CONTROVERSY BREWS IN THE WORLD OF ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS
ROSHAMBO WINERY CRIES SOUR GRAPES
Healdsburg, CA: Since its inception four years ago, Roshambo Winery has put the “sport” of Rock, Paper, Scissors at the very heart of its marketing campaign. Named after West Coast slang for the game, the irreverent winery has become well known for their annual RPS Championship. Last year’s tournament made the pages of Newsweek and was the biggest in U.S. history, as 200 competitors threw fists and fingers for the $1700 purse. It’s symbolic of their mission to make wine fun and accessible to the masses. Roshambo Winery has even gone so far as to create a tasty $10 screw-cap brand of wine called “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” which features graphics of a rock, paper and scissors on the snappy label. And they’ve taken their wines on the road promoting it at RPS tournaments in other cities and states. In partnership with Doug and Graham Walker, founders of the World RPS Society and authors of The Official Rock, Paper, Scissors Strategy Guide (Simon & Schuster), Roshambo Winery has played a key role in RPS’s pop cultural tipping point.
Cue DARTH VADER’S THEME SONG.
Enter ANHEUSER BUSCH.
In yet another example of David being bullied by Goliath, the Beer Titan is sponsoring a new USA RPS League and is hosting a $50,000 tournament this April – just over a month shy of Roshambo’s fourth annual championship in Healdsburg. Competitors in 500 markets nationwide are currently competing in this Bud Light promotion to win a trip to the finals in Vegas. Big Beer has slapped its name across the RPS Phenomenon, and predictably enough, they refuse to recognize the winery’s popular tournament or the World RPS Society itself. In essence, the pioneers of the popular modern sport have been shoved to the edge of irrelevance as Big Beer usurps the spotlight. Can you hear the sinister singsong of Beer flipping Wine yet another bird?
“One, two… Bud’s coming for you. Three, four… they’ll swipe what’s yours.”
But staying true to their mantra, “Fighting for Fun in a Winey World,” Roshambo isn’t going down without throwing a few fistfuls of Rocks. Naomi Brilliant, the winery’s eccentric 33-year-old President and self-proclaimed Wine Hero, is understandably vexed at what she considers the blatant misappropriation of her creative marketing efforts and years of blood, sweat and tears. “For another liquor company to run with RPS to promote its product should be a crime. We’re looking into that, actually.” What exactly she has up her sleeve, nobody knows, but she cryptically suggests, “You better believe Roshambo Winery will make its presence felt at the Bogus Beer Championship in Vegas.”
Needless to say, the winery will move forward with their 4th Annual World RPS Society-sanctioned Roshambo Tournament this June 3rd, 2006. And while she can’t offer $50,000 to the winner, Ms. Brilliant promises “lots of fun in the sun and the chance to walk away with next month’s rent in your pocket.”
For more info please visit www.roshambowinery.com, www.worldrps.com, and if you must, www.usarps.com.
Media Contact:
Scott Keneally
scott@scottkeneally.com
415.902.8175
In a classic tale of David vs. Goliath, Big Beer Company bears down on small winery's creative marketing campaign.
posted by Scott Keneally @ 12:48 PM
3 Comments:
The World RPS Society is with you, man. Only solidarity can defeat The Man.
I stand with mighty fine wine, not watered down swill called budweisser. Go Roshambo!
-Ryan
Though I court the sipid generosity of lagers & ales, and delight also in the rangy stealth of the grape, it is the dominance of distilled spirits which most ineluctably steers my intemperate voyage through life, and therefore I feel I must take a controversialist stance in suggesting that your correspondent is mistaken to hold up any member of our crapulental arsenal above another, unless it be LIQUOR alone.
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