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Jameson campaigns for ‘St. Patrick’s Eve’
In response to a leap year pushing St. Patrick’s Day 2024 to a Sunday, Pernod Ricard-owned Irish whiskey brand Jameson has teamed up with two SNL stars to campaign to move this year’s celebrations to 16 March.
This year’s St. Patrick’s Day would have been the first to fall on a Saturday since 2018 were it not for the leap year, and now it looks like there won’t be another Saturday St. Paddy’s until 2029.
Johan Radojewski, vice president of marketing for Jameson Irish Whiskey, said: “Our Must be a Jameson campaign honours a community anchored by their shared lighthearted spirit, so when leap year skipped over a Saturday St. Patrick’s Day, we did exactly what a Jameson would do: we created a completely new holiday so people can start celebrating St. Patrick’s Day a little early.”
In order to boost its Must be a Jameson campaign, the brand is working with comedians Colin Jost and Michael Che, the hosts of Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update sketch.
“We teamed up with Colin Jost and Michael Che to help us seize this moment and encourage everyone to embrace St. Patrick’s Eve, because they’re a duo who appreciates a smooth Irish Whiskey, good company and a brand-new holiday – just like any Jameson would,” Radojewski explained.
In addition to appearing in social media content joking about the problems of the leap year, and the merits of St. Patrick’s Eve, Jost and Che will be hosting a live streamed celebration on 16 March in Times Square. At 8pm, to mark midnight in Ireland (and the arrival of St. Patrick’s Day), a pastiche of the New Year’s Eve ball drop will be executed in the form of a Jameson ‘rock drop’.
Of course, the Saturday celebrations means that the comedy duo will not be appearing on SNL, as Che explained: “Colin is also probably a little relieved we’re going to spend a Saturday night ringing in St. Patrick’s Eve with Jameson, instead of reading the jokes I write for him.”
Jameson is pushing the boat out across the US for its St. Patrick’s Day campaign, quite literally in Chicago where it will be wrapping the ferries and water taxis that will be cruising along the green-dyed Chicago River. The brand will also be lighting up the outside of the Las Vegas Sphere and launching a digital takeover of LA Live.
Jameson is no stranger to mounting big US campaigns for St. Patrick’s Day, which is one of the country’s biggest drinking occasions. Last year it offered people US$10,000 to take the day off.