Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Worryingly, Volkswagen - manufacturers of reliable, if a little dull, motor cars - are still reported to be sniffing around Alfa Romeo - manufacturers of charismatic, if a little unreliable, motor cars - to add them to their already sizeable family.

On the face of it, using the 'opposites attracting' philosophy, it's a good fit.

Certainly better than the 1980s, when Alfa and Nissan got together to create the Arna. Instead of marrying Alfa's beautiful bodywork to Nissan's bulletproof mechanicals, they did it the other way round... so we got a Nissan Cherry that broke down rather a lot.

But does the world need yet another set of cars based on VW's PQ35 platform? We already have, by my maths, 18 (eighteen).

And where does this all leave SEAT - who Volkswagen labelled their 'Spanish Alfa Romeo'?

But more to the point, did the world ever need a Spanish Alfa Romeo? Given that SEAT have consistently failed to return a profit under VW ownership, I guess the answer is 'no'.

Not so innocent

Interesting 'David versus Goliath' story in the latest edition of Marketing Week.

Dawn Reid, a single mother of two, spotted a gap in the market and launched her own range of child-friendly vitamins in July 2010.

Good on her.

By January 2011, she had them stocked in no less a place than Waitrose.

Impressive stuff.

Trouble is, of all the names she could've chosen, she opted to use Innocent. That's right, as in the smoothie manufacturer 58% owned by the mighty Coca-Cola. Well, if you're going to pick a fight, you might as well make it a big one.

Worse still, not only has Reid used the same name, she's also chosen a similar logo (sans-serif font, all lower-case). Alarmingly similar ethos too, if you scan her website.

Given the original Innocent's diversification into juices and snack pots, it surely wouldn't be inconceivable that they would branch out into the similarly healthy world of vitamins. Yet Reid insists that consumers won't confuse the two brands... despite her using a look-alike logo. She's also concerned that a larger company can seek ownership of a commonplace word such as 'innocent' - but what she fails to realise is that branding goes way, way, way beyond a name.

I usually root for the underdog, but, sorry, in this case I think the hound's completely in the wrong. You could say that it's barking up the wrong tree.