Opening of Book 1 of ‘Lemony Snicket’s a series of unfortunate events’: The bad beginning
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.”
Once upon a time a young boy had a dream to take over the energy drink marketplace.
Fast forward a few decades and that same young boy found himself CEO of an energy drink company and signing on the dotted line to become a title sponsor for a Formula 1 team.
Despite rumblings and murmurings about this ‘premium energy drink’ being so premium no had ever heard of it before they signed as title sponsors, a drink you couldn’t actually buy in the shops, a £50m can productions facility in the UK, although the drink was made in Austria, a UK office address that was no more than a serviced office space and Companies House account records that didn’t quite add up everyone was assured that due diligence had been undertaken and all was well and above board.
Following the unveiling of the 2019, everything started off so well:
The hunt for this premium energy drink soon turned into like chasing the elusive unicorn.
Social media users were teased with images of cans in retail refrigeration units and ‘coming soon’ announcements:
How true that is (or was) we’ll never know.
All seemed to be going well, until …
Not to be one for letting things get him down, the fighting talk started …
… and normal service resumed
Including being featured on the cover of a couple of magazines:
And being compliant with court orders (despite lambasting the judgement):
And then finally, the news was out that the UK’s premium energy drink was available … online … at Walmart!
(At the time of writing, the energy drink itself is now not available online at Walmart, although it’s still available at Amazon and on Rich Energy’s website)
But things were about to turn ugly.
Seething from the court ruling and the upcoming appeal, social media became the obvious place to vent frustration:
At the same time boosting and applauding the team’s performance in F1
Losing the appeal was possible the straw that broke the camel’s back. Nine days ago on 10 July 2019, just before media day at the British Grand Prix, the following post appeared on Twitter:
The entire motorsport community took a unanimous, sharp intake of breath and exclaimed:
Understandably, Twitter went into meltdown and the next day, Haas released the following statement:
What has happened since has played out like a car crash in slow motion.
Rich Energy Watch since July 11 2019:
This is either the greatest guerrilla marketing/PR tactics ever invented, judging by the amount of publicity these posts are generating, or we are in the midst of witnessing a very public meltdown.
Either way, there are so many questions to be asked and so many questions left unanswered.
In the meantime, all we can do is wait, and watch and see how this tragedy in four acts plays out!
Girl in the Pitlane 