Meanwhile , UK microbrewers BrewDog crossed the same line with their enhanced beer called, charmingly, Speedball. Speedballs, for those of you who don’t watch Law & Order, are an often-lethal combination of heroin and cocaine. This beer doesn’t contain either illegal drug, but does have a healthy does of guarana, Californian poppy, kola nut, and Scottish heather honey*. According to their website, the ingredients all balance out:

This light chestnut, slow motion roller coaster of a beer perfectly balances out a vicious cocktail of active ingredients, who said equilibrium has to be boring?
Combined in the bottle are the natural stimulants guarana and kola nuts with natural depressants Californian poppy and hops, all blurred together by the audacity of Scottish heather honey.

I don’t know – guarana is a pretty strong stimulant, as I previously discussed in relation to 7-Eleven’s Fusion coffee. High-energy drunks – just what we need!

According to the Daily Mail, Speedball, like Cocaine before it, got pulled from the shelves:

BrewDog, which makes the 7.1 per cent beer, was yesterday accused by a drinks’ industry regulator, the Portman Group, of ‘profiteering from the scourge of illegal drugs’.

‘The blurring of alcohol and illicit drugs fosters unhealthy attitudes to drinking and trivialises drug misuse,’ said the group’s chief executive, David Poley.

‘The company is seriously misguided in its claim to be educating and preventing people from misusing drugs. We are taking urgent action to protect the public from exposure to such negligent marketing.’

At BrewDog’s website, Speedball is listed as “out of stock”. Well, at least you can get their other beers, like Hop Rocker, The Physics, Punk IPA, Hardcore IPA, Rip Tide, and Paradox.

I think it’s unlikely that anyone would expect Speedball to have actual coke or heroin in it – consumers are savvy enough to know a marketing ploy when they see one, especially when this kind of shock product naming is common for energy drinks and alcohol. One wonders where they’ll go next to get the market’s attention. Catchword has always recommended that companies use code names for their products that are so off-the-wall that they’d never make it to market – like cheese, or fish, or maybe surgical procedures or infectious diseases. Could we see a new beer on the market called Dogfish, or perhaps Hepatitis?

*This sounds horrible-tasting to me.

I’m not sure who the target audience for Stampede Light might be – people who forget to take their vitamins with breakfast? – but having a celebrity spokesperson never hurts. It’s great to see the Stampede brand getting some well-deserved attention!

We know naming research can be done well. It’s just that so often, it is not. It isn’t about what the name describes. It’s not even about what name respondents *say* they like the best. It’s about the associations that each name candidate evokes. When you ask associative questions, you get answers like “This name feels energetic” or “This name sounds friendly.” If you want your new name to communicate ease of use, associations like energetic and friendly are close to perfect. Too few marketers ask the right question when testing names.

Had typical research methodologies been applied when Jobs and Woz were launching their company, we might have EduComp or GraphiComp instead of Apple. And instead of Yahoo, we might have SearchSmart or InfoSeek (oh, wait …). Instead of Nike, we might have QuickFoot or SportKix.

YAWN.

Please people: If you’re going to test your name candidates, do us all a favor. Ask the right questions, and don’t let respondents steer you away from the truly great naming solution. Charisma and style count for just as much as semantics when naming a new product or company.