“Cocaine” is busted
Brands are walking on thin ice when the experience they promise is mostly make believe. But some brands go beyond thin ice and try to walk on water, promising pure fiction to keep themselves afloat.
That’s the case with Cocaine, an “energy drink” brand I wrote about previously. Now the fiction has failed, and Cocaine has been deep-sixed from the market, under a tsunami of federal and state opposition.
Here’s the sordid tale. Below, a snippet:
“Cocaine” drink pulled from shelves nationwide
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut: An energy drink called Cocaine has been from pulled from stores nationwide amid concerns about its name, the company that produces it said Monday.
Clegg Ivey, a partner in Redux Beverages LLC of Las Vegas, said the company plans to sell the drink under a new name for now.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter last month that said Redux was illegally marketing the drink as a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement. May 4 was the deadline for the company to respond.
The FDA cited as evidence the drink’s labeling and Web site, which included the statements “Speed in a Can,” “Liquid Cocaine” and “Cocaine — Instant Rush.” The company says Cocaine contains no drugs and is marketed as an energy drink. It has been sold since last August in at least a dozen states.
One joke making the rounds is that the beverage might be renamed “Crack,” to salvage what’s left of the brand equity.
The problem with a shock brand like Cocaine is that you can’t execute on brand unless you want to face federal drug charges. The more you play with the shock value, cutting and re-cutting the metaphor, the more you string out your users (er, customers) with less and less.
It’s rarely the name that makes the brand
Truth is, it’s rarely the name itself that makes the brand. It’s usually the other way around: brand strategy, the brand experience and brand value delivered are what build the brand, and make the name memorable.
The brand name as creative platform
Too bad those pushing Cocaine didn’t envision their brand as a creative platform beyond the can. Had they done so, they might have selected a name that was low on shock, perhaps even stunningly bland and generic, but with oodles of creative potential. Name-wise, they might have come up with something far more scalable in a customer context, a name like, say, “vitamin water.”
May 9th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Washington Post has a funny column about this asking why we don’t pull Ben Jerry’s with flavors like “Chubby Hubby” (promoting obesity), “Dave Matthew’s Magic Brownies” (promoting drug use) and “From Russia With Buzz” (promoting alcoholism)
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/2007/05/cocaine_marketing_the_food_dru_1.html#comments
May 11th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
That Post article was interesting, though I wouldn’t really call the Cocaine brand “edgy.” It’s just stupid. It really boxes them in as a brand name. The mistake the Cocainers made was in thinking that the brand name itself was enough to make the brand. It’s really the brand context that counts, much more than the name itself. To develop that context takes some real brand building, of course–like the folks at Vitamin Water. Moreover, there is just too much negative context going around from the real cocaine for the Cocaine brand to have much of a chance.
June 13th, 2007 at 6:12 am
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