Tea DIGITAL INSIGHTS AND TRENDS: CONTENTS - Creativebrief
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DIGITAL INSIGHTS AND TRENDS: tea CONT E N T S • 3 key trends for 2020 • 3 audience profiles
3 key tea trends for 2020
1. TEA: TH E MUS I CAL
OK, not a musical, but definitely an event. In 2019, a study found we’d
prefer to drink tea in the comfort of our own homes, but this year we’ll see
tea-drinkers get more experimental and sensation-seeking, both in flavour
and serve sophistication. Consumers are getting more playful and curious
with flavours (see Bubble Tea), whether they’re tea-loving thrill seekers or a
tea novice.
GOOGLE TRENDS: ‘AFTERNOON TEA NEAR ME’ IN THE PAST 5 YEARS
Source: Google Trends
Tea is taking a leaf out of the beverage playbook and going hard on flavour
selection. Experimental flavours like cucumber and apple, African solstice,
cherry blossom sling sound straight out of a mocktail menu, and for those
after a harder tipple, there are rum, gin and whiskey tea bags. Tea is even
making it into cocktail pairings. This year we’ll even see cheese, pea and
beetroot flavours launch (hopefully not all in the same blend…).
It’s not only flavours, but the occasion and theatre that tea can be enjoyed
with. People want their tea to be better than they would make themselves
at home, so the quality of the serve is important, even down to crockery
(yes, it matters). Afternoon tea is experiencing a resurgence thanks to
Instagram and the VIP-yet-accessible experience it affords us in luxury
hotels and restaurants. There’s even afternoon tea awards, that have
categories like ‘best themed’. 2018’s winner was a science-inspired theme
served in petri dishes with dry ice: that’s the theatrical bar we’ve set.
T H E O P PORTUNITY FOR BR ANDS
Flavour-wise, make sure it tastes as good as it smells and play
to people’s sense of adventure. Use social media to light the
imagination and stage your product with drama and theatre.
Appeal to smell, touch and sound and make damn sure it will look
good on Instagram. It’s got experiential campaign written all over
it. Think about the gifting market, and how beautiful ad interesting
gift sets could trump alcohol or confectionary-based ones. Like
these tea advent calendars.
2 . F UN CT I O N AL I -T E A Tea with a purpose is booming - likely spurred on by the explosion of wellness industry. It’s well known for like the potential to reduce cholesterol, blood pressure and the risk of stroke, as well as lower blood sugar levels and improve focus. These five-hour TEA shots are also weighing in on the energy drink category. Many tea brands are using the wider topic of health to elevate above the category and move into the lifestyle space: using influencers to promote their teas and cold brews. People like the Hemsley sisters, Kelly Holmes and Adidas global ambassador Adrienne Herbert show a clear move towards associations of fitness and an active, holistic approach to health. This is reflective of a wider wellness trend that continues to sweep the UK. Anything with purported health benefits can be steeped with tea; CBD oil and turmeric have joined mint and ginger in reinforcing health benefits of teas.
Another growing strain of teas doesn’t even require flavour names, the appeal is exactly what they can do for you, your mind and your body: cleanse, sleep, calm, refresh and so on. Beyond that, some varieties are blended for who you are: women, pregnant women, men… even kids. Quite broad at the moment, but could this go lifestyle blogger… over-thinking millennial… exhausted parent? Looking at the way people are now searching for tea (source, Answer the Public), it does tend to be ailment-first, and actually people have pretty high expectations of tea. Some people are looking for tea to delay menopause, induce labour and help with anxiety. Super-tea, basically. Finally, gone are the days where we’d tolerate bland taste for health benefits - our sophisticated palates want something that tastes good too. T H E O P PORTUNITY FOR BR ANDS Don’t overstate the benefits, but craft blends that help with the ailments people are seeking relief from. Search behaviour and social listening can be very revealing, so always include an online ear to the ground for product development and feedback.
We analysed five independent tea brands and saw this trend play out: the
size of each circle represents the number of different keywords users are
finding their website through. “Tea” based keywords are represented in
the crowded, overlapping areas in the centre where competition is higher.
Moving away from the centre, brands can own the less competitive ‘white
space’ by creating investing in content higher up the funnel. Brands who
are already investing more heavily in onsite content hubs had the biggest
SEO footprint below (the blue and yellow circles below). Content does
ensure they get found in more ways than their competitors:
3. AU D I E N CE - LE D V ISIBILITY
Big brands like Tetley and PG Tips have more established scale and routes
to market, so smaller, premium tea brands can punch above their weight in
building up the size of their digital footprint; both on and offsite. Social media
tribes are always growing and evolving, but the real expansion opportunity
for online visibility is creating audience-led, onsite content that means your
website is more likely to get found. This is especially important if you’re
running an ecommerce sites selling directly to consumers, and don’t need
to rely on supermarket footfall to sell.
