The Surprising Psychology of Milk Tea

Boba is deceptively simple but psychologically complex.

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When you see someone take that first sip of freshly made milk tea, their face looks like pure joy.

Today, millions of people enjoy this experience. Across the world, customers flock to their favorite spots to meet with friends and savor sips of these tasty drinks.

In the early 2000s, though, milk tea was just coming on the scene. The few brands that had earned a foothold in the industry were justifiably concerned: Would milk tea just be another fad food?

Sure, people are enjoying it today, but would they still be in a year, or five years? And with so much new excitement for this product, would people be able to distinguish milk tea companies?

These are the questions that Serenitea, a Manila-based milk-tea company, faced in 2014. While successfully opening 60 stores, they found themselves in a strategic fog. Unsure of what consumers truly felt towards the drink, they offered as many flavors as possible.

They also had no clear definition of who they were and how they were distinct—their brand promise, product line, and product packaging all seemed nearly identical to their competitors. How could they define themselves in a way that would deeply resonate? And how could they take milk tea to a deeper level to ensure it wouldn't just be another fad?

Their path to an effective brand strategy took them into the deep, unexplored psychology of milk tea.

Harnessing Psychology to Take Milk Tea Deeper

Like Airbnb, Serenitea partnered with an agency, CIA Bootleg Manila, that specializes in drilling down to the deep consumer "why". The agency conducted a series of intensive, psychological-based techniques in its market research. Specifically, they probed the consumer's deeper, emotional connections to milk tea, including their earliest childhood memories of milk and tea.

What they found was that milk tea was a complex topic, with distinct subcomponents. Their research revealed that milk tea elicited three consistent psychological responses:

How can a milk tea company stand out in a crowded field? Psychology.

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• People connected to milk through the concept of nurturing; they fondly remembered their childhood and being cared for by their mothers.
• Next, consumers connected tea to its healing properties; respondents would recall receiving tea when they had indigestion or seeing their parents drinking herbal tea for health reasons.
• Lastly, they associated milk tea itself with teenage fun: a guilty pleasure of their youth.

They had uncovered the three psychological cornerstones of the milk tea experience: nurturing, healing, and teenage fun. This set of insights was crucial. By incorporating them into the core of their brand strategy, they charted an entirely new path.

Applying Psychological Insights into the Core of the Milk Tea Business

Off the bat, this psychological trifecta solidified the company's mission: to indulge, heal, and nurture the customer's mind and body. CIA Bootleg Manila translated the brand promise into an updated brand DNA—to create milk tea experiences that rejuvenate (indulge, heal, and nurture).

This revamped strategy informed a new set of brand assets that meaningfully differentiated them from their competitors, who remained focused on the simple features of their milk tea products.

Milk tea taps into many psychological elements.

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Crucially, the new brand DNA enabled them to narrow down their offerings. Instead of an unstructured list of near-infinite flavors and combinations, they distilled the menu to a smaller selection of drinks, each reflecting an element of their brand promise.

In this way, they categorized their offerings into drinks that "nurture", "indulge", and "heal."

With a newfound understanding of who they are and what they represent, they cultivated new collaborations and brand extensions. Serenitea partnered with a select group of brands sharing these three attributes.

For example, they worked with the beloved local donut chain Mr. Donuts (described as The Dunkin Donuts of The Philippines) to create a set of limited edition donuts. Just like their drink categories, each donut theme typified a Serenitea trait and included innovative Creme Brule sandwich donuts ("indulge") and green tea-flavored donuts ("healing").

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Serenitea also furthered its brand stature by working with two nurturing, global brands on limited-edition milk teas: Sesame Street and Peanuts cartoon. More importantly, since the brand now understood the deeper meanings of milk tea, it could strategically extend to other milk tea-driven experiences beyond beverages—partnering with artisanal chocolate and dessert brands to offer Serenitea flavors.

With its revamped strategy, Serenitea quickly became one of the most beloved milk tea brands in The Philippines. Understanding the deeper, unexpressed feelings of the consumer, was critical to their success.

Why Psychology Is Crucial for Growing a Business

Understanding customer's emotional needs is imperative for a successful brand strategy. However, these deeper emotional needs are a challenge to uncover. They are implicit and unspoken. Consumers won't necessarily come out and explicitly state them in a survey or questionnaire, and they may not fully realize them themselves.

Think about it: Have you ever thought deeply about why you love your favorite brands? Neither have most consumers.

Understanding these deeper needs requires methodologies that can probe these implicit motivations. There are multiple entry points for these insights. Serenitea used qualitative, psychological research, while Lego tapped into the powers of ethnography.

Walmart returned to its brand heritage, while Airbnb harnessed the True Why Test to develop its billion-dollar brand. There are many roadmaps, but the destination is all the same: To find the deeper, emotional space the brand can anchor itself.

Businesses often obsess over externally facing elements: the logo, the colorway, the motto, etc. These are undoubtedly important, but each is an outward, consumer-facing expression of a deeper brand identity.

Decisions about what a logo should look like, what a slogan should be, or what a retail experience should feel like, are ultimately derived from this deeper core. It should ideally predicate everything a brand does, ensuring it's felt consistently across all customer touchpoints and exposures.

The Deep Psychology at the Core of Any Business

This deeply psychological approach to brand strategy was crucial for Serenitea. As Aaron A. Palileo, CEO of CIA Bootleg Manila, describes,

The process of insighting took a while, with our psychologists interviewing over fifty customers for a minimum of three hours per interview. But after we discovered the deep memories and meanings behind milk tea, tea and milk, ideating the new logo, slogan, store design, products flavors, down to the packaging, became very intuitive.

This should bring some much-needed perspective to any business. If these elements are based on a faulty core, it makes little difference how slick a logo appears, or how catchy a tagline sounds.

Serenitea provides a great reminder that brands matter when, and only when, they matter to people. It comes down to marketing psychology. Branding, especially in the business-to-customer space, is a deeply human enterprise.

When you look at the smiling face of a happy milk tea customer, you can be forgiven for thinking the milk tea experience is all about joy. It's not wrong, but it's incomplete. Even simple pleasures carry a deeper meaning rooted in human nature. A successful business must do the same.

This post also appeared on the marketing psychology blog, NeuroScienceof