The Old G is one of those brands that didn’t come out of a marketing brainstorm but from a real place and a story rooted in friendship, identity, and a desire to see a different kind of gin on the shelf. Co-founded by longtime collaborators who were looking to make something that felt familiar yet culturally specific, the brand has slowly carved out its own lane in the spirits world.
The Hip Hop Museum caught up with Peter Ibrahim, one of the brand’s founders, to talk about creating a different gin, why storytelling is so important to the brand, how his co-founder, Hebru Brantley, brought a design aesthetic to their mission, and much more.
Adam Aziz: To start, why did you choose gin as the spirit to focus on?
Peter Ibrahim: I’ve worked in the alcohol business since I moved to the United States, which was 17 years ago. I was on the launch team for D’USSE through Bacardi and Roc Nation. I was dabbling in some things with Bombay Sapphire gin. Bombay had a really great arts and activations program going at the time, and I was working on those.
I’ve always wanted to have my own brand. I knew that within alcohol, there are three main pillars. The first is experiential marketing. The second is sales. Sales are very crucial, especially for a new brand. I’ve set up sales teams for large brands, including Jameson Irish Whiskey. That was great because it got me into distributors and out in the market with the field teams. The final pillar was brand marketing, so I went back to Bacardi and worked on the Bombay Sapphire brand team. And then from there, worked across all their scotch whiskies.
At that point, I saw there was a void in the market which was gin in the taste palate of the US consumer. People in the US don’t grow up with gin. I moved from Egypt to London when I was six, and everyone there drank gin their whole lives. They grew up with gin; you saw a gin when you were a kid, drank gin when you were older. So everyone was into gin. But in the US, you did not. So I always wanted to create a gin that didn’t give that burn, that bite, that juniper taste, and that bitterness that people here didn’t grow up with.
AA: How did it all come together?
PI: I met Hebru Brantley on a special project for Bombay, where we got him to do the first-ever limited edition bottle for Bombay Sapphire, and he and I became very close. I thought we should be using him more, and he joined me in founding The Old G. There’s no gin or spirits brand that represents the minority community. That was a big piece for me. I grew up without any spirit that represented me.
AA: Talk to me about naming the brand The Old G.
PI: It used to mean original gangster. That’s now amalgamated to meaning someone who is a master of their craft. So the brand itself, The Old G, is designed to make you sit down with your elders or the people you’re mentoring to tell stories and be creative.
The gin is the vehicle that makes you sit down, chat, get with your family and friends, get with the OGs, learn, and pass that along to the next generation.
AA: How do you strike the balance between what the brand stands for, being a minority-represented brand, and the need to make sure The Old G grows and finds its way into the mainstream?
PI: There’s really no brand, except maybe Hennessy, D’Usse, and Ciroc, for a period of time that was directed towards the black and minority community in this country. We know that black and minority cultures always weave their way into the mainstream: movies, film, art, music, fashion. Even the biggest, most Italian and French brands are now using people like Travis Scott and Pharrell, who is the head of Luis Vuitton. So we know that by focusing on the black and minority community, it will eventually weave its way into the mainstream.
We are also a brand that most distributors or large conglomerates don’t have. You don’t have a brand that can go into the South Side of Chicago and say, ‘ We are like you. ‘ We are 40-odd-year-old black and minority men and women who are selling a product to someone that looks like us.
And so we’re kind of reversing what most mainstream brands do. Most mainstream brands go into white or wealthy communities and want to be this prestigious, premium thing. We are an extremely premium brand in terms of how we’re made, what we’re made from, and how we look, but we’re going to go into our communities first.
AA: How important is storytelling to the brand?
PI: Storytelling is everything, honestly. It’s everything that we are and want to be. We, you know, the OG’s are the storytellers. Name a Hip Hop artist, they’re all storytellers. Everyone, Nas, Biggie, Slick Rick, they’re all storytellers, every one of them.
So our brand is built around storytelling because we want you to sit down with the OG’s, listen to music, talk, gain experience, and gain knowledge. And so our whole brand is about storytelling, everything we do.
When you look at the branding, we very much wanted to be a black-and-white brand. It’s an ode to the black-and-white movies and album covers that shaped us.
Everything we do is black-and-white. And so our branding has to show that. And, obviously, Hebru designed our bottle, which is a matte-black, very unique, custom bottle. Hebru looks over every single creative thing.
AA: How do you approach the making of the gin product itself and exploring new iterations or products?
PI: It all comes from the people, our consumers. We started with one SKU: the 750ml bottle. We now have a pocket bottle because people said they wished we had one. They wished they could pay $13 before committing to a full $35 bottle purchase. Everything we do is listening to the community.
Our goal is to create the smoothest gin in the world and to take people from ‘I hate gin’ to ‘I would maybe buy this’.
AA: Why do you think it’s important that Hip Hop has its own physical Museum space?
PI: Everything historically needs to be honored in some way. So, like a Hip Hop Hall of Fame, the NFL has a Hall of Fame. I’m from Egypt. It’s the hub of museums and history. And having history preserved is always amazing for people learning, for younger generations, helping them understand why things are the way they are today.
Follow The Old G on Instagram.
