Sometimes, the stars align, and in walks a client made seemingly just for you. For me (a kid from Darjeeling, tea's spiritual home) that client was Beca, one of Southeast Asia's oldest tea businesses.
A few things were apparent when the Beca team and I first met in Singapore in October 2022:
- We bled tea.
- They were iconoclasts.
-They had a great story that just needed good telling.
-I had never tasted anything like their tea (and haven't since).
There's something special brewing.
This was one of those partnerships in which the strategy, creativity, and all the orderly steps we take to arrive at something unputdownable existed only on paper. Instead, we sipped samples and listened repeatedly to move the work forward.
Because where does one even begin with tea? Life's liquor, all things to all people, a beverage with a history as epic and tumultuous as humankind’s.
Higher up, we knew we had to break free from the emerging bubble tea and old and cold colonial narratives.
We didn't want to answer questions like “Is this Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe 1?” or “Can I get that with boba pearls, red beans, and pudding?”
Closer to the ground, we wanted our cool kids to drink Beca so they could taste tea like never before.
Finding Beca's voice.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. So, we focused Beca’s story on its tea—how they make tea the undisputed star, how they source it, and how, steeped in tea’s history over five generations, they possess the knowledge and nerve to shape its future.
And in a world gone mad, we figured that sitting down and drinking tea may be the most rebellious thing Beca’s customers could do.
So, we used their words and mimicked the unique intonations and phraseologies of Singlish, the dominant local English-based creole language. A range became "Wah Not Blah" (wah = wow) and a star product, "Terrific Teh Tarik" (a "pulled" tea or "teh" popular across Southeast Asia). Like an unorthodox blend, it resulted in an unafraid voice.
We also pushed it with saucer-breaking headlines like:
“Because life's too short for s**t tea.”
“Not your grandfather's tea.”
“Drink tea, not death by teabag.”
“Goodbye, three pumps of sugar. Hello, tea!”
“It takes a few affairs to find your true tea love.”
Bringing it all together.
Typically, and for good reason, we don’t echo our voices and experiences when we write for our clients. But it felt natural for me to do so with Beca, and two eagle-eyed editors/BS detectives — my long-suffering colleague Yirong and boss Jonathan — tempered my worst instincts.
A writer needs editors like water does vessels.
Beca launched in an expectedly different way in January 2024, with a menu inspired as much by regional tea-drinking traditions as by trending mixologists. Drinks are served with flavor profile cards in an unorthodox space: part gallery, part learning space, part teahouse, and wholly Beca. You need to see it to believe, to visit this vision made real. It's something else.
It's easy to layer and complicate what we do.
Working with Beca was a reminder to keep it pure: shake hands with good clients and dive into their worlds, go deep, then write, write, and write till it’s right.
Nitin leads Yonder Consulting's evolving storytelling specialism across Asia. He divides his time between Singapore and the Himalayas. Please email him to see how he can help your business become something customers can’t stop looking at.
Credits:
Consultancy: Yonder Consulting
Narrative Strategy + Verbal Identity + Foundational
Copy: Nitin Das Rai
Brand Strategy: Yonder Asia (formerly CHV)
Brand Design: Fictionist Studio
Web Design: Bike Bear
Architecture: Syarawi Architects, Mentah Matter Design
PR, Social Media & Marketing: The Right Seed
Graphic Design: Edwin Liong, Elisa Kua, Rachael Liew, Tan Hee Hee
Sometimes, the stars align, and in walks a client made seemingly just for you. For me (a kid from Darjeeling, tea's spiritual home) that client was Beca, one of Southeast Asia's oldest tea businesses.
A few things were apparent when the Beca team and I first met in Singapore in October 2022:
- We bled tea.
- They were iconoclasts.
-They had a great story that just needed good telling.
-I had never tasted anything like their tea (and haven't since).
There's something special brewing.
This was one of those partnerships in which the strategy, creativity, and all the orderly steps we take to arrive at something unputdownable existed only on paper. Instead, we sipped samples and listened repeatedly to move the work forward.
Because where does one even begin with tea? Life's liquor, all things to all people, a beverage with a history as epic and tumultuous as humankind’s.
Higher up, we knew we had to break free from the emerging bubble tea and old and cold colonial narratives.
We didn't want to answer questions like “Is this Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe 1?” or “Can I get that with boba pearls, red beans, and pudding?”
Closer to the ground, we wanted our cool kids to drink Beca so they could taste tea like never before.
Finding Beca's voice.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. So, we focused Beca’s story on its tea—how they make tea the undisputed star, how they source it, and how, steeped in tea’s history over five generations, they possess the knowledge and nerve to shape its future.
And in a world gone mad, we figured that sitting down and drinking tea may be the most rebellious thing Beca’s customers could do.
So, we used their words and mimicked the unique intonations and phraseologies of Singlish, the dominant local English-based creole language. A range became "Wah Not Blah" (wah = wow) and a star product, "Terrific Teh Tarik" (a "pulled" tea or "teh" popular across Southeast Asia). Like an unorthodox blend, it resulted in an unafraid voice.
We also pushed it with saucer-breaking headlines like:
“Because life's too short for s**t tea.”
“Not your grandfather's tea.”
“Drink tea, not death by teabag.”
“Goodbye, three pumps of sugar. Hello, tea!”
“It takes a few affairs to find your true tea love.”
Bringing it all together.
Typically, and for good reason, we don’t echo our voices and experiences when we write for our clients. But it felt natural for me to do so with Beca, and two eagle-eyed editors/BS detectives — my long-suffering colleague Yirong and boss Jonathan — tempered my worst instincts.
A writer needs editors like water does vessels.
Beca launched in an expectedly different way in January 2024, with a menu inspired as much by regional tea-drinking traditions as by trending mixologists. Drinks are served with flavor profile cards in an unorthodox space: part gallery, part learning space, part teahouse, and wholly Beca. You need to see it to believe, to visit this vision made real. It's something else.
It's easy to layer and complicate what we do.
Working with Beca was a reminder to keep it pure: shake hands with good clients and dive into their worlds, go deep, then write, write, and write till it’s right.
Nitin leads Yonder Consulting's evolving storytelling specialism across Asia. He divides his time between Singapore and the Himalayas. Please email him to see how he can help your business become something customers can’t stop looking at.
Credits:
Consultancy: Yonder Consulting
Narrative Strategy + Verbal Identity + Foundational
Copy: Nitin Das Rai
Brand Strategy: Yonder Asia (formerly CHV)
Brand Design: Fictionist Studio
Web Design: Bike Bear
Architecture: Syarawi Architects, Mentah Matter Design
PR, Social Media & Marketing: The Right Seed
Graphic Design: Edwin Liong, Elisa Kua, Rachael Liew, Tan Hee Hee
