Lipton: BRINGING THE TEA BREAK INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

Credits & Description:

Category: Best Use of Social Media Marketing

Advertiser: UNILEVER

Product/Service: LIPTON TEA

Date of First Appearance: Apr 19 2010

Entrant Company: PHD, Shanghai, CHINA

Digital Planning Director: Ivy Au (PHD)

Senior Brand Manager: Nikkey Wang (Unilever)

General Manager: Leo Chu (AKQA)

Media placement: Digital Campaign - IM- MSN - 19 April 2010

Media placement: Digital Campaign - E-Mag- Poco - 19 April 2010

Media placement: Digital Campaign - RON- BaiduTV - 19 April 2010

Media placement: Digital Campaign - Search Engine- Baidu - 19 April 2010



Insights, Strategy & the Idea

A cup of tea in the workplace has long been more than a means of refreshment and a quick break. Every cup of tea is a vital mini social occasion – a way of building camaraderie and relationships between colleagues.

Unfortunately the habit of socializing face to face while preparing tea is under threat as people are increasingly choosing to socialize online and at their desks instead.

The challenge was to increase tea consumption within the workplace by re-establishing the link between socializing and tea consumption.

Research showed that people weren’t against drinking tea per se but that it didn’t really fulfil a social function anymore, as they could socialize privately at their desks instead of in a communal area at work. In fact young professionals actually find it difficult to initiate conversations. Indeed real conversation seemed to be a dying art as people were more likely to chat online.



Creative Execution

LIPTON set out to bring the tea break into the 21st century by acting as an enabler of spontaneous, confident chat, reinforcing LIPTON’s role as a social connector.

Introducing LIPTON Social Tea Talk; An online and social media campaign that replicated the real dynamics of an office conversation.

Teaming up with China’s most popular IM office chat tool, MSN Instant Messenger got our audience to fully engage with LIPTON and socially connect without having to leave their digital comfort zone.

• Personalised video invites made the gesture of initiating a conversation simple and attractive and encouraged face-to-face chats.

• Co-workers shared video content delivered through IM and factoids for posting on social networks.

• Downloadable tools (emoticons, LIPTON winks picture uploads) allowed for personalised conversations.

Workers were incentivised - points for every conversation started could be used to win an afternoon Tea & Snack Pack for their office.



Results and Effectiveness

The Social Tea Talk campaign was an innovative digital first for China and became one of LIPTON’s highlights of the year.

In just seven short weeks and with a highly targeted budget, over 2m MSN users engaged with a campaign that really captured people’s imagination – as evidenced by a conversation rate of 45% from 4.4m banner clicks to 2 million invitations to Tea Talk being sent.



Sales volume increased 36% and tea drinking frequency rose by 30% from the previous year (Millward Brown & Unilever Sales Results), successfully re-establishing the LIPTON social tea occasion in the office.