The Tetley Tea Folk are iconic advertising figures created over 30 years ago and used by Tetley Tea to promote their teabags. Following a ten year absence, Tetley brought them out of retirement to front their new campaign.Our overall goal was simple; to make the return of the Tetley Tea Folk the most anticipated comeback in 2010. To achieve this, a four tiered strategy was developed to create anticipation, build hype, create a big bang and sustain the interest and coverage beyond just the week of their TV return. The four elements included:SOW – build collateral and start planting the seeds for the comeback amongst media and consumersTEASE – start the whisper campaign and start turning up the volume day by dayREVEAL – shout about the return and make it the biggest news of the dayEXPLODE – maintain the momentum and build character and personality for the Tea Folk.The campaign raised spontaneous awareness for Tetley to its highest in 3 years taking a 32% market share and made the Tea Folk famous again with blanket coverage across all national, online and regional media generating a PRV of £1,650,000, OTS 645,269,365 and 16:1 ROI.

SOW: Pulled together assets from archives including historical adverts, memorabilia and arranging for a Sun journalist to appear in the advert.TEASE:Mocked images of celebrities as Tea Folk, hinting they may star in the ads. Sparked debate and talkability by releasing images of how the 21st century Tea Folk might look; Gaffer carried a Blackberry, Sydney appeared as a Hip Hop star and Tina transformed into a WAG.REVEAL:Return story was sold into news, business and trade. Targeted social media by personalising images of journalists as Tea Folk to be used as their Twitter and Facebook avatars. We also created nostalgic Tetley t-shirts – sold online and 'placed' on celebrities.EXPLODE:Celebrated nostalgia with a brand historian, changed the names of workers at the factory to that of the Tea Folk, profiled Tetley’s biggest fan and showed that flat cap sales had soared.

Blanket coverage across all national, online and regional media generating a PRV of £1,650,000, OTS 645,269,365 and 16:1 ROI.28 national newspaper hits including The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Star, and The Independent.Key journalists used specially drawn Tea Folk as their twitter avatar and high profile Tweeters including Stuart Broad and Amanda Holden engaged with the Tea Folk direct.Spontaneous awareness for Tetley rose and reached its highest in 3 years taking a 32% market share.Helped create content for social networking platforms that were built from scratch and resulted in over 130,000 Facebook fans and 12,000 twitter followers.Anand Gandesha Marketing Manager, Tetley:"The agency team worked tirelessly to make this an advertising landmark and their uncompromising creativity generated excitement and column inches for the Tea Folk. They continue to surprise us with how they keep the interest and excitement in Tea Folk going."