Update: Red Bull has backed down, on the proviso that Redwell doesn’t put its name on energy drinks.

Red Bull, the mega-brand behind the caffeine/taurine/tastes-a-bit-like-death-filled energy drink as well as massive amounts of sports sponsorship including fully owned sports teams, a hefty F1 sponsorship deal and extreme sports sponsorships including its own air race has issued legal warnings to small Norwich-based microbrewery Redwell Brewing.

The mega-brand is worried that there will be confusion in consumers between itself and the micro-brand and has demanded that Redwell changes its name, Redwell being a small business with eight people working there.

 

This might seem like an odd thing to get fired up about, but it strikes me as corporate insanity and I’m clearly in an easily rattled mood.

It would be easier to understand if it was Red Ball, or Red Cow, or Blue Bull, or anything along those lines and would also be easier to understand if Redwell actually operated in the same market. Energy drinks and alcoholic drinks are both liquids that one can consume, but they are not by any stretch of the imagination competitors. To add insult to confusion, the branding looks entirely different. In fact, in terms of branding, I would have thought Redwell would have more to worry about from Bulmers.

Redwell’s owner Patrick Fisher sums it up excellently talking to  the BBC. “Our name is different, our branding is different. We don’t make energy drinks and we’re not planning to move into Formula One or send a man skydiving from space very soon.”

It would make more sense for Brian Jacques to demand Redwell to change its name because it’s a bit too similar to his series of mouse-fantasy Redwall books. I’m not saying it would make sense, just more sense. From a confusion point of  view I’ve had to go back and change where I’ve written Redwall to Redwell twice now.

 Corporate insanity

Companies can’t always act in a way that the average person would consider to be sensible.Not to throw too much sympathy in the direction of Red Bull – from anyone’s perspective this is a stupid move in terms of PR and basic sensibility – but trademark laws are weird and you can find a trademark swiped out from under you if you don’t adequately protect it. For this reason, many companies feel they have to be a little bit heavy handed so as not to lose their own brand.

I suspect that this demand on Redwell from Red Bull is along those lines. This is most likely a decision that nobody at Red Bull wanted to take, but were forced to by internal processes and perceived risk evasion. Big companies sometimes have the tendency to think a bit like a very slow moving mob, which traditionally has the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the sum of all its parts.

Perhaps Red Bull took advice from an intern at their legal firm who understood the theory but not the practicality or real world implications of the action. It’s the right time of year for someone to be a relatively unsupervised intern – summer holidays so uni is out and so will some of the higher ups at any company you look at. That’s pure fantasy from me and I like the theory, but who knows. Someone knows. You’ll probably never hear about it. Let’s pretend my intern theory is correct and maybe we can look Red Bull in the eye.

The alternative is of course good old fashioned idiocy. Even being a relative ignoramus when it comes to big business manoeuvres, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a stupid idea. Fantastic PR for Redwell though.

Perhaps I should set up a coffee brand called Red Ball.