How a Black woman-led agency brought Wray & Nephew to Miami Carnival and put culture first

Ashley McKenzie-Barnes brought Wray & Nephew to Miami Carnival, honoring the traditions, history and community behind the celebration.

Ask any Jamaican about Wray & Nephew, and you won’t just hear about rum. You’ll get a story. Maybe it’s a grandmother rubbing a splash on your forehead to break a fever. Maybe it’s a few drops poured onto the ground for those who came before. Maybe it’s the bottle that showed up at every cookout, nine night, wedding and christening, or the first sip that burned all the way down while the uncles laughed.

“Anyone who has a relationship with this brand, it’s emotional. It’s nostalgic,” Ashley McKenzie-Barnes, creative director and founder of D.PE Agency, told theGrio. “You don’t just have it because you love the colors. You grow up with it because it’s traditional, and it has some meaning to you.” 

And those memories reach far beyond Jamaica. Whether you’re from the Caribbean or grew up around its diaspora, odds are you have your own story about the overproof rum, or at least have heard someone describe the night they met Wray and his nephews. Knowing firsthand how deeply the brand runs through the culture, McKenzie-Barnes began exploring a bold idea: bringing Jamaica’s most iconic rum to one of the diaspora’s most unifying celebrations, Carnival.

What started as a conversation a year ago came to life this weekend as Wray & Nephew partnered with Gen X, a Jamaican-bred band that has grown into the largest carnival band at Miami Carnival, to officially bring many Caribbean’s spirit of choice to “di road” (a.k.a. Carnival). But for McKenzie-Barnes, a Jamaican woman who grew up with both the rum and the road, the project was never just about getting a brand into the band. It was about getting the story right.

“It felt more like let’s get to the roots, let’s get to the community. Let’s get to the culture,” McKenzie-Barnes shared, explaining how the team spent months “breaking down the nuances of carnival” from the bands, band leaders, band marshals, costume designers, etc. 

“It is this world of its own…It’s not just the party, and it’s not just this festival in the streets, but it’s about emancipation,” she added. “Move with the crowd, dance. Don’t get intimidated by it. Don’t shy away from it. That’s the point. That’s the spirit of carnival.” 

Though each island has its own unique practices, the tradition of carnival across the Caribbean stems from the ingenuity of enslaved African people determined to find joy in an oppressive world. With that history in mind, D.PE and Wray & Nephew approached the brand’s carnival integration with care, thoughtfulness, and passion, and it showed in the experience they built for the content creators and media invited on the trip.

That care was in the big things, like clear guidance on the do’s and don’ts of J’ouvert and carnival and dinners at Jamaican-owned restaurants around Miami, like Mangrove. In the small details like the plantain chips, dried mango, coconut water, sunscreen, and a portable fan waiting in each guest’s hotel room; and in the message woven through it all, that carnival is “meant to be felt, not observed.”

“We’ve seen for just so long what advertising can do that now we pay attention and we can see through what is authentic and what feels like a lived experience, “ she explained. “It might take a little bit more effort or a little bit more research, but it truly makes a difference.”

Carnival has always been more than a parade, and Wray & Nephew has always been more than a bottle. Both carry memory: of ancestors, of freedom hard-won, of community. And this weekend in Miami, McKenzie-Barnes’ D.PE agency made sure the two finally met on di road in a way that felt like a homecoming.