Drinking tea… an iconic symbol of British culture and something that people long for on a cold winter’s day, like today. Throw in a biscuit as well – good times!
Supermarket shelves are stacked with options, fancy a cup of English Breakfast tea, Earl Grey, green tea, herbal, an iced tea? You’re not lost for choice. So, which one do you pick up during your weekly shop and why?
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To show how brands can use social media monitoring to learn more about consumer motivations and behaviour when buying a particular product, we looked at the social conversation between 12- 18 February for four well-known tea brands: PG Tips, Twinings, Tetley Tea and Yorkshire Tea.
Let the battle of the tea brands commence! Firstly, we looked at the overall sentiment of each. And, it seems it’s good news all round!
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As you can see from the chart above, Tetley Tea received the highest percentage of positive mentions at 78.7%. Whilst this may appear to be a lot higher than the other three brands, it’s important to mention Tetley launched a competition on 15 February, which in part drove positive comments higher. This aside, it’s still obvious that the four tea brands have received few negative comments.
From the sentiment chart, we were able to drill down further to establish some of the motivations behind choosing specific ‘brews’. We have split these up into eight themes. As you will see there were many tea drinkers comparing brands.
Flavour and Taste
Twinings herbal tea range got the thumbs up, with one person commenting that they couldn’t drink any other type of tea, and fans loved the aroma:
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Yorkshire Tea was described as ‘delicious’ by some.
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However, there was a more mixed response towards the overall drinking experience of Twinings and PG Tips:
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One person even went as far as relating PG Tips to ‘fish tank water’!
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Health and Lifestyle
For particular tea brands, the health benefits were one of the key discussions. Twinings herbal range raked in many comments including:
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Many consumers saw drinking tea as part of their lifestyle and everyday routines. One person said that Twinings helped them get up in the morning:
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As well as a PG Tips fan:
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Twinings also helped people relax later in the day:
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Two tea brands were seen as providing emotional warmth / well-being. PG Tips was relied upon as a mood booster, and even life-enhancing:
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Tetley encouraged happiness amongst its tea drinkers:
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Drinking tea was also part of people’s social identity and they associated certain brands with being ‘posh’ in comparison to others, and PG Tips being referred to as ‘builders tea’:
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Quality
The quality of each tea brand also generated a social conversation. Some referred to Yorkshire Tea as being a proper ‘cuppa’ or ‘brew’, suggesting that other brands may not quite cut it in terms of good quality tea:
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It may come as some surprise that Twinings was described as ‘hot water’ by one tweeter, implying poor quality (you’re paying for tea, not water):
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Nostalgia
Tetley recently celebrated 175 years in the business, using nostalgia to engage its fans. Its famous Tetley Tea Folk are used to encourage people to join the official Facebook page:
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Sentiment
Expats and travellers talked about missing tea, many associating this with home turf:
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Competitions
There were 2,796 mentions of Tetley’s #FreeTeaFriday giveaway. These were most likely driven by brand engagement as Tetley’s Tea Folk tweeted various messages promoting the competition to win a year’s supply worth of tea throughout the day:
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A discount offering 10% off tea from a competitor brand, also generated a Twitter buzz but this time it was not initiated by the brand itself:
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Advertising
Although social media users didn’t refer directly to the PG Tips advert, its well-known mascot, the PG Tips monkey, was mentioned. Pun intended:
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Yorkshire Tea’s ad campaigns also resonated on social:
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Celebrity endorsement
Having a celebrity fan can also be influential. As much as you may personally want to, it seems no one can escape the power of One Direction! 1D’s Louis Tomlinson is a big fan of Yorkshire Tea. After several tweets from the boy band member, the tea brand reached out to him on his birthday and sent him a cake replicating their box of tea, with a personalised touch.
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This was a hot topic amongst younger tea drinkers and resulted in many of them associating the tea brand with the popstar, rather than vice versa!
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These are just some of the insights we found by taking a deeper dive into the conversation around tea brands. Our analysis identifies some of the memes and threads in the brand discussion and patterns or differences in consumer behaviour. Anyone for tea?