Clipper Teas ad screenshot

Source: Ecotone UK

The TV ad is live now and will run until 30 September

Clipper has become the latest tea brand to splash out on a major advertising campaign amid a wider move towards own label in the category. 

It has invested £800k into a new ‘Make it Better’ campaign, including its first TV ad, which premiered this week on ITV and Channel 4.

The ad will run via “hyper-targeted” TV and video on demand throughout the London region until 30 September.

Projected to reach over 2.1 million viewers, it told the story of Clipper as “a renowned sustainable tea pioneer” and called on Britain’s tea drinkers to “make tea the best way, with the finest organic and 100% natural ingredients, brewed in an unbleached, plastic-free teabag”, said the brand.

Clipper Teas marketing & category director Bryan Martins said the brand wanted to bring to life “everything our brand stands for in a joyfully vibrant way”.

The launch will be supported by PR, social media, and paid media promotion across the four-week period.

It comes on the back of a challenging year for the brand, whose value dropped by £1.3m in the 52 weeks to 18 June 2022 – a 7.9% decline [NielsenIQ].

In fact, eight of the top 10 tea brands – excluding Yorkshire Tea (up 4.2%) and Pukka (2.8%) – have seen declines over the same period.

Despite this, Martins claimed Clipper was “still in a strong position year-on-year”.

Clipper had “expected to experience a decline in sales across the wider tea category” as people changed their routines, “returning to the office and consuming hot beverages out of home more frequently”, he said.

Yet while total value sales of branded tea tumbled by 6.6% to £554.6m over the period, own label sales grew by 5.3% to £131.6m [Kantar 12 w/e 12 June 2022].

Tetley and Twinings have both ramped up their marketing. Tetley last year splashed £2.5m on a new ad campaign after its supermarket sales fell by almost £5m. However, its value has fallen by a further £5.3m this year – a 6.2% decline [NielsenIQ 52 w/e 19 June 2021 vs 18 June 2022]. 

Twinings, too, has bolstered its marketing efforts in a bid to stem declining sales. It last year launched a TV ad campaign after its value dropped by £4.2m in the 52 weeks to 19 June 2021. Despite the push, its value also dropped a further £6.4m this year [NielsenIQ].