The first shot of a suprisingly civil war

Monday July 18th 2011, a day war broke out. That date will soon be in history books as the date the first shots were fired in a skirmish between Mountain Dew Energy and Relentless.

Since Mountain Dew Energys Launch in the UK it's been growing a market share, recently Relentless has been making a push for the same demographic. They have a big advert campaign at the moment starring Chase and Status and MMA fighter Roger Gracie which has been showing in cinemas. I've put a link to the video below.

For those unfamiliar with relentless they have a larger product range than Dew Energy at the minute and seem to be getting some traction at the minute especially with the Inferno product.

I'm sure this is nothing and was probably a photo opportunity too good to miss for those at Dew Energy but on Monday we saw something which was a little out of place in the UK market which was 1 company referencing an other. In the US it's common place to have referential advertising, there's a series of long running commericals about a Pepsi and Coke delivery man for example but in the UK that's never really been the case but this week we might have seen a movement towards it.

A relentless employee getting himself some Mountain Dew Energy on one of the legs of their tour. Now perhaps the fact it was social media means we shouldn't take it too seriously but it does show a possible shift in attitudes to mentioning other products. Dew Energy haven't gone to the air yet with an ad so it would be a bit naive of me to suggest they would do something like this in traditional media. Relentless are yet to respond to the picture in any manner, I'm a little suprised they haven't asked for it to be taken down.

You can find details on the Dew Energy tour on which this happened as well as their latest Dew Project at their facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/#!/MountainDewUK?sk=wall&filter=2


There's a really good article here talking about the legalities of using another companies trademarks in  advertising. http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/in-practice/comparative-advertising-ecj-fizzes-it  which probably indicates we won't get something as insanely brilliant as the following Pepsi Max ad which has a Coke Zero driver failing to get one over on the Pepsi man

So in basest terms, who was right? Who has the better drink? What's next? Will Relentless take a shot back at Dew on their social media?

This Soda-War Correspondent is keen to find out