The previous years saw the milk tea boom in the Philippines. This period paved the way for the launch of Serenitea Milk Tea in 2008. Grounded on the simple joys of serving milk tea variants and snack options, Serenitea rose to become one of the fastest-growing and most recognized milk tea brands in the country.
A few years after their launch, Serenitea’s popularity was challenged by new players. This led to a saturated market, with several milk tea brands fighting for consumer acceptance and loyalty.
Despite an established customer following, Serenitea’s owner, Juliet “Jules” Herrera-Chen, knew it was time to re-think the brand and its future. “We were somehow stuck, like the business suddenly reached a plateau state, not losing but not also moving up as how we wanted it. As a pioneer, we want to maintain our strong positioning in this category,” says Jules.
The important starting point came when Jules met Aaron Palileo of Bootleg Innovation Design, a customer-centered and creativity-based firm that helps organizations innovate their corporate and brand strategies.
Bootleg specializes in finding new ways for companies to differentiate and innovate in their markets. Bootleg applies a unique brand of consumer needs finding and market sense making involving “human sciences.” At the heart of their process are social scientists that are competent in social anthropology and psychology–disciplines that have developed effective methods to truly understand people and environments.
“We have a highly accomplished team of psychologists and social anthropologists who boast of professional [i.e. clinical and commercial] and academic experience and success,” says Palileo.
Launched in 2013, Bootleg was established by Aaron Palileo, Paolo Abella and Jay Amante, three creative entrepreneurs who know a thing or two about consumer insighting, brand building and designing experiences.
Palileo is a teacher at Ateneo Graduate School of Business while Abella graduated from New York Film Academy and has worked on commercial videos for multinational brands. Amante, who graduated from AIM’s Managing the Arts Program, owns Blanc Art Gallery, one of the country’s top art galleries.
“We started by understanding what Serenitea’s strengths were to begin with. One is that it is the only brand that uses real imported tealeaves. The local culinary experts we spoke to validated that this was one of the things that made Serenitea special. We performed digital scans to monitor the sentiments of consumers online and found out that people already loved Serenitea’s in-store experience,” says Palileo.
Bootleg’s psychologist then interviewed various kinds of customers – milk tea fanatics (those loyal to Serenitea and its competitors) as well as high-frequency customers of other beverages like coffee and fruit shakes.
Throughout the process, Abella, Amante and Palileo regularly met with the owners, Jules and her husband, Peter to talk them about their personal and professional dreams and aspirations.
After the insighting process, Bootleg developed long and short-term strategies for Serenitea. Bootleg guided Serenitea in crafting its long-term direction by articulating its overall brand vision, mission and value proposition. Bootleg developed a new tagline that perfectly captured the new brand strategy – “Have a Moment of Serenitea.”
These long-term strategies were then translated into a brand equity development plan, which plotted the specific product, service, price, place, promotion and frontliner strategies and programs.
At the end of the project, Bootleg generated the following outputs for Serenitea: a new understanding of their customers’ needs and wants on behavioral, psychological, and emotional levels, a better understanding of their direct and indirect competitors, their brand’s real strengths, a more focused long-term brand strategy that serves as a blueprint for present and future growth and a detailed marketing plan.
“Overall, we helped Jules create a better, stronger Serenitea – from knowing and building on her brand’s strength, market and consumers, competitors as well as future directions and growth potentials,” says Abella.
Growth opportunities
With a more focused marketing and brand strategy, Serenitea preserved its loyal fan base and solidified its leadership in the milk tea category. More importantly, Serenitea has evolved from a straightforward beverage retailer to a place that offers a complete milk-tea experience as it now offers milk-tea based chocolates and candies.
These strategies and programs allowed them to further grow their customer base. The chain now currently runs 30 outlets located all over the metro, and in Cebu and Davao City.