Teh Kotak Brand Audit : Brand Credentials and Point-Of-Difference

The Background of Method Selection

Welcome to my first brand audit! First of all I am so happy to tell you that the brand that I assess is one of my favorite brands all the time. Yup! That’s Teh Kotak. I have already consumed Teh Kotak since I was in elementary school, I love it’s premium taste and it’s quite hassle-free of course since it is Ready-To-Drink Tea, and it’s very suitable to drink this anytime, especially refrigerated Teh Kotak during the summer is the best!

So, I am going to explain why brand audits are important? Based on the book I’ve read before titled ‘Strategic Brand Management’ written by Keller stated that, “Brand audits is a comprehensive examination of a brand to discover its sources of brand equity”

A brand audit requires understanding the sources of brand equity from the perspective of both the firm and the consumer. Yet from the same book I’ve mentioned before, stated that the Brand audits are thus particularly useful background for managers as they set up their marketing plans and can have profound implications on brands’ strategic direction and resulting performance.

What are the steps of brand audits? The brand audits consist of two parts, that are brand inventory and brand exploratory. For first part, I will show you only about my initial research about the brand inventory and my recommendation that I could give for the brand based on my understanding. The brand inventory itself provides you a current, comprehensive profile of how all the products and services sold by a company are marketed and branded.

A brand inventory can be analyzed by different kinds of methods, but before assessing the data I believe we should first recognize what kind of the company that we are going to assess. For my case, I’m going to assess PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry and use their ‘Teh Kotak’ brand as the main target of analysis. Teh Kotak itself is a long-standing brand that is already known to the public, so I think what should be analysed is their brand credentials, point-of-difference, and also their brand positioning.

First, I choose to do a brand credentials worksheet to help me spot the factors that could build the brand good reputation in general, and identify the sustainable brand equity. Brand credentials could help the company stakeholders working due to unified standards, and provide independent verification against them.

Credentials could generate sustainable transformation that most effectively catalyzed in a larger context of collaboration between enterprises, NGOs, governments and others. A full-scale system involving farmers and businesses in the supply chain, which combines them with markets and civil society has positive impacts, is based on credentials especially for its certification. Based on the GreenBiz media stated that, “Build brand ethics into your marketing as sustainability has become synonymous with quality. It’s also clear that employees also want to work for purpose-driven brands.”

I analyzed the brand credentials through their public-exposed company presentation as my primary data. For the secondary data, I dig deeper into their brand from other people’s journals, publish news from a well-known trusted online media news platform and the ratings from several online selling channels that PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk. to see more about the brand in the other points of view. The reason I choose to add primary and secondary is to strengthen my analysis result and also see both views which are the most fundamental one in assessing a brand.

Second, I am going to assess the brand in the point-of-difference because the product itself has a lot of rivals in the market, we have to identify strong key differences and retain a good point of parity.

Why I am not choosing the target audience worksheet method is because it’s more suitable for the new company that still wonders which targets are suitable for them to sell their product/services. The reason I am not choosing the brand traits, is because I want to know what makes this brand long-standing

PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk. Credentials

Teh Kotak was launched in 1979, so it’s already 41 years since Teh Kotak was established. The fact that Teh Kotak already has FSC certifications, indicates that the cardboard packaging of ready-to-drink beverage products comes from responsibly processed wood. The Head of Marketing of PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk, Siska Suryaman hopes that the presence of this FSC-certified Teh Kotak can build public awareness to continue and actively participate in efforts to conserve nature. This campaign is expected to enhance brand image in the minds of consumers and proceed with purchasing Teh Kotak The effect of green packaging and green advertising on brand image, improve consumers perception and purchase decision of Teh Kotak product.

The commitment to care for the environment has also been realized by Teh Kotak through the “Thanks to Nature” campaign that has been going on for the last few years. They already received some awards from the Master Brand Award from Makassar, because they are a pioneer of RTD tea drinks with UHT technology. Teh Kotak is made from the best quality tea leaves which are taken only from selected tea leaves planted at an altitude of 1000 meters above sea level. Due to these advantages, Teh Kotak quickly accepted the market and gained the image as high quality tea.

Teh Kotak is # 1 in RTD tea in carton packs with 71% market share, based on the company presentation that was published in 2018. However, I think Teh Kotak could maximize their potential, and become a top brand and build even more outstanding performance as well as their milk products. Based on the top brand index data, judging by the overall Ready-To-Drink Tea competitors, Teh Kotak only has a market share ratio of 4.1% which is ranked number 4 on the top brand index.

PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk. claimed that they have several business strengths, that consists of the strong industry fundamentals, leading market position poised to capture continued growth, presence in multiple categories and track record of product development, extensive nationwide distribution network, stringent Quality Controls across the entire production chain, and of course a highly experienced management team.

