Positioning strategies of Tea Brands, Lipton

When you think about drinking tea, Lipton is probably one of those names instantly popping up in your mind. The history of this legendary brand dates to 1890. Lipton was founded by Sir Thomas Lipton and was named after him. The brand has a British origin and is quite experienced and passionate about what it does. Lipton is mostly known as a tea brand, but along with tea, the company also offers ready-to-drink beverages. The brand is renowned, successful, and popular. Effective strategies and positioning have their crucial role in the success of Lipton. So, let’s dive into Lipton’s profile more thoroughly and understand their choices of positioning and strategies.

Overall target market analysis of tea brands

Tea is considered one of the most popular beverages in the world. Despite the introduction of new beverages in the market, the tea market is continuously growing with time. The growth of the tea market relates to several factors. The disposable income of consumers is consistently growing, which encourages them to purchase more products and even those with higher prices.

This allows tea producers to introduce new, exclusive, and premium blends. Besides, with time there has been raising awareness about the benefits that tea can have for health. Among these benefits is the ability of tea to strengthen teeth and bones, boost the immune system, reduce the risk for cancer, kidney stone, and cardiovascular diseases, etc.

All this information contributed to the growing demand for tea. Also, tea brands started to introduce new ingredients in blends that target consumers having common health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, etc. As a result, the market growth for tea is fueled and strengthened by the increasing application of tea in the cosmetics and beauty industry.   

Let’s start by by identifying the target markets of Lipton.

To easily find out what target audience Lipton tries to attract, let’s go through the following commercial of the company and analyze it.

This commercial is bright, engaging, and positive. The colors are pastel, calm, and pleasing for the viewer. There is playful and cheering music in the background along with a voiceover. The plot is simple, clear, and understandable. The commercial is focusing on the green tea of Lipton. The voiceover describes the benefits that this tea can bring to the consumer along with the enjoyable good and fresh taste of the tea.

The benefits and effects of the tea are projected continuously with the scenes as well. There are three main characters in the video. One of them is the focus of the commercial. This young lady seems cheerful, positive, and calm. She enjoys her tea and the time spent with the close ones. Her two friends have a similar attitude to her. Their bond is quite loving and strong. They enjoy chatting and talking with each other.

These young ladies collectively depict the segment of customers that Lipton wants to target. All the discussed characteristics of these characters clearly show that Lipton focuses on Nesters’ segment.

Target Market: Nesters

Lifestyle and Values:

 People belonging to the Nesters’ target market give crucial importance to faith and always look for positive attributes in people. These people are known as calm, passive, responsible, and positive people. They prefer to move with the flow and are not adventurous. Those belonging to this segment tend to lead a well-organized daily routine.

The family has an immense role in their lives. Nesters are remarkably family oriented and love spending time at home with their close ones. Representatives of this segment enjoy communicating with people, chatting, and talking.

Nesters are not enthusiastic when it comes to career and work. They tend to choose comparably stable positions instead of the ones that are risky, but financially beneficial. These people avoid taking risks in general and value stability in their lives. Nesters don’t use their appearance to stand out. They dress and look like average people.

Attitude to Shopping:

 Representatives of the Nesters’ segment like to plan their shopping. They create shopping lists and write down all the items that they will need to buy when in-store. The opinion of other people can strongly influence their buying decision. Very often they can make a purchase based on the experience that someone else had with the product.

These people don’t strive to keep up with trends as trends are not that important for them. People from this segment give their preference to the goods and brands produced domestically. Also, they choose products and brands that are popular and demanded by the majority. Nesters are quite loyal to the shops and rarely switch to others. 

Marketing Strategy of Lipton

Marketing strategies play a crucial role when it comes to the success of the company. Any company nowadays should understand the game-changing role of effective marketing. Different companies use different marketing strategies. This varies depending on the size, industry, products, and other attributes of the company. Lipton uses carefully chosen marketing strategies to promote and sell its products.

It is not surprising as the tea and ready-to-drink beverages market are relatively competitive. There is a strong visual association with the yellow color that the brand has created throughout the years. The packaging and logo of the company helped to connect the yellow color to the name of Lipton. This has made it easier for the brand to advertise and market its products through visual methods. 

