YCN Competition Brief 2015: Yorkshire Tea
Brief: To design a product or packaging based innovation around Yorkshire Tea's black tea to encourage the sale and consumption of the product in the 18-35 year old demographic.
The Problem: The tea market has seen a decline in 18-35 year olds drinking black tea, instead turning to more exciting herbal teas and coffee. I wanted to recapture this demographic through finding a solution that makes Yorkshire Tea’s black tea more interesting.
Solution: Straight Talking Tea
Being brutally honest but breaking the news gently. A packaging design concept that uses the brutally honest Yorkshire character to aid anybody to voice a difficult confession that would be hard to vocalise otherwise, due to fear of the concequences. Inspired by the significant milestones faced in the 18-35 year old audience, the concept uses difficult conversations faced by the audience, whilst tapping into British dark humour.
Values
• Honesty
• Yorkshire character
• Life’s moments
• Humour
• Straight talking
• Fun
Concept: Giving Yorkshire Tea customers the opportunity to be as straight talking, honest and to the point as somebody from Yorkshire through voicing something they wouldn’t have had the ‘guts’ to say otherwise through a cup of tea.
The concept uses the small tags attached to tea bags to communicate a confession or statement the user would find difficult to voice. The tea is there to ease the blow for the person receiving this news, tapping into the British tea drinking culture and ethos of everything being easier with a cup of tea.
Tag design front and back.
These example tags show statements that would be difficult or awkward to say to someone, something you would find your self hesitating and feeling uncomfortable to vocalise, whilst attempting to pick up on the dark British sense of humour.
Packaging: Keeping the iconic Yorkshire landscape illustrations from the existing Yorkshire Tea packaging to keep this coherent presentation of the concept being a believable step for the brand to take (even if the idea is a little out there), the Yorkshire dales have become a dramatic post-apocalyptic scene.
The story telling scenes unfolding have a Grayson Perry meets Wheres Wally? feel to visualise the unravelling, spiralling out of control state of mind that unfolds in the panic and build up to revealing the truth, but in a subtle way. During this state of mind, we imagine the response and ‘aftermath’ of this revelation to be significantly bigger and worse than it usually is. The packaging is designed to be coherent with the tags light-hearted, humorous tone.
Supporting the product user right up to the point of utilising the product through on-packaging copy to ease the unnerving build up this brutally honest moment. The opened box reveals the message 'Because everything is better with a cup of tea'.
Thank you for looking!
