Twinings Pulls “New Coke” With Similar Results: Changes Legendary Earl Grey Tea

You have to ask yourself: Don’t corporations ever learn? Or are they as dense as politicians who keep making the same mistake? In 1985 Coca Cola made the corporate belly flop heard round the world when it introduced “New Coke,” assuming that its customers would buy it like the classic Coke because it had the name “Coke” on it. Now legendary tea maker Twinings is making the same mistake:

It is the company credited with transforming tea into the nation’s [England's] favourite tipple more than 300 years ago.

But now Twinings has provoked the ultimate storm in a teacup by tampering with one of its best-known and most cherished blends.

Fans of the company’s Earl Grey tea are furious that the firm has altered the traditional flavouring and relaunched it as The Earl Grey.

They say the new product tastes like ‘lemon cleaning product’ and describe it as ‘dishwater’ served up in a cup.

Dozens of angry tea drinkers have posted complaints about the new flavour on the company’s website since the new brand was launched in April.

One wrote: ‘I cannot describe how awful this new tea tastes. The old award-winning tea was in a completely different league to this foul-tasting dishwater.’

Others have simply described the new product as ‘horrid’, ‘vile’ and ‘an affront to tea’.
One wrote: ‘I agree with the other posts here that the new Earl Grey is an awful disappointment!

‘Bring back the old recipe that was refreshing and flavoursome.’

Some tea drinkers are so dismayed by the new blend they have added their names to a Facebook campaign called ‘Bring Back the Original Twinings Earl Grey Tea’.

Several have enquired on the campaign page where you can find old stock of the original Twinings Earl Grey on supermarket shelves.

This is all reminscent of the pre-Facebook days when Coca Cola lovers stockpiled the old formula, and sold supplies for huge sums to those who yearned for the old flavor.

Twinings seems to be making a major mistake: these are not the old days when competition among tea makers mean a few big companies and smaller ones. Tea is an up and coming industry — increasingly popular now in countries such as the United States.

(On a personal note, I fell in love with tea after living in India for two years. I loved the tea I had at homes and also while working as an intern from January 1972 through May 1972 on the Hindustan Times Evening News in New Delhi, and also the tea I had when I went back as a freelance journalist and reported from New Delhi and Dacca, Bangladesh from September 1973 through May 1975. On Sept 4 I leave on a major national trip that will have me on the road all but 6 weeks for the next 9 months. I have 5 tins and boxes of tea and an electric tea maker that will accompany me – plus a thermos).

I know of people here in the United States that feel Twinings is the tea above teas and will only buy Twinings. The blend they often praise? Earl Grey. Because they contend they cannot get that pure flavor anywhere else.

But so far Twinings — like political Tea Party members in the United States — is not giving in one inch:

Twinings, however, was last night refusing to capitulate, standing by the new version of its 180-year old tea, named after Charles, the second Earl Grey, who was a leading architect of the 1832 Great Reform Act.

Claire Forster, a company spokeswoman, insisted that since relaunch “our sales results have been the best ever, the highest ever volume share of the Earl Grey market”.
“It was traditionally thought of as the tea you had when you went round to your grandmother’s,” she said.

“Now a lot of young people are getting into Earl Grey.”

She added: “All products need to evolve to keep up with people’s developing palates. We kept it true to the original Earl Grey, just made it a tiny bit more refreshing. But whenever you change something, you can never please everybody.”

The good news – if there is any – for the Earl Grey rebels is that every customer who complains to Twinings is being offered “the ten day challenge”: £10 to try the new tea for ten days and see if it grows on them.

Perhaps more importantly, if they refuse to take part in the challenge, they get a year’s supply of the old Earl Grey – an offer which may lead to cynics wondering if the whole protest over the change is an internet ruse to raise sales of the tea bags.

Prediction: this is a great opening for another tea company that a) wants to try and come up with something closer to the old formula (and they can probably approximate it close enough) b)wants to capture customers who feel so betrayed by Twinings that they stop buying their products.

Business plans do matter…in business. As an example read THIS PLAN by the great American tea company Honest Tea that has one of the best bottled teas on the markets anywhere — real tea and not too sweet (I am an admitted addict of their tea and fruit drinks due to the flavor, purity and slight sweetening).

You can just see some tea company somewhere working on a way now to capture the business Twinings will most assuredly lose as it tries to win over new, perhaps younger customers with a new blend.