Tea commercials

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mbanu
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Thu Feb 17, 2022 8:42 am

mbanu wrote:
Wed Feb 16, 2022 12:21 pm
Compare maybe with Lipton USA in 1994, trying to convince Americans that drinking tea could be manly:

Apparently this was successful enough for bottled tea to cause some marketing problems in 2021, leading to a split -- consider Lipton USA's two new ads, running at around the same time, where the man chugs while the woman sips:


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mbanu
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Tue Feb 22, 2022 3:38 am

A social-class based ad for Ridgways loose-leaf tea from 1986. In this case it seems to be going for class-reversal humor, "It's OK to drink 'posh' tea!" Possibly because many of the British middle-class drinkers who would have found a standard aspirational ad appealing were switching to instant coffee around this time?

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mbanu
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Tue Feb 22, 2022 4:21 am

Interesting pair from Joko tea out of South Africa. Undated, but I think they are around the same age (the internet suggests 2006-2007, maybe), as they are promoting two different versions of the same idea, that tea is an energizer.


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mbanu
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Mon Mar 07, 2022 8:31 pm

This is an interesting one -- an American Anglophile all-girl rock band from the 1970s, Fanny, doing a public service announcement for tea. :)

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mbanu
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Wed Mar 09, 2022 10:58 pm

A puzzler -- Lipton trying to sell Darjeeling tea in 1982. Were they trying to play off the Roaring Twenties nostalgia of the 70s, or was something else going on here?

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mbanu
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Fri Mar 11, 2022 3:07 pm

mbanu wrote:
Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:50 pm
An ad from 1968 for the Canadian tea blend Red Rose; apparently if you drink too much tea you will turn into a strange dancing man who uses tea to smooth over social class tensions. :)



It's interesting that the only thing specific to the blend mentioned as a selling point is that the teabags are larger; I guess by 1968 the fact that with loose tea you can use as much or as little tea as you'd like was fading away? Otherwise it is hard to understand how the problem exists that this solution solves.
A complete reversal by 1986, going for the popular social class aspirational approach, "When It's Red Rose, Everyone Knows". I suppose people's views of the 80s were a bit different than those of the 60s...

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mbanu
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Sat Mar 12, 2022 11:47 am

Meanwhile, a "not your parents' tea!" type of ad for boxed Vita lemon tea in 1987. :D

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mbanu
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Sat Mar 12, 2022 10:41 pm

mbanu wrote:
Wed Feb 16, 2022 9:15 pm
Image
Image


In the 1920s, Salada was known for its skill in creating publicity stunts, where newspapers would cover the stunt as news and in the process provide Salada with advertising.
Maybe an example from 1987 -- Michael Jackson at the height of his popularity during a press conference in Japan with his pet chimp Bubbles, who can't get enough of Michael's Japanese tea. If the Japanese equivalent of the Tea Council did not engineer this, they most surely wished they had. :D

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mbanu
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Mon Mar 14, 2022 1:49 pm

A 1989 pun-based commercial for M-Tea-V. :D

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mbanu
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Tue Mar 15, 2022 12:10 pm

I get a kick out of this 1988 Tetley promo -- American Anglophiles are uneasy around Teasmades, but a musical mug with cartoon mascots would have been pure poison to the image of British elegance, especially in 1988. :lol:




Not quite the thing for a spot in Victoria magazine. :D I'm sure it was a nice promo within the UK, though.

tea-and-toast.jpg
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mbanu
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Thu Mar 17, 2022 10:09 am

mbanu wrote:
Tue Mar 15, 2022 12:10 pm
I get a kick out of this 1988 Tetley promo -- American Anglophiles are uneasy around Teasmades, but a musical mug with cartoon mascots would have been pure poison to the image of British elegance, especially in 1988. :lol:
Maybe a counter-argument ad from 1990 for the Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Maker:



The reason using a machine like this would have been promoted as "The modern way to make old-fashioned iced tea" is because it used teabags rather than instant tea mix, sort of side-stepping that old-fashioned iced tea was American, not British.
RayClem
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Fri Mar 18, 2022 10:39 am

I despise iced tea made from instant tea. It may even be nastier than instant coffee, which I also despise. The thing that amazes me is that there are even some nice restaurants that serve instant iced tea, spoiling what otherwise might have been a pleasant dining experience.

