The Campaign

Getting busy Hong Kongers to follow details like tea steeping times was a tall order, but we found an innovative way to ensure each cup of Teacha tea was steeped to perfection – by adding just a small twist to our existing tea tags. THE IDEA: ORIGAMI TEA-TIMER We teamed up with packaging designers to create the world’s first origami tea timer, encouraging drinkers to fully immerse themselves while the teas steeped. We replaced our tea tags with envelopes that asked to be unfoldeded. Inside, integrated onto the paper, were origami instructions. Tea drinkers spent the time making the folds to create beautiful, benefit-inspired pieces of origami, each with varying levels of difficulty to match the right amount of steeping time for a given blend – the more time the tea needed to steep, the more folds for the origami. Once the origami was complete, so was the tea!

Creative Execution

We created origami designs for 3 of our best-selling blends, each with varying degrees of complexity per their ideal research-backed steeping times: 1) a pelican representing the smoothness of Earl Green (3 minutes to complete), 2) a butterfly to represent the balancing effects of Tulsi Harmony (4 minutes to complete) and a humming bird to represent the revitalizing powers of Sweet Fruits of the Forest (5 minutes to complete). Launching in cafes across Hong Kong’s busiest districts, and promoted only through Teacha’s own social media platforms and instore, TeaCha found a way to persuade tea drinkers to change their tea-drinking behavior and enjoy teas like they never did before. Executions: Packaging –tea tags replaced by 3 origami designs, each with different levels of complexity and completion times Social media – social posts of designs, encouraging tea-drinkers to do the same through a hashtag Instore - Shelf Talkers and table stands

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

With zero paid media spend, 500 Origami Tea-Timer teabags were sold out in 3 days, helping our new brand gain major traction. And consumers didn’t stop at making the origami and drinking the tea – more than 200 captured their beautiful origami masterpieces and shared it with friends on social media. All photos of Origami Tea-Timer, including TeaCha’s own profiles and consumer generated photos, garnered some 3,000 engagements within 2 weeks. After the photos of our designs went viral online, Millennials in Hong Kong started to get curious – driving a 200% surge to TeaCha’s website. These simple yet smart designs not only helped Hong Kong tea drinkers brew a perfect cup of tea, but also brewed a new chapter for our brand. Mass production has since been commissioned.

Our target was the Millennial Hong Kong tea drinkers who were always on the lookout for new immersive experiences. While they were more health conscious than their parents’ generation, they wanted things convenient and fast. They drank functional tea for its health benefits but didn’t realise that even though teas are packed with goodness, they required specific steeping times to fully release its nutrients. To get these busy and impatient Hong Kong drinkers to notice and follow brewing instructions, our campaign was created to fit into these criteria: 1. MINIMAL EFFORTS – Each origami took 2 – 5 minutes to complete 2. PHOTO OPPORTUNITY – The beautiful origamis provided ‘show-off’ opportunities for the ‘camera first’ Hong Kongers to share on their social profiles 3. FUN! – Instead of a boring tea lesson, we created something fun that people genuinely wanted to participate in, while positively changing their behaviour