Lino Fleury, a Canadian entrepreneur, created a new drink called Slow Cow and dubbed it “the anti-energy drink”. Fleury observed that caffeine-packed drinks like Red Bull increase anxiety and hyperactivity. He wanted to create a relaxing drink—the antidote to energy drinks if you will. Slow Cow contains theanine, chamomile, valerian, passiflora and other ingredients known for their calming effects. As a new and growing brand, differentiation is essential. Apparently Slow Cow has understood this key point, because their brand strategy is based on differentiation.

 As Slow Cow is challenging and playing with Red Bull’s logo and name, it makes it easy to compare the two brands. Both are functional beverages and address similar groups of consumers. Yet, rather than giving today’s fast paced consumers an extra boost of energy, Slow Cow invites them to slow down and relax during their busy day. By parodying Red Bull, Slow Cow can quickly create brand awareness and recognition and eventually build their brand equity. 

As we have mentioned before there are 4 factors that build brand equity:

Differentiation is a brand’s ability to stand apart from others. It is the degree to which the consumers find a brand unique, different and distinctive. Differentiation enables a brand to gain consumer choice, preference and loyalty.

Relevance is a measure of appropriateness (is the brand meaningful to me?) which relates to a brand’s appeal. Relevance reflects consumer choice. Yet, highly differentiated brands with low relevance can still be very successful.

Esteem measures the degree to which the target audience regards and respects a brand – in short, how much it is liked.

Knowledge measures whether there is a true understanding of what a brand stands for. Awareness is a sub-component of knowledge. 

We can say that Slow Cow is a growing brand, so their first focus should be differentiating itself from its competitors (other functional beverages) and then developing its relevance by highlighting its calming effect. In the functional beverages market, Slow Cow will not struggle with Red Bull and other energy drinks, as it positions itself as an opposite, thereby creating clear and strong differentiation. In other words, Slow Cow is not necessarily capturing Red Bull customers, but instead it is attracting more potential customers to functional beverages in general and developing the market further. Slow Cow has already enjoyed much media attention for its witty name and logo.

We just might see a quick success for this Slow Cow!