This post is inspired by my April 2010 post, Good Catalog Descriptions of Tea. I also considered my post Truthfulness: Tea Companies: Be Cautious With Claims of Uniqueness, while writing it.

The catalog descriptions of a tea are a key element of tea marketing, and they are also a key point of focus for shoppers looking to buy tea. Since writing my original post in 2010, I have learned a lot more not only about tea, but also about writing and communication. I want to share some of my deeper insights that I have gained from juxtaposing my continued exposure to tea catalogs and sampling of teas with my experience in Why This Way, a consensus-based belief system that focuses on clear communication.

I hope that this post can be useful both to tea drinkers and to people who buy tea, as well as to companies looking to market their tea more effectively.

The description above, from Rishi Tea, of a masala chai blend that is top-ranking on RateTea, is an interesting example of a commercial description that I object to now more than I did a couple years ago. The commercial description shown above is out-of-date and has been changed by Rishi (and updated on RateTea), and I like the way in which they changed it, but I still have one small quibble with it. You’ll find my full analysis of the change and my continued objection below.

My Early Experiences With Catalog Descriptions of Tea

Pretty early on in my forays into the tea world, well before I wrote that original post, I had a sense that I liked some companies’ descriptions of their teas better than others. On the one hand were companies, like Upton Tea Imports, which had brief descriptions of their teas that I found described the teas quite accurately, fitting with my experience of drinking the teas, and on the other hand were other companies whose descriptions I felt either did not mesh with my perception, or in some cases, contained little to no useful information at all.

I also noticed that, with the exception of foreign companies which had clear language barriers, the tea companies with the worst descriptions were ones whose teas I tended to like least.

The characteristics of the sorts of descriptions I like most have changed little since my original post. In my opinion, the best descriptions:

are concise, avoiding excessive words that communicate little information.

nearly always contain information about what flavors, aromas, and other qualities to expect in the tea.

may contain or reference brewing instructions.

usually describe the tea’s origins, and often mention how it is produced, such as distinguishing pan-fired from steamed green teas, mentioning the cultivar used, or discussing any peculiarities or distinguishing features of production.

may make analogies to other teas, especially more common ones.

avoid weasel words, highly subjective language, or overreaching claims, especially universal claims of quality, or claims about how the reader of the description will perceive the tea.

I want to explore this last point in depth because it is the point on which my thinking and viewpoints have evolved most since writing my original posts. Since writing the original post, I also created an article on RateTea about Weasel Words in Tea Descriptions and Marketing, which I recommend reading if you want to understand this topic thoroughly. But there is something from outside the tea world that has also influenced how I think about these descriptions.

Why This Way and Insights Into Communication

In 2012, a group of my friends and I founded a group that become Why This Way, a consensus-based belief system and organization which I (but not all in the group) consider to be a religion. The cornerstone of this group is a system of rules of communication and a process for following the rules, both of which are continually evolving. The rules are designed to facilitate respectful and truthful conversations between people from widely disparate belief systems, and so far, they seem to be working pretty well. People from widely different faith backgrounds, including Christians, Atheists, Agnostics, Jews, and one Muslim and one Hindu have joined our discussions and contributed to the development of our system of beliefs and practices. We have been able to have fruitful and positive discussions of issues that normally evoke strong feelings, and embrace the fact that we have different viewpoints without the differences causing any problem for the functioning of our group or our ability to reach consensus on points we care about.

One of the key aspects of the rules of communication is that they require people to speak in such a way that more clearly identifies the line between what is agreed by all present to be objective, vs. the speaker’s subjective opinions or perspectives. For example, I believe in God, but because not everyone present in the group does, I could not make statements about God or implying the existence of God, without using an I statement. So, I could say: “I believe in God.” or “I believe God loves us.” but I could not say “God exists.” or “God loves us.” Another prohibition in the rules is against making statements about another person’s thoughts, intentions, or motivations. Instead, we can only talk about a person’s words or actions. So I cannot say: “He wants us to change this rule.” but I can say: “He told me that he wants us to change this rule.” One of the intentions of this rule is to curb the phenomenon of thinking we know what another person is thinking, which often leads to misunderstandings in discussion, and instead keep the discussion focused on things that we actually have direct experience with.

When I became more experienced with the rules of communication in Why This Way, I began to notice numerous ways in which the written and spoken communications around me in my daily life broke the various rules of our group. One of the places I’d frequently see the rules broken was in advertising and marketing, including in the commercial descriptions of teas by tea companies. Interesting, even though I wrote my first post about tea descriptions almost two years before the founding of Why This Way, I have noticed that the descriptions that fit more closely within the rules were ones that I have always tended to like, whereas the ones that more egregiously broke the rules were ones that I have always tended to dislike. There is a great deal of overlap between the use of Weasel Words too, and the breaking of the rules of communication.

Here are two of the most egregious examples:

“You’ll love this tea” – This statement breaks the spirit of Why This Way’s rule against making a statement about another person’s thoughts, because it’s telling another person how much they will like a certain tea, without any information about the person. It also breaks the rule about stating something as fact that is uncertain. The person writing the commercial description has no way of knowing how the person will respond. I personally find these sorts of statements a bit abrasive or even invasive, like they are telling me what my tastes are. My reaction when I read this is a defensive one: “You don’t know me, you don’t know what my tastes are, don’t tell me what I will or will not like!” This sort of reaction often makes me feel less favorably towards the company writing it.

