Not all that long ago, tea advertising used to look easy. It also
used to look quite good. Even recently, it looked capable enough. The PG
chimps and Tetley Teafolk may have been a little tired, but there was
still an easy charm and a craftsmanlike appeal lurking beneath the
surface of their appearances.
So why, all of a sudden, does every agency with a tea account seem to
have lost the plot? Like veteran typists told to look at the keys,
they've been asked to think about what they're doing - and have made a
complete mess of it as a result. It's tempting to think that, if you sat
one of the PG apes down at a keyboard and asked it to come up with its
own scripts, you'd get a more striking and intelligible campaign than
the leading brands have come up with in the past 12 months.
I said, three weeks ago, that BMP's wholly unimaginative update of the
PG work might look good if Tetley made an equal cock-up of moving its
brand on. I must say, I didn't expect D'Arcy to back me up quite so
efficiently.
To blame the ineptitude of D'Arcy's launch ad on the confusion currently
infecting the tea market would be too generous. The identity crisis that
seems to have gripped the leading players in the face of their perceived
outdated image would be too convenient an explanation. You might
speculate that Tata Tea's acquisition of Tetley back in 2000 could be
causing confusion in the brand's own marketing strategy. But this would
seem strange when you consider that the strength of Tetley's existing
brand was cited as one reason for the purchase.
The fact is that this ad is inexplicably poor. It's bemusing and
laughable from start to finish and hasn't a single redeeming feature in
strategy or execution. Tetley's relaunch feels as bland and watery as a
diet Cup-a-Soup and as tasty as a pint of cold Lemsip.
"Tetley is rich in antioxidants that can help keep your heart healthy."
It's not a muscular, groundbreaking proposition, is it? In fact, my
mother has been banging on about this for years, which is why I strongly
suspect that it's no exclusive quality of Tetley tea either. Are
audiences ready to view the hot drink they've enjoyed all their lives as
some new-found health tonic? Let's face it, if you really wanted to get
a health kick out of your morning brew, you'd be drinking the green
Chinese stuff.
D'Arcy has attempted to communicate the premise through a 60-second TV
ad that is simply beyond belief. It starts off bizarrely enough with an
overweight father running in a school sports day (powered, no doubt, by
that incredible new sports drink - tea). The creative bar is then
repeatedly lowered through a series of vignettes that are, by turns,
surreal, ludicrous and derivative, but always remain stubbornly
irrelevant to the message in question. My favourite is the Beefeater who
abandons his post to stop a toddler grazing her knee. Chris Morris
couldn't send up advertising better than this.
Meanwhile Ewan McGregor babbles on inanely in banal rhyming couplets
that end with the atrocious line (which, clunkily, doesn't rhyme): "You
are the champions and this is your cup." It's unmitigated garbage from
beginning to end.
A reason for this torture is finally revealed at the close of the spot
as the health waffle appears onscreen. Viewers are unlikely to read it,
however, as it's stuck in the middle of a Teletubbies-style sequence
that involves floating neon circles containing the characters' heads and
a little girl nodding strangely in the middle.
It's as if D'Arcy is desperately trying to divert attention from the
main idea with this nausea-inducing display. I can't say I blame the
agency.
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