Finding where product development could improve a cup of tea

The question

The brand’s team wanted to know which stages of the tea journey did most to settle which brand people buy.

It also wanted the physical, emotional and sensory cues at each stage, what makes a cup good or bad, and where product development could give people a better drink. Hot and iced tea are made and drunk differently, so each needed a journey of its own.

Our approach

We followed the making as closely as the drinking, so the team could see the whole experience around the cup as well as the tea in it.

Online, frequent drinkers of the brand and of its competitors kept tea logs, filmed themselves making tea and reported from the shelf.

We gave them tasks that break routine: buying a tea they don’t usually drink, running a blind tasting with a friend, swapping tea and other drinks across the day. For a while, we let them take over the conversation.

Then we met some of them at home over a cup of tea, and went shopping with them.

What the team came away with

The team had two interactive online journeys, one for hot tea and one for iced, with drinkers’ own video alongside.

Each ran from the moment someone wants a cup, through the shelf, the kettle, the steep and the drink, to the bin. At every stage it set out what happens, the sensory cues at play and how different kinds of drinker behave.

They were built so colleagues across the business could explore each stage for themselves, and see where product development could improve the cup.