SMIRNOFF | TEA PARTAY | 2007
No budget, so they bet it all on YouTube / SMIRNOFF "TEA PARTAY"
For a new product launch with no budget and no TV airtime, BBH chose a parody rap video instead. Within days of going live, it reached a million people.
The problem
The new product, Smirnoff Raw Tea, was a test-marketing project limited to the New England summer market. The budget was small, and investing in a TV commercial wasn't realistic. Agency BBH New York had to find a way to reach people without television.
The insight
The starting point was a simple idea: wouldn't it be funny to smash together the refined image of tea with the rough-edged format of rap music? The humor comes from colliding two things that normally never meet: wealthy white youth culture and hip-hop. And turning the small budget into an advantage by betting on YouTube—a platform whose use was still undefined at the time—was a sharp call.
The idea
It's a thorough parody: wealthy East Coast young people rapping proudly about their trust funds and designer shoes. A fictional band called Prep-Unit (P-Unit), dressed in pastel-colored clothes, dances just like in a real music video. The director, Julien Christian Lutz, who had worked on hip-hop music videos, gave the parody real authenticity.
What happened
Traffic poured in right after it was released. Creative director Kevin Roddy later recalled that it reached roughly a million people within just a few days—unusually fast for the time. Within five months of release it had surpassed 2 million views and was picked up by major newspapers and TV news programs. It won Gold at Cannes Lions, and a West Coast sequel was made the following year.
Afterthought
The joke itself is simple—more like a one-liner than anything deep. But it was exactly that lightness that opened the door to an era where things could spread online without relying on TV at all. The fact that putting it on YouTube was just a workaround for having no budget—and that this later became the blueprint for the entire genre of "viral video"—is endlessly delightful.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2007
