VODKAT isn’t VODKA

When is a vodka drink not vodka?  When it’s a blend.  There is a large market in blended products, be they ready-to-drink products (alcopops) or the various other types of alcoholic mixes (licqueurs and “light spirits” being some of those products).

If you are marketing a vodka mix, is it wrong to use the mark VODKAT?  How about if you also use imagery connected with VODKA?  what about if you add the word IMPERIAL (which is common on vodka)?

Diageo have obtained a ruling this morning that the VODKAT product  was “passed-off” as vodka.  Vodka is one of the spirits mentioned in European Regulations relating to the definition and labelling of spirits, so there was clearly a known meaning of the term “vodka”. 

It was probably the right decision, but it was a lot of work to get things sorted.  Diageo (who own the SMIRNOFF, KETEL ONE and CIROC vodka brands) established that VODKAT was costing them approximately 3% of sales of SMIRNOFF.  Given that a legal case of this size would have probably cost at least £900k to bring (and I would expect costs of well over a million given the amount of evidence and expert opinion), it was probably worth bringing since from a mathematical point of view you would need about £30M in sales to make the case “break even”.  Diageo must have been achieving £30M across their vodka brands from UK sales.

Interestingly, VODKAT changed their packaging in August 2009 – presumably with an eye to the outcome of the case and having seen the evidence.  So given that the court said that VODKA has a meaning (a protectable meaning) whereas some other terms (such as schnapps) do not, what is VODKAT described as now?  You guessed it… schnapps.  For VODKAT however, their new get-up was deemed not to have overcome the spectre of passing-off, so we should see VODKAT off the shelves, at least for a while.  Time for a rebrand?