YOGI TEA: CREATING ADDITIONAL CONSUMER VALUE

Quote on the Yogi Tea tag: “Love has no fear and no vengeance.”

“Once upon a time, there were people who would call themselves as ‘the smartest’ on Earth. They could market anything to anyone without exerting much effort. Believe me, it was magical. Nobody knew how they could do it or how their ‘campaigns’ worked. These guys would just throw a fabulous ad or a fascinating TV commercial, and they would attract people regardless of age, gender, and psychographic distinctions.”

The statement above would be the perfect introduction of a based-on-a-true-story type of movie plotted in the 70’s and 80’s. Yet, dictating the scenario in question in a marketing-related movie that is set in the contemporary 2000’s would be impossible unless the scenarist intended to compose a science-fiction drama whose tragic end features the suicide of a time-travelling perfectionist marketer who, despite trying everything, can not satisfy today’s consumers. Having evolved in line with the opportunities technological developments have generated, the contemporary consumer can not be satisfied with the mainstream mass marketing efforts romanced in the quotation above.

Undeniably, consumers of the past did not have the right to expect additional value or effort from brands because not many brands, and consequently, not as much competition as today, existed (Rust, Moorman & Bhalla, 2013). Yet, the consumer today is aware of the competitiveness in markets, and he/she knows that brands competing in the same product category have to satisfy his/her need for the basic functional benefit offered by the product category in question. Indeed, the consumer knows that these competing brands will eventually need to offer a complimentary unique and unexpected benefit to make him/her opt for their products over contemporaries’. As a result, taking advantage of the ferocious competition among brands, today’s consumer wisely waits until brands compete and show their best. Then, he/she chooses the brand which exceeds (not only satisfies) his/her expectations. The demand for brands to offer additional consumer value seems to have forced marketers to give emphasis to creativity in developing strategies.

However, many can suggest that not every market offering is augmentable, and they would not be completely wrong at first sight. Some brands that are concerned with generic consumer goods such as tea can not be expected to offer additional benefits or to achieve more than line extensions (white tea, black tea, digestive tea, blueberry tea, and so forth) to win the preferences and hearts of consumers. However, despite the limitations posed by their products’ nature, truly consumer-centric brands seem to have somehow found a way to create additional customer perceived value by identifying what their consumers appreciate beyond the core benefits of their products. Below is Yogi Tea’s outstanding example of how marketers can justify ‘if there is a will, there is a way’ when creating additional consumer value.

Yogi Tea, an Oregon-based tea company, seems to have found one of the most cost-efficient methods to create additional consumer value: creating and altering product messaging. After analyzing the research on the behavior of the tea person, the brand simply prints brief messages that relate to its target profile’s psychographics on the tags of its branded tea bags. As highlighted in the research by Tetley Tea Academy (2014)[1], tea people are actually not attracted to the boiled tea product itself but to the soothing effect, comfort, and mental relaxation experienced upon holding a cup of hot tea.[2] Likewise, ‘tea people’ are more likely to blog, tweet, or keep diaries, a point which implies that they are highly emotional.[3] Probably considering these points, Yogi Tea has leveraged the importance consumers give to the psychological benefits of tea by adding emotional and relaxing messages on its tea bags. Through this augmentation, the brand offers consumers two additional psychological benefits: First, it helps consumers find more meaning and emotional satisfaction in tea cups. Second, it reinforces consumers’ mental relaxation through visual messaging. As a result, the brand qualifies in creating three things at the same time: relevant additional consumer value, improved consumer relationships, and a highly distinguished positioning at a pretty low cost.

As the Yogi Tea example above illustrates, even brands concerned with generic product categories can create additional consumer value and, thus, distinguish their supposedly generic products. Inferably, there seems to be no reason for brands to not be able to trigger a creative approach to strategy unless they forget that they themselves need to have a heart first if they seek to win the hearts of others.[4]

[1] Please notice that this information is with reference to http://www.tetleyteaacademy.co.uk/index.php/serving/teapersonalities

[2] Please notice that the information is with reference to the following resource: http://www.tetleyteaacademy.co.uk/index.php/serving/teapersonalities

[3] Please notice that the information provided has been derived from http://thoughtcatalog.com/chelsea-fagan/2013/02/tea-people-vs-coffee-people/

[4] Please notice that this statement is with reference to the quote “You can not win the heart of customers unless you have a heart yourself” by Charlotte Beers, J. Walter Thompson on page 54 of Aaker on Branding: 20 Principles That Drive Success by David Aaker (2014).