Underdog, a tale of Trade Mark concerns

The official press photo of Head Brewer Roger Ryman at the launch of Underdog & Eureka

Working in marketing for St Austell Brewery we had great success with many brands including the likes of Tribute and Korev, but for every winner there are also losers. St Austell were very innovative and had a great Head Brewer in Roger Ryman, who along with his talented brewing team had a reputation for being ahead of the curve in terms of new beers and failures were rare, but one such beer was Underdog.

Underdog was launched on draught keg in early 2017, it was a 3.5% abv session IPA, originally brewed using a new unnamed experimental hop (US 7270), plus Galaxy and Simcoe hops. It was a high flavour, low alcohol beer with pineapple, citrus and lemon notes intending to leave pub goers wanting more. Underdog was also unfiltered and thus became St Austell's first intentionally hazy beer to become a permanent part of the portfolio. This latter feature was a contributing factor for its eventual demise, although not the main reason as we'll see.

With the interest in craft beer becoming ever more popular the brewing team at St Austell began to experiment with new interesting beers, challenging beer styles, ingredients and flavours. One such beer they developed with was a wonderful low abv sessionable IPA called Underdog. The beer was experimental and the use of the Underdog name was fine for this, but there was a problem, the Underdog trade mark was owned elsewhere and if we continued there was a commercial risk. In the marketing team we highlighted this and advised we should not use the name. However, the ball was rolling, Roger and his team were keen to progress and the sales teams were also enthusiastic. It seemed an understandable passion for the new beer might be clouding judgements around our trade mark concerns.

Underdog, along with another new beer Eureka were showcased at our Sales Conference in January 2017 and launched a month later. Investment was made in font lenses and other marketing materials and the sales teams began to get listings. A year later Underdog was launched in cans, which required a significant financial commitment in terms of brew lengths for canning and also purchasing and storing empty cans. Everything was now in place for Underdog to potentially flourish, but that's not what happened.

Underdog cans where the abv was increased to 4.0%

On draught a problem had emerged. The hazing of the beer was not consistent. Beer poured from a full keg would appear as an appetising light hazing, but as the keg was used the beer began to pour more like soup. Customers at some of St Austell's more traditional pubs were not ready for this and the beer began to lose listings. In cans, sadly none of the major supermarkets showed an interest in listing Underdog meaning St Austell had a lot of stock, both filled and empty cans with no big customers. Things were starting to look rocky for Underdog, but the final and sharpest nail in its coffin came from our trade mark solicitors.

I recall we had a review meeting every year with our solicitors. I was the main point of contact for Intellectual Property matters (IP as it was called), although I was far from an expert, hence the reason we employed the services of solicitors who were. I remember at the meeting they left us in no uncertain terms of the financial commercial risks we could  incur by using and investing in a brand name that was owned by someone else. Underdog was actually owned by Brewdog, who our solicitors advised had a reputation for being quite litigious. I've no idea if that was true, but in the case of Underdog they had every right to be so. It was time to take the risk seriously.

Trade mark challenges from other parties are never a pleasant experience. Solicitors letters are strongly worded to the point of being aggressive with implied huge financial implications. They are not the sort of letters one really wants to land on your desk that often! In my time at St Austell IP challenges included from the likes of Paramount Studios for the use of Italian Job and Halo Foods, owners of Sugar Puffs for the use of Honey Monster. As a marketing team we were not keen to add Brewdog to this undesirable roll of honour!

By early 2019  Underdog was quietly withdrawn from sale. Sales had not reached expectations but above all possible financial penalties from the IP risk was too big to ignore. Would it have survived without the trade mark issues? It had certainly begun to get a few fans and the brewing team had overcome the hazy consistency issues. However, it had limited appeal on draught keg in South West pubs where cask beer was still king and there was only minimal interest for the cans from supermarkets. My personal view is that Underdog was a little ahead of its time and were it to have been launched two years later under a new brand name, a different outcome might have been possible. As it was I believe St Austell had no alternative but to withdraw Underdog given the sales performance and more importantly the IP concerns. 

There were lessons to learn in that the name Underdog, although a good name should not have been used for the launch. Ideally the beer should have been renamed as the liquid was good. One of the positives to come out of this is that St Austell began to take IP concerns more seriously and potential names were now always checked for ownership, even if they were only to be used once for a small batch beer. So sad as it was to see Underdog bite the dust, the tale has positive outcomes for future new brands.