Branding

How We Build Brand Awareness and Create Brand Extensions

Using our award-winning brand marketing expertise, we launched 9 Dragons Tea, a movie documenting tea’s evolving history and culture. We worked to unveil the film and provide strategic business consulting to extend the brand beyond the movie, opening up incremental revenue opportunities with new product and service offerings.

Unlocking a Global Hub For Tea Lovers

9 Dragons Tea represents the most original content in the world of tea. Although tea is the most popular drink after water, tea’s history is a muddled subject, rarely told and littered with misguided facts.

The film 9 Dragons Tea documents the untold story of tea’s ancient history and long-buried secrets. A tell-all tea tale, this 90-minute tea movie traces Camellia Sinensis’s ancient roots in China and its epic journey to the West.

We set out to define the brand strategy for the film and explore new business opportunities beyond the movie. This comprehensive brand case study covered the diapason of branding, video production, content creation, and digital marketing.

Along with the brand campaign, our business consulting team uncovered exciting brand extension opportunities to unlock new revenue streams and create a brand franchise.

Three Key Challenges

9 Dragons Tea is a small independent film
A historical documentary has a niche appeal
Tea is a highly fragmented marketplace

Opportunities

We utilized the potent mix of branding, content creation, and video production with digital media marketing to:

Build brand awareness
Drive website traffic
Grow online communities

Talking to Prospective Fans

Working with the filmmakers, we defined, refined, and charted its brand strategy based around authenticity, emotion, and simple elegance. We sought to clarify what the film stands for, how it enriches the tea experience, and how it stands out as a movie.

During this process, our business consulting team also uncovered the brand came with multiple new opportunities–books, podcasts, and one-of-a-kind immersive tea experiences for fans to deepen their engagement with the brand.

As part of our brand and digital marketing services, we developed the brand guide, offering some guardrails on how to talk about the film and the event. BrainLush set out to create a brand book, a responsive website, evergreen blog content, and video content to market online and offline.

Accompanying this brand strategy, we identified new business opportunities to extend the brand into new products and services to increase revenue streams. We created merchandise, including posters and other products. We unveiled the film across Facebook, Instagram, and Google to appeal to tea drinkers worldwide.

To build online communities and engagement, we promoted pillar content, driving traffic to 9DragonsTea.com with a branded Tea Blog. We are in development of the branded tea events and accompanying books.

From the film trailers to branding videos and explainer videos, we crafted brand messaging that speaks to a specific target audience.

Creating a Scalable Brand Platform

Defining Brand Strategy

Craft Brand Narrative

Through our script-writing services, we crafted a compelling brand narrative using storytelling techniques to convey the 9 Dragons Tea brand promise. We developed strategic messaging that reflects the brand’s core values.

Understand the Target Audience

We set out to understand the target segments based on their interests and personas, from types of tea to arts and culture and welless. For example:

Black tea or green tea lovers
Oolong tea drinkers
History buffs
Documentary fans
Health and wellness seekers

Align Content For Brand Consistency

We strategically interwove core messaging throughout the videos, website content, and external communications to achieve brand consistency.

Resonate Emotionally

By authentically communicating relevant messaging, we ensured the brand videos resonated with the audience, forming an emotional connection and simultaneously making them want to know more.

Extending the Brand

Through our business consulting services, we analyzed and strategized brand extension opportunities to expand audiences and generate new revenue streams. We focused on three business strategies:

Category Extension

The documentary is poised to branch out as a fictional action/adventure movie. The global tea culture gives rise to a lifestyle television series showcasing global tea cultures: “9 Dragons Tea – Traveling Teapot.” This category extension will help build a stronger brand identity and reputation, not to mention increased revenues.

Product Form Extension

The 9 Dragons Tea movie spans across the tea realm from history to arts and cultures. So, it is natural to offer new products and services to deepen fans’ experience with the movie. Such offering includes books, merchandise, podcasts, and social events, as examples.

By extending the brand to other product forms, 9 Dragons Tea reaches new audiences and deepens the fans’ engagement with the brand. And the filmmakers reap the benefit of having multiple revenue streams from existing content.

Channel Extension

As a theatrical release, the filmmakers can expand viewing options to include streaming services, digital downloads, and even physical media sales. Offering fans the opportunity to stream the movie at home makes business sense as part of a distribution strategy, as streaming has become mainstream in how we consume media.

Expanding the distribution options helps reach new audiences, increase the convenience and accessibility of the content, and generate new revenue streams.

