Leaving the kettle to brew has become an instinctive nature for morning commuters. Whether it’s a green tea that needs to sit in the water that’s just the right temperature or two spoons traditional black tea boiled generously with sugar and milk, nothing is quite welcoming as that morning cup. And it comes as no surprise that every roasted leaf adds up to a $40.5 billion global industry.
Maintaining market standards as rich as the history of this staple, Ispahani is the largest contender in Bangladeshi market. Producing, blending and packaging top quality tea for years has made them a conglomerate with 520 sales centers and 25 divisional sales offices. Their fundamental approach is offering, communicating and delivering value.
It starts with expert tea tasters and blending experts go through a thorough procedure to ensure that only the best, freshest and finest tea leaves go into every pack. Every year a quality assessment team of ISO visits the tea blending and packaging plants and accordingly, regular upgrading of systems and machinery to meet world-class quality parameters. They continually conduct research, product blind tests, innovations, and renovations along with some brand building campaigns every year to stay ahead of the competition.
Their most recent campaign, ‘Tea means Ispahani Mirzapore’ declares that “the richer blend and great taste of Ispahani Mirzapore Tea let you live every moment filled with love.” They want to promote tea as an experience with loved ones. Constant innovation to meet the consumers’ demand is how they have built a brand loyalty reminiscent the everyday pick me up.
STRATEGY FROM THE ROOTS
While marketing their tea, Ispahani believes that retailers and consumers are equally important. Retailers are the initial point of promotion because they have direct access to consumers and the power to promote a particular product. Furthermore, retailers communicate product offers, new products or any product information to end consumers. Ispahani makes products available at outlets; communicate offers/benefits to retailers first through sales representatives and then run mass/customized advertising campaign when/where necessary.
Consumers are the ultimate purpose to build a product or brand over the years. The tea giant invests heavily in understanding the changing needs and wants of the tea market. They understand that 99% of the market is a variety of black tea but that does not limit the variety that is increasingly becoming prevalent. Understanding the values of both retailer and consumer is how the brand strategizes.
BREATHING LIFE INTO EVERY CUP
In 2014, Ispahani relaunched its new pack and repositioned itself with a phrase/slogan – Cha maane life ta bhorpur, cha manei Ispahani Mirzapore (Tea means a full life; tea means Ispahani Mirzapore). They played their first digital campaign in November of that year via Facebook, YouTube, GDN, local news portals, and websites. Nevertheless, they were limited as Google could not display their text in Bengali, their initial target. The national voice of the campaign resonated in thousands of homes. Ispahani Mirzapore received thousands of queries via email and a plethora of comments and messages on Facebook, all of which commended the campaign. This dynamic motivated the company to step towards real-time engagement. With digital media utilization, they found greater depth into the emotions consumers associated with Ispahani. Creating a chain of active conversation and responses with consumers allowed them to focus on real engagement through specific messaged, address the inquiries, and develop a more constant connection with consumers. The company believes that consistency is key in an era when the audience is exposed to such a vast degree of content.
With a campaign budget of Tk. 485,000, it was expected that the campaign would reach 750,000 people, receive 40,000 page likes, 4 million Google Display Network and (GDN) Impression. Just like their tea, Ispahani managed to handpick the best campaign, as it reached 1.8 million people, received 84,400 page likes, and 4.49 million GDN impressions. Moreover, #IspahaniTEA reached 3.7 million people and the picture tagging campaign engaged 307,900.
Overall, the company obtained more than 84,000 new fans and reached 5.5 million Facebook users in a matter of six weeks.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY: THE ENERGY BOOST FOR EVERY COMPANY
The company uses this as an opportunity; with data-management capability, they can reach, offer and tailor products and messages accurately and repetitively through specific targeting. The new trend also poses a very significant business challenge from the perspective of competition in the market.
Just like their tea, Ispahani managed to handpick the best campaign, as it reached 1.8 million people, received 84,400 page likes, and 4.49 million GDN impressions.
ANYTHING BUT A DISRUPTION
Ispahani concludes that the digital disruption is economy-wide and will continue to intensify in the coming years. They recognize this and began formulating and implementing a digital transformation strategy to have a competitive advantage. Digital technology has impacted the company in three key pillars:
· Improving customer experience
· Improving operational efficiency
· Increasing the level of agility of the organization
MATTERS OF MONEY AND MASTER PLANS
Digital technology, sales automation, marketing automation and financial modeling adds value to financial plans of Ispahani. It facilitates better planning and forecasting for the company. Our month on month sales data and reports (from sales automation and ERP software) are used planning for example. The more technology gets into play, the more the company is using them for decision making leads to strategic advantage. Otherwise, only machinery or technology that is bought will not give any result as the convergence of technology is ubiquitous.
TRACKING THE EVERYDAY
Ispahani has implemented technology into its every day. The company witnessed a more efficient operational function in aspects that included:
· Day to day meeting
· Tracking sales force
· Updating sales figure
· Tracking division-wise data.
CREATING FUNCTIONALITY FROM FACT AND FIGURES
Ispahani values using data in order to increase market efficiency. A majority of their data comes from Nielsen Retail Audit, Household Panels are obtained through Kantar MRB, and brand tracking data comes from Kantar Millward Brown. They use a multifaceted tool known as the brand awareness mapping in order to determine their current percentage of awareness, make plans to increase it and finally compare the campaign results against our objectives set. The tool entails top-of-mind-awareness (TOMA), spontaneous awareness, aided awareness, and total awareness. First Choice Brand Consideration (FCBC) metric allows them to determine how many consumers perceive the brand when they feel the need for this particular product in any particular category. We also always look into brand familiarity funnel also known as the brand conversion funnel to measure how awareness triggers to trials; and regular user-ship converted to to most often user-ship. The final weapon in Ispahani’s arsenal is Facebook. The insights from each, frequency, shares, likes, mentions, conversions, and engagement status direct plans for future campaigns.
IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU’RE SELLING
Given that Ispahani sells tea which is a production company of consumer packaged goods (CPG), digital campaigns do not suffice in marketing. CPG companies such as theirs must focus on mass markets and mass communication, mass distribution and for this they consider:
· Traditional Media (TV, Press, and Radio)
· Outdoor branding
· Point of purchase
· Digital campaign
CPGs pursue classic value chain model as opposed to the demand of platform that brings together producers and consumers, connect participants and generate value in two-sided markets – app developers on one side and app users on the other. Social media and digital platforms act as facilitators of engagement; they have empowered people and have offered platforms where the owners and consumers can interact with trust and even they can swap roles in ways that generate value for the platform.
