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Can Lipton Ice Tea work wonders for Hindustan Lever? A look at the brand and whether it's a hot bet this year. By Supriya Shrinate Think Paloma. Yes, Nestle's brand of ice tea launched in India over a decade ago. What do you remember? Little? Can't blame you---it was such a grand disaster. So what makes Hindustan Lever think it can do the unthinkable---sell a steaming hot beverage on ice? Sure, many years have gone by, consumer experimentation has risen, chilled colas have gained enormously, Indian per capita income has grown, exposure levels are assumed to be higher, and Lever is not Nestle. But still, would you bet on Lipton Ice Tea's success in 2004? First, consider tradition. Recent estimates of bladder-fluid intake (excluding water) indicate that 90.7 per cent of beverage consumption in India is tea. Had, that is, the way it has been had for ages--hot. If any beverage has really broken free of tradition, it is the fizzies. What did they do? Pepsi used its brand irreverence to sell choice, and Coca-Cola used its brand realism to appropriate the 'thunda' position in consumer mindspace. Good going. How, in Lever's eyes, can an ice tea splash into the game? The company, which launched its Lipton Ice Tea in lemon and peach flavours in 2002, was unavailable for comment. But it's fair to assume an acute awareness of the 'health' attribute that colas have all but lost after the recent pesticide fracas, and perhaps even an acute soreness about colas having taken over from soaps as 'intimate inspirational' brands that appeal to the 'individual's inner self'. Put the two together, and the Lipton challenge begins to crystallize (or maybe that's the wrong word). Market conditions might just be favourable. Jagdeep Kapoor, Managing Director, Samsika, a marketing consultancy, views the ice version as a natural evolution of hot tea. In the West, ice tea is a youthful fun beverage, and JWT's current efforts to target the "young adolescent in transition" seems aimed at doing something similar in India. Lipton Ice Tea's taste is thought to be just the thing for the uninitiated Indian palate. But should Lipton Ice Tea use tea as a reference point at all? That's not clear. Since the product is likely to prove an alternative to soft drinks, at least in point-of-impulse terms, it may well make sense not to project ice tea overtly as a form of tea, evolved or otherwise. In fact, Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc, expects Lever to position Lipton Ice Tea squarely against colas---not just in imagery terms, but also by way of the other marketing aspects of availability, taste and affordability. There is a certain something that goes on when a consumer throws his or her head back to glug the stuff down from a can, and this is the sort of intangible benefit that an old cup of tea cannot deliver, nor even juices and the like. This belongs to fizz semiotic territory, and ice tea is among the few other beverages that could edge its way in. Ah, now that throws up another issue. Should Lipton Ice Tea really take on colas? A headlong confrontation could prove devastating to ice tea as an idea, given the equity that fizzies have generated already. The brand cannot hope to outwit Pepsi, surely, and nor can it realistically challenge Coca-Cola's stance (Atlanta man Steve Heyer, last heard, still had a clear sense of what's not on). But what Lipton Ice Tea can still do is leverage itself by what the colas have already done---and play up its 'natural' advantage in an unselfconscious sort of way.
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