Elephant-Size Emotions for Dilmah Tea 

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We’re taking a trip to Australia for our Ad Of The Week this week, and what better way to spend the long winter evenings than by relaxing with a great cup of tea? Dilmah, the single origin Ceylon tea brand, has been on Australian shelves for four decades now and is back with a new brand campaign from agency Toybox, “Making The World A Better Tea”.

The campaign is built to reinforce the values that make Dilmah stand out. Dilmah is a family-owned brand that makes single-origin tea, and it’s also a brand with strong values and sustainability commitments. Those are on show in “Baby Elephant”, one of the films in the new campaign, which celebrates the brand’s work at Dilmah Conservation, including its Elephant Transit Home for orphaned baby elephants in Sri Lanka.

This work isn’t just good for the elephants, it’s good for this ad – as it means Dilmah can authentically tell its story via a playful elephant calf, the kind of creative element almost guaranteed to produce positive emotion. While any brand can use a baby animal in an ad and get some kind of positive effect, the genuine connection between Dilmah and the elephant conservation programme makes a huge difference to how the ad lands with viewers.

The ad asks the question, does an elephant care about the tea, the land it grows on, or the human children it interacts with? Maybe – but what’s certain is that the tea cares for the elephant. It’s an elegant way of tying together various brand values and emotional benefits into one story, and it ends with Dilmah’s distinctive “Do Try It” catchphrase.

As Dilmah’s Head of Marketing ANZ – Shamil De Dodwell explains, “Our ambition with Elephant was to create a campaign that would bring to life our mission to make the world a better tea through a fresh entertaining creative. We wanted to inspire Australians that great tea begins with a commitment to quality at the source which is what makes Dilmah’s single origin tea so unique. The campaign celebrates the care, kindness and humanity behind Dilmah, and invites people to rediscover the rich taste and quality of authentic Single Origin Ceylon Tea. By making quality more meaningful, our goal was to increase consideration and inspire more Australians to choose Dilmah and make a difference in the world through their cup of tea.”

The results on our Test Your Ad platform are spectacular. “Baby Elephant” is one of the most effective ads we’ve ever tested in Australia, in the top 1% of all commercials with a mighty 5.7-Star Rating. That predicts exceptional long-term business impact, which is just what you want to see from a brand-oriented campaign. “Elephant” is no slouch in short-term impact either, with a Strong Spike Rating.

Going deeper into the results it’s plain to see what’s driving these scores – sky high happiness throughout the ad and an exceptional Emotional Intensity score, massively outperforming the Australian average. This ad brings joy to viewers, at the same time as it underlines the qualities that make Dilmah stand out in the market.

It’s a great example of how sustainability and environmental messages can boost effectiveness when they’re authentically tied to the brand’s existing values and reputation. In our The Greenprint report on sustainable messaging, we talk about the “Messenger Effect”, and how sustainability ideas work better when they come from an impactful messenger, like an authority figure or an innocent who’s affected by the issues. “Elephant” combines both, with the unknowing calf and the wise, credible Dilmah with their conservation pedigree. Together they make for an ad with elephant-size effectiveness.