TO LIVE & WORK IN LAS VEGAS

No Snow in this Forecast

The energy drink market is a highly competitive one. Not only can it prove to be extremely lucrative, but any “Joe Blow” can mix a couple vitamins, amino acids, and guarana into some carbonation and call it something stimulus oriented. You’re probably familiar with some of the larger brands such as Redbull, Monster, and even Rockstar, or  the action sports marketed drink “Xenergy,” right here out of Las Vegas.

But watch out Rockstar and Xenergy -- you’ve got a new competitor fighting out of Sin City. And they’ve got an interesting new marketing technique; a technique they’ll use to market themselves straight into the ground.

“Blow” energy drink mix is a powder that comes in a Styrofoam packing modeled after a brick of cocaine. The multiple packets come complete with a credit card and a mirror; probably so you can fix your eyeliner if ever caught in the rain while your personal Visa is declined. (Because I think if you used the credit card to crush the powder so you can snort it off the mirror you’d probably end up in the E.R). But let’s face it, the manufacturers of Blow don’t expect you to snort it. They’re selling you a Ford and telling you it’s a Ferrari. This company is going to come down about as quickly as the high they pretend they’re selling. Here’s why:

“We’re the only energy drink I know that puts a warning on the container for minors not to consume our product,” states Logan Gola, the mastermind behind this future failure.

Logan, are you telling me you blew your whole load on a gimmicky marketing campaign while forgetting to do your market research? (Or just pretending you did?) Energy drinks are typically consumed by a demographic in the approximate 16-30 range but most sales and marketing efforts are geared toward teenagers.

Does anyone remember “Cocaine” energy drink? Vaguely, if at all I’m sure, and my point exactly. Cocaine hit the scene trying to cash in the same gimmicky campaign of selling product advertised as another product. (Maybe these two companies used the same marketing firm.) Either way, that lasted a short second until the FDA pulled them off the shelves and made the company redo its marketing and approach. Allegedly, this product is set to re-launch … but I haven’t seen it yet.

Regardless of whether or not Blow manages to evade the FDA, a product falsely billed as a drug only has two audiences and, typically, it will fail with both. Drug users don’t buy the hype of a product that pretends to be a drug, and non drug users are just as uninterested in a product feigning similarity to a product they would never use. So what’s left? I’d say a small percentage of mildly unsupervised fourteen and fifteen year olds, which isn’t a large enough portion of consumers to keep this product afloat -- and that’s assuming an assembled group of parents don’t dump it down the drain.

Sorry Logan. There’s no snow in this forecast. Next time, feel free to drop me a line, first.

 

Precocious entrepreneur, workaholic and a rabid perfectionist Crystal Starlight knows a thing or two about getting ahead at a young age. Email her at [email protected]

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