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TEA-FOR-TRUMP CAMPAIGN



Kirjoittanut: Suong Tran Thi Ha - tiimistä FLIP Solutions.

Esseen tyyppi: Yksilöessee / 2 esseepistettä.
Esseen arvioitu lukuaika on 5 minuuttia.

An Indian tea company has made a campaign sneering Trump and we loved their smart marketing idea. Continue reading and you’ll know what happened and what Hekumu could learn from it.

Hekumu herbal tea

I am attracted by coffee, but a herbal tea lover

The tea for Trump is a well- done campaign made by an India tea company with a lot of efforts of their marketing team to spread the words about the goodness of green tea. At first it sounds absurd to associate Trump with green tea, however this absurdity may be one of the elements to support the campaign to go viral and the meaning behind the whole concept has been delivered very well to get the agreements from their audiences. The idea was just simply to send the special package of green tea for Trump, together with the message: Donald Trump, drink the tea 🙂

Link for video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYy7qy2AQeo

This real-time campaign video has gained +3.22 million views (in first 72 hours) on Facebook and YouTube, +350 million campaign reach from 80+ countries (lead by India and US), +23.000 of tweets and mentions on Twitter (having 60+ twitter verified profiles), 150.000+ digital engagements, 42.000+ video shares. I think this is amazing numbers to prove how successful the campaign could go viral.

Tea-for-Trump aimed to the audience in America and India, with the combination of content marketing, digital marketing, and real-time marketing. Main activities of the campaign were to attract the audience’ s attention, encourage them to engage to the brand, manage their feedbacks during real time happenings and then follow the momentum of the spillover effect to apply media strategies, like online newspaper or offline billboard, etc.

What helped the campaign succeed?

I think first of all the success of the campaign was because of Trump. Trump himself is a phenomena from the time he has become one of the most powerful man on over the world. Together with his influence in both positive and negative sides, he has created many controversies and strong concerns related to his extreme views about racism, sexism and beyond. Using Trump as a communication tool to spread the benefits of tea is a smart strategy. The campaign drew the audience consensus with the fact that Trump should drink tea to cleanse himself and become smarter. It was a way to mock Trump in a very polite but profound way and at the same time to make people feel fun and excited to involve themselves in the event by joining requesting Donald Trump to #drinkthetea. The popularity of Trump’s image and the concurrence of those who are opposed to Trump pushed the campaign to go viral and stimulate the media.

The second reason has led to the success of the campaign was the perfect execution combined exactly with timing, audience targeting, distribution, amplification, seeding, and cross-platform advertising. By a good planning and vision of what can happen after during and after the event has made this marketing team anticipate and control the situation well. I think it is especially harder to control the happenings during the real time. However, the developments of the event could go smoothly according to the plan could show how much effort the team has put to control even the little details. Every element that participated should be aligned very well with each other. It somehow is same as the event that I used to manage. To be able to bring up the amazing performance, people from the backstage must do a lot of works and everything should be controlled perfectly.

A little detail appeared in the campaign video that made me noticed was the image of India women in their traditional costume. That happened totally under the good arrangement and care of the little details. On another hand, they could succeed in spreading the culture, Introducing tea originating from India and impress people by the image that the Indian women could raise the voice towards the important person like Trump. Why it was not a man to give the speech? Using the woman to show the points of view again the sex racist like Trump is again the smart arrangement.

However, the campaign message has also generated a great deal of controversy from those siding with Trump against the brand. Some have suggested that getting involved in Trump affairs is not the company’s business and that the company just wants to use Trump to drive sales. Somehow, the funny parts and beneficial sides of tea were unvisible to some people, and that could pose a huge media risk for the brand. I believe the company can somehow get the message across in a softer and more neutral way, but it’s certainly not an easy thing to do.

Learning points for Hekumu herbal tea business practice

As a new brand, Hekumu cannot invest that much money for such a big event. However, there is a possibility to go viral on social media channels with a little investment, by using the available resources to save costs, like we can make ourselves the interesting and meaningful videos or ask for permission from the school to organize the kids’ painting day in school. The goal can be to gain the awareness of Hekumu brand and to present the message that Hekumu tea is a good and safe option for kids because it has rich vitamin resources and caffeine free. With Hekumu herbal teacup, Hekumu hope that kids can savour the delight moments together with their family.

One more input that I have learnt from this viral campaign was about the importance of the measurement tools of the success. In my opinion, any campaigns, from the cheap to expensive investment, should set up carefully the clear goals and performance measurement tools. In the India tea company campaign, they have used the media coverage to measure their success. Also, I could see that this tea company paid much focus on content marketing, and they also had a very good plan for content distribution using the integrated channel strategy. In Hekumu case, we can for example, count the effectiveness based on the engagement rate on social media channels and how many platforms our messages can reach to.

One more important point is to have the crisis control plan. Any kind of media crisis can happen to a brand and even can become bigger if it is not being controlled or solve well. I think the brand manager should not ignore this possibility of risk whenever they aim to communicate to their audiences. I think being able to vision these possible risks and find the solutions for the specific issues are key to help the brand managers to reduce maximum the risks. Surely the risk to a big company can be bigger than the small one, but the awareness of it is needed for a good planner.

Comments
  • Iida Luhtala

    Like I said earlier: This was SUPER interesting! Really, maybe the best blog post I’ve read this autumn.
    It is compelling, I learned something new and it helps our journey with Hekumu.
    Amazing.

    15.10.2021
  • Iida Luhtala

    from the essay team (Kamil and Sandy)
    That is very interesting angle to talk about marketing.
    Impressive!

    xo

    11.11.2021
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