Looking from the senior management team along with their working experiences, they are experts in their own field and already work in big companies and experienced in held the same department position before entering PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk.

PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk. have gained their strategic alliances by having a strong partnership with the farmers by providing guidances, technical, managerial training and financing to keep their great product quality that could help them strengthen the brand even more. They have an extensive distribution channel such as supermarkets, hypermarkets, mini marts, and grocery stores), traditional retailers (which mainly consists of small independent retailers), and wholesalers.

To improve better communication to the consumer, Ultrajaya decided to partner with the PT Mitra Integrasi Informatika (MII) so that communications are done more by phone instead of email, because voice message is more effective, humane, and friendly. It also contains personal touch making communication more effective, thus complaints or problems could get faster response.

PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk. have investments and joint ventures with highly named companies such as PT Kraft Ultrajaya Indonesia, PT Toll Indonesia, PT ITO EN Ultrajaya Wholesale. For the safety of all the intellectual property of PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk. they already register all of their product patents.

Let’s look at their performance! From the online reviews, Ultrajaya has a good rating on several selling platforms. Ultrajaya has a 4.8 out of 5 stars on Shopee, 91 out of 100 from BliBli.com. That could represent a good reputation of Ultrajaya products and brand as the trustworthy one.

These kinds of credentials are considered as a sustainable brand equity not just to create trust for the consumer, but also set a standard for the company and maintain its reputation and quality.

Teh Kotak Point-of-Difference

To see who’s the competitor of Teh Kotak brand, we could see it from the top brand index rank. Teh Kotak is ranked number #4 and I am going to analyze the three Teh Kotak toughest competitors, that are Teh Pucuk Harum which is the market leader of the RTD tea drink, followed by Teh Sosro, and Teh Gelas. Based on the sales data, I couldn’t find the specific brand sales data, the company provides us with the consolidated sales data, so I couldn’t compare the sales from these four brands.

The point of difference between these three products is that they have three different kinds of packaging. The main products for Teh Botol are the tea on their glass bottles, but now Teh Botol makes boxes packaging as well to expand their market penetration. From the perceived quality, Teh Kotak could provide aseptic packaging which ensured the product remained long life without the use of any preservatives.

No preservatives also implemented for the Teh Botol products, that could be one of the point-of-parity that should be retained by the company because people are more into non-preservatives products since it’s more healthy to be consumed. From the pricing I see that Teh Kotak is not leading the price, Teh Kotak is more in the middle price compared to their competitors brand, so there’s no price speciality nor premium price.

According to the Teh Kotak tagline, ‘Persembahan dari Alam’ , which is represented by the participation and action in various nature conservation programs and package Teh Kotak products with an environmentally friendly system. People are more intrigued with the type of packaging and their commitments to maintain and responsible for the tree they use as the materials of their packaging.

For the marketing effort, I see that Teh Kotak has several online media channels as well as the brand competitors. From what I see there’s a lack of consistency in the social media feeds, especially the brand attributes. This can be seen from the color selection, font, and unique patterns and iconic characters.

Recommendation for Teh Kotak Brand from The Initial Research

The recommendation for based on these analyses, I conclude that brand credentials are very important for the company, especially the long-standing brand. Because they have to maintain their trustworthiness both to the consumers and the shareholders. Credentials of Teh Kotak act as a form of standards and ensure the verifications of the brand.

Teh Kotak have a good reputation for its brand and they should create a more extensive campaign to deliver their message and point-of-differences as their unique selling point and bring positive energy and good value to the others.

The tagline ‘Persembahan Dari Alam’, actually delivered a positive message toward the brands and their action, but however it can lead to so many things, and it doesn’t introduce the brand very well.

I think they can improve their social media presence and fix their brand attributes. Since the next generation is really dependable with technology, they should improve their presence there, and tap a bigger market. The social media platforms advertisement is also very flexible and you can even select the radius and people’s list of interests that are correlated with the brand so you could aim for the right target.

References

1. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/using-product-certification-win-consumers-hearts-and-minds
2. https://text-id.123dok.com/document/nzw48nvq-analisis-positioning-teh-dalam-kemasan-merek-ultra-teh-kotak-pada-mahasiswa-strata-1-institut-pertanian-bogor.html
3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322647415_GREEN_MARKETING_AND_REPRESENTATION_OF_THE_OTHER_An_Analysis_of_Green_Image_Ad_Represented_by_Teh_Kotak_Ad_%27Persembahan_dari_Alam%27_Version
4. https://www.mii.co.id/en/use-cases/listing/2018/03/11/10/38/pt-ultrajaya-milk-industry-tbk-faster-and-more-friendly
5. https://www.ultrajaya.co.id/investor-relation/annual-report/eng
6. Keller, K. L., & Swaminathan, V. (2019). Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity, Global Edition (5th ed.). Pearson.