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Tea brands want to woo coffee drinkers, while coffee brands tune up their old game.
Unbiased market observers, however, say that in the absence of anything but flaky empirical evidence, all that can reliably be said is this. So long as people haven't turned into utter and total creatures of 'dead habit' (thank Tagore for the phrase), the loyalty flow can happily go either way. From tea to coffee. Or from coffee to tea. With many claiming patronage of both beverages, too. Whatever the preferences, whatever the rationales, it's market dynamism that counts. This is so in any market. Tata Tea's efforts to woo over the world's coffee-habituated palates, then, need not attract the sort of scoffs reserved for lost causes. Nor should you think Nestle has lost its marbles for aiming Nescafe coffee at a much bigger audience in India than it has done all these years. Nescafe, a distinctly upper-end brand, has rolled up its sleeves for mid and lower-mid market action (going for a roadside tea-stall ambience in its advertising would've been just too drastic a shift). In north India, this is tea territory, big time. And it's not just Tata Tea and Nescafe. It's many of the rest as well. Tea brands are out to win over the coffee drinker. And coffee brands are out to win over the tea drinker. This should be an interesting saga as it unfolds. Will tea brands appeal more to the coffee loyalist's mind than heart? And will coffee brands appeal more to the tea drinker's heart than mind? Or the other way round? It'll probably be some sort of blend of appeals. Whatever it is, get ready for some heady fourway stimulation of mutual hearts and minds.
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Is
tea had in places soaked historically in coffee? Can this sort of opening
even be made in the first place? Coffee fans respond in their usual
manner. With a prolonged 'hmmm...' to indicate their submergence in deep
thought. A submergence synapse-sparkled, no doubt, by the brain waves that
the beany beverage is supposed to induce. Such people are often best left
deeply self-engaged, free to think.