PG Tips

PG tips

Type	Tea
Owner	Unilever
Country	Manchester, United Kingdom
Introduced	1930

PG Tips is a brand of tea in the United Kingdom, manufactured by Unilever UK. It is claimed that Britons drink 35 million cups of the tea every day.

Brand name

In the 1930s Arthur Brooke of Brooke Bond launched PG Tips in the UK tea market under the name of Pre-Gest-Tee. The name implied that the tea could be drunk prior to food being digested. Grocers abbreviated it to PG.

After the Second World War, labelling regulations ruled out describing tea as aiding digestion—a property previously attributed to tea—and by 1950/1 the PG name was officially adopted. The company added "Tips" referring to the fact that only the tips (the top two leaves and bud) of the tea plants are used in the blend.

Products

PG Tips is available as loose tea, tea bags, and in vending formats. A "Special Blend" tea, which is the same as the tea blended for the brand's 75th anniversary, is available in tea bag form only.

The tea used in PG Tips is imported in bulk as single estate teas from around the world and blended in precise proportions set by the tea tasters to make blend 777, which can contain between 12 and 35 single estate teas at any one time (depending on season, etc.) at the Trafford Park factory in Manchester.

PG Tags, tea bags with a string, were launched in 1985, and pyramid-shaped (tetrahedron) tea bags in 1996 (PG Tips Pyramid Bags is a registered trademark). The pyramid-shaped bag was designed to help the tea leaves move more freely, as loose tea moves in a teapot, and supposedly create a better infusion. One 2011 version of the product packaging makes the claim: "The PG Tips pyramid tea bag gives the tea leaves 50% more room to move around than a flat conventional tea bag. So the tea bag works more like a miniature tea pot. This allows for all the freshness to be released for the best tasting cup of PG."^[1]

The Brooke Bond name has now been dropped from all packaging, and the product is now known as PG Tips.

In Scotland, Unilever sells a specially developed blend of PG. It is called Scottish Blend.

In the Republic of Ireland, Unilever sells tea under the Lyons brand.

PG tips, Scottish Blend and Lyons teas are exported by Unilever UK & Ireland Export, based in Unilever UK & Ireland's Head Office Leatherhead, through a worldwide network of food distributors.

Advertising

Unlike the blended teas many companies were producing, Brooke’s teas were pure, high-quality teas from India and China. Brooke realized the importance of advertising early on, introducing the slogan, "Good tea unites good company, exhilarates the spirits, banishes restraint from conversation and promotes the happiest purposes of social intercourse."^[2]

The Tipps family

In 1956 PG Tips began using anthropomorphic chimpanzees in their TV advertisements. These were dressed in human clothes and were known as the 'Tipps family'. Their voices were often provided by celebrities, such as Peter Sellers and Bob Monkhouse. By 1958 PG Tips had risen from fourth to first place in the British tea market.^[3] The chimpanzees were from Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire.

These advertisements were stopped in the 1970s after complaints by animal rights organisations. However sales dropped and the chimps were bought back 18 months later. The last 'Tipps family' advert was broadcast in 2002.^[4] The PG Tips chimps spawned a spin-off in memorabilia, including trading cards and figurines.

The T-Birds

The 'Tipps family' were replaced with a house sharing group of claymation birds called the T-Birds, animated by Aardman, the company behind Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. In Ireland these commercials were still airing in late 2006, though advertising Lyons Tea (another Unilever brand). This led to PG Tips becoming a major partner with Wallace and Gromit's first film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, launched in October 2005. PG offered "Gromit" mugs on pack in the supermarket. According to The Grocer magazine, Unilever reported that during this "Gromit" mug promotion, PG Tips sales increased 600 percent. Wallace and Gromit also appeared in an advert with Lady Tottington (another character from the film) around the same time.

PG Tips also produced a long running series of trade cards as give-aways. These cards ceased production in 1999 after a survey of customers showed that they were not contributing to developing the business.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, PG Tips celebrated its 75th anniversary with special packs, including a limited edition Golden pack and a one-off Diamond tea bag. The Diamond tea bag cost £7,500 and was made by Boodles jewelers and used Makaibari Silver Tips (Imperial).

Monkey

In 2007, PG Tips reunited Johnny Vegas and the popular ITV Digital Monkey character puppeteered by Nigel Plaskitt and Susan Beattie and voiced by Ben Miller, following a holiday TV special about famously bad decisions (ITV Digital's launch) where they featured briefly. Johnny's notably cleaner and soberer than he often plays,^{[citation needed]} and the Monkey character pointedly explains he's not a chimpanzee, he's a monkey, a nod to PG Tips' chimpanzee family.

