Shot! The Wedgwood Tea Conservatory

Wedgwood’s refreshingly different floral tea experience at the 2017 RHS Chelsea Flower Show

I love a good idea, especially a really good marketing idea. Even more so, when it takes me completely by surprise and captures my imagination. At this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, the one thing that impressed me most did so because it was so unexpected. And it wasn’t a plant or a garden.

In the flower-filled Great Pavilion, you usually find wonderful floral exhibits by growers, often putting on lavish displays to catch the eye. Although they change from one year to another, en masse they look pretty much the same. But this year, as I walked through the Grand Pavilion, I came across something completely different.

At first, it wasn’t completely clear what it was. There was a stylish bar complete with bar stools and a bar tender. But the only drinks being served was tea. I was intrigued and took a seat to see what it was all about.

Photo: Wedgwood

The bar tender explained that this was a new venture from Wedgwood who had launched a range of floral-inspired tea blends, each with its own unique floral pattern which appeared across various items of crockery. I was immediately drawn to the blend called Yellow Tonquin and watched as it was being brewed cafetiere-style.

Just one look at the leaves and you could immediately tell Yellow Tonquin was no ordinary tea. The colours were beautiful, reminiscent in a way to a potpourri, with vibrant yellow and dark pink petals on a bed of green leaves.

In fact they were a blend of mixed herbs and flowers which included among other things, basil, lemongrass, lemon myrtle, orange peel, rooibos, spearmint and yuzu. Served in a small sake-like ceramic bowl, it was delicious. Flavour-wise it was certainly lemony, but quite complex and quite unlike any other tea I’d ever tasted. I can imagine it would be even more refreshing served cold over ice.

Of all six teas and their accompanying graphics, Yellow Tonquin was the one that appealed to me the most. As with the tea, the yellow packaging and the china itself really stood out. Apparently the design was inspired by the Chinese town of Xiaolan in the Jiangsu province which is known as the City of Chrysanthemums.

That a company who manufactures fine bone china would also make a product that could be drunk from its crockery made perfect sense, especially as each design was married to its own blend. As the theme for both the teas and the design was floral it also made perfect sense to be at the world’s most prestigious flower show. However, what I hadn’t appreciated was the connection between Wedgwood and Chelsea was far stronger than simply a love of flowers. But for that you have to go back 213 years.

Wedgwood was founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood and it’s his name that is intrinsically linked with the Wedgwood company. What I didn’t know — and I’m sure many others don’t know either — is that Josiah’s son John was a passionate horticulturalist and the founder of the RHS, the Royal Horticultural Society, who put on the Chelsea show.

So this initiative wasn’t just something dreamt up by a marketing department looking to ride on the coat tails of something else, but a genuinely bona-fide connection. Indeed, you have to ask yourself why hadn’t Wedgwood done something like this years ago?

It turns out that this was in fact something much bigger. The pop-up at Chelsea was also going to appear at two other RHS shows: Chatsworth and Tatton. Not only that, Wedgwood was also partnering with John Lewis, one of the UK’s most respected retailers to put on a Chelsea Flower Show inspired tea experience at their Peter Jones store which is just a short walk from where the flower show is held.

The Tea Conservatory was open until 16 June. Guests could book afternoon tea and sample the new Wonderlust tea collection, all in a luxurious Wedgwood setting. 20,000 brewed pots of Wedgwood tea were expected to be served in Wonderlust teaware. Even the food on the menu had a floral theme including pulled ham hock and floral chutney bloomer, Earl Grey bouquet scones with strawberry petal jam and clotted cream and lemon-infused shortbread.

I wish I’d know about it in advance as I’d definitely would have gone, but by the time I found out about it it was over.

Many years ago, Gary Withers, the founder of the London-based live events company Imagination, coined the phrase “three-dimensionalising the brand.” What he meant by that was creating something that brought a brand’s personality to life in the form of a live experience. This venture by Wedgwood was all about three-dimensionalising its brand.

For me, this entire project was the perfect example of how to do that. It was original, it was relevant to both the brand itself and the location in which it was held and perhaps just as important it was the perfect concept for the brand’s upmarket audience.

But as good as it was, I think Wedgwood missed a few tricks.

First, they should have really publicised the activity on social media. I for one had no idea it was even happening until I stumbled across it at the show. I could have easily missed it and been none the wiser.

Second they should have given away samples of the teas to visitors and had a competition where you could win teas, crockery as well as a top prize of a trip to either Wedgwood itself or a holiday in China.

And finally, bearing in mind the time of year, surely someone should have thought of offering an iced version of the teas!

Activations like this also point the way for an event such as Chelsea, which up until now has only focused on providing a visual feast for the eyes, to actively be encouraging its exhibitors to put on something far more experiential. People are no longer content just to see things — they can do that by watching a video. Increasingly, they want something far more immersive, that’s multi-sensory and far more emotionally-connecting. In short, they want to truly experience them!

Behind the image: All these images were shot handheld with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and either the 12–40 2.8 Pro or the 75 1.8 lens using available light only. Shot in London on 22 May 2017.

Wonderlust Yellow Tonquin tea is available to buy direct from Wedgwood, but at £12.00 for 12 teabags. it’s pretty pricey.

More details here http://bit.ly/2sAB2es

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Footnote: Like so many iconic British companies, Wedgwood is now in foreign hands. It is a subsidiary of the Finnish company Fiskars, which also owns the Iittala, Royal Copenhagen and Waterford brands.