Insight
"Egyptians drink tea" is not a mere generalisation; it is drunk by all ages, consumer profiles and social classes. It is also significantly dominated by dust tea where Lipton's rival, Al Arousa, caters to a significant portion of the market and is renowned for its excellent quality, reasonable price, and wide availability. Lipton, on the other hand, and though a popular and trusted brand, does not offer the strong tea bag poured to Egyptians' liking.
Tea drinkers are usually reluctant to switch to tea bags as it is perceived as a lighter cup of tea. That forced Lipton to adopt a wholehearted approach that connects with Egyptians.
Lipton Extra strong is a local initiative whose global launch started off in Egypt. Why? Because the consumption of strong flavoured tea or “heavy” tea as Egyptians refer to it; is entrenched in Egyptian society across gender, age, and class. Thus, a stronger teabag was developed to serve the local market; and Lipton Extra Strong was born.
Strategy
Egyptian coffee shops are the bars equivalent of western societies. The challenges demanded an innovative angle of pursuit. The "Ahwageya” (Tea & coffee servers) are influential in their communal status and renowned for their exceptional tea making skills; serving what the target ordered with sheer strength.
This campaign launched with a teaser phase, through a short video showing portraits of tea experts performing their day-to-day stunts. This was also supported with interactive stunt GIFs and creative posts to provoke the target into guessing what Lipton was up to.
A week later, the agency launched a hero video that showcased a series of tea experts performing their stunts using Lipton extra strong and celebrating the variance with their customers. Towards the end of the video, Lipton extra strong invited tea experts to their nationwide tea competition, announcing their road show locations and asking them to show off their tea making skills and expertise.
Execution
The hero video copy was promoted heavily on social media networks such as; Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, leveraging on the high number of users available on those platforms to achieve the maximum reach and product awareness possible. Magna also promoted the tea serving stunt moves as a sport, by associating the campaign assets with the top sports websites in the market.
It then launched a competition across Egypt governorates, and the winner in each governorate qualified to the final round and competed on the national level. The final winner was crowned as the “No.1 skilful tea server” in Egypt, representing Lipton Extra Strong, and was also be rewarded by accompanying the Egyptian national football team in the 2017 African cup of nations.
The agency also utilised mass reach advertising products such as; Roadblocks and YouTube Masthead ads to ensure it achieved the required reach and awareness in the shortest period of time.
Soon after, several online humorous accounts, local influencers and PR personas started sharing the content; augmenting the total campaign reach.
Results
• The campaign reached more than 10 million social media users, which represents 50% of the potential target audience on social media
• The hero video copy generated 14 million views throughout the campaign duration, with a 20% organic views coming from a high share rate
• The hero copy had a higher than market average view through rate of 25% (average market VTR is 18%)
• Lipton page engagement rate has reached 10% during the campaign activity vs. average of 5%
• Lipton teabag market share has increased by 4% after end of campaign, mainly driven by Extra strong unit sales growth month over month
• Lipton brand love increased by 8%.