Teh Kotak: Brand Touchpoints, Brand Communications and the Issues
Hello welcome back to my brand inventory progress! Yup, I’m still doing analysis of the brand inventories to deeply understand about the problems that are faced by Teh Kotak then propose a recommendation strategy. I aspire to give the most relevant and useful recommendations for Teh Kotak in my capability.
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 updated data, adding data of Teh Kotak’s brand touchpoints, and generating further analysis and recommendations.
Brand touchpoint is any time a potential customer or customer comes in contact with your brand — before, during, or after they purchase something from you, that would shape customer perception about your brand. We must pay attention to the brand touchpoint not only because it builds perception towards the brand but also to make sure the customers are satisfied every step of the way, so we have to be careful with that.
According to TDC Indonesia, brand communications is the bridge between your brand and your target audience. It serves as a guide for all types of internal and external communications in a company. This audience engagement process reflects your company as a brand. All brands want to have long-term relationships with their customers, therefore the effective way to do it is by having the right approach and plan.
In assessing the brand touchpoints and communications, I am going to make a list of all the touchpoints and efforts of Teh Kotak brand, because I believe that the brand touchpoint may vary in every brand depending on what they offer so I must be smarter in selecting the data that will be taken into the consideration.
There are two kinds of touchpoints: brand-owned touchpoint and the customer touchpoint. The brand-owned touchpoint is the one that the company could control and the customer touchpoints it’s something that the company couldn’t control. The company should give a great effort to make customers generate great touchpoints because it’s correlated to what the company could satisfy them.
Before assessing the brand touchpoint and brand communications, I have to identify the product type of Teh Kotak itself, we can see that this brand is a low involvement product. We could identify the influencing factors of low involvement products. First, from the nature of the product Teh Kotak is inexpensive and non-durable. Second, because the product has a low price, consumers didn’t invest less time and effort in making a purchase decision. Third, low involvement products targeted a mass consumer and most of whom are cost-conscious, middle class consumers.
The brand touchpoint can be identified as four categories that are company created touch point, intrinsic touchpoint, unexpected touchpoint and also customer initiated touchpoint. I will explain about it in this post along with the examples and analysis below. Here are the list of current Teh Kotak touchpoints:
I already conducted a direct interview with the brand team of Teh Kotak and they said that they didn’t make a design for their customer journey map because their market is quite dynamic, they also have to make a lot of changes in the journey map, and they said that it’s hard to implement. What they do for sure is, they expand as many channels as possible and not forget to always maintain good services in all places.
Pre-purchase Touchpoint
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 ATL ada TVC Placement di TV Terrestrial, Pay TV, ataupun special build in di TV and even TVC Placement in TV Cable.
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. This campaign has an ultimate sentence, that is “Karena setiap cerita pasti punya rasa, sama seperti rasa Teh Kotak yang punya banyak cerita untuk kamu.”
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. SES is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person’s work experience and of an individual’s or family’s economic and social position in relation to others. This classification could help us determine the strategy and direction of movement of a brand.
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.
Looking from their Instagram account @idtehkotak, I can see that they use this channel not only for advertising that meant to increase awareness and perception of the brand, but they also use an interactive media, by creating QnA box, asking people thoughts on something and reply all of the customer input to create a high engagement and keep in touch with all the audiences that are interested in Teh Kotak. Because in a brand we should put more effort into the people who are interested in us rather than the one who is not interested because it will waste your time and be ineffective. This way will also improve the algorithm of the Teh Kotak’s Instagram account as well. So this engagement effort should be continue.
On their Instagram, Teh Kotak is also posting a promotion in order to sell their products, they create a great deal to attract more consumers, and remember, because Teh Kotak is a low involvement product, they need a great amount of exposure and promotion to attract consumers. Teh Kotak sell their products online mostly in the online selling platform such as Shopee, JD.ID, Tokopedia that have rating features, it generates unexpected touch points such as rating and review. In this case Teh Kotak design company created a touchpoint that could meet customer expectations, they should also maintain the brand communications and build a strong perception and not overpromise. Teh Kotak likes to input the logo of their partner as well to maintain a good relationship with their partner and inform the audiences where they can purchase Teh Kotak.
According to the IGBlade one of Instagram data analytics platform, I found out that @idtehkotak don’t have a good engagement rate, the similar accounts as Teh Kotak have 3.72% engagement on average and Teh Kotak have only 0.26% , the average likes is also gain 156.8, meanwhile another similar account are able to gain 2.2K and the average comments only 7.8.
