Full Circle Associates

I'm a tea drinker (and you thought I was only a chocoholic) and earlier this year a friend pointed me to Adagio Teas. I was intrigued by their tea making gear and impressed with their selections. At the time, I did not order as my stash was full from a tea-buying spree in Vancouver, B.C.

The name went out of my conciousness till I was reading a message from Sharon Brogan (of SBPoet fame) mentioning that Adagio had developed a way to reward bloggers who posted about their site. Well, as a tea-fan and a blogger, I had to check it out. (Note to all people selling stuff - two things just came into play: recommendations from our networks and a clue you are intersted in some of the same things we are!)

I clicked over to their Help Us Grow page. There they had two offers: rewards for giving them links based on your blog's Google page rank, and Blogger Skins. Nice move.

But then I clicked around more, because beyond liking tea, chocolate and blogging, I love community. And yes Adagio has added elements to convene people who love tea. In fact they have a whole adjacent site, TeaChef. It is brilliant. They profile a certain tea each month. They will send you a sample of the tea to create a recipie to enter into a monthly competition. The comunity votes for the best recipe and the winner gets a "fabulous tea-related reward and the acclaim of the community!"

Further, their copy includes the word "love." And you can feel it when you rove the tea message boards at TeaChat. Again, this element is at a separate but "adjacent" URL. They also have TeaMuse and TeaMap. It is interesting - they are branding around the tea, not their company name. Really interesting.

I'm impressed. Now think about this model as applied to, let's say, disaster relief, or rebuilding the Gulf coast after Katrina. What can we learn from Adagio to help mobilize people for community action?

I think it is something about the love.

Filed in: tea, community, onlinecommunity, marketing, branding, adagioteas, love, adagio