Extending the Brand

Through our business consulting services, we analyzed and strategized brand extension opportunities to expand audiences and generate new revenue streams. We focused on three business strategies:

Category Extension

Product Form Extension

Channel Extension

Expanding the distribution options helps reach new audiences, increase the convenience and accessibility of the content, and generate new revenue streams.

Building a New Website

Our digital marketing services developed a responsive 9DragonsTea.com website with evergreen content and a tea blog to build an online brand presence.

We integrated the website with video content, enabling it to rank faster with Google and other search engines. The website gained traction quickly, and the domain authority, DA, started to climb.

We built advanced video schema markup and implemented an ongoing content marketing strategy to optimize search engine visibilty and SEO ranking for targeted keywords.

We produced relevant content and refreshed older blogs for content optimization through our digital marketing services.

Creating Brand Video Content

Official Trailer

This 2-minute film trailer is produced for the general audience. It reflects key story elements of the movie and the brand.

Origin Story

Called the Heart of Tea, this intriguing origin story teases how Black tea was invented and the origin of Oolong tea. Although these are popular teas, the origin stories are rarely told.

Social Video

Filmed in an authentic Chinese courtyard built in the Qing Dynasty, this social video showcases the simple elegance of tea tasting.

An elegant visual experience, this how-to video brings to life the artistic height of the Gong Fu Cha tradition invented in Southern China.

Brand Video

This video expresses the film’s unique core value, the Tea Spirit, wholeheartedly.

Through an intimate look at a father-and-son tea-making scene, we bring to life a Chinese tea philosophy: “Good people make good tea.” This brand video engages viewers on an emotional level.

Brand Storytelling Video

To reach a wider audience and deepen authenticity, we used Chinese subtitles for onscreen graphics in this social video with a longer duration.

Video Utilization Strategy

Next, we put our branded content to work. We devised the following strategy to drive traffic to the website and build online communities.

The evergreen content fueled across the 9DragonsTea.com platform and all marketing channels.

Enriched Website Content

The video content enriched the website, making it more SEO-friendly. To optimize search engine ranking, we built advanced video schema markup to drive organic growth in traffic and keywords.

Social Media Marketing

Then, we promoted these brand videos on social media, attracting an audience. People followed, and conversations began around our pillar content.

Demand Generation Ad Campaigns

We used the brand videos to create targeted ad campaigns, further driving website traffic and increasing brand awareness.

Video Utilization Strategy

Next, we put our branded content to work. We devised the following strategy to drive traffic to the website and build online communities.

The evergreen content fueled across the 9DragonsTea.com platform and all marketing channels.

Enriched Website Content

The video content enriched the website, making it more SEO-friendly. To optimize search engine ranking, we built advanced video schema markup to drive organic growth in traffic and keywords.

Social Media Marketing

Then, we promoted these brand videos on social media, attracting an audience. People followed, and conversations began around our pillar content.

Demand Generation Ad Campaigns

We used the brand videos to create targeted ad campaigns, further driving website traffic and increasing brand awareness.

Digital Marketing Strategy

We devised the following social media marketing strategies to maximize performance and drive traffic:

Choose the Right Platform

Social media platforms are not created equal. Selecting the right platform is critical in reaching the right audience. Facebook and Instagram offer the right fit for the movie.

Optimize Videos For Social Media

We re-edited the videos when necessary to tailor to the platform’s requirements. We also experimented with screen sizes and orientation to optimize performance.

Understand the Audience

We tailored each ad campaign to a target audience based on interests, demographics, or affiliation.

Learn and Adapt

Then, the fun began. We sat back and analyzed the data as it trickled in, gleaning insights for improvement.

Improve with Insights

Tracking traffic, engagements, and leads, we made adjustments on the fly to elevate performance. Then, something exciting happened…

Results: Clicks, Views, and Leads!

While it is not an exact science to pinpoint the ROI of a brand campaign, there were some inspiring results.

Here are some key performance metrics.

282K

Video plays

10.7K

Engagements

6K

Followers starting at 0

15.7%

CTR

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Testimonials

We are grateful for the opportunities to work with wonderful people, making meaningful connections through our work.

Here is what people say about our collaborative experiences.

I've had the opportunity to work with Christy on a multitude of projects and have been impressed with her storytelling, creative brainstorming, problem-solving, and tenacity to bring the best possible product to fruition.

Christy is a true catalyst, constantly making things happen and bringing people together in the pursuit of excellence. After working with Christy in many roles over many years, there is no one I would recommend more highly.

Christy has more than a creative gift; she has an uncanny ability to identify with the needs of both her customers and investors. I've seen her take an idea, rally her team—artists and programmers—and turn it into a finished product in a matter of months!