Ginger beer Old Jamaica is a brand that’s flown under the radar in the UK, with the likes of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo often stealing the show when it comes to branded campaigns. A new campaign has everyone talking, though it’s not for reasons you might expect. Old Jamaica is ‘retiring’ its brand with a ‘Farewell Old Jamaica’ campaign celebrating its life.
Led by SAMY Alliance, this is the first retirement of a brand I can think of where the current branding hasn’t been deemed too controversial to stay (remember Aunt Jemima?). The campaign was launched with a rather uninspiring/odd video of a warehouse worker explaining its demise (below).
Elsewhere, there are also out of home and digital strands to the campaign with “surprising creative stunts” promised. On social media, Instagram users have been commenting in droves, with plenty of them upset about losing their favourite drink.
Instagram posts started by referencing the brand’s demise as part of a partnership with Notting Hill Carnival but recent videos have taken a rather strange turn. One is captioned: “Farewell non-gingers, OJian has arrived 🤓” – watch the video and read the comments (below) to get the whole bizarre experience. I can’t work out if the caption is supposed to say ‘OJion’ like the video or whether ‘OJian’ is supposed to mean something else.
Does this mean Old Jamaica is soon to be creating more non-ginger drinks? It already has a line of tropical, grape, pineapple and cream soda.
The more I look at what Old Jamaica is doing, the weirder the branding gets, there are videos about memories of Old Jamaica, there are cats retching at the mention of rival ginger beer Fentimans, there’s a man crying over his can of Old Jamaica. It’s all rather odd, and I’m not sure it fully ties together, though it’s certainly playful.
There’s more to come, too. We can expect a “farewell bucket list that will feature the ginger beer in unconventional scenarios” and a final “CAN-down” – a website featuring the number of Old Jamaica cans left in circulation.
Either way, celebrating the end of a brand’s life feels like a natural extension to a brand’s journey that has been previously untapped – possibly because by the time brand’s decide to hang up their hats, they have no money left for farewell campaigns. Is ‘Farewell Old Jamaica” all just one big marketing stunt to relaunch the brand once people have begged it to stay? Possibly. But if people are watching carefully to see what happens, that can’t be a bad thing.
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