Teh Kotak: Brand Communication, POP and POD
Analysing the effectiveness of Teh Kotak Brand Communication fitted with their POP and POD
Why Should We Assess Brand Communication, POD, POP?
Welcome back to my page! Get ready and let’s analyse my new findings about brand inventory specifically on the brand communication, POD, and POP of Teh Kotak. In the previous post I already explained my findings and analysis about Teh Kotak brand communication, but now I will mention all of those again in this post and equipped it with new data and further analysis.
Point-of-Parity (POP) is an attribute that is similar to the other competitive brand and has become one of the basic parts that should be fulfilled in order to get the brand ready placed into the market.
Point-of-Differentiation (POD) is an attribute that is strongly associated with a brand, could be positively evaluated, and could not find to the extent with a competitive brand that means that their competitor can’t easily imitate the brand point of uniqueness. POD OF a brand should not be too excessive because it is on the abstract level, and if you make it too excessive you can’t control what’s on the people’s associations.
To some extent it can help you to communicate your brand effectively to your audiences. If it’s too excessive people can go beyond what you can control. The effect of ‘go beyond’ can create an expectation that could not be met by the producers. There’s Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT), that explains that the customer satisfaction comes from the fulfillment of their expectation, not how good the product is. So, we should be careful about managing the people ‘s expectations.
The associations here can be divided into two parts, that are functional and also abstract related. When we are talking about the brand association with different people, we could know that the perceived association of every person is different. The association itself can be formed not by just experiencing the brand by buying the product, but it can also be formed by the impression they got from the brand communications through advertisement and other things. The association of the brand makes you imagine positive particular things on the brand then you believe it, called RTB or Reason-to-Believe.
This time, I’m going to assess how Teh Kotak brand reacts to their POD and what their effort is in communicating their brand. Is it effective or not? Does it match with how people perceive their brand or not?
Brand Association Data Collection
Okay, first of all I already conducted in-depth interviews with three of my friends to collect what’s Teh Kotak on people association and then generate the association list into a mental map. The mental map itself can identify what’s the strongest value that is perceived by most people and next the company can create a stronger brand concept. The core value that could be highlighted is one of the points of the mental map that is the most frequent and then evaluated by which one that has the highest density. There’s no actual rules on how many people to conduct the survey, but we can stop if we already meet the saturation. What does saturated mean here? It means when you collect data and you can’t gain any new insight from your interviewee anymore, it means the data is already saturated.
From the in-depth interview that I conduct, the one that has been mentioned the most is Rizky Febian, and from the mental map above we can conclude that it has the highest density as well shown by the amount of sub-point. From this mental map we can see that Rizky Fabian as their ambassadors is very influential towards how people perceive the brand. Thanks to Rizky Febian’s influence, they brought an impression such as music, friendly advertisement that led to the dance and slogan.
I also give my interview additional questions that lead to their loyalty about the Kotak brand. Based on the interview, 2 people said they are going into the store and didn’t find Teh Kotak, they will buy another RTD tea brand, and one of them said that they prefer another brand rather than Teh Kotak. From the majority of the data I collected from the interview, we could see that Teh Kotak is still on the Brand Recall stage on the awareness pyramid.
Teh Kotak POP and POD
Before assessing Teh Kotak POP and POD we can see first that there are multiple frame of references. Based on the book I’ve read titled ‘Strategic Brand Management’ written by Keller stated that, “It is not uncommon for a brand to identify more than one frame of reference. This may be the result of broader category competition or the intended future growth of a brand, or it can occur when the same function can be performed by different types of products.”
When you set a multiple frame of references, you will be able to satisfy various people’s needs, Remember! Setting too much can be a backfire and you can’t make everyone happy.
From the frame of references we can see that Teh Kotak, from the competition in the product type they have many competitors such as Tehbotol Kotak, and then based on the product category Teh Kotak have competitor such as Buavita Kotak and in a broader scope they have a competitor in product class such as Aqua, Bear Brand, etc. All of them offer more or less benefit, to quench thrist.
The POP of Teh Kotak based on the similarity I found and frame of reference that the benefit they offer, that is to quench thirst. Another POP is that Teh Kotak is the packaging, although they are one of the pioneers of this kind of packaging, the other competitors already follow the Teh Kotak packaging strategy. The POD of Teh Kotak is a packaging design strategy that could blend the font color that is suited with the one of the associations mentioned in the mental map being their identical point.
