Bass Brewery - Marketing

Marketing

Bass was a pioneer in international brand marketing. The Bass Red Triangle was the first trademark to be registered under the UK's Trade Mark Registration Act 1875, as trade mark number 1. The 1875 Act came into effect on 1 January 1876 and that New Year's Eve, a Bass employee waited overnight outside the registrar's office, in order to be the first in the queue to register a trademark the next morning. In fact, Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton Limited received the first two registrations, the first being the Bass Red Triangle for their pale ale, and the second the Bass Red Diamond for their strong ale. The trademarks are now owned by Brandbrew SA, an Interbrew subsidiary based in Luxembourg.

Bottles of Bass with the Red Triangle logo have occasionally appeared in art and literature. Bottles of Bass Pale Ale bearing the triangle can be seen in Edouard Manet's 1882 painting Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Bottles of Bass can also be seen in over 40 paintings by Picasso, mostly at the height of his Cubist period around 1914. In the "Oxen of the Sun" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, Bloom remarks upon the Bass logo.