UpFront - January/February 2010
David vs. Goliath
A Vermont small business takes on a major corporation with the grassroots power of social media
by Lena Anthony
Matt Nadeau was having just another typical day at the office last September--until he opened the mail. Amid the bills, catalogs and fan mail to Morrisville, Vt.-based Rock Art Brewery was a letter that could have destroyed the business Nadeau opened 12 years ago. It was a cease-and-desist from the maker of a popular energy drink. The publicly traded corporation alleged that Rock Art Brewery’s Vermonster beer violated a trademark on its energy drink and petitioned Nadeau to stop marketing the beer under the name Vermonster, despite the fact that Nadeau held a trademark in the state of Vermont and had submitted an application for one on the federal level.
"I couldn’t believe what I was reading," Nadeau says. "The letter said there would likely be consumer confusion at the point of sale, and that it would dilute their world-famous brand. It made no sense to me."
Determined to clear things up, Nadeau got on the phone with a lawyer, who had bad news for the small business owner: "He told me I would win in court, but that I would probably go bankrupt in the process. He said this billion-dollar corporation would drag out the process in court until I couldn’t afford to fight anymore. I was taken aback. I didn’t think justice was for sale in America, but here was a lawyer telling me it was. I was livid."
He then called the energy drink corporation’s lawyer and asked to speak to someone at the corporation. "She told me if I had anything substantial to say that she would pass it along. Not only did they fire this letter out to me, but they weren’t even going to talk to me. That just fueled me even more."
Determined to win but certain he was going to lose, a panic-stricken Nadeau turned to his network of microbreweries and beverage distributors, sharing his story in an e-mail to the group. The next morning, he got a response from one of the biggest stores in Vermont saying it had pulled all of the corporation’s energy drinks from its shelves in protest. "Other stores followed suit," Nadeau says. "That was a big statement."
Soon, regional and national media were picking up the story, and Rock Art Brewery’s plight spread to Facebook and Twitter. Then a Vermont production company offered to help Nadeau, who had little experience with social media, post his story on YouTube of a small business being bullied by a big corporation. "We were getting people from all over the country contacting us in support," Nadeau says. "We even had supporters in New Zealand and the Czech Republic. They were pushing my story on their end. All they had to do was copy and paste this YouTube link."
Supporters from across the country also took it upon themselves to call the energy drink corporation in protest. Just over a month after the cease-and-desist arrived in Nadeau’s mailbox, the crisis was over. Nadeau and the corporation’s lawyers drafted language that satisfied everyone: Nadeau was able to keep marketing the Vermonster beer but he had to agree to never sell energy drinks--something Nadeau says he never intended to do.
Two weeks into the public campaign against the energy drink maker, a Facebook group in support of Rock Art Brewery had more than 16,000 members. At that same time, Nadeau says, there had been 1.6 million posts, or "tweets," in reference to the subject on Twitter. While Nadeau says the fight he waged shows the need for trademark law reform, it also shows the grassroots power of social media. "We can change anything when we work together," he says. "That is true democracy in action: no interference from lobbyists, no unseen agendas holding up democracy, no deals being made to anyone’s benefit, just pure democracy at its finest."