CHALLENGE

The ready-to-drink tea category has been exploding. Alternatively, Nestea,a trusted brand for 70+ years, with near 90% awareness, has experienced YOY sales declines, primarily because of its perceived irrelevance among the Millennial target. This target, interested in shifting from soda to healthier alternatives, and desirous of more premium taste attributes,found Nestea’s  formulation dated and way too sweet.

Simultaneously, competitors like Pure Leaf, Brisk and Gold Peak, were investing heavily from an innovation, natural ingredients and advertising spend standpoint, thereby successfully stealing share. As a result, it was make-or-break time for the Brand; it needed to reinvent itself (formulation, flavors, packaging and global campaign) and we needed to help reintroduce it to the marketplace. But, getting Millennials to try it was an extremely difficult task, as they had already made up their mind about the Brand — it was their “grandmothers’ iced tea, definitely not for them.

Find out how we got this stubborn, non-loyal target to give the Brand a try and buy it, setting a new bar for sales.
INSIGHT

Consumer-Shopper:

She only wants ingredients that matter, and she wants it without thinking about it or compromising on taste. What’s more, she thinks that she wants it only from newer, competitive brands.

Retailer:

Retailers were like consumer-shoppers in this regard. They also had a bad taste in their mouth when it came to the Brand. So, we needed to treat retailers like shoppers. They also needed to try the new product, so that they would be open to carrying it and carrying multiple skews.
EXPERIENCE

We built a competitive-busting, 360º shopper-plus experiential plan that recast   Nestea  as the new standard in RTD tea and convinced shoppers to experience how fewer ingredients still deliver the flavor and taste they want.

Scaled market events


Since research indicated that no one would buy the new brand without proof of its new, ingredient-free proposition and taste, we brought the Brand to the target, via large-scale sampling events across multiple cities. The strategy tapped into the “less is more” trend and the current “tiny house” movement. At the events, consumers toured the house, sampled multiple flavors of the new Nestea, entered a sweepstakes for a year’s supply of Nestea and shared their experiences through a SnapChat filter.
Drive-to-store


Retailer emails, mobile ads and WOM/Social reached our targeted shoppers, with content and a coupon, inspiring trial/purchase.


So, that we could control the message, we created a digital hub page on retailer websites, which told the new Nestea story.


And we got retailer employees in on the fun, offering them a special Nestea information kit and coupon to inspire their enthusiasm and involvement in our “try the new Nestea” campaign.
In-store


Shoppers were exposed to the Try Nestea,  Less is More campaign via retailers’ circulars, specialty pallets, new POS and high-impact floor graphics. Each tactic reinforced another, with a simple, reason-to-believe message that reinforced the Brand’s new formula, format and packaging proposition.
Post-shop


We kept the momentum going, by engaging our heavy-social target, who love to read and write reviews, to share their NEW Nestea  experience, encouraging their own repeat purchase and the trial of other shoppers.
Sampling


Central to the stores’ “surround sound” were Less is More product demos, reinforced by Brand flyers. Some of these events were purposefully planned on or around National Tea Day, to efficiently benefit from any awareness already in the marketplace.