Lipton's jigsaw puzzle

The jury is out on whether Hindustan Unilever can match the success of Tata Tea’s Jaago Re campaign with ‘Stay Sharp’.

What have jigsaw puzzles got to do with promotion of tea? Ask Hindustan Unilever. The fast moving consumer goods major has woken up to Tata Tea’s mega success with the Jaago Re campaign and has launched ‘Stay Sharp’.

The idea is to leverage the online space to launch and build consumer engagement with the Lipton Yellow Label tea, which was visible mainly at tea and coffee vending machines in offices. So when Lipton relaunched the tea in mid-April, it wanted to create some buzz.

The result: Lipton’s new digital campaign is all about the world's largest jigsaw puzzle consisting of 25,000 pieces, which are further broken into 1,000 parts with 25 pieces each. Visitors to the website can solve one or more of these 1,000 parts each time they log on. The top five winners, who can solve it within a period of eight weeks, will get Apple iPhones.

The brand positioning is clear: Lipton relaunched its yellow label tea in mid-April with increased focus on Theanine, a naturally found substance in tea which is known to increase 'alpha brain waves’ that are associated with a "relaxed yet alert" state of mind.

Stay Sharp, the company says, is promoting the same qualities – the premium tea brand also helps a person to stay sharp and focused. The idea evolved after researchers at Lipton Tea Institute developed a special blend made from young tea leaves that has high levels of Theanine.

The puzzle, available on the website – www.stay-sharp.in — has been conceptualized by Royce B McClure who designed the world's largest commercially available jigsaw puzzle, titled Life: The Great Challenge, consisting of 24,000 pieces.

OgilvyAction, the brand activation arm of the Ogilvy Group, has also put in place an office activation programme in about 500 offices in Mumbai and Delhi for informing people about the website and seek their participation in solving the puzzle.

Vikram Grover, Category Head, Beverages (HUL), says the idea behind the relaunch was to make tea exciting, modern and relevant for young consumers. He, however, declined to comment on the market share and the sales growth target the company has in mind.

But will this work? The jury is out on this. Harish Bijoor, CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, says, both Jaago Re and Stay Sharp are great pieces of digital marketing. While Tata Tea has taken a strategic mass market route, Lipton has chosen a niche market route through mind games,” he says.

Yashesh Shethia from Chlorophyll (brand consultancy), isn’t convinced. "Just because the interactive space is the new buzz, it does not mean agencies should jump on the bandwagon blindly. Social media works only when the target customers find a need to interact with the product. “If the product or the idea does not fit into their lives, they discard it," he says.

For example, in the FMCG category, mega digital campaigns such as Cadbury's meethamoments and HUL’s gangofgirls (Sunsilk) couldn’t create the kind of buzz jaago re did.

Shethia says jaago re had a compelling reason for its success: With elections round the corner, the campaign had an immediate connect. Result: jaago re has over 6,00,000 registered users besides the Facebook pages and thousands of views on YouTube.

Stay-sharp has close to 20,000 registered users. But that may be an unfair comparison as these are still early days for the campaign.

But now that the elections are over, Jaago Re may have lost its relevance. So watch this space for Tata Tea’s next punch.