One of the adverts was a spoof of the "deli scene" from the movie When Harry Met Sally; in the advert Monkey describes the taste of PG Tips by saying "Oh Yes" repeatedly like in the movie, finishing with a woman in the table nearby asking the waiter "I'll have whatever he's having". The ad ends with the tagline "How Would you Describe the Taste?". It was first shown on 3 February 2010.^[5]

Another advert, to advertise the naturally occuring thenanine in PG Tips, featured Monkey and Al playing the characters of Captain Mainwaring and Private Pike from the popular sitcom Dad's Army.

PG tips and sustainability

In May 2007, Unilever became the first company to commit to sourcing all its tea in a sustainable manner.^[6][7][8] To that end, the company asked the Rainforest Alliance, an international environmental NGO to start certifying tea estates in East Africa.^[9][10]

As of February 2008, PG Tips packs have been carrying a seal saying 'At least 50% of this tea comes from Rainforest Alliance-certified farms'. The company stated that by 2010 all of its tea would be Rainforest-Alliance-certified tea. An advertising campaign supporting the initiative was launched at the same time, including two new TV ads with Monkey and Al. At the same time, Monkey starred in a 10 minute documentary-style advertisement called 'A Tale of Two Continents' which was only shown in cinemas and online.^[11] In 2011 the maker of PG Tips also stated it is to stop testing its teas on animals. ^[12]

See also

• Tetley, PG tips' main competitor
• Lipton, another brand of tea also owned/made by the same company (Unilever) as PG tips.
• Typhoo tea, UK's third leading brand.

Slogans

• "How would you describe the taste?" (Al and Monkey)
• "Do your bit, put the kettle on" (Al and Monkey)
• "We All Need a PG Moment" (used during the T-Birds era)
• "There's no other tea to beat PG" (later chimp ads), followed by "It's the taste!" spoken by a chimp
• "Dad, do you know the piano's on my foot?" MR SHIFTER: You hum it son, I'll play it!
• "Avez-vous un cuppa?" (Tour De France)
• "It's the Tea you can really Taste" (Earlier chimp ads)

Notes

1. ^ "PG Tips Tea, Popular Brands". FamousFoods.com. http://www.famousfoods.com/pgtipstea.html. Retrieved October 3, 2011. 
2. ^ History of PG Tips
3. ^ "Inside Story: The PG Tips ads". The Independent. 17 March 2008. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/inside-story-the-pg-tips-ads-796752.html. 
4. ^ "After 45 years the PG Tips chimps retire". The Telegraph. 12 Jan 2002. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1381207/After-45-years-the-PG-Tips-chimps-retire.html. 
5. ^ Sweney, Mark (1 February 2010). "PG Tips spoofs When Harry Met Sally in latest Monkey ad". guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/01/pg-tips-when-harry-met-sally. 
6. ^ Mortished, Carl (May 25, 2007). "Unilever seeks approval of its tea’s green credentials". The Times. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/consumer_goods/article1838038.ece. 
7. ^ Button, Martin (August 12, 2009). "Unilever recently announced plans to source our entire tea supply sustainably". News Vendor – The Blog of UK Vending Ltd. WordPress.com. http://ukvending.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/unilever-recently-announced-plans-to-source-our-entire-tea-supply-sustainably/. Retrieved 5 July 2010. 
8. ^ "Unilever commits to sourcing all its tea from sustainable ethical sources" (Press release). Unilever PLC. 2007-05-25. http://www.unilever.com/mediacentre/pressreleases/2007/sustainable-tea-sourcing.aspx. 
9. ^ "Unilever commits to sourcing all its tea from sustainable ethical sources" (Press release). Unilever. http://www.unilever.com/ourcompany/newsandmedia/pressreleases/2007/sustainable-tea-sourcing.asp.  (Archived June 17, 2007 at the Wayback Machine)
10. ^ "Time to brew up a sustainable cuppa". The Independent. 5 December 2007. http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article3223697.ece. 
11. ^ http://www.pgtips.co.uk/ataleoftwocontinents/^{[dead link]}
12. ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/pg-tips-maker-agrees-to-halt-animal-tests-on-its-tea-2202615.html

External links

• Official PG tips website
• PG TIPS CARD info