Is Old Jamaica Being Discontinued or Just Marketed Well?

The last few days have seen ginger beer lovers outraged by the apparent discontinuation of Old Jamaica. But is Old Jamaica really being discontinued? If it is, then it’s certainly going about a retirement of a brand in a novel way.

Instead of the quite retiring of brands often done out of sight of consumers, the drinks brand has loudly declared that its coming to an end, imploring drinkers to partake in a “legendary send off” and telling them to “stock up while you can”. So is this a genuine closure of a drinks company or just a marketing campaign aimed at drumming up sales?

The announcement

A video showing an actor playing a shelf stacker announcing the ‘farewell’ from Old Jamaica hit the headlines recently. This coverage, in turn, led to social media being awash with posts lamenting the decision to close the brand. Interestingly though, a look through Old Jamaica’s own social channels shows that this closure was first mentioned all the way back in August.

How is the company doing?

There’s been no sign that the business has been distressed. The brand belongs to Beliv Company, who have made no noise of Old Jamaica being in trouble previously.

According to NIQ data reported by The Grocer, though, the ginger beer brand has been in “long-term volume decline since at least 2019”. It does add, however, that “sales in 2023 were a respectable £11.3m […] nearly two-and-a-half times that of Bundaberg, its nearest competitor in ginger beer”.

Is there anything that points to this being a real business closure?

Well, Old Jamaica’s website is quite explicit that their product is set to depart, with prompts to “enjoy it before it’s gone”. In fact, apart from a privacy settings page and some terms and conditions, there’s not much else on the website at all.

While this farewell marketing campaign has primarily been hosted on the firm’s social media channels, their Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) accounts are inactive. In fact, neither have seen any new posts since 2023.

Perhaps, with so few clues available from Old Jamaica, it’s wise to look at the marketing agency involved to get some answers instead. In an interview with Mediashotz, however, the head of the agency behind the campaign, Hernán Cerdeiro of SAMY Alliance, seemed to confirm the discontinuation, “the chance to retire a brand was something that we relished, simply because as far as we can work out, it had never been done before so publicly” he said.

Cerdeiro added that he wanted “to give Old Jamaica’s loyal customers one last chance to say goodbye, to take that final sip, and see the can ride off into the sunset”.

Alfonso Haces, the senior global marketing head at Old Jamaica’s parent company, expressed the same sentiment, claiming that “as we bid farewell, we’re not whispering goodbye in silence – we’re shouting it from the rooftops with the world’s first farewell campaign for a brand”.

What’s making people think that this is a marketing ploy?

For a start, this just doesn’t happen normally. After all, why would you put more money behind a failing product?

Marketers could point to the social media outcry that follows after any established brand leaves our shelves as a fantastic opportunity for one last cash-in. While this makes some sense, though, it begs the question, what next?

If a failing product suddenly enjoys a surge of popularity after a closure announcement, should the producer still go ahead with the discontinuation? Any sales increase would surely make its producers think twice.

On Reddit, some sharp-eyed commenters also spotted that at the bottom of the Old Jamaica website it reads “like Ozzy with his Final Tour in ’92…it’s the end of the road for us”. This presumably references heavy metal band, Black Sabbath’s frontman, Ozzy Osbourne, who left in 1992. The inference here is that because Osbourne went on to rejoin the band twice and tour both times, that this is not a serious, or permanent end to Old Jamaica.

Is there any precedent for a fake retiring of a brand?

Yes. Heinz Salad Cream saw a similar ‘public outcry’ in 1999 when documents were allegedly leaked that they planned to discontinue the popular condiment. The publicity gained from the furore led Heinz to relaunch the sauce instead, with a hefty £10m advertising budget behind it.

Heinz recently tapped into similar public-led marketing in 2018, when they declared that they planned to change the name to Heinz Sandwich Cream. The name change never went ahead, and the public were left guessing whether the plans were just a marketing ploy all along.

Proposed name changes have often been enough to provoke strong reactions from the public. Perhaps seeing how much publicity Marathon and Opal Fruits received when changing to Snickers and Starburst respectively, there seemed to be a brief period in which other brands looked to take advantage of this by proposing name changes themselves. Coco Pops floating the name Choco Krispies, and Pizza Hut suggesting Pasta Hut similarly sent the public in a spin, but never came to fruition.

Is Old Jamaica being discontinued? – The verdict

With no hard evidence either way, it’s impossible to say for sure at the moment, but we’d be very surprised if this was a straight-up retirement of the brand. While the parent company and the marketing agency behind the campaign suggest that the closure is true, it has to be remembered that playing along with the campaign is in both of their interests.

The lack of any definitive statement is the most obvious clue that all is not what it seems. All of the literature around the campaign strongly suggests a departure, without explicitly stating anything. This would allow for some wiggle room in interpretation, perhaps referring to a name change, packaging alteration, or something similar instead of seeing the drink disappear.

If the campaign goes well, Beliv Company may even decide that a genuine discontinuation of distribution, followed by a grand relaunch due to public demand, may stretch out the heightened interest a little longer. Do we think that there’s a chance that the drink will disappear from our shelves completely though? We’d have to gingerly say that it’s unlikely.

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