Building a Legacy Through Flavour, Story & Soulful Sips: 1868 By TATA Tea
- Noopur Sane
- Aug 4
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 7
1868 by Tata Tea had all the right ingredients, from premium blends, rich heritage, to a legacy worth showcasing. But while it was positioned as a premium tea brand from a product standpoint, it lacked a compelling brand story to bring that richness to life. With little more than a single-line description, the brand wasn’t telling the world what truly set it apart. We partnered with the team to build a strong strategic foundation and digital identity, helping 1868 reflect what it truly stands for: a heritage-rich, flavour-first, premium tea experience.
Brand & Communications Strategy
Challenge: 1868 by Tata Tea needed a clearer brand narrative and identity to cut through the noise in the premium tea space. While the product quality was top-tier, the story and communication needed to better convey its blend of heritage and indulgence.
Builder Moves:
1. Qualitative consumer immersions to decode perceptions around premium tea and understand key gifting triggers, purchase behaviour, and emotional motivators.
2. Benchmarked competitor strategies and mapped market whitespace to identify differentiators and key opportunities for 1868 to own a unique space.
3. Crafted the brand positioning, purpose, archetype, brand pillars & consumer value proposition
4. Set the tone of voice, brand moodboard and overall communication guidelines including sample copy, dos & dont's and content across the funnel, based on the identified personas
5. Honoured the legacy of 1868 while spotlighting its flavour-first approach, resulting in a positioning that established the brand as a deeply rooted, indulgent, and premium tea experience.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Challenge: While the brand had now repositioned itself as a heritage-rich, flavour-first premium tea, the website failed to reflect this identity. Both in terms of communication and user experience, it lacked the clarity, consistency, and premium feel that the brand deserved - which impacted brand perception as well as conversion.
Builder Moves:
1. Conducted a detailed website audit to identify UX gaps and consumer pain points across the homepage, product, collection, and About pages.
2. Benchmarked top Indian and international D2C websites to align on structure, navigation, content flow, and storytelling elements.
3. Refreshed the UI to reflect luxury cues and product diversity, while improving discovery and navigation through a clearer, more intuitive layout.
4. Designed immersive visual sections inspired by Indian heritage (e.g., window frames, ingredient spotlights) and revamped key brand pages to bring the sourcing and flavour story to life. Tech & Design partners: Webspero & ButterWorks.
