The Brief

Brand positioning, brand story, tone of voice, key messaging and copy for the website and packaging of a new-to-market chai brand in collaboration with Bloom London.

The Challenge

Indian food is typically stereotyped into the “traditional” and “ethnic” brand archetypes, which is something the founders wanted to avoid. They wanted to challenge the British concept of chai, and on an even bigger scale, our concept of the right cup of tea. Their overarching goal was to make chai a modern product that you’d drink anytime, anywhere, the same way most British people would drink English Breakfast tea. The first challenge we addressed with the branding was setting Tuk Tuk Chai apart as a modern Indian brand in a compelling, energetic way, avoiding cultural stereotypes.

 Storytelling

Firstly, I had to tackle the tone of voice and overarching brand story. Tuk Tuk Chai’s co-founders had a international love affair and through that, discovered chai. It was an engaging and authentic way to introduce the story and the range.

To set the product apart from the Starbucks “chai lattes”, we decided to put together a video of chaiwallahs making chai on the streets. My thinking was that this would contextualise the product and show how different it is from the standard British brew.

Finally, many consumers will not be familiar with how to drink real chai – it’s a different drink to British tea. So we created a page to encourage people to try it different ways; hot, cold etc. This gave rise to the strapline: chai it your way.

Product Range

For the product range, the client created a range of three flavours which loosely correlated to different geographical regions in India – masala chai is predominantly drunk in the North, cardamom chai is a speciality of the South, and ginger chai is drunk across the country. For this reason, we decided to match up each product with an adventure in that region, to give a taste of India without going down the heritage route.

How this helped them

By contextualising the product for a British audience, I helped the founders of Tuk Tuk Chai to communicate about their product in a way that was relatable for the customers they wanted to reach. From educating the audience about the ways they could make it their own, to bringing in a modern love story, Tuk Tuk Chai became a brand that was about more than just tea. It’s about fusion, East meets West and a celebration of multiculturalism. It has a point of view, and that’s what makes them stand out in a big way within the tea industry.