A Las Vegas-based company, Redux Beverages, has launched a new product- a highly-caffienated cola with a highly controversial name, Cocaine. Redux bills Cocaine as a "legal alternative" to the real thing and claims it is "350 percent stronger than Red Bull" yet lacks the "sugar crash". According the The Daily Mail (UK), the drink is being marketed in Los Angeles and New York and primarily to teens. No surprise there. What's also not surprising is that Redux is not buying critics' arguments that the name is problematic or the least bit cynical.

Its maker claims the title is "a bit of fun" ... The drink's inventor, Jamie Kirby, said: "It's an energy drink, and it's a fun name. As soon as people look at the can, they smile."

Commentary
A large part of the success of contemporary marketing and advertising campaigns relies upon the sophisticated and subtle manipulation of words, images, and symbols. To give one product or an entire brand multiple layers of complementary meanings or association in the mind of the consumer is the goal to which many strive and few achieve. Naming an energy drink Cocaine is about as subtle and sophisticated as mooning. To be fair, the people who think of mooning as "a bit of fun", who look at "mass moonings" and smile, are the very same people to whom this product is targeted.

What Redux fails to account for, however, is that this demographic is already over-targeted and has been heavily exposed for their entires lives to advertisements. It is quite possible that this particular demographic is more cynical than the people so cynically and crudely trying to manipulate them.

Prediction:
I think the product is going to fizzle. Given all the buzz surrounding Cocaine, e.g. the front page Drudge link, Redux officials must be riding high right about now. But like all highs, this one won't last. The novelty surrounding Cocaine will wear off about as quickly as its buzz does- and without the sugar crash.