Fighting Bottled Water: How do you Market Tap Water?

If you discuss brands long enough the conversation will eventually turn to how marketers were able to brand and sell a true commodity – water. Today, Americans pay more per ounce than gas or milk for a substance they can obtain for pennies from their kitchen. But a backlash is brewing and a few smart marketers are attempting to make tap water cool again.

“Americans spend nearly $12 billion a year on bottled water because they think it is a cleaner, more convenient product than tap water. Many young people and high-income consumers also think there is a certain cachet associated with buying bottled water. But several top-selling brands, including Dasani and Aquafina, originate from local municipal water supplies, not pristine alpine springs, and the plastic bottles are damaging to the environment. That's why the adman and public relations expert behind the "Tappening" campaign want to turn the tide in favor of the faucet. Their mission: Make tap water cool again.”

Wendy Melillo in Hustle and Flow gives the details on how an organization called Tappening is going after the bottled water industry. It has a great examination of their strategy including their message, their strategy and an excellent SWOT analysis.

If you thought making bottled water was difficult, consider the challenges facing someone marketing tap water. There is really no product to attach consumers to. The message is the product and it’s notoriously difficult to make something cool that you can’t see other people doing.

Sure the message can be passed from person to person, but the main driver of bottled water was originally seeing it in the hands of society’s influencers. Without an element to carry around, to be seen with, to make conversation of, these tap water marketers face a very difficult goal.

The article touches on another point in their SWOT analysis:

“The Tappening effort represents social marketing, an attempt to change consumer behavior, just like Advertising Council campaigns have gotten us to wear seat belts or 'take a bite out of crime.'

The danger is that Tappening's effort could end up resembling the futile efforts of Sisyphus if the real reason consumers drink bottled water is convenience -- and not because they think they are getting a healthier product.

"William Smith, evp of the Academy for Educational Development and editor of Social Marketing Quarterly, doubts the effort to get Americans to switch back to tap water will get much traction because bottled water is so portable.

"'I believe a small group of environmentally friendly people will buy into it, but a national trend seems hard to believe,' Smith says. 'That is principally because it is just more work for consumers who like the portability. And water doesn't seem to be price sensitive. People pay a lot of money for it.'”

The Tappening effort is focused purely on combating consumer’s perceptions that they are getting a healthier product, but I think convenience is a key factor is making their decision. In that case it becomes even more difficult to combat.

For the foreseeable future, bottled water is here to stay, but the article is an excellent case study in the attempts of social marketing and in particular marketing a commodity.

From AdWeek, Photo by pshutterbug

Comments

[fuentes de agua]

this issue is becoming a serious problem i think...