Lipton has enlisted American rapper and actor Ice-T – the man behind albums OG Original Gangster, Home Invasion and Gangsta Rap – to try to reclaim the peach emoji for Lipton Peach Ice Tea brand.
As part of a new pan-European #RespectThePeach campaign, devised by Adam & Eve\TBWA, the frontman is dropping into gym and fitness communities on TikTok and Instagram where people routinely post about training their bum, and set the record straight: this fruit is not a glute.
This is being followed by the launch of a video in which Ice-T officially calls on the Internet to respect the peach, saying: “’Make sure the peach emoji is always used to represent the sweet peachy taste of the OG Lipton Peach Ice Tea. A butt is a butt and a peach is a peach – is a Lipton Ice Tea.”
The campaign also sees the launch of the buttmoji – an anatomically correct butt shaped emoji.
Producers and DJs have remixed Ice-T’s voice from the video into TikTok tracks designed to spread across social and into nightclubs. The campaign is also supported by contextual digital out of home advertising in hundreds of gyms.
As part of the campaign, Lipton Ice Tea is inviting everyone to share their own peach emoji misunderstanding stories under the hashtag #RespectThePeach, resulting in creators and users piling on to engage directly with Ice-T, who will respond in real time.
Everyone is encouraged to join in the campaign through shareable ads, stickers, GIFs, memes, and even a butt emoji that people can use instead of the peach. Participation is built into the campaign, with creator involvement, personalised responses, and live community moderation fuelling the conversation.
Running across TikTok, Instagram, and OOH across March and April, the activity initially launched in the Netherlands and Belgium, with more European markets taking up the campaign in the coming weeks.
Pepsi Lipton global chief marketing officer April Adams-Redmond said: “When we discovered that 93% of peach emoji usage has nothing to do with the fruit, we instantly saw an opportunity for Lipton Peach Ice Tea.
“Partnering with Ice-T to #RespectThePeach is a relevant, playful intervention that speaks to how people actually communicate online. This campaign is about Lipton showing up where conversations are happening, with a welcome dose of irreverent humour – all while sipping on some delicious Ice Tea.”
Adam & Eve\TBWA executive creative director Mark Shanley added: “It turns out 93% of social posts are using the peach emoji wrong. That’s a lot of ass related content. So we needed a genuine authentic expert in the subject.
“That’s why we hired Ice-T to help Lipton Ice Tea to teach a lesson in respecting the peach. This feels like the sort of insight led, social first, butt joke that the world needs right now and we have had a lot of fun making it.”
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