Customers did not play along: Nestea cancels relaunch

From the new appearance (left) back to the original (right): Nestlé reverses the relaunch of Nestea.

A relaunch is often good for a brand and usually provides a breath of fresh air - but sometimes it backfires. A current example of this is the Nestlé subsidiary Nestea, as the Handelszeitung revealed last week. In March 2018, the group had the popular iced tea brand completely revamped: New recipes, new visual identity, new brand philosophy.

The reason for the relaunch was not only the 70th birthday of the tea pioneer, but also the departure of long-time iced tea joint venture partner Coca-Cola the year before. The beverage manufacturer, with whom Nestlé had promoted the Nestea brand for 25 years, parted ways and launched its own iced tea brand, Fuze Tea (Switzerland: Fuse Tea). The launch was accompanied by a multi-million euro advertising campaign across Europe. Fuze Tea became an instant success and the Nestea brand, which had come under pressure as a result, was forced to reinvent itself.

However, the relaunch flopped in all relevant markets. In its home market of Switzerland, Nestea even disappeared from the shelves of many retailers. Nestlé's Head of Tea, Gareth Jones, explains to the Handelszeitunghow it could have come to this. The new Nestea had performed well in preliminary tests and "the new bottle looked great," but consumers no longer recognized their visually significantly changed brand in supermarkets. 

The situation was further complicated by the fact that Coca-Cola launched a large-scale advertising campaign for its new Fuze Tea product at the same time as the Nestea relaunch - with a budget in the tens of millions. This contrasts with Nestea's modest budget: "We were able to spend a few tens of thousands," says Jones. And critically, he admits, "We changed everything in the Nestea relaunch. And it went wrong." If you change too much at once, rather than incrementally changing small things, you'll have more problems when you fix it.

Nestlé's correction to the relaunch flop happened quickly. For a supertanker like Nestlé, which normally can hardly change its share price at short notice, this is a quick reaction, finds the Handelszeitung. The company is thus showing courage in burying a failed relaunch.

The old, tried-and-true Nestea should be back on the shelves as early as the end of August. On the Nestlé site the original is already present again. However, the Nestea.com brand site is currently down: "The site you are looking for could not be found."