Simon Mowbray Tetley is to embrace life without its Tea Folk icons by launching a £15m multi-media campaign. As exclusively revealed in the news pages of The Grocer this week, the tea maker is ditching its famous cartoon characters after 28 years for a new campaign which concentrates on a health-based image for the brand. A 60-second TV ad, a length which the company claims is "unprecedented" in the tea category, gets its first screening on February 4 with the slogan You are the champions and this is your cup'. It also features a new written slogan for the brand ­ Tetley§U. Other activity will also pick up on research which shows that the antioxidants in tea are beneficial to health. Giant 48- and 96-sheet posters will be splashed across more than 2,500 billboards from next month, while adverts have been booked in glossy magazines. A new sampling campaign at 75 gyms nationwide is also planned, as is a new web site. New packaging, meanwhile, is set to hit shelves in mid-February and builds on the same theme without the help of the Tea Folk. Andrew Glen, commercial director for Tetley GB, said the new campaign was aimed at achieving a "big job" for the company in its bid to revitalise the category. "The Tetley Tea Folk have done a great job for us since we first used them in 1953," said Glen. "However, we felt they would not have been appropriate for this campaign. We have got a big job to do and we are committed to doing it." {{P&P }}

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