Oct
More on the Monster vs. Rock Art Brewery Battle
Last night I made a short post about Hansen Beverages and their bullying tactics with Rock Art Brewery in Vermont. They are making the claim that people will somehow confuse their Monster Energy Drink with Rock Art’s Vermonster Beer. The truth is that Hansen beverages makes Monster energy drinks and the distributor for Monster in the US is Anheuser-Busch wholesalers. Hansen wants to get into the beer mark so they are using their considerable monetary might to push this little Vermont brewery around. It’s a sin.
I have first hand experience with this kind of nonsense and was in the right but didn’t have the resources to fight it. I am very happy to say that Rock Art Brewery is fighting it as much as they can. Who knows if they will prevail, really tough to defend yourself (even when you are right) in a case like this when the company going after you makes over a Billion $ a year.
The wonderful thing about the Internet is that it can act as an equalizer. It’s tough to equalize yourself against a Billion dollar corporation but people are blogging about the Monster Boycott, Tweeting about it, posting video’s to YouTube about it and calling Hansen directly to express their outrage.
There are a lot of things that you can do if you want to help this small brewery. You can:
- Contact Hansen Beverages and express your outrage
- Blog about it if you have a blog
- Tweet about it if you use Twitter
- Join the Facebook Group Vermonters and Craft Beer Drinkers Against Monster
- Stop buying Monster Energy drinks
- Spread the word to people you know
- Support Rock Art Brewery by buying their beer or going to their web site and buying some of their merchandise if their beer isn’t available in your area
Here is a video from the owner of Rock Art Brewery about this situation.
Here are some places where you can get more information on this whole ordeal:
October 16th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
[...] YEARLY LESSON – “More on the Monster V. Rock Art Brewery Battle” [...]
October 16th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Nice write up. I agree its ridiculous that this is happening. Interesting to see if social media has an impact or not in the outcome.
October 16th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Yeah, it’s amazing how quickly this has spread through Twitter and the Blogosphere
February 7th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Why doesn’t the guy just change the name of his beer? Why would he waste his money fighting this, when he has just stated that this is a 10th anniversary beer? He wants to make money off of this publicity.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Why should he have to? It was a baseless claim. It was his 10th anniversary beer but that doesn’t mean he only made it for his 10th anniversary, it’s a beer that they are continuing to make today. It’s not cheap to come up with a name, design a label, get it approved by the regulators, print them up and then market that new beer. Why should he have to change just because a company with more money tells him to when there was clearly no violation of the trademark? Lastly, he is a business owner, what is wrong with making money off of publicity?
April 30th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Bob – don’t be a d-bag. This guy is getting hosed for no verifiable reason. Even if Monster does extend itself into the alcohol arena, RAB is not going to be taking up ANY market share. Thing of the difference in consumers that would buy a VT craft beer and douche-y energy/alchohol drink.