer-owned cooperative in USA.
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