A good name like Fargo can go far

Drinks marketers are inured to hacks from the marketing press badgering them, but it was with some surprise that Henry Leyland, brands marketing manager at regional brewer Charles Wells, recently took a call from a journalist for the magazine for film buffs, Empire.

The reporter wanted to know if Fargo, the Charles Wells’ cask ale, was somehow connected with the Coen brothers’ film of the same name, which is about a bungled fake kidnap set in the wilds of the American Midwest. It features a heavily-pregnant sheriff and ends with one of the bad guys being fed into a wood-chipper.

This is not the first coincidence with the ale’s moniker. The Bedfordshire brewers are already aware that they could never launch the brand in the US because the long-established Wells Fargo bank, famous for having its name painted on stage coaches in Westerns, might take a rather sober view of any booze by the same name.