Everyone’s spelling out their matcha-green credentials with written articles
and videos: few are going further and branching into content for their
audience that is lifestyle-led, based on shared values and interests.
There are so many benefits to this content - it tells your audience that you understand them, it’s generous, builds trust and familiarity - and it’s a reason to come back again and again to your site and establish yourselves as the front of mind, tea of choice. Otherwise, what else would you put in your newsletters or post on your social profiles? T H E O P PORTUNITY FOR B R AN DS To get found and deepen relationships with your audience, first you must get to know them. Who are they? What are they passionate about beyond your product? Understand them, then ask what you could create that’s useful, surprising or valuable to them. Underpin with search analysis, publish regularly and show off your personality. Go beyond the expected - beyond recipes and tea chat - but stay relevant.
THE AUDIENCE OPPORTUNITY People who put ‘tea lover’ in their Twitter bio are typically the ones who just like a lot of the regular stuff… so think beyond the steadfast tea fans and branch out to the more adventurous. Meet three of our favourite pen portraits for inspiration…
ZOE: EXPERI ENCE SEEKER This group are a fantastic untapped opportunity for brands to bring new types of tea to an experimental and open audience. She’s social, curious, digitally savvy and likely to hunt for new, interesting things to do in the city around her: from gallery exhibitions to quirky board-games-and-cereal-cafés. She’ll curate and share these experiences on social, where she also gets a lot of her ideas from. She’ll let apps like Spotify, Instagram and Twitter do the ‘discovering’ for her: surprising her with informed and relevant suggestions that she wouldn’t have otherwise found. Constant pressure to originate content can be exhausting for her. Like her followers, she wants breadth more than depth of experience, trying everything once (plays, heritage sites, art festivals, films). But probably only once. The opportunity for brands: offer her an out of home experience that she’d want to introduce her friends, like afternoon tea with a twist (and make sure it’ll photograph well). Experiment with unusual flavours and colours to grab attention and appeal to all the senses. Help her keep her place in the group as the one ‘in the know’. Her in a hashtag: #experienceesoverthings Driven by: recommendation, status, fun, play, stimulation RI LEY: GENERATI ON ZEN Between work and a heavy-duty social calendar, she seeks solace and quiet in micro-moments when she can. Riley is likely to be reading more obscure platforms like Reddit and Medium for productivity tips. She sets herself phone curfews and meditates with the Calm app. She wields her consumer power carefully; aware of environmental issues and this influences her choices of skin care, clothes and food: she gravitates towards brands that have kindness, strength and compassion. She’ll seek these brands out, stay loyal and will spend more on a product if she falls in love with their origin story and the lifestyle it emanates, and probably recommend to friends too. As a content omnivore, she’ll devour books, podcasts, IG Live, blogs and apps - as long as it serves a purpose, keeps her mind or body in balance (or indeed, ‘sparks joy’). The opportunity for brands: Substantiate your health benefits and wrap an aspirational lifestyle around them. Create content to help her achieve balance elsewhere in her life. Surprise her with a tailored tea subscription to really make her feel part of something (responsibly sourced with recyclable packaging of course). Her in a hashtag: #momentofzen Driven by: purpose, connection, balance, health
S POT L I G H T ON A DA M : THE A MATEUR FOOD C RI TI C Social media, reviews and free blogging software has enabled the boom of amateur food critics over the past 10 years. For some brands, the desire to satiate these people is waning, but nevertheless they continue to snap, post and critique. For those that do it really well, there’s a great opportunity for brands to tap into some of their clout. He likes to think of his palette as more than half decent, and he jumped onto the power of reviewing restaurants and food very early on. He has good digital skills and has been able to leverage the two, not necessarily with the intention of making money, but just the chance to eat lots of different and delicious (preferably free) food. He probably has a full-time job that may have nothing at all to do with food, but taste and flavour are his personal passion. He may have a blog set up; it may just be allowing foodies to live vicariously through his Instagram, but either way, he’s publicly documenting what he’s eating. He’s likely to have a small-ish, but highly engaged community following him that are based locally where he is. Just the sight of him pulling out his DLSR in a restaurant, pub or bistro strikes fear into the staff there. He may just be covering one region, meaning that he’s always looking for the next new, exciting dining experience within a small radius. New restaurant openings, seasonal or tasting menus will usually get him there, but in between he may be looking hard for ideas on what to post next. The opportunity for brands: substance AND style. Unusual and surprising is great, and undoubtedly Insta-worthy, but above all it needs to taste good. Can food pairings with the tea also feature? Either as serving suggestions, or could you provide interesting garnishes or optimum preparation guidelines. Is there a sample gift set you could post him? Enlist lots of Adams, their recommendations are more likely to be noticed, trusted and inspire action than celebrities and influencers with national reach and less resonance. Lighting lots of little fires with local experts can light up the UK between them. Him in a hashtag: #playstaydine Driven by: being first to know, taste, quality, attention to detail
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