The brand uses both conventional and unconventional methods of marketing. Lipton actively uses traditional media for marketing purposes. Television is a perfect example, as probably everyone can recall seeing one of many TV ads of the company. These commercials are mainly transferring a sense of warmth and calmness strongly associated with the brand.

The TV ads of Lipton are always attractive, interesting, and cheering. The brand tries to create positive feelings and emotions in the minds of customers through its ads. Also, the company uses printed media to market its products. Very often people can find ads of Lipton in various magazines.

At the same time, Lipton actively uses non-traditional methods of marketing. The brand is remarkably active in the digital platform. It uses the social media pages of the brand to promote its products and keep up with time. The brand has carefully chosen and attractive content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Lipton clearly understands that digital platforms allow accessing a larger customer base and enables to find new customers.

The brand uses different social media platforms to stay in touch with its customers, inform them about its activities and update them about news related to the brand. Lipton uses online ads as well. Along with this, Lipton is sponsoring various initiatives and events and uses campaigns to evoke the interest of the customers and attract them.

Problem Removal 

There is not just one problem that Lipton strives to solve. The brand has different goals and purposes that are closely related and interconnected with each other. Lipton connects the taste and quality of its products directly to the environment and nature. The brand wants to ensure the safety and well-being of nature to be able to provide its customers with the signature taste and aroma of tea.

Lipton believes that its tea is not just a simple popular drink, but it is a means to bring something good, bright, and positive to the lives of its customers. With its products, the brand wants to give back and bring happiness not only to its customers but to the planet and the farmers and their families. Also, the brand wants to keep up with time and ensure that its tea tastes will remain desirably and great not for today, but the future as well. 

Social Approval

Nowadays, social acceptance is crucial for any company striving to become successful and competitive in the market. There are many ways and strategies that companies can use to gain social approval. Thus, the strategies used for obtaining and maintaining social approval may vary from one company to another. Lipton understands the role of social acceptance very well.

As a part of multinational consumer goods company Unilever, Lipton has the same strategies as Unilever when it comes to social approval. Sustainability is the main strategy of Lipton when it comes to social approval. The company strives to implement sustainability in all its operations. Their strategy of being sustainable focuses on eliminating the use of pesticides and chemicals when growing raw materials for making Lipton products.

They work closely with the government and suppliers for this purpose to create safer and healthier products for consumption. Also, the company actively invests and participates in different initiatives and educational programs for its sustainable goals. 

Message Strategy

Moving on to the message strategy of Lipton let’s discuss one of the posts of the company from its Instagram page. 

This post is quite interesting and engaging. It is not something that you would expect to see on the social media page of a tea brand. There is not tea, cup, or anything that can pop up in your mind when you think about such a brand. Instead, we can see the animated picture that contains all the colors intricately connected and associated with Lipton.

The picture gives a sense of warmth, lightness, and certainty. There is writing in the center of the picture. It contains words written in bold as well as words in distinctive fonts that help them to catch attention and stand out from the general text. This writing comes to encourages people to be true to themselves, be open, and free. It wants the viewer to accept who they are and share their feelings with close ones.

Lipton presents its tea as a perfect way to connect with people, come together, and make everything easy and simple. They encourage living easy, sharing, and forming close relationships with people to gain the feeling of happiness.

All the discussed details of the post picture and its description indicate that Lipton represents the Innocent brand archetype. This brand stands for happiness, easy living, and optimism. Certainty, predictability, and perfection are core characteristics and values of a brand belonging to this archetype. The motto of this archetype is “Free to be you and me!” and the archetype is all about innocence.

Summing up, Lipton is undoubtedly an influential brand and has valuable experience in the market for tea and ready-to-drink beverages. Its dedication helps the brand to keep on working passionately and constantly creating new products for its customers. Not many companies can reach the success of Lipton, and there are different reasons behind the success of this brand. The discussion showed how important it can be for a brand like Lipton to choose effective and strong strategies and positioning tactics. The positioning strategies of Lipton could assure visible success for the brand. Check out the main page of our website for more posts like this.