Pepsi’s ‘Blast Your Jamaican Flava’ campaign to boost young talent in Jamaica

Pepsi-Cola Jamaica recently launched its ‘Blast Your Jamaican Flava’ campaign for youth empowerment across the country, amid a sea of notable and ‘everyday’ young talent on the lawns of the Hope Gardens.

During the launch event on August 22, Luz Tejada, Pepsi-Cola Jamaica’s commercial manager, shared that Jamaicans can expect a number of initiatives over the coming months that will provide real opportunities for young people to be empowered and to passionately express themselves.

“We are embracing the talents that exist here in the Jamaican youth and providing a platform for empowerment. We will be doing scholarships in different skills-based areas, engaging our arts-based schools to design labels for us, and doing our community mural projects,” said Tejada.

With the help of the company’s youth ambassadors, there will also be a road tour visiting select town centres across the island and encouraging everyone to “blast their Jamaican flavour”.

Meanwhile, the endeavour has already got under way with the concurrent launch of the official ‘Blast Your Jamaican Flava’ video commercial, which features all six new Pepsi youth ambassadors – singjay Romario ‘Laa Lee’ Ricketts, catering company Pink Apron Jamaica Ltd’s Charissa Henry-Skyers, augmented reality artist Benito ‘Don Dada’ Thompson, hairstylist Angel-Lee Morgan, dancer Raquel Monteith, and footballer Devon Williams.

Laa Lee, whose voice can be heard crooning in his self-ascribed amapiano and dancehall flair, was among several of the ambassadors who were on location expressing their gratitude for the opportunity to join the campaign and spread their own unique flavours.

The singjay performed a chorus of hits after sharing, “I always see the big artistes like Shenseea and Busy Signal get to do these types of campaigns, and as a ghetto youth from ‘Jungle’, this is a big thing for me. And if I can do it, you can do it.”

Henry-Skyers, the founder of Pink Apron, also got to use the launch as a platform for her own talents, providing a menu of tantalising hors d’oeuvres with Pepsi on the side. She shared, “I really hope that this campaign encourages other young people out there to just know that they can blast their Jamaican flavour. So just do your thing. At the end of the day, you can’t do anything until you actually try. Just be bold, step forward, be yourself, blast your flavour.”

Alando Terrelonge, minister of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, lauded the company for celebrating “the extraordinary creativity and diversity inherent in our culture”.

The ‘Blast Your Jamaican Flava’ campaign is one avenue which Pepsi-Cola Jamaica aims to use to continue investing in Jamaica and comes after the successful ‘Jama-I-CAN’ campaign, where the focus was set on celebrating the cultural heritage of the country.