How Te-A-Me took on Trump
How, why and what happened after Fisheye’s “ballsiest client” approved of a unique and polarising idea.
“I literally jumped off my seat thinking it was a joke,” says Sumit Shah, executive director, Madhu Jayanti International, the makers of Te-A-Me. His reaction was when Orko Basu of Fisheye initially pitched what’s gone on to be one of India’s most globally successful online campaigns.
For those unfamiliar this involved sending Te-A-Me’s green tea to US presidential nominee Donald Trump, apparently since it “purifies mind and body and has been known to make people smarter.”
For those unfamiliar this involved sending Te-A-Me’s green tea to US presidential nominee Donald Trump, apparently since it “purifies mind and body and has been known to make people smarter.”
We are unclear whether the brief included the words “go viral” but “go viral” it did. Shah supplies us with some statistics: 710 articles in the international press in 24 languages across 65 countries. A digital engagement with 81 countries on Facebook and Twitter with 3.2 million views and over 22,000 tweets and mentions.
So how did this all come about?
The brief
Te-A-Me’s brief was simple: to promote its different variants (20 so far) and their benefits. Basu says, “Our job was to amplify that to the world.” When asked if Tata Tea’s Jaago Re with its activism tinged communication had any impact on this campaign, Shah says, “The brief to the agency was we have limited budgets. Nowhere close to Jaago Re which brings up only one benefit of tea: that it can wake you up. But instead of one benefit and attribute, we wanted to show off 20 of these. We decided on a platform that helps showcase the power of tea.”
The idea
Given the brief, the agency zeroed in on Donald Trump, a subject the world was already talking about and picked the green tea variant.
Both agency and client were aware too of the polarising nature of the campaign; that Trump’s meteoric rise pointed to him having a huge groundswell of support in America and even in India, were some people have very publicly sworn their allegiance to him.
The hitch
Building the campaign around Trump was a calculated risk given the process began at a time when candidates like Ted Cruz still looked like they stood a chance. Asked what they would have done if Trump had in fact fallen by the wayside, Basu says, “We didn’t think about that much to be honest. We focused on Mr Trump since he was getting all the attention. Between the time we conceived the idea and he became the presumptive nominee, it intensified.”
Which led to an unusual problem. Given the nature of the project an American team had to be a part of it but many potential partners backed out given the candidate’s litigious nature and his well-documented history of taking any perceived or real critic head on. Basu will only say a team of extremely passionate people across India and Canada made it happen, including pieces seen in the film like graffiti. He stops short of identifying them, given there’s already been “a small minority of extremely threatening mails and comments; extremely hateful stuff. We need to protect them and not mention any details that would compromise their security.” As for the people who featured in the ad, Basu says “Given its branded content, obviously we have model releases, but the reactions were genuine. New York reacted incredibly well.”
The process
To be on the safe side, Te-A-Me made multiple tea deliveries to Trump Towers, braving the secret service which had a fairly rigorous presence. The last of these, documented in the film, happened as recently as the 12th of this month. The team worked hard to pull the film off within a week. They were clear the campaign should break before the Republican National Convention, given the uncertainty of what would follow after Trump’s official nomination.
The result
Considering this is Te-A-ME’s first mainline campaign, and the firm has a stated aim of backing on social media, Shah is pleased with the results. The platform has been a gift that keeps on giving. After Trump bagged the nomination, Te-A-Me tweeted out yet another suggestion.
He says, “We see tea as a change agent moving from good to much better. Or bad to good. That’s the platform and messaging we choose.
The international fame of the campaign has translated into a lot of demand for the product online, says Shah though the tea is officially available only in India and Israel. Other plans include Middle East and perhaps Europe as well. When asked about America, he says, “We got a lot of demand and people are buying from our line systems. But I’m not sure we want to attempt the US; they drink different sort of teas there. We’d have to rejig the product before we do that.”.
Despite thriving on a high-pressure environment, Mr Trump does not drink alcohol, coffee or tea, nor does he smoke, although he enjoys the occasional Diet Coke (real Coke on treat days) and Virgin Bloody Mary. This is said to be because he lost his brother Fred to alcoholism. He did, however, introduce Trump Vodka in 2006 and bought a winery in Virginia in 2011, Trump Vineyard Estates, now owned by his son Eric.A
MEAT AND POTATOES MAN
He may be a billionaire, but Mr Trump is a man of the people when it comes to his partiality to takeaway in the form of KFC, McDonald’s Big Macs and fries. When he’s slimming, he’ll pull the bun off his burger or eat just a pizza’s toppings to save calories. An aide told Axios he’s cut down on the junk food since entering the White House, sticking to his beloved steak — which his butler told the New York Times he likes so well-done it “would rock on the plate” — crab or shrimp, with a side of vegetables or Cobb salad. He also loves classics including meatloaf, caesar salad and spaghetti, and snacks on original Lay’s potato chips, vanilla Keebler Vienna Fingers. His preferred treats are cherry vanilla ice cream and See’s candies, but he doesn’t eat Oreos since they began using crops grown in Mexico.
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