At one time I had one of the Mr. Coffee Iced Tea makers. It did make a pretty decent iced tea. However, the plastic they used for the container only lasted a couple of years before cracking/crazing as it was not properly designed to withstand the temperature of the brewed tea. Thus, I am back to making iced tea the old fashioned way. I still use tea bags for iced tea. I reserve high quality loose leaf teas for brewing hot tea. Although I am sure that iced tea made from a good loose leaf black tea would be tasty.
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mbanu
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Fri Mar 18, 2022 1:13 pm

RayClem wrote:
Fri Mar 18, 2022 10:39 am
I despise iced tea made from instant tea. It may even be nastier than instant coffee, which I also despise. The thing that amazes me is that there are even some nice restaurants that serve instant iced tea, spoiling what otherwise might have been a pleasant dining experience.
Usually the instants seem to target whichever beverage is less well-known -- for instance in the tea-drinking UK, instant coffee used to be more popular than brewed coffee.
RayClem wrote:
Fri Mar 18, 2022 10:39 am
At one time I had one of the Mr. Coffee Iced Tea makers. It did make a pretty decent iced tea. However, the plastic they used for the container only lasted a couple of years before cracking/crazing as it was not properly designed to withstand the temperature of the brewed tea.
Ad vs. reality would be a fun comparison. :lol: The British advertiser David Ogilvy had a good explanation, I think.
David Ogilvy wrote:Why do some people chose Jack Daniel's, while others choose Grand Dad or Taylor? Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don't make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn't the whiskey they choose, it's the image. The brand image is 90 per cent of what the distiller has to sell.

Researchers at the Department of Psychology at the University of California gave distilled water to students. They told some of them that it was distilled water, and asked them to describe its taste. Most said it had no taste of any kind. They told the other students that the distilled water came out of the tap. Most of them said it tasted horrible. The mere mention of tap conjured up an image of chlorine. Give people a taste of Old Crow, and tell them it's Old Crow. Then give them another taste of Old Crow, but tell them it's Jack Daniel's. Ask them which they prefer. They'll think the two drinks are quite different. They are tasting images.

I have always been hypnotized by Jack Daniel's. The label and the advertising convey an image of homespun honesty, and the high price makes me assume that Jack Daniel's must be superior.

Writing advertising for any kind of liquor is an extremely subtle art. I once tried using rational facts to argue the consumer into choosing a brand of whiskey. It didn't work. You don't catch Coca Cola advertising that Coke contains 50 per cent more cola berries.
I think this can lead advertisers down a path of madness where they suspect these things are symmetrical; that if people buy a particular teapot for the image and being 50 per cent more durable won't make more people buy it, that making it 50 per cent less durable won't make less people buy it, either. :)
RayClem
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Fri Mar 18, 2022 2:14 pm

Yes, many advertisements certainly stress image. Perhaps one of the most classic is the Marlboro man, implanting the image that if men smoked Marlboro cigarettes that they would be perceived as rugged, handsome individuals, presumably attractive to the opposite sex. I am glad such cigarette advertisements are no longer permitted in the States.

The advertisements for Dos Equis beer featuring "the most interesting man in the world" also focused on image rather than product quality. I rather enjoyed some of those ads.

Burl Ives was featured in several advertisements for Luzianne Tea bags for iced tea. I am not quite sure what that image was trying to convey.
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mbanu
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Mon Mar 21, 2022 12:53 pm

mbanu wrote:
Wed Feb 16, 2022 9:15 pm
A 1950s American-targeted one from Canada's Salada Tea:



This one is a little interesting because the ending slogan, "America's 'Quality' Tea", seems likely from an older ad campaign idea. Maybe not obvious, but by the way the announcer pronounced "quality" at the end, he was likely using the term in the 1920s Emily Post type of definition, where quality was a euphemism for high social class, a bit out of place with the rest of the ad. :) For a social-class based ad, one would have expected a different tone than ice-skating clocks, impatient ice-cubes, and singing jingles. I think they originally wanted to just use the "Enjoy Yourself" slogan from the middle. Perhaps the ending slogan was the boss's idea? :D
Tea-ads that inherit something from previous ads are interesting in their own way.



This 1989 Barry's Tea ad from Ireland had to work around the old-timey cartoon tea-wallah that Barry's was still using as their mascot.



Australia's Lan Choo was clearly a Chinese tea blend originally, although given the amount of milk being used, I doubt it still was in 1986.

*Edit: Or maybe a Ty Phoo knockoff? It looks like Lan Choo was put out first in 1948 -- a tea pretending to be a tea pretending to be a Chinese tea? :lol:
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