Twinings has long been seen as a quality tea.
But most people would only consider drinking it on special occasions.
We needed to convince existing, occasional Twinings drinkers that they deserved to drink high quality tea every day.
We discovered that Twinings could display a unique understanding of the emotional importance of tea to its core, female drinkers.
The result was a beautifully crafted, moving TV campaign which touched the hearts of millions of people.
It has already led to record market share of 14.1%, marked rises in weight of purchase and unprecedented campaign impact and efficiency.
It is a testament to the power of expertly executed, emotionally rich TV advertising to drive a huge social response, with the power of music especially important. It’s the first chapter in a story that will see Twinings take the place in tea drinkers’ hearts that it truly deserves.
The context and objective
Since 1706 Twinings has established itself as the expert in quality tea. Its packaging, its range of 115 teas and its previous advertising and communications (including campaigns featuring Stephen Fry and ideas around the ‘art of tea’), have all pointed to a company devoted to producing an excellent, even special product.
Yet the result of this has been that Twinings has become perceived as a brand only suitable for special occasions: On average, Twinings’ existing drinkers only consume it twice a week, with a cheaper, lower quality brand being used as the daily cuppa.
From this we identified our marketing objective: To convince existing, occasional Twinings drinkers that they deserved to drink high quality tea every day.
The insight & idea
To achieve this, we had to discover what would make Twinings’ special tea relevant, on a daily basis. So we spoke to Twinings fanatics, women who drank the tea every day, to whom the brand truly was indispensable.
The overwhelming human truth that emerged from this investigation was that these women embraced many roles in their lives (wife, mother, worker, daughter, sister, friend) but were so busy doing so they were in danger of not discerning where these roles ended and they themselves began.
Twinings played a vital role in helping them to navigate their busy lives. The restorative properties of Twinings tea, from Earl Grey to Blackberry and Nettle did no less than enable them to get back to feeling like themselves again. We expressed this creatively as Twinings ability to ‘Get you back to you’.
The creative execution
It was vital of course in executing this thought that we communicated this feeling of restoration to others, rather than merely telling people that this is what they should expect. We created a simple, but entrancing creative device: the dramatic journey of a heroine back to herself, a journey that would be received by women as a metaphor for their experiences and lead them to understand the true value of Twinings restorative power in their daily lives. Its first expression was a TV ad, dubbed ‘Sea’; the story of a woman navigating stormy waters and reaching solid ground again, becoming reunited with herself and enjoying a cup of Twinings tea.
We discovered in creative development research that the visual treatment of this story was vital. For women to imagine this story as reflective of their own experiences, it had to be taken out of the real world rather than attempt to hold up a mirror to their lives, so animation was chosen over live action, metaphor rather than realism. Moreover, the type of animated treatment, with its feeling of craftsmanship, like a blend of wood-cut and water-colour, not only engaged women as a thing of beauty but also hinted strongly at the quality of Twinings teas, successfully signifying Twinings artistry within an accessible and intriguing human story.
Music was the other crucial element. Our chosen track, ‘Wherever you will go’, communicates conflict and resolution and enables the viewer to feel the experience of the heroine and to recognise those feelings as reflective of their own. Of course, it would also stick in people’s hearts and minds, so people could take the feeling of drinking Twinings with them wherever they went. We hoped and believed that this would extend the campaign’s popular appeal and achieve additional online, radio and TV exposure for the brand.
In research we found that all these efforts were not wasted: The extraordinary power of the ad was that it delivered an emotionally rich proxy for the experience of drinking Twinings. It allowed women to read the story of their days and their lives in an animated fantasy and find the role of Twinings within that: As the refuge from life’s storms and the replenishment of hope and confidence.
The consumer response in research was ‘that’s what drinking Twinings feels like’ and they wanted more of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5THMr7YbEM
Media strategy
The media strategy's main objective was to drive awareness of the new campaign across touch-points that would allow the creative idea to establish an emotional affinity between Twinings and the target audience. Therefore the campaign was launched with 60" TV copy and 60" cinema, ensuring that we not only maximised reach within the ABC1 Women core audience, but also that we created a level of standout that would break Twinings out of its history of 'passive' advertising. This ATL spend was supported heavily via digital channels, in particular PPC and VOD ( You Tube) to cost effectively maximise views of the TV ad, engagement with additional content and to spark interest and conversations around the new campaign, insight that drove the creative and a music track that helped make the ad so popular.