Teh Kotak Brand Communication
According to Brand24 blog, brand awareness could be measured through surveys, tracking certain types of website traffic over time, monitoring mentions of the brand. The measurement can be done by an online media monitoring system with tools to generate metrics like volume of mentions, levels of engagement, social media reach.
Reading the data generated from online media monitoring and analytics, I can see that Teh Kotak brand has the highest social media mention category on Youtube.com by 49,4%. Market of RTD tea in general, targeting younger audiences with age 15–40, with teenage as its core. As the market is currently saturated with hundreds of RTD brands, it seems strong players are hard to beat.
The communication in advertising became generic with the quality, nature, and good taste as their key communication. To enter the clutter, and understand the consumer well. Teh Kotak has been trying to use different ways of communication to tap younger audiences by using different platforms.
I think one brand of communication that is most reflecting positioning is their advertisement by Rizky Febian. But what’s not good is they put more focus on Rizky Febian, the music, dance, and the ambassador’s traits not about the Teh Kotak brand itself. The ambassadors were successful in generating a positive online sentiment, but not giving much impact in the improvement Teh Kotak brand index rank.
They meant to tap younger audiences, by using ATL brand communication. What is ATL brand communication anyway? “ATL” stands for “Above The Line”, meaning that the advertising is going to be deployed around a wider target audience, using different kinds of media such as television (TVC), radio, or billboards. ATL is most applicable when a product is directed for a broader spectrum of consumers.
Since 3 years ago, the ATL brand communication used “music” as a platform to enter the younger segmen as we see music as a universal and safe way. The first brand campaign was using Rizky Febian , featuring hits once popular song titled ‘Kesempurnaan Rasa’, twisted became “Kesempurnaan Cinta ‘’ through TV and digital.
The Ads Awareness was high, and the campaign was considered successful and generated likeability. Following the success, since last year the brand used Kahitna and its popular song ‘Cerita Cinta’ twisted into ‘Cerita Rasa’ as Teh Kotak’s new campaign that is very successful in gaining ads awareness likeability . The past 2 campaigns were considered unique and the brand was also awarded as one of the most successful ‘Ads Leaderboard’ by Youtube.
Teh Kotak successfully managed their brand to generate positive sentiment by gaining 82,4% positive mentions with only 17.6% negative mentions. All of these data are the real proof of a great brand’s credentials, and how strong they are in the market.
Teh Kotak Brand Elements
Finally we are here, maybe this is my favorite part in analysing the brand elements. I love to identify the meaning behind the brand in terms of visual, shape, words which aim to deliver the right message to their targeted audiences. Why is it important to assess their brand elements, because the elements are something that people see first and through these elements the brand could communicate their brand well.
Logotype of Teh Kotak
If we take a glance at the beverage shelves in convenience stores, Teh Kotak is the one that stole the show. The typographic design is not as contemporary as the products on the right-left-over-bottom. It takes us back decades, making it stand out from the crowd.
Based on Naraaksara website, The Motter Ombra is one of the most important display fonts of the 20th century. He became a marker of the times. The echoes of sikedelia, disco, hippie from the 1960s can still be felt in the circular, rounded and deviated letter designs. It offers novelty and exploration of unusual forms. Ombra moters have been used on many things, such as posters, shop signs, and music album covers. The designs that were born under the sikedelia genre take a lot of inspiration from Art Nouveau; while Art Nouveau itself takes inspiration from the beauty of natural forms, plants, tendrils, flowers etc.
The design decisions at that time may not have been based on knowledge of the historical flow that the Motter Ombra went through. But even that is not necessary, because from the design alone we can guess that there are nuances of organic, natural, flexibility and nature itself. Those things that might be felt to represent the Teh Kotak Brand.
Color Tone of Teh Kotak
The color tone that Teh Kotak that usually use for the logotype is yellow, this color could bring an youthful, fun and warmth as well that is right fitted with their core target audiences, teenagers. For the packaging design, we can see that they set brown as their prominent color in packaging design that could generate a sweet and loyal impression.
Brown is a color connected to life, growth and the color of the earth, because it’s the color of soil which is associated with nature. The plus point that is correlated with the brand color tone with their action is that Teh Kotak could show their stronger commitment through their FSC certifications, that indicates that the cardboard packaging of ready-to-drink beverage products comes from responsibly processed wood and conserve nature.
There is also a red color in the packaging design. Maybe one of their main reasons to choose red in the packaging design is because red is a very strong and prominent color, it could create the attention of people and give an energizing effect. In general, red is used for food product packaging design because red is believed to be able to increase appetite. It can also symbolize the intensity of the taste.