I am doing the comparison between @idtehkotak Instagram analytics with their biggest competitor @pucukharumid where they could be in the rank #1 of the brand top index and how is their engagement on Instagram. We could see that their competitor has an engagement rate above the average, they have an A+ grades meanwhile Teh Kotak only obtains E as their current grades. I analyze deeper about their Instagram post, the one who is posting more consistently is Teh Kotak, but for the content and visual, Teh Pucuk wins. The color palette that Teh Pucuk use is very consistent and has a great visual style as well.
Teh Kotak Event and Experiences
Besides the ATL, Teh Kotak also uses BTL advertising strategy. ‘BTL Marketing’ stands for ‘Below The Line Marketing‘. This kind of marketing is the kind of marketing that targets specific groups of people with focus. The example of the BTL that Teh Kotak uses is sponsoring an event that is related to their brand, Love Fest.
In the Love Fest, Teh Kotak make a photobooth and also ‘Kotak Curhat’ and created hashtag #FestivalPakePerasaan, that is correlated with Teh Kotak brand that wants to highlight the message that everyone has their story and definitely behind that story and we all have a feeling and thoughts for each of our stories. They create this for the offline event and experiences. They didn’t forget to create events and experiences through the online media as well.
Teh Kotak makes an event and experiences by using the current media that are currently happening, TikTok. They conduct a giveaway for 3 winners by creating a challenge to make a video with Teh Kotak brand effect that they created on TikTok. Follow the dance moves of the reference video that already been provided by Teh Kotak, download the video and upload it in their Instagram account, followed by the hashtag #CeritaRasaTikTok.
Are you wondering why they asked them to upload their video on Instagram instead of their TikTok account itself? Because based on the Teh Kotak programmatic advertising they found out that their main target audience, younger generation use Instagram frequently rather than Tiktok, even though that TikTok is also rising because of the interactive and fun making video features. Why did I consider this as an event and experience? Because one of the main indications that a brand conducting the event and experiences marketing strategies is that they are creating something that should directly involve people they targeted and have direct contact with them as well.
Teh Kotak also sees an opportunity in approaching a big community that consists of their targeted audiences, for example K-Pop community. Not a long time ago they created a K-Pop giveaway, the prize will be three albums of Korean boy bands. The requirement of joining this giveaway is by making a creation of the new taste of Teh kotak, the creation can be formed in a picture, creative video, or simple recipe video.
Teh Kotak is seeing this opportunity by seeing the competitor Nü Tea using NCT as their brand ambassador and the big impact caused by their ambassador. So, Teh Kotak approaches them with K-Pop but in different ways. The brand team also informed me that they have only a limited marketing budget so definitely they should allocate the budget wisely and creatively. From the comment, I can see the excitement of the K-Pop fans of this giveaway.
This giveaway has an objective not only creating awareness of Teh Kotak brand, but also to build an engagement that Teh Kotak is always close to them and fun. This can be classified as a customer initiated touchpoint, because Teh Kotak planned on what the customer will do in building contact with the company. Beside that they also created an intrinsic touchpoint where the interaction happens during the process of buying or using the brand, mostly connected with customer service and it creates emotion and feeling.
Home Delivery Service
Teh Kotak when it comes to selling their products, they try so much effort in reaching their customers. To keep their product reachable for everyone they even make home delivery service, of course with a minimum amount of purchase. This could have a great opportunity to sell their products fastly and in bulk. In their home delivery service they offer a free shipping service and also gifts such as pouch as a beneficial gimmick for consumers and value Teh Kotak even more. In this service we can see that we provide more benefit for them than the usual one, because the consumer shows more interest in our products as well.
During the Purchase Touchpoint
During the purchase, in the offline side, as I’ve already mentioned before that they usually market their products in so many offline channel such as modern market and traditional market, Teh Kotak must check all of the service level given from the channel they tap, is it already great or maybe there are things that should be improve. It can be seen through the sales and also direct observation can be conducted in order to know the service given.
Store display
According to the interview that I conducted with the brand team of Teh Kotak, in the offline brand presence they are focusing to target as many offline channels they could reach. The main channel for them in selling Teh Kotak is the modern market and traditional market. The modern market consists of modern trade hyper/super market and modern trade mini market meanwhile the traditional market consists of pasar tradisional, grosiran, warung, rombong rokok, school, etc. In creating the brand presence they use a lot of different kinds of displays, such as shelfvision, trolley, floor display, stand alone display, front and end gondola.
