Jameson’s Month of Comedy refined and re-imagined by RAPT Creative

RAPT Creative has rolled out a refined and re-imagined Month of Comedy for Irish whiskey brand, Jameson.

The brand had launched its Month of Comedy platform in 2021 with an April Fools’ prank on social media channels announcing that it had developed a skin-care range.

According to Brand Manager, Vuyisile Dlepu, comedy was the ideal marketing platform to demonstrate the brand’s personality, saying that Jameson is the serious whiskey that does not take itself too seriously.

“2021 saw us create a really exciting campaign which left many wondering what else we would be coming up with. The 2022 campaign we tasked RAPT Creative to come up with needed to be equally as impactful to keep Jameson top-of-mind long after it ended,” he explained.

The Jameson brand is open, charismatic, honest, light-hearted and witty. The question RAPT Creative needed to answer for the 2022 campaign was ‘how can comedy widen Jameson’s circle of connections?’

“The answer lay – rather unfortunately – in the fact that friends of Jameson have gone and are going through a lot as a country. By positioning Jameson as the nation’s therapist; the agency would widen the circle of connections by bringing us together to laugh at the things that may weigh heavy on the collective spirit or tear it apart,” says Dlepu.

To implement the strategy, RAPT Creative is turning to social media channels to launch ‘Isikhokho se Skits’ or ‘The Dogs of Skits’. It has partnered with creators Sipho Muchindu, Khanyisa Unfiltered and Primo9teen who specialise in comedic content on Twitter and Instagram Reels and will pit them head-to-head in a bid to find one winner for Skits-land. This portion of the campaign broke late in May (May 23).

During the pre-awareness phase (which broke earlier in the month), Jameson asked its friends and fans to suggest topics they’d like to see the skits focus on, and selected the funniest which were on-brand to brief the creators.

These were filmed and ‘broadcast’, after which the audience was challenged to submit their own skits. The best were rewarded with Jameson hampers and their skits added to the Jameson channels.

In this way, Jameson’s Month of Comedy not only gave the brand’s friends, fans and a broader audience more to laugh at when they needed to, it was able to engage with them in a space where we know they consume their laughs.

“Best of all, viewing the skits they created and sent in gave us considerable insight into the state of the Mzansi psyche. And we’ll be using this information and guide our relationship with them in the months ahead,” concluded Dlepu.