How a seven-year strategy helped Yorkshire Tea become the nation’s favourite brew.
The tea category was in decline. PG Tips, Tetley and Typhoo, with little advertising or product innovation, were losing relevance, along with overall market decline. By contrast, Yorkshire Tea was very much an outlying brand. A family business who had nurtured a progressive culture around ‘doing things proper’, an infectious belief to anyone who encounters their business, challenged us with making them number one.
Identifying an audience who prefer premium brands and aren’t swayed by promotions, we needed to bring them to Yorkshire Tea and get them hooked. Using our planning construct of Braver by Design, we balanced hard-working line and length TV plans with inventive award-winning ideas. Dynamic radio campaigns, VR campaigns educating children around the importance of trees and national cricket tea making competitions have all contributed to both business and brand growth.
From 2015 to 2019, tea market penetration declined from 88.6% to 86.4%, however Yorkshire Tea increased over 3% and value sales rose from £70.9m to £93.6m - 1.1 million more Yorkshire Tea drinkers! Yorkshire Tea’s long-term ROI stands at £4 for every £1 spent and our innovative work has won us the Media Week long-term strategy Award in 2020 and two IPA Effectiveness awards.