Oriental Leaf's New Year short film sparked controversy: product scenario misunderstandings in New Year marketing

In the latest Spring Festival short film of Oriental Leaves, a family reunion and tea drinking scene is depicted, but a scene of pouring bottled tea into a teapot to heat it has caused heated discussion among netizens. This article will analyze this marketing mistake and explore how to avoid product scene misunderstandings in Spring Festival marketing.

Recently, Nongfu Spring Oriental Leaves launched a New Year short film with the theme of "Drinking Tea Together During the Chinese New Year". The short film depicts several families sitting together to make and drink tea, but one of the scenes is pouring bottled Oriental Leaves into a teapot to heat it. This behavior that goes against common sense makes Oriental Leaves products seem out of place in the New Year atmosphere of the short film, which has caused controversy among netizens.

User comments

In terms of insight into consumer psychology, brands cannot just fit their products into traditional cultural customs while ignoring current social and psychological changes. On the other hand, even if a brand wants to create new scenes and new ways of drinking, if the starting point of marketing insight is biased, no matter how good the film techniques and atmosphere are, it will be difficult to truly impress consumers.

1. The scene insight of bottled tea drinks has gone astray

Let's first take a look at this Spring Festival short film titled "Drinking Tea Together During the Spring Festival" by Oriental Leaves. The elderly at home are busy washing cups and pasting window decorations to prepare for the children to come home. This is the most familiar scene during the Spring Festival. The warm yellow sunlight and the home furnishings full of life have set a warm tone for the short film as a whole.

The family went into the house and sat down while chatting lively.

At this time, grandma brings out the tea set and says "Hey, let's have some tea", which leads to the scene of everyone sitting around and drinking tea, which is usually a necessary part of entertaining guests during the Chinese New Year. The child, under the guidance of his mother, serves tea to his grandparents, and several shots outline the theme of family reunion.

The narrator then points out the connection between tea and Chinese New Year, "Chinese New Year is a time to drink tea together."

Just looking at the copywriting of the short film, the writing and insight are actually quite good:

Chinese New Year is the time to drink tea together.

No matter how far or near, let’s sit down and talk about what happened in the past year.

With tea, there is endless talk.

Let’s drink tea together during the Chinese New Year, Oriental Leaves, Chinese tea.

The copywriting links the leisurely state of drinking tea with the process of family reunion and conversation, allowing everyone to naturally think of tea during the reunion, and impressing consumers with the Spring Festival scenes that everyone is familiar with. Tea is indeed one of the main New Year's goods purchased during the New Year, and the scene-based interpretation in the short film once again strengthens consumers' minds.

Just seeing this, the short film seems relatively normal, but there seems to be no direct connection with the Oriental leaves, so the short film has the characters pour the Oriental leaves into the teapot to heat them, and then make and drink tea in a serious manner.

Searching for "Oriental Leaves Heated" on Xiaohongshu shows that many consumers have already tried this. Oriental Leaves put the heated drinking method into the brand marketing video, which is in a sense an attempt to create a new lifestyle. In the cold winter, especially in the southern region where there is no heating, guiding consumers to drink Oriental Leaves by heating is conducive to making up for the winter sales off-season of the traditional beverage industry.

Xiaohongshu "Oriental Leaf Heating" Notes

But it is obvious that consumers are not very receptive to this new scene and new method. Not only is the taste after heating a matter of personal opinion, but it is also not very suitable for the more traditional Spring Festival. This scene is somewhat abrupt compared to the atmosphere created before.

First of all, Chinese tea culture includes two parts: brewing tea and drinking tea. Bottled tea is usually sold for convenience, targeting busy workers or those on the go, and it is difficult to provide the "ritual sense" in tea culture. During the Spring Festival emphasized in the short film, the process of brewing tea was omitted and the bottled tea was heated, which gave people a sense of confusion.

Secondly, when people go home for the Chinese New Year, they are looking for a "real" emotional connection. The scenes of conversations between relatives and friends depicted in the front of the short film mostly take place during the process of making tea. If even the tea is "pre-brewed", how can the short film convince consumers that the scenes and emotions conveyed are real? No wonder some netizens commented after watching it: eating pre-prepared dishes, drinking pre-brewed tea, listening to pre-recorded songs, and spending a year of warning.

User comments

"Pre-brewed tea" and pre-prepared meals are not equal in status, and consumers are much more receptive to bottled tea. However, such scenario insights not only force bottled tea and tea to be compared on the same track, while bottled tea is relatively not dominant; they also cause products to become outlets for social emotions at special time points, just like the New Year's Eve dinner with pre-prepared meals, which may trigger consumers' associations and dissatisfaction with issues such as adjusting holidays and working on New Year's Eve.

In comparison, the two product shots at the end of the short film are more in line with people's common sense: pouring bottled tea drinks on the New Year's Eve dinner table and buying tea drinks in boxes for the New Year. In the final analysis, the characteristics of "portability" and "ready-to-drink" plus the reputation of the Oriental Leaf flavor are the biggest selling points of the product. There is no need to forcibly create a sense of ritual or create new scenes in order to integrate into the New Year atmosphere.

2. CNY marketing insights need to be down-to-earth

After watching this Spring Festival short film by Oriental Leaves, TOP has summarized the following three points for marketers to refer to on how brands can test consumers' potential acceptance when building new scenarios and how to avoid risks when facing nodes and topics that may cause controversy:

1. Marketing methods that communicate with consumers’ emotions should avoid cultural and emotional minefields.

CNY marketing mostly adopts a warm and emotional communication method, which is usually regarded as a "safe card" for brand marketing. However, compared with the rational method of using data to make sense, the marketing method based on emotion is more difficult to quantify and avoid risks with data, and it requires the keen judgment of marketers to avoid the minefields of traditional culture and social emotions.

For example, the aversion to "pre-brewed tea" reflects that consumers' expectations for the traditional Spring Festival atmosphere are difficult to shake. Although this description is not the brand's original intention, the deviation that occurs at this special time and marketing method will make it difficult for consumers to view products and brands rationally and objectively, thereby hindering information exchange and communication between brands and consumers.

2. When developing new usage scenarios for products, we must start from reality.

One of the misunderstandings of Oriental Leaves is that it combines the "rebellious" behavior of heating teapots to drink tea with the slow-paced traditional Spring Festival atmosphere. In this way, the new scene ignores the product's own portable and ready-to-drink positioning and the demands of the target consumer groups, and is unable to convince consumers to accept this innovative lifestyle.

If Oriental Leaves released a creative video about a new way to drink "heated tea" at other times other than the Spring Festival, it would not have caused so much discussion among consumers. Appropriate usage scenario insights must be based on the differentiated characteristics of the product and user needs.

3. Dispel the fog of New Year atmosphere and emotional marketing, and sincerity is the greatest killer skill when facing consumers.

When conducting marketing insights, the inspection phase is actually the simplest step: use common sense to judge whether the marketing behavior is appropriate. For example, pouring bottled instant tea back into the kettle to heat it up during the Chinese New Year is obviously contrary to common sense without any other additional conditions. After all, the product is aimed at the general consumers, and brand marketing can only produce good results if it adheres to the bottom line of truth and sincerity.

Author: TOP Jun

Source: WeChat public account "TopMarketing"