In 1997, Matt Nadeau, a Vermont native, started his own microbrewery in the basement of his home. He named it Rock Art Brewery, in honor of the ancient petroglyphs that are etched in the rocks of the Vermont mountains surrounding his home. Eventually Matt moved his operation out of his basement and into a larger facility where he produces a full line-up of beers that are distributed throughout Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut and Arizona. In all regards, Matt had successfully realized his dream and turned a pastime into a profession.

To celebrate Rock Art's tenth anniversary, Matt decided to brew a special beer. Indicative of the ten-year mark, Matt crafted a big, bold beer with a 10% ABV (Alcohol By Volume) and aptly named it "Vermonster. "

Everything was going great for Matt until September 14, 2009. That morning, he received a cease and desist order in the mail from the Hansen Beverage Company, the makers of Monster energy drink, demanding that he:

1. Immediately cease and desist from any distribution, sale or other use of Vermonster in connection with beverages, including the use of any advertising, promotional and point-of-sale-materials that include the infringing mark;
2. Expressly abandon U.S. Trademark Application Serial No. 77/765,863; and
3. Pay to Hansen its attorney's fees incurred in connection with this matter. Hansen's argument is that , as Monster is planning to enter the alcoholic beverage market, Vermonster will "undoubtedly create a likelihood of confusion and/or dilute the distinctive quality of Hansen's Monster marks. Thus, use of Vermonster infringes Hansen's rights, and constitutes unfair competition under state and federal laws. "

Matt has sought out legal advice from a number of trademark attorneys, who each in turn have stated that should he proceed with litigation, he would most likely be vindicated in the eyes of the law. However, if he were to win in one court, he would be faced with an appeal from Hansen's lawyers in another. And another. And another. Fighting this, he has been advised, will most certainly bankrupt him.

So Matt decided to do what downtrodden, Little Guy's do when bullied by The Man: he resorted to grassroots tactics. However, this isn't your mother's letter-writing campaign.

Matt has smartly gone digital and positioned Rock Art Brewery's website as the hub for his battle against Hansen. The landing page features little other than content relating to his cause and prominently features a large title reading, "ROCK ART BREWERY VS CORPORATE AMERICA. " Just below the battle cry is an embedded, surprisingly well-produced, 6-minute YouTube video detailing his company and the lawsuit facing him. The site includes downloads of Hansen's original cease and desist letter, as well as links to the media coverage Matt has garnered. And, of course, there are the must-have "follow us on " Facebook/Twitter tabs. The #ISupportRockArt hashtag is a popular trending topic (though it has yet to break into the featured top ten). On Facebook, the 1,800-plus fans of the brewery are posting their support, encouraging a boycott of Monster and have even posted the mailing address of Monster's CEO, Rodney C. Saks.

What Rock Art Brewery is attempting to do could very well become a perfect case study of the power of social media as a grassroots tool. Beyond the #ISupportRockArt hashtag, Twitterati have already started posting #monsterboycott, #BoycottMonsterDrinks and #hansenboycott in their tweets. In my two minutes on Twitter observing #ISupportRockArt trending, 25 new tweets were posted featuring the hashtag. Furthermore, this story is only a month old and the exponential rate at which it has gained supporters is illustrative of the wildfire-like nature of the Internet.

Should this campaign gain enough of a following, Hansen will be forced to conduct a cost/benefit analysis of whether or not to pursue with their current course of action. I am willing to bet that had they checked with their PR counsel as well as their legal counsel in the beginning, they probably would've been advised not to have issued the cease and desist in the first place.

Regardless of how this plays out in court, any attempt by Hansen to position Monster in the alcoholic beverage market will inexorably be linked to the Rock Art Brewery name, even when it fades from the Twittersphere, as any future google search for "Monster Energy Drink " or "Hansen Beverage Company " will surely list links to this story amongst its returns. In the end, the move by Hansen to protect its brand from the "likelihood of confusion and/or dilute the distinctive quality of Hansen's Monster marks " will in effect have inadvertently perpetuated that very same scenario to occur.

**UPDATE 10/22/09** Hansen has withdrawn the C&D order. Here are the details.

Disclaimer:

The Killswitch Collective, LLC is in no way giving legal advice or is supporting or denying the legality of this case, nor are we advocating either side of the issue. We are simply using this scenario as a case study to show how online networks and the digital landscape can quickly and efficiently add momentum to a cause.

I was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to cover ad:tech Chicago as a guest blogger for Adrants.com this past week. Adrants, for those not familiar with the publication, provides marketing and advertising news in the form of a website and daily email newsletter. Adrants' content is provided by current and former industry practitioners, and the publication seeks to provide insightful, informed, experiential, and no holds barred commentary on the state of the advertising and media industries.

If you are in the communications industry, you are probably familiar with ad:tech. The event, now in it's tenth year, brings together some of the best minds in the business for roundtable discussions on all things digital, specifically how the digital revolution has permeated every aspect of advertising, marketing and PR. This year, ten ad:tech shows will occur in seven countries, making it the preferred resource and destination for digital marketers around the world.

For my coverage of the event, along with that of several other industry peeps, visit the the ad:tech blog .

