Turning provenance into a sell-out product story

For JING, I led the launch of Origins Explorer: a festive collection designed to introduce people to the breadth of exceptional tea through origin, flavour and food.

The opportunity was to create something more useful than a conventional gift set. The collection needed to work as a desirable Christmas product, an accessible introduction to the brand, and a compelling story for press.

The product as an introduction

Origins Explorer brought together teas spanning white, green, oolong, black, puerh and Darjeeling, allowing someone relatively new to JING to experience a broad spectrum of tea within one collection.

Its price point was deliberate. It made the collection substantial enough to feel special, while remaining accessible as both a consumer gift and a PR send-out, giving journalists and new contacts a meaningful introduction to the brand without requiring prior knowledge of fine tea.

Rather than sending a single hero product, we could introduce the wider world JING represented.

Building a story around origin

Provenance became the thread connecting the collection.

Each tea offered an entry point into a different place, producer and style of tea, translating specialist knowledge into something engaging and easy to explore.

We extended that idea into food, pairing the teas with recipes developed by a Michelin-trained chef and inspired by the same origins. This gave the campaign another editorial dimension: tea became part of a broader story about place, flavour and culture rather than an isolated product.

It also created multiple routes into the collection for press (Christmas gifting, food, provenance, craftsmanship, travel and specialist tea) while keeping everything connected by one central idea.

The approach

The campaign brought product development, editorial storytelling and PR together around that proposition, including:

• A collection spanning a broad spectrum of tea styles and origins

• An accessible price point suited to gifting, discovery and PR seeding

• Producer, place and provenance-led product storytelling

• Michelin-trained chef recipe pairings with an accessible angle connected to the origins of the teas

• Consumer-facing copy that made specialist tea knowledge approachable

• Multiple editorial hooks for food, lifestyle, gifting and Christmas media

• Coordinated storytelling across owned channels and PR activity

The result

I secured 56 pieces of festive press coverage across consumer, food and lifestyle media in print and digital, including The Guardian’s digital gift guide, Great British Chefs, The Times (print), and local London publications.

The Origins Explorer subsequently sold out, giving the campaign a clear commercial outcome alongside its editorial reach.

The project demonstrated how product, price, content and PR can reinforce one another: creating something that was simultaneously a gift, a brand introduction, an educational experience, an editorial story and a commercially successful product.