Yogi Tea sponsrar Mynewsday

Då vi på Mynewsdesk består av en samling hipsters är det givet att vi gillar ekologiska produkter så när goodiebag-teamet sammanträdde för att välja sponsorer blev valet att kontakta Kung Markatta självklart då de har ett av Sveriges bredaste sortiment av ekologiska produkter. De tackade ja, och skickade oss 1500 förpackningar av deras Yogi tea

Vi bad Feijo Bleisgraaf, Account Manager på YOGI TEA berätta lite om hur de som ett nische- varumärke jobbar med PR och varför de bland annat valde att synas på vårt Mynewsday event.

"Yogi Tea is a well known, but niche, organic herbal & spice tea brand. For those who have never heard about it, seen it, or ever tasted the exotic, rich and spicy flavors you should have a look at the tea section in most supermarkets or in one of the many health stores. For those who do know Yogi Tea you will probably have noticed that this brand is not an ordinary tea and the products are far beyond the usual teas in the market.

Yogi Tea is a brand with a rich history, a brand with an unusual spiritual and sustainable story that has grown over the years into a life style product that open minded, conscious and trend setting consumers want to relate to.

Throughout Europe and in the United States you can find this brand in most organic supermarkets, most health stores and in supermarkets in some markets like in Sweden. This does not mean Yogi Tea is a huge company dominating the tea market. In fact, the brand is successful, but also very niche and has grown steady and without huge marketing budgets into a mature brand with a good brand awareness amongst the average consumer.

How did this come about?

When the founders of Yogi Tea first started to commercially produce, pack and sell this tea they were convinced that letting people smell and taste the product would convince consumers to start buying and using it on a daily base. So they cooked and served the tea on all relevant fairs, events and gatherings, targeting a group of consumers that would relate to the product and brand the first. In those days these consumers were the pioneers in organic consuming and very committed to environmental issues. These pioneers started to grow a lot of affection for Yogi Tea, not only because of the taste profile, but also because of what the brand stood for. They felt they could connect to a brand that understood their lifestyle, wants and needs.

Internet and digital communication didn’t really exist in the 80s or was really developed in the 90 s as it is nowadays. Word of mouth, which was triggered by effectively seducing the core and niche target group, started to develop into the snow ball effect that eventually reached the average consumer searching for good tasting, high quality products.

Word of mouth is basically creating a free brand representative that ideally starts with passionate commitment from a small group of trendsetting people that inspire the early majority, which inspire the majority. This is the way how Yogi Tea has grown over the years, creating each consumer, one at a time.

Digital word of mouth!

Word of mouth used to occur on social gatherings, or by telephone between friend and family. With the rise of the internet and social media a new and great marketing tool also started to develop. The commercial game is still the same. Creating consumers that consume your product and making sure they keep coming back to the store to replenish. The only thing that has changed is the digitalization of social contact and therefore also the word of mouth. This change gives us many opportunities for cheap, budget and guerilla marketing, excellent for small companies, with not much marketing budget to spend.

Online or social media should not be seen as a standalone tool to conduct marketing. It should be seen in a holistic way, in order to complete other activities or to give other activities a push.

Yogi Tea is a brand that was developed by an Indian guru who inspired many people by teaching Yoga and an ancient Indian health science called Ayurveda. These roots and history makes it relatively easy to communicate directly with Yogi Tea’s core consumers which are found on yoga and health related events and fairs. Often Yogi Tea is present on these events and fairs, serving tea like they also did in the past and acting like sponsors supporting these small but great initiatives.

What happens when you commit your brand to initiatives like this is that events and fairs communicate this commitment on their websites and all sorts of social media pages. They find it important to show their audience the commitment of a well known brand to their event, and therefore they communicate about this cooperation without any great expectations like advertising fees. When this happens the digital snowball immediately starts to roll, even before the event took place. People start talking about it, they see a brand like Yogi Tea commit to that event, which creates credibility to both the brand as the event and they start sharing this with their friends. People who visit the event will also have live encounters with the brand, because of its sponsorship and this encounter creates even more commitment. This presence is then being rewarded with pictures and positive messages, which the visitor of the event is posting or tweeting and reaching at least 200 to 300 of its followers, which contains many friends and family members.

After the event there is usually a very positive energy that floats around the organizers and visitors of the event. When people are happy, content, inspired and satisfied they do feel the urge to share this positive feeling. Again the commitment of a brand like Yogi Tea to this event is being rewarded with “thank you” postings and tweets, supported by the many pictures that show brand imaging.

Marketing snowball!

Once you have conducted the exercise as described above not only the consumer snowball starts to roll faster and become bigger …. Also the marketing and even the business contact snowball starts to roll of the mountain. Other events see the positive vibes that has been created and new business opportunities also starts to occur. In fact, you start to create a network, very valuable for your brand, which will last you a long time and which you can pick and mix from whenever you have the need for marketing exposure or when you want to develop creative sales and marketing ideas.

From our own experience this approach, which has organically grown, turned out to be very effective. Not only is it effective, it is also very suitable for companies with low marketing budgets. For Yogi Tea it basically eliminated the need for expensive advertising campaigns which is minimally targeted, not very effective, does create some brand awareness but hardly any real brand commitment."