Yorkshire Tea TV ad still 2017, Kaiser Chiefs

Yorkshire Tea is about to kick off its biggest-ever campaign – and its first to feature multiple TV executions.

The £7m investment will make its small screen debut on Saturday (4 March), when one of a trio of ads airs during The Voice on ITV. The 30-second clips feature personalities from Yorkshire and were filmed at the brand’s headquarters in Harrogate.

Leeds rock band Kaiser Chiefs (above) perform telephone hold music in the reception area, while Dewsbury-born triathlete brothers Jonny and Alistair Brownlee use their Olympic medal-winning skills to make a high-speed delivery – and Barnsley’s Michael Parkinson conducts jobs interviews for the buying department. Each clip ends with the strapline “Yorkshire Tea: where everything’s done proper”.

The push’s eclectic range of stars was chosen to help make black tea relevant among younger consumers while also appealing to the brand’s core audience, said Kevin Sinfield, head of brand marketing at Yorkshire Tea. It is the only top-five tea brand in value growth (by 3.1%) in a category down 3.9% largely as a result of consumers opting out of traditional black tea [Nielsen 52 w/e 8 October 2016].

“We still believe in the standard black tea category,” Sinfield added. “We still have a challenger brand mentality.”