TEA & SYMPATHY FOR TWININGS

Tea brand Twinings is facing a high street rebellion, according to The Grocer this week, with apparently “furious” tea drinkers angry at the changing taste of its Earl Grey tea and demanding reinstatement of the original recipe.

More than 150 consumers (not exactly an enormous sample of the tea-drinking public) have expressed their displeasure online after Twinings revamped its Earl Grey earlier this year by adding extra bergamot and citrus and renaming it “The Earl Grey”. And all this despite an increase in sales since the new blend was introduced.

This is not, of course, the first time there has been opposition to a recipe change to a well established product. Probably the most famous example was Coca Cola, whose ‘New Coke’ formula ‘won’ in blind taste tests against Pepsi but the market reaction to which was so poor, that the company revered to its original formula, which it re-branded as "Coca-Cola Classic", leading to a significant gain in sales. Is this a silver lining for Twinings in the Earl Grey cloud?

So is the message to brands that a dramatic change of recipe to a well-loved product could lead to regular, loyal consumers starting to explore other brands? Is it akin to a form of betrayal from a trusted friend?

There will always be reasons behind such a fundamental product change. Sometimes bringing a revised product to market can be viewed as an exercise in damage limitation to cause as little alienation of current buyers as possible. There can be other reasons though, including a longer term view that the current core buyers are not sustainable. Sometimes, if a brand is deemed to be in long term decline, a decision is taken to target a whole new set of ‘cooler’ and younger core buyers. In this instance, upsetting their current buyers can be acceptable in the interests of longer term sustainability.

From a research standpoint, you need to ensure you understand both the change to the product and the strategy for its introduction, and structure the research accordingly. There is no single answer to the best way to run this type of research – you have to evaluate it on a case by case basis. For example, will you tell people it’s a new and improved taste or hope to slip it in under the radar? This would certainly influence how you introduce the product when testing.

This, of course, is not just any old product. There is likely to be more risk attached to ‘tampering’ with a cherished institution like Earl Grey tea than with a lot of other projects. So research should not only focus on innovation but on “conservation” too. This is where semiotics in research can be so important, having an inherent and detailed understanding of category rules, which are sacrosanct and which could survive or even thrive with reinvention.

If the product is changing and offering a tangible benefit which you will communicate – lower salt or fat or sugar ... etc. it is wise to let people know so that they can evaluate the product and the message as a bundle. Or are you changing to make the product appeal to a wider audience or is retention of current buyers a key objective? This would impact on who you would want as respondents to your research.

Change isn’t always dangerous and isn’t always bad, provided you factor in from the outset what you are trying to achieve. If retaining core customers is still the objective, changing both the recipe and the name at the same time might be too much for a devoted consumer. And they are the ones who would be hardest to get back once they leave.