Raw Tea

Raw Tea is a line of alcoholic malt beverages under Diageo's Smirnoff brand, available since 2006 and sold mostly on the US market.^[1] It contains tea, and originally came in Lemon, Peach and Raspberry flavours. Green Tea was also recently added, in concert with a new promotion of an "East vs. West" competition, along with a new rap video.^[2]

"Tea Partay"

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.^[3] 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.

Twisted Tea Partay

The Tea Partay video was predated by a YouTube video called "Twisted Tea Partay,"^[4] 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. Note the video was not originally called "Twisted Tea Partay", but the name was changed to closer identify with Smirnoff's version. The word "partay" appears nowhere in their song/video.

References

External links

• Green Tea Partay rap video
• TeaPartay.com site
• Official product page on Diageo site.