Written By Lucas Pottier and Chiara Lea
Marketing, much like politics, requires a level of narrative creation when advertising a product. By establishing a product as having a nationalistic edge to it, emotions become tied to the item linking it to one’s wallet (Kate, 2018). Just as in donating to charity or buying lemonade from a child, purchasing power can have an impact which plays on one’s emotions. Nowhere is this clearer than in the liquor industry where breweries and distilleries are often given long detailed narratives on their origins and identity (Kate, 2018). Liquor is often based on region and therefore on nationality; Germany with beer, France with wine, and England with gin. Acknowledging this, it is easy to see how politics can take advantage of this myth-based market and utilise it for profit and nationalism. UK gins mimic a sense of primacy as they often claim to revive the 18th-century history of gin-making, specifically within London (Kate, 2018). By claiming to revitalise this tradition, the UK brands bring a sense of resurgence into traditional gin-making values. Balancing history and identity, these brands often claim a historical lineage or root themselves in English identity. While once history and identity gave way to claims of imperialism and conquest, now it is a means to sell a product that represents a historical ‘greatness’ (Kate, 2018).
Farage Gin markets itself as “A Taste of Brexit” highlighting its red, white and blue colouring. Run under the name of Britain’s most infamous politician, Nigel Farage, Farage Gin portrays itself as a purely political product. As the face of the gin, Farage historicizes the brand at every opportunity linking it to Cornwall and by “hop[ing] you enjoy [his] patriotic take on this quintessentially British drink” (Farage, 2024). He established a clear British identity within his product. There is no question by the title of his gins, Farage places his product within his political sphere. Farage Gin claims to exist as the quintessential Brexit product; it is solely British for the British and it is good. The first part of this claim is clear as the brand’s rhetoric shapes the product as from a British garden marketed to the Brits, yet, the second claim is just as important. By giving value to Farage’s product, it stands as a replacement for the British economy as a whole. The success of the product and its favor symbolizes the success of the British, and their ability to succeed independently of the EU or outside influence. Farage’s business has tied a product of its brand with a nation in an attempt to appeal to a distinct customer.
The underlying history of gin in the UK and the Gin Craze in particular is a lot darker than Farage would like to recognize. The era of the gin epidemic stemmed from the root causes of overcrowding and poverty. Poor living and working conditions fueled alcohol, specifically gin, abuse as prices dropped. In reality, by historizing gin, Farage attempts to utilize commercial nationalism to appeal to the Brexit voter, yet, reveals a darker history to British gin by doing so which links his politics to this period ripe with social unrest.
But what are the implications of Farage Gin for identity-making?
Most research on assimilations of national identities by brands focuses on the profit-based side of the process. Claiming that a product represents the national identity usually sells (Kumar & Steekamp 2013). This is not really the case with Farage gin, as advertising for the product remains quiet in the UK. Rather, one can understand Nigel Farage’s strategy through his ‘produce of England’ liquor to be the consolidation of a normative, or as Jenkins (2008) puts it, a nominal identity.
Our understanding from the little advertising on Farage’s website of his gin is that it implies a dual normative identity through the product. First, qualifying it as made in Britain, and specifically in Cornwall by British brewers established a spatial delimitation of what this gin represents and who it’s aimed at (Spielman, Maguire & Charters 2020). Farage gin aims to distinguish itself from those international brands of gin, by being the real British one, for the British people. Second, an emphasis on the social context and advertising of the gin. The metaphor a ‘taste of Brexit’ implies that this gin falls under the ideology Farage put forward in Brexit: Take back control. Farage gin is a reaction to Britain losing its heritage because of international universalism. Farage gin is an illustration of what Brexit is really about, re-rooting into national tradition and culture. The description of the first gin bottle linked by Farage to Christmas defines who it’s aimed for straight away. Gin, a product of British culture, is linked to Christmas also through culture. The othering could not be clearer, this gin is for true British people, rooted in culture and Christian tradition, not the others.
There is also a symbolic purpose in the visual of the Gin bottle and the advertisement. Despite the clear explicit patriotic signifiers that represent the three coloured bottles, the flag and the ‘product of Britain’ on the bottle, an implicit message is transferred. The speaker himself, Farage, is key to this message. It’s thanks to him, a real British man of Cornwall with his dog, that Britain is becoming Britain again.
The ‘taste of Brexit’ metaphor also denotes Farage’s success story. In a sense, this gin culminates as only possible thanks to Brexit. And who knows what this country would have done without Farage Gin! Farage gin is to a certain extent a taste of freedom for Farage, freedom
from the EU, freedom from migrants. But as always, freedom has a price, and here freedom costs £40 a bottle without delivery (Farage 2024). The price of a bottle is the cherry on top of Brexit’s discourse, confirming Farage’s hypocrisy vis-à-vis whom he claims to protect and help. Farage’s Brexit campaign wasn’t for the working class, neither is his Gin. Rather, this gin was made for people like him, elites, who claim to be helping the working class by producing locally.
Altogether, it’s important to remind ourselves that Gin is not originally British, but Dutch, and thus from Europe. Furthermore, as Farage greatly puts it, “You might not yet have the Brexit you voted for, but this stuff really is the taste of it” (Mason 2022), and the price of it.
Bibliography
Bossart, Celine. 2018. ‘The Complete and Slightly Insane History of Gin in England’. VinePair. 21 May. https://vinepair.com/articles/england-gin-history/.
Farage, Nigel. 2024. ‘Farage Gin’. Nigel Farage (blog). 2024. https://nfarage.com/gin/.
Kate, Annie. 2018. ‘Spirited Nationalism: US and UK Gin’. Medium (blog). 5 July 2018. https://medium.com/@wallena/spirited-nationalism-us-and-uk-gin-e825f4afdd5.
Mason, Jessica. 2022. ‘Nigel Farage launches gin range claiming it’s ‘the taste of Brexit’. The Drinks Business. 05 September. https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2022/09/nigel-farage-launches-gin-range-claiming-its-the-taste-of-brexit/
Spielmann, N., Maguire, J.S. and Charters, S. 2020 ‘Product patriotism: How consumption practices make and maintain national identity,’ Journal of Business Research, 121, pp. 389–399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.05.024.
Kumar, N. & Steenkamp, J-B. E. M. 2013. Diaspora Marketing. Harvard Bus Rev, 91(10), 127- 50.
Jenkins, R. 2008, Social Identity, 3rd Edition, Abingdon: Routledge.
Featured Image source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/05/nigel-farage-gin-sparks-cornish-controversy
Identity Hunters 