– This statement breaks the spirit of Why This Way’s rule against making a statement about another person’s thoughts, because it’s telling another person how much they will like a certain tea, without any information about the person. It also breaks the rule about stating something as fact that is uncertain. The person writing the commercial description has no way of knowing how the person will respond. I personally find these sorts of statements a bit abrasive or even invasive, like they are telling me what my tastes are. My reaction when I read this is a defensive one: “You don’t know me, you don’t know what my tastes are, don’t tell me what I will or will not like!” This sort of reaction often makes me feel less favorably towards the company writing it. “Best” – Personal tastes are hugely variable, and I think it is really problematic to make a universal claim that a tea is the “best” in any category, without referring to some more objective measure. For example, I have no problem with companies saying that a tea is a “best seller” in their catalog, or that it won a certain award, or that it is best rated on their website (or on a third party website like RateTea or Steepster), or even that it is a personal favorite of the company’s tasters. The use of a label like “best” without clarification would break Why This Way’s prohibition against stating something as fact that is uncertain, and it would also break the prohibition against exaggerating.

I think that the way of communicating described in the rules of communication has many compelling advantages, not only for speaking and writing but for reading and listening. I’ve found that by learning to communicate within the confines of these rules, and use these rules as a reference when reading or listening to others, I’ve noticed numerous benefits, including:

A greater ability to discuss controversial issues without offending people with different viewpionts.

A greater ability to discern the truthfulness in various statements, even when I know little or nothing about the topic itself. (This ability is of particular interest when reading marketing material from an unfamiliar company.) This is in large part due to an increased ability to identify when people are speaking from experience, vs. speculating or repeating something they were told, by how they chose to word statements.

I think these same lessons could be immensely useful in applying both to writing and reading commercial descriptions of tea. People shopping for tea, especially when considering buying from a company that they are not sure whether or not they trust, can look for certain patterns of speech in the commercial description of the teas, and can spot companies that are “talking up” their product, vs. the ones that are simply providing more objective factual information, or clearly identifying their own subjective opinion (there’s nothing wrong with subjective opinion, but I think it’s important to identify it as such rather than present it as global fact). And companies writing commercial descriptions could use these insights to shape how they write about their tea, making it less likely that people would have the sort of knee-jerk reaction that I get when I read things like “You’ll love this.”

Picking Apart a Description: Rishi’s Masala Chai

Just like I picked apart a description of a tea by Upton Tea Imports in my original post, this time I want to pick on Rishi Tea. I chose them in part because they are one of my favorite tea companies, and I think their tea descriptions tend to be excellent, and I want to keep the tone of this post positive. But there are still a few quibbles I have with the description featured in the screenshot at the top of this post:

A robust and full-flavored black tea blended with our traditional Indian Masala spices. The bold flavor of our select shade-grown black tea presents full notes of cardamom, ginger and clove that is zesty and stimulating. Masala Chai should be brewed strong and served sweet with steamed milk and sugar.

What’s the problem here? I highlighted two words that jump out to me. Let’s look at one at a time:

Select is a word that I dislike in this context because it has a strong positive connotation in terms of quality of the tea, and yet is generic enough that it doesn’t say anything about the qualities of the tea itself. This word seems to be claiming “this tea is really high-quality” without describing its attributes. I like the words robust, bold, and full-flavored, because they communicate a quality that high-quality teas do not necessarily have. Other teas with a different character might be described as smooth, delicate, or mellow, which would also communicate useful information.

I found it interesting that Rishi has since updated their description (presumably long before I took the screenshot above–I was slow at updating the commercial description on RateTea’s site). The new description reads:

A robust and full-flavored black tea blended with our traditional Indian Masala spices with full notes of cardamom, ginger, and clove that are zesty and stimulating. Masala Chai should be brewed strong and served sweet with steamed milk and sugar.

I like the change. It removes the one word that I objected to. So what about the objection to the word “should”? I wrote about my own personal battle with the word “should” in my post There is No Should. But in the context of tea descriptions:

“Should” in this case makes a universal claim about the right or proper way to prepare Masala Chai. Because personal tastes differ, this claim may not be truly universal. This could evoke a small defensive reaction in a person who has a strong preference of preparing Masala Chai in a different way from the way described. In my case, I tend not to like sweetening tea, so I objected on these grounds.

“Should” does not identify the nature of the claim. Is Rishi saying: “We developed this blend to taste best when brewed…” or are they saying: “Masala Chai is traditionally brewed…” These are two different statements. The first would give me information that Rishi has specifically intended the brew for use with a particular brewing method. The second case merely provides some historically background. Neither of them evoke the slightly jarring reaction that I feel when I read the “should”.

I have no problems with brewing recommendations; quite to the contrary, I strongly prefer when tea companies provide recommendations for brewing their teas. However, I think it comes across as slightly abrasive when companies present their recommendations as global fact, and I think the word “should” can sometimes come across in this manner, although whether or not it does depends greatly on context.

How About You? What do you think?

I’m particularly interested to hear from others on this post. I have several questions for my audience:

Do you agree with my overall recommendations for writing commercial descriptions, or do you have any points of disagreement?

Do you also react defensively or skeptically in the circumstances I described above, such as when a description makes a claim about what you will like, or a global statement about how things should be brewed?

Do you agree that Rishi’s new description of this tea constitutes an improvement over the old one?

What are your favorite companies with respect to their catalog descriptions of their teas?

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