Teh Kotak brand team usually place the display in the strategic position and have a great market potential in the future, they usually increase the amount of display that could generate more conversion/selling out. Indirectly, when we try many types of displays, we will slowly find out which displays are effective in a particular place. Teh Kotak usually minimize the elimination of a marketing channel, and maintain that they keep many kinds of channels available. Store display is very essential to market the product.
Teh Kotak should put a strategy in selling all of their product variants. In their product catalogue/portfolio, we can see that Teh Kotak has five variants to create options and satisfy more people. Why is that? Because people have their own preferences, so if we could make the references broader and implement an effective marketing strategy it would be able to boost sales. They usually give beneficial gimmick in-store/online stores by giving purchase gifts such as pouches.
Online Selling Platform
For the online selling platform such as Shopee, JD.ID, and Tokopedia, they have their own customer journey, PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk is only opening their store in Shopee to generate higher sales and improve the brand exposure. The customer journey is already computerized and automated to help the seller sell the product because the platform provides the feature for the seller to up their product so the product can be easily reached by the targeted audiences, the platform also has a great analytics management system.
Personal Selling by Whatsapp
Personal selling via WhatsApp is intended for people who order Teh Kotak in a bulk order, and usually want to use the cash method. Besides that usually the people who use this system are the ones who want the product in a hassle-free manner. Customer service and staff sales manner is very important to carry out this sales strategy. Teh Kotak definitely maintains the quality of its customer service by holding training and also making standards to serve consumers well.
Post Purchase Touchpoint
For the post-purchase via offline, the customer will get a receipt of purchase and in some stores Teh Kotak provides a bonus for purchasing the product such as pouch after purchase. On the Teh Kotak packaging we can see that they also provide us with call numbers to customer service to listen and help the customer. They also provide us with the barcode of the product, nowadays barcodes are not only helpful for the store keep on track on the inventory of the product but the customer is able to scan the barcode to check the authenticity of the product. To keep the customer safe and maintain the taste of the product they didn’t forget to input the expired date so that people know when is the best time to consume the product after the purchase.
For the online purchase, the customer will receive an automated email confirmation and the confirmation notification from the online selling platform as well. So the customers are aware of every movement of the touchpoint and could keep track of their product purchasement. In several online selling platforms, everyone is able to sell products, but for the quality assessment, they can provide guarantee, intermediary bank, and also badge for star and official shop, so that people can feel safe in purchasing things from online selling platforms. For PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry, they are able to gain more trust because they are capable of obtaining a badge as an official seller.
These are the examples of ratings that have been given by the customer after purchasing the product, it can be good or bad, and the cons of using this platform that the bad comment can be viewed by anyone. Therefore, the company should always try to improve in maintaining the customer experience. Responsibility is very important, when a customer posts a complaint, Teh Kotak should show that they care about their customer by asking what their problem is, how they can help, and give customer compensation for the mistakes that have occured.
Brand Main Issues Gathered Brand Communications and Touchpoints and Recommendations
From the analysis above we can see that Teh Kotak already tries so much effort in their advertising and promotion strategy. They also enter so many offline channels and online channels in order to improve their sales. However, I see that there are many channels that they can approach as well such as popular business franchises such as MCDonald and KFC and online food merchants. I saw a lot of beverage brands doing that, for example Ngikan, one of the famous online food merchants provides a packet of their food with Teh Pucuk, and Teh Botol with Geprek Bensu. I think it’s quite promising and very worth to try.
From what I saw from the ratings given by the customer via online selling platform, PT Ultrajaya Milk Industry Tbk should improve the customer service, because they shouldn’t only be replying to the customers that are giving the complaint. I think they should maintain the relationship with the customer who is also giving a nice review to keep improving the customer loyalty, once people are in touch with the brand they will repeat buying the same brand and even not willing to buy a replacement from another brand. I got this insight from lecture session two weeks ago, Mr. Felipe said that it’s okay that we don’t have great sentiment in every touchpoint, but keep minimizing paint point and not forget to input a sweet touchpoint in the end of the touchpoint circuit.
I could mention several improvements that must be conducted in order to maximize the brand presence especially in online platforms they rely the most for creating advertising, campaign and promotion, Instagram. They must create a better presentation of themselves in terms of brand visuality, tone, and voice. I think they could allocate more budget in fixing their Instagram performance first then after the engagement is already great they could next conduct other ads and promotion strategy. They could use a Facebook Pixel as well and conduct A/B tests for their post and compare which one that their audiences like the most and produce the content by considering the content that is the most preferred and performs better.
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