Tagline of Teh Kotak
According to the Teh Kotak tagline, “Persembahan dari Alam” , that 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.
Online Presence of Teh Kotak
Teh Kotak have their own websites, Instagram, Twitter, and also Youtube. We can all agree that the strongest brand communication channel of Teh Kotak is currently their 2 uniques campaign on Youtube which I already mentioned, that could be classified as their kind of ATL brand communications which is a great strategy to implement when they want to target teenagers as their core audience.
Looking from The Kotak’s Instagram and Twitter, we can see that the feeds consist of so many colors in their feeds and elements on their feeds. The feeds are considered inconsistent, it can be seen as they use so many different colors throughout the feeds. To ensure the brand consistency they should have their own color palette and font. The font consists of headings, subheadings, and body texts that should be set in order to create a good online feeds that could attract and engage the audience to create more awareness and eventually create a great amount of conversion.
Looking onto their website, with the url given tehkotak.com that makes people easier to enter their website. Through this website, I could see more consistency in the color tone and font, compared to the one that is published on different social media platforms. However, I think the website doesn’t give so much information about the brand nor their product. They can make the website more interesting by putting up videos ads, and music that could maximize the potential of website visitors that create higher awareness of the brand.
They can add more information into the website as well, such as Teh Kotak commitment, new composition, frequently asked questions (FAQ), create suggestions and critiques to continuously improve the Teh Kotak performance in terms of product and communications within the audiences.
Dilemmas and Possible Confusion
From my current analysis, there are several dilemmas and possible confusion in terms of POPs and PODs owned by Teh Kotak. First I’m going to mention the historical and also nostalgic logotype, meanwhile the core target currently is the teenagers. So the design itself should be more modern and keep up with the times and trends. Second, I see the dilemmas about the huge advertisement starring Rizky Febian will highlight more into the ambassadors rather than the Teh Kotak brand itself.
The brand communications in their web is not good enough to identify Teh Kotak in the market, the lack of information shown and the inconsistency in their visual style, not creating any special meanings for the audiences. The brand should be able to communicate effectively by giving their product the center of attention and highlight.
Recommendations for Teh Kotak
Based on the analysis above, I could mention several improvements that must be conducted in order to maximize the brand presence in all of Teh Kotak advertisements channels to create more engagement and the feeling of brand characteristics, not just by the real actions, but how they present themselves in a brand visuality, tone, and voice.
There are some improvements for marketing communication. First they can create fixed brand guidelines for the visual, voice, and tone based on Teh Kotak’s customer persona. Second, Create a good corporate branding and publish about how Teh Kotak are responsible for their production and their action to conserve nature. Third, they are able to conduct partnership with influencers that are more representative with the brand message and value. Last but not least, they can also put more important information on their website page to maximize the performance of Teh Kotak’s brand communication.
For the big advertisement starred by Rizky Febian, as we know it already build a strong association with the brand, Teh Kotak could make the advertisement to be more personal on highlighting how Rizky Febian love Teh Kotak very much, and then their strong associations will be aligned with the brand concept generated by the mental map. I gave this recommendation by also calculating the company capabilities as well in conducting the new strategy.
References:
- (n.d) Retrieved September 13, 2020, from http://tehkotak.com/jasmine.php
- Says:, C., & Says:, V. (2020, August 28). Brown Color Meaning — Personality & Psychology. Retrieved September 13, 2020, from https://colorpsychologymeaning.com/color-brown/
- Teh Kotak dan Motter Ombra-nya. (n.d.). Retrieved September 13, 2020, from http://www.naraaksara.com/2019/02/teh-kotak-dan-motter-ombra-nya.html
- Chia Video Creative at Brand24 | Creator of #ChiaExplains | Writer & Host of #SocialRecap. (2020, June 23). How to Measure Brand Awareness and Why You Need It. Retrieved September 13, 2020, from https://brand24.com/blog/how-to-measure-brand-awareness/
- Pascal. (2016, June 14). 6 Effective Methods for Measuring Customer Loyalty. Retrieved September 13, 2020, from https://www.userlike.com/en/blog/measure-customer-loyalty
- Putri, A. (2020, September 06). Teh Kotak Brand Audit : Brand Credentials and Point-Of-Difference. Retrieved September 13, 2020, from https://medium.com/@alya_indira/teh-kotak-brand-audit-brand-credentials-and-point-of-difference-c3c5fa52912c
- ATL. (2020, July 11). Retrieved September 13, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATL_
- Keller, K. L., & Swaminathan, V. (2019). Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity, Global Edition (5th ed.). Pearson.
