Global tea promotional campaign to kick offin December?

• Cabinet-Appointed Procurement Committee tasked with selecting consultant to place market-specific promotional material

The long-awaited Global Promotional Campaign for Tea is set to kick off by the first week of December, according to Tea Board Chairman Rohan Pethiyagoda.

The promotional campaign, which has already gone through one procurement process this year, will be kicked back by another year until the winter of 2018 if the December deadline is not met. 

“If we cannot start off by the first week of December we will miss the winter season this year entirely. There is no point in kicking off the campaign in the summer months as the demand for tea is highest during the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere. All our markets are in that region except for Australia. So it’s better to delay it than start it in the summer months,” Pethiyagoda said. 

The campaign has been delayed for several years already due to shortcomings in the launch initiatives and has survived an attempt by the Treasury to take over the promotional fund earlier this year. 

The Cabinet-Appointed Procurement Committee was tasked with selecting a consultant who in turn would undertake placing promotional material for specific markets. The committee is now in the process of carrying out technical evaluations of the proposals submitted by the three successful bidders who wish to be selected as a consultant, Daily FT learns. 

The recommendation of the committee will then be forwarded to the Cabinet for approval. Pethiyagoda expects the whole process to take five weeks if everything goes according to plan. 

The campaign will focus on 12 key markets with a pilot project running in Russia, the US and China. The Tea Board expects to run an Above the Line (ATL) campaign in the Russian market while a Below the Line (BTL) campaign target on Digital and Social Media will be the focus in the US and Chinese markets, the Daily FT was informed. 

However, these details will be finalised after the consultant selection process is completed. 

“The consultant has to advise us on how to carry out the campaigns in each of the markets. The basic creative content has been developed but this has to be adopted for other platforms such as social media as well,” Pethiyagoda said. 

He also raised concerns on the methodology employed to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. 

“It is easy to spend the money, but how are we to figure out the success of the campaign once it is completed. We have to explore this issue as well,” he said, adding that the cost of surveys to track demand will be too great to take up.