Campaign effectiveness
Our TV advertising made a strong impact in conventional terms, creating a 24% leap in communications awareness (from 38% to 47%). Source: Millward Brown
We have also seen a 22% climb to date in our key image measure of ‘a brand for people like you’ (from 54% to 66%). Yet it was in the real time responses to the campaign online and in broader society that the true stren our highly emotional campaign can be assessed. The video of the ad was viewed 1.4m times, becoming the 5th most watched entertainment video on YouTube in October 2011. In total there were 3m Twinings channel views in the period. This compares to relatively paltry viewings of 538K and 735K for such high profile campaigns as Yeo Valley ‘Churned’ and Muller ‘Wonderful stuff’.
Gratifyingly, the music track from the ad ‘Go wherever you will go’ by Charlene Soraia, reached number 3 in the music charts, Scott Mills’ of Radio 1’s record of the week with 11.9m people listening weekly to it, immortalised on NOW 80 and provoking 330K digital downloads.
Buzz around the brand was huge, reflected by an increased number of searches for Twinings keywords of 3.78 times around ‘Twinings’ compared to the pre-launch period, 3 times around ‘Twinings Tea’, and 7.5 times around ‘Twinings advert’.
Engagement online was very encouraging: 85,033 monthly returning visitors (and counting) to twinings.co.uk already vastly outstripping the expected engagement level of up to 30K monthly returning visitors. So people were not only engaged by the advertising but with the concept of ‘Gets you back to you’ – very important if increased frequency of consumption was to be encouraged.
Given the highly emotional approach of the campaign it was especially satisfying to hear innumerable verbatim testimonies to the power of the campaign such as ‘I’ve been having a hard time the last two weeks, but played your ad on YouTube and had a cup of tea and it’s made me feel so much better’ and ‘genuinely a very moving advert. I relate to this very much, coming home for a cuppa after a long hard day. Thank you Twinings!’ The figures only provide a snapshot of how this ad engaged on a profound level with women and really raised the importance of drinking quality tea in their lives.
Return on investment
The media planning strategy had helped achieve this impact with outstanding efficiency. Share of Voice increased by 3.6 pp in a market where media investment increased by 80% (Oct/Nov 2011) and our total market investment fell from £8.9m to £5m.
But ultimately, the return on investment would be judged in terms of market share and signs of increased frequency of consumption of Twinings.
The market share story was one of unprecedented success: Market share reached 14.1% in the twelve week period ending 24th December – the result of the campaign stimulating underlying growth of 5%. This was not only Twinings’ highest ever share in the market and remarkable for a premium brand competing with mainstream competitors PG and Tetley (declining 3% and 5% respectively in volume); it came in a difficult market where overall category sales were falling by 3% in volume and 1% in value. Twinings core speciality teas were the engine of growth along with green tea, which was facing stiff competition from new entries by competitors such as Tetley. Clearly the campaign was helping brand sales buck the trend of the market.
Moreover average weight of purchase went up across the Twinings range: up 27% for Twinings special teas; 20% for Speciality teas; 14% for Infusions and 22% for Green tea. This was the evidence of the increased frequency of drinking that Twinings craved.
Of course, the journey of Twinings and ‘Gets back to you’ does not end here. New TV executions are in development, enriching the campaign and bringing out different nuances of meaning through the metaphors used for women’s daily emotional journeys. Beyond that, and building on the activity already stimulated in social media, ‘Gets you back to you’ is something we believe will come to have a valuable social currency among women. It can also be used to bring out the benefits of key products in a uniquely emotional way, and help to add engagement to the point of sale. The ambition is that ‘Gets you back to you’ will give Twinings a consistently relevant and engaging place in women’s lives, such that they can’t do without at least one cup a day.
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