Local preference for tea puts Coca-Cola in cold sweat

Local preference for tea puts Coca-Cola in cold sweat

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The first attempt by PT Coca-Cola Indonesia was Hi-C.

It failed, without even starting to gain recognition in the
market.

The second, Frestea, fared better. Nevertheless, PT Coca-Cola
did not get a chance to fight the specter itself -- Teh Botol
Sosro. PT Sinar Sosro, the producer of long-established Teh Botol
Sosro, did not lose sweat over the challenge; instead, it skewed
the direction of the battle, offering Frestea a fresh rival,
Fruit Tea.

Teh Botol Sosro has effortlessly continued to conquer the
beverage world, gripping around 70 percent of the noncarbonated
soft drinks market, say some retail analysts.

Coca-Cola was not the first beverage company that had ever
tried to challenge Teh Botol Sosro. Apart from several contending
small companies, the first major rival was PT Pepsi Cola.

In 1995, PT Pepsi Cola released bottled-tea Tekita, which
contained 300ml of tea, outsizing the 220-ml Sosro. To counter
Tekita, Sinar Sosro launched 318-ml Estee.

According to a brand value survey carried out by SWA business
magazine and Mars (Marketing Research Specialist) recently, in
the noncarbonated soft drinks category Teh Botol Sosro has been
sitting pretty on top for three consecutive years.

This year, it scored 356.1, while Fruit Tea (also from Sosro)
followed in second place with only 36.6 and Frestea from Coca-
Cola in third with 29.6.

While many people elsewhere, particularly in the United
States, often claim to be addicted to Coca-Cola, in Indonesia,
it's addiction to Teh Botol Sosro.

If brand value is any indication, in Indonesia, Coca-Cola
scored a mere 141.6 this year.

Foreigners who visit large cities in Indonesia, particularly
Jakarta, will find Indonesians' penchant for Teh Botol a notable
characteristic.

A young Malaysian, on a visit to Jakarta, noted this habit. On
the website http:myindo.com, Farah Mahdzan, writes, "Teh botol
is to Indonesians what teh tarik is to Malaysians and Coca-Cola
to Americans ... My Indon (Indonesian) friends always ask me if
you can buy teh botol in Malaysia, and they're always shocked to
hear that you can't here ... Don't come and live in Malaysia if
you're a teh botol lover; can't get that stuff here."

In several website forums, netters have even compiled polls to
vote for the top brand of teh botol. The winner is obvious: Once
again, the ever popular, omnipresent (at least in Jakarta), Teh
Botol Sosro.

Such forum has sometimes contained messages from people who
were staying abroad and claiming to have a craving for Teh Botol
Sosro, which was not easy to find in their respective countries.

Some netters in the U.S. said they found Tetra-packaged Teh
Botol Sosro in some Chinese stores.

However, some Teh Botol Sosro fans still feel that the glass-
bottled version is better.

Devotees say that for the best experience you should sip Teh
Botol Sosro with a straw, straight from a bottle that has been
fridge-cooled: Don't pour it into a cup and put ice cubes in it.

The concept of drinking cool, black, sweetened tea with a hint
of jasmine was invented by an Indonesian family, the Sosrodjojos.
They owned PT Sinar Sosro and other companies, including the
first, PT Gunung Slamet (GS), which, since the 1950s, has managed
tea plantations and a processing plant in Slawi, Central Java.

In 1965, Sosrodjojo's third son, Soetjipto Sosrodjojo, tried
to expand the distribution of GS' loose jasmine tea product, Teh
Cap Botol, to Jakarta.

With his staff, Soetjipto, traveling in a car equipped with
speakers, staged tea demos, with "tasting promotions" at public
places in Jakarta. They concocted Teh Cap Botol in front of the
crowd, and later distributed the tea samples to the public.

However, because it took time to boil the water, crowds got
bored and left before the tea was ready. Soetjipto changed the
strategy, boiling the water at his office and transporting the
freshly made tea in urns.

However, on the way to demo locations, the tea was spilled so
later they poured it into washed soy sauce or lemonade bottles.
The third attempt was successful and they never looked back.

The promotion technique sparked an idea to package tea in
bottles. In 1969/1970, the name Teh Botol Sosro, imprinted on
specially-designed bottles, was first introduced.

They changed the bottle design in 1972, and, later in 1974,
the family made a historic move: They changed the bottle design
into what we see now everywhere and established PT Sinar Sosro.

The company, located in East Jakarta, has to date produced the
first glass-bottled tea in Indonesia and, it claims on its
website (www.sosro.com), the first of its kind in the world.

It took years for Sosro to cultivate the habit of drinking tea
from a bottle, for Indonesians, like people elsewhere, were used
to drinking hot tea from cups and ice tea from tall mugs.

Nowadays, many Indonesians have acquired a new habit, just
like the words in Sosro's bull's-eye marketing slogan: "Whatever
you eat, you drink Teh Sosro."