In developing a brand image for its premium teas, Tazo literally invented a fictional identity, modeling iteslf after a "Marco Polo meets Merlin the Magician" concept

During the '80s, bottled mineral waters became the rage. In the '90s, specialty coffees caught on. In the mid-'90s, tea master Steve Smith decided it was high time for tea to takes its rightful place in this triumvirate, but that meant giving the drink a complete image overhaul.

As a food category, tea was stale. It lacked the hipness of, say, a cappuccino, and was mostly thought of as a drink for blue-haired ladies, sick people and the aging hippie granola crowd. Smith knew he could do for tea what Starbucks did for coffee if only he could get people to try his innovative blends. At first, Smith and his business partner, Steve Lee both previously associated with Stash Tea toyed with the idea of opening an upscale tea salon in Portland, Oregon, decorated around a "Marco Polo meets Merlin the Magician" theme. But with the growing popularity of bottled teas, they set their sights on developing a premium brand product instead.

Question was, what to call it? How to get people to see tea as youthful and fun? And how to differentiate their product from the standard off-the-shelf brands? Smith turned to his friend, Steve Sandoz, creative director at Wieden & Kennedy, for help. Sandoz, in turn, brought in designer Steve Sandstrom to collaborate on coming up with a brand identity.

Smith laid out his "Marco meets Merlin" idea and explained how tea was the most ancient beverage in the world besides water. "We wanted a brand that looked like it wasn't from here and it wasn't from now," Smith says..

In response to Smith's request, Sandoz invented the name "Tazo," which sounded to him kind of ancient and exotic. "When I tried to come up with a real name," Sandoz explains, "I recognized that any recognizable word carried meaning with it that would elicit some kind of reaction from people. But if I made up a name, it could mean anything I wanted. Tazo sounded a little like tea, but not exactly."

After concocting the name, Sandoz says he immediately wrote out "ten really stupid definitions for it, and once I did that, I was convinced we should make up a history. When you think of other tea companies saying they had been making tea for the last 20, 30 years, well, Tazo could say we've been making it for the last 7,000. We could appropriate all of recorded history!"

Sandoz tested the name and zany concept out on Sandstrom, who knew immediately what Sandoz had in mind. He quickly came back with a rendering of the name based on Exocet (an Emigre typeface designed by Jonathan Barnbrook) that was vaguely reminiscent of old Celtic and alchemy symbols. "The cross-like lower case "t" and the cross in the "O" made the characters look more like symbols than letters," says Sandstrom. "You don't know what time period it's from it could be from a thousand years ago. I knew the face was something I could manipulate enough to look old and not necessarily feel European or Asian. Like tea, the logotype would feel universal."

At first, Sandstrom framed the mark in a rectangular box that looked as if it had been stamped from a woodcut. The next day, he made the logo look even more like a symbol by turning the "O" into a circle and placing the letters around the "t," creating what the company now calls "the Tazo Wheel."

Meanwhile, Sandoz had come up with the tagline "The Reincarnation of Tea" to aptly express Smith's goal of bringing about a rebirth of tea in America. With that, the identity elements fell into place. "We had antiquity, multiculturalism and history," says Sandstrom.

They also had the makings of a great story line for the next "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or for Tazo's romanticized tea lore. Sandoz had once lived in India and traveled extensively through Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and Nepal and still had vivid memories of those years. "That helped me to put myself in those places and create characters that seem fairly believable," he says. In Tazo's catalog, marketing materials, website and, to a limited extent, on the packaging, Sandoz spins amusing yarns about the origin of Tazo, weaving in the names of real places and things so that the stories border just on the edge of possibility.

One story about the Tazo logo claims it was unearthed during an archeological dig. A sepia-toned photograph of a rock slab carved with mysterious hieroglyphs (actually a jumble of characters including Hindi, Cyrillic, Japanese and Arabic) backs up this account. The accompanying text relates that it is "the Tazo Stone, ancient repository of most Tazo formulas" uncovered from a "cave on the shores of the Red Sea during an abnormally low tide following a lunar eclipse and earthquake in 1987." Interwoven among these spoofs is useful (and factual) information about how tea is grown, blended and brewed. This mixture of fun with fact keeps people reading, even the vertical production credits, one of which says it was done by "Muknar & Ravi, Advertising, Design and Dentistry, Patna, India."

"I think most packaging is maybe too functional," says Sandoz. "There's no romance to it. Or if there is romance, it is done in such a traditional 'ad-y' way, with the compelling aspect being 'buy this thing now.' The notion that we came up with is that Tazo as a brand should appear as if it really doesn't understand traditional Western marketing and should even be bad at it. We felt that would be not only charming, but different from anything else out there. It would make Tazo seem more exotic and foreign, just like we didn't get it."

Sandoz was so intent on achieving this effect that he says, "I've done some stuff for Tazo where I've written a piece of copy and then I've translated it into another language and then translated it back into English to make it more awkward. I think there is something about that awkwardness, that it is not slick, that makes it more interesting."

Still, that's not to say that Sandoz and Sandstrom don't understand the difference between charmingly awkward and uncomfortably amateurish. The text and design are decidedly sophisticated, appealing and upscale, but the look is purposely low-tech, printed on kraft paper with muted, earthy colors.

Packaging for Tazo products also continue the brand's unique tone of voice and give customers an emotional connection to the product. "Sandoz didn't want the filterbag tea products to go out with traditional names," says Sandstrom. "So instead of English Breakfast, he called it Awake." Others he called Om, Zen, Passion, Refresh, Calm, Mambo evocative (trademarked) names that become an enchanting part of the Tazo experience.

All of this helped to intrigue customers into reconsidering what tea was all about and to convince them that Tazo was no ordinary tea. "It is one thing to make a good product, but people have got to find out about it. The way you do that is by packaging it well," says Sandstrom. The appeal of Tazo's packaging encouraged some retailers to buy the entire filterbag line without even trying them all. Today Tazo's 80 or so products full leaf, filterbag, iced tea, bottled ready-to-drink and juice blends and Chai are sold in more than 5,000 upscale restaurants, cafes, resorts, specialty and natural food stores in the U.S., Canada and abroad. The company itself was recently acquired by Starbucks.

Packaging and the brand message have helped Tazo to open doors at high-end establishments and to enhance the product's appeal in target markets. Some products have even sold well in places like home accessory stores where food items are rarely found. Its presence in such stores is obviously driven by the elegant style of the packaging, which makes it a popular gift item..

But Tazo has been careful to ensure the package design is appropriate for the market. Smith says, "We don't want people to look at the packaging and say 'Ooh, that looks expensive.' We want it to project good value. It's important to strike a balance so the packaging doesn't look too precious."

Great packaging also is no assurance of long-term success, Smith adds. "Ultimately, you can have the greatest packaging in the world and it can only sell your product once. [With Tazo,] we want to deliver on the promise of making you smile, making you intrigued, and giving you a fulfilling cup of tea."