Jacamo pop-up pub blends marketing with good causes

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 25, 2019

More and more brands are embracing good causes and as well as issues such as sustainability, workers’ rights, animal welfare, more recently, mental health has risen to the top of the priorities list for many labels.

So it’s interesting that N Brown’s menswear brand Jacamo is this month launching the Jacamo Arm-in-Arms, a brand new pop-up pub "providing a safe space for UK men to open up and discuss what it means to be a man today and the challenges facing modern men”.

It happens on Wednesday on Mitre Street in London after the company said “research found that men are most likely to meet their friends down at the pub (58%), yet a quarter don’t feel comfortable enough to talk about their feelings”.

It will have a full day of free panel discussions led by cricketer and Jacamo ambassador Freddie Flintoff and boxer Luke Campbell, with a series of discussions taking place "over a pint and some pub grub”.

The company said it wants to “get men ‘down the pub’ to have an open debate about the issues" they face.

Men will be able to visit the Jacamo Arm-in-Arms throughout the day and as well as grabbing a drink on the house, they can listen to live music, get a free trim from the resident barber and speak to a celebrity stylist for some AW19 style and fit advice. 

It’s the kind of initiative we’re seeing more and more often as retailers retreat from physical store spaces (N Brown is closing its shops to focus on its webstores) but use pop-ups to boost their marketing efforts and the good causes they support.

And of course, the pub is an increasingly popular focus for marketing. In the summer, for instance, luxury brand Mulberry used the pub as a basis for an international campaign that included live performances and pub quizzes. That campaign recognised the fundamental place of pubs in British culture.

Back with Jacamo, the company has also released the second edition of its Modern Man-ual and said a survey showed that in a single week “18% of men between the ages of 18 to 24 in the UK have had a good blub. We live in modern times where men should be encouraged to talk about their mental health and their feelings”. The company added that it aims to “look at what needs to be tackled and how the nation as a whole has quite rightly become forward thinking in terms of masculinity and mental health”.