An advertising campaign for Lipton

• Main Authors: Aaron, Maria Diana F., Go, Jennifer D., Kho, Joan G., See, Katrina Valene C., Veracruz, Maria Lourdes M.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2003
• Subjects: Advertising—Tea; Advertising and Promotion Management
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/18686
• Institution: De La Salle University

In 1993, Unilever acquired Lipton, a tea company founded by Sir Thomas J. Lipton, a famous merchant who realized the potential of serving good quality tea products. Today, Lipton is handled by California Manufacturing Company, an affiliate of Unilever for its food products. Lipton tea products are of the first quality tea products that came out in the Philippine market. In fact, Lipton has long been known for its high quality brewed tea. Lipton dominates the hot tea segment because of this. The tea market is slowly expanding; this can be noted by the increasing number of new entrants. As of now, the bigger share of the market belongs to ice tea while hot tea segment is half its size. One of the problems of Lipton, is that it is only second to Nestea in terms of preference. Awareness is also a major concern. While Nestea has a very large awareness because of its ‘Plunge’ campaign, Lipton remains a second mention brand. Another weakness which may be used as strength is that Lipton is perceived as tea for old people. This however, shows that even as an ice tea drink, Lipton’s natural brewed tea aspects are assumed by most people to be still in there. The market is also slowly adjusting their taste preferences. More and more people prefer less sweet drinks and Lipton ice tea may be just the drink for them. However, it is important to note that a lot of other products like SOLA, Snapple, and the recently launched Earth and Sky are using 2natural brewed tea3 as their selling proposition. The challenge is to find a more creative way of executing the functional benefits and emotional benefits of ice tea. Considering the characteristics of Lipton as a product, it can appeal to the young adult market because of its natural brewed lemon flavored tea. The group findings also show some degree of association of 2natural3 to 2doing an outstanding job effortlessly3 and equated this to talent, thus, the use of natural talent in the campaign. Since awareness for Lipton ice tea is very low, the group suggests the use of both traditional and non-traditional advertising. However, a bigger chunk will still go to traditional advertising since the target market generated a greater recall from it compared with non-traditional advertising. A survey conducted by the groups shows how little awareness was generated by Lipton’s past campaigns which were primarily in non-traditional. If the market were to become more aware of Lipton ice tea, it is suggested that Lipton must be more aggressive in its tri-media and below-the-line campaigns as well. With a given budget of P 40 million pesos excluding research costs, the group recommends various ways in which the company may enhance the level of awareness among the target market and eventually capture more market share in the ice tea segment. These may be seen in the seen in the form of billboards placements, cinema ads, internet ads, and event contests aside from the tri-media campaign.