For years, the tea category has largely relied on calming, meditative clichés to reach the same homogeneous group of consumers. But in a fast-moving consumer market with tea often overshadowed by hundreds of other exciting, bubbly drinks to choose from, category sales of tea stagnated. TAZO needed to stand out, not only to regain market share and penetration amongst existing consumers but to appeal to a younger consumer target of 18-34-year-olds. TAZO needed a bold campaign to prove it was a different type of tea.

Tapping into the rising trend of guided meditations and modern mindfulness practices, TAZO saw an opportunity to prove its Zen tea was truly a different type of blend. To appeal to a previously untapped audience of tea drinkers, we reframed TAZO Zen as a way to unlock one’s creative potential. We exploded the trendy-but-clichéd format of guided meditations by creating a completely new kind of audio experience featuring legendary rapper and founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA. A long-time practitioner of meditation, RZA famously bridged hip-hop and Zen Buddhism. Together, we produced his first-ever spoken-word album, Guided Explorations, inspired by TAZO’s Zen tea. This six-track EP helped listeners break through their mental roadblocks with creative exercises infused with anecdotes from RZA himself. As for the soundtrack, we nixed the stereotypical chants and chimes for bold, active guidance over heavy hip-hop beats.

TAZO has always been the tea brand that challenges the status quo to better society. To further this ambition while bringing an experience rooted in purposeful exploration to the masses, we needed to appeal to a younger, previously untapped audience of tea drinkers. So, we reframed TAZO's Zen blend as a way to unlock one's creative potential, instead of just another way to simply relax or unwind.

For the music and each spoken-word exercise, RZA drew upon his own experiences of overcoming creative challenges to provide listeners with tangible, action-oriented guidance to help them unlock their own creative potential.

When Guided Explorations launched in February 2020, we dropped the EP on Spotify and Apple Music. Almost immediately, it was picked up by all other major music-streaming platforms including Amazon Music, YouTube, and Pandora. The release was supported with an integrated paid, owned, and earned promotion plan, with RZA personally promoting the album as part of his daily meditation series on social (which he continues to do over a year later). Finally, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we leveraged the album to give our community meaningful content while quarantined at home by hosting weekly Instagram Lives (featuring RZA) that focused on key themes from each track.

Guided Explorations was embraced by even the toughest critics, garnering 940 earned articles and 1.5 billion total impressions in major outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Pitchfork, UPROXX, Mic, Forbes, and more. The album reached over 1 million streams, with three tracks reaching RZA’s own Top 10 on Spotify. Google searches for TAZO spiked three times surrounding the release, while consumer conversation across social media was overwhelmingly positive with 1.5 million organic social impressions. For TAZO, this drove a 17% increase of the Zen SKU, and has since led TAZO sales to outpace the rest of the tea category by three times.