Winners 2018/Beverages Silver

Project: Matcha Green Tea: Reinventing a classic

Client: Unilever

Design: Design Bridge

Lipton may be the number one tea brand in the world, but its range of green teas had been knocked off the top spot with sales down by 10.8%. They needed to bring consumers back, and they saw an opportunity to bring tea trends to the mainstream market with a range of matcha blends.

As they would have no advertising support, the design needed to work hard to persuade at shelf.

Drawing on Japanese culture where matcha originates from, a hand drawn intricate fan pattern creates a striking and uplifting design. It is the first of Lipton’s packaging to have a white background, indicating premium and health cues and enabling stand out on busy shelves.   

The results have well surpassed expectations with sales targets smashed by 71%. Even with no advertising spend they achieved $1.7 million sales in the first six months, selling more than 500,000 units. Lipton now has a 45.8% market share of the matcha category and has doubled the size of the segment.