Here are just a few notions that I took away from the event:

1. For most agencies, "digital" still only represents 15-20% of project work (unless, of course, you are a solely digital agency like Razorfish). While these percentages will inevitably grow, traditional mediums like print and television will continue to represent the majority of any agencies' workload. However, we are sure to see the cross-pollination of traditional and digital campaigns.

2. With clients tightening their belts when it comes to their communications budgets, the importance of metrics and analytics is paramount to any campaign. Simply put, we in the industry need to justify our services in term of ROI at a micro-level beyond what has been traditionally offered to our clients. The good news is that the digital realm adds analytical insights to our arsenal that were not available to our predecessors.

3. "This is the year of mobile." OK, not so much. At one of the keynote roundtables, the adroit speakers hypothesized that it will not be until 2014 that we will see the American consumer embrace mobile advertising in the way their counterparts in Europe, Africa and Asia have. This is not to say that mobile campaigns do not have a place in the present day marketing-mix; they do when approached in the simpliest manner (i.e. SMS, a technology that the consumer has already adopted and is not exlcusive in terms of mobile hardware).

And there was much more, which you'll find covered in detail on the ad:tech blog. Thanks to Adrants for the opportunity. I hope to be back next year!

It seems that business pundits are of the mind that many of the successful social networks that exist today are doomed to fail because of a crippling inability to monetize themselves. I've thought about this and I'd like to take a moment to mount my digital soapbox. After much reflection, I think that this is not only a myopic point of view, but that it is exactly this line of thinking that will in fact bring down social networking as we know it.

I'll be honest with you; in college I didn't exactly excel in my Finance, Accounting and Econ courses (and that, as my mother will tell you, is putting it lightly). However, I have been around long enough to recognize good business practice when I see it. I mean think about it, we all are experts in our own right, simply by performing our role as consumers.

As consumers, we reward those that provide useful, reliable, friendly services with our continued patronage. If they provide us with the contrary, we take our business elsewhere. We may not be schooled in the science of supply and demand, but we are smart enough to know when we are getting the short end of the stick.

But I digress… Back to the topic of monetizing social networks. For the jury, I submit Exhibit A: Facebook, the Grand Poobah of the social realm. Facebook seems to be perpetually seeking ways to monetize itself and every time it does, it shoots itself in its very corporate foot.

In November 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, a system where third-party websites can include a script by Facebook on their sites, and use it to send information about the actions of Facebook users on their site to Facebook. Information such as purchases made and games played are published in the user's news feed. While still active, a class action lawsuit was filed in 2008 against Facebook, Blockbuster Inc., Overstock.com, Fandango, Hotwire.com, GameFly, Zappos.com, and any additional "John Doe" corporations that participate in the Beacon service.

In 2008, we loyal users learned of a clause in the network's terms of service that reserved Facebook the right to sell users' data to private companies, stating "We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship." The backlash from this revelation was so great that Facebook eventually removed the clause from their privacy policy when it was updated on November 26, 2008.

More recently, there are reports of rampant "click fraud" occurring within the network's cost-per-click advertising, a service mainly used by small self serve advertisers. In some cases, advertisers have reported gross misrepresentation of click-throughs as high as 10:1 when gauged against third-party metric tracking sites. The site instructed those who have issue with the service to log the discrepancies and submit them to Facebook. After taking the time to collate these logs, advertisers have been rewarded with a reassuring, pre-scripted response letter.

As I list these controversies, I know that they have resulted in little or no change in how the Facebook runs its network and that they have had no effect whatsoever on the exponential increase in FB users (What? Are we supposed to switch to MySpace? Please, that is so 2004).

However, the alternative network twitter , which most social mavens now use almost exclusively, has Facebook worried about its future (for evidence, just look at all of the new, twitter-like features recently added to Facebook). It isn't out of the realm of possibility that if Facebook continues to lose credibility, users will up and take their profiles elsewhere.

WARNING: If you are a devout capitalist, or if your name is Rupert Murdoch, the following paragraph may make your head explode.

What I propose as a solution is simple: don't monetize them, at least not in the traditional sense. There exists in media a perfect example of how these sites can persevere and ensure longevity, but I haven't heard a single pundit offer this idea yet. I suggest that social networks adopt the same model as PBS and NPR. Revenue will come through "donations" that are made by corporations and businesses that wish to participate in this medium. If they are smart, these businesses will realize that they have a vested interest in ensuring the survival of these networks as a communication tool. This will require that that they accept that there is no way to moderate or direct the conversation; the value lays in the ability to facilitate and participate in it.

Not only will this provide a constant stream of revenue, but this model will ensure transparency throughout and allow these networks to maintain the trust and continued participation of its users.

I am not naive enough to think that the CEO's, CFO's, MBA's, etc. that run these sites will ever consider such a drastic course. I understand the need for ever-increasing revenue, especially in the digital world where the necessity for continued improvement requires substantial reinvestment. Only time will tell if Facebook and twitter and their ilk can survive or if the imminent death of MySpace is an aberration and not a paragon. I simply encourage those in charge of running our social networks be wary of how they seek to monetize them in the future, because their track record so far has me worried.