Raw Tea is a line of alcoholic malt beverages offered by Smirnoff company since 2006, sold mostly on US market.[1] Being an alcoholic product, it contains natural tea in three different flavors: Lemon, Peach and Raspberry. Green Tea was also recently added, in concert with a new promotion of an "East vs. West" competition, along with a new rap video.
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The release of Raw Tea line was backed up by a viral advertising campaign, based around an online musical video titled "Tea Partay" (available on major video hosting sites beginning in August 2006). The ending of the video promoted the TeaPartay.com website, which initially contained little beyond the video itself. The video humorously features actors and dancers appearing as wealthy preppy young adults singing rap music, ostensibly performed by a band named Prep-Unit (P-Unit). The song contains references to the WASP lifestyle. The video was popular on the Internet, garnering more than 5.8 million hits by June 2011 on YouTube alone, virtually all of them in the United States where the product is sold. A sequel was created to promote Smirnoff's new Raw Green Tea. This new Tea Rap, known as Green Tea Partay, features a West Side Beverly Hills rap group known as the Boyz N The Hillz featuring white nouveau riche stereotypes rather than their East Side Old Money counterparts. Spurred on by a series of "disses", Boyz N The Hillz rap about the California lifestyle while insulting those who act like the boys of P-Unit. Two of the characters in Boyz N The Hillz can be described as fitting the surfer stereotype, while the higher-pitched third member of the group acts, sounds, and looks completely different. With his white monitor-tan he rather represents "IT-Boys" than it-Boys and therefor seems to stand for the Californian generation of "web-winners." The lead vocalist is film actor Sebastian Siegel. This video has attracted far fewer hits than the original, tallying under 250,000 by June 2011,
The Tea Partay video was predated by a YouTube video called "Twisted Tea Partay,"[2] which was uploaded four months before Smirnoff's advertising campaign (April 2006). "Twisted Tea Partay" involves teenagers who rap about buying and consuming Twisted Tea, a brand of hard iced tea. The creators of the Twisted Tea Partay claim this video is "The Original Tea Rap!!" This is not official, however.