Long ago the three jokes in marketing were: selling ice cream to Eskimos; selling sand to Saudi Arabia; and selling water in bottles.
Well Eskimo ice cream really does exist. Mind you it’s made from fish, reindeer fat, berries and seal oil so it must be an acquired taste.
Perth’s GMA Garnet really does sell sand to Saudi Arabia. It’s a special alluvial sand used in sand blasting, but that’s still a great sales tale.
As for water in bottles - well we’re all drinking it now aren’t we? And who would have thought it a few years back?
As a kid on European holidays I drank bottled water - because, they told me, the local water was not suitable for drinking: “aqua non potabile” said all the taps on Italian trains.
But back home everybody praised the purity and taste of our water. Here in Melbourne the Board of Works boasted the finest water in the world straight out of our taps.
So what has changed to turn bottled water into a $500 million industry, and discarded plastic containers into an ecological problem?
The main driver has been health consciousness. We need to drink more water, say the health and beauty articles. We should drink less sugar water, the plain is best. It’s the slimmest drink there is.
Add to this our changing climate. As the planet gets hotter and our summers seem to get ever longer, our drink consumption soars. The growth of the gym and running movement contributes. Did you see how many water bottles get drunk and discarded during a marathon or bicycle tour?
The past two decades have also seen some very sophisticated advertising to put a gloss on a very plain product. It is the perfect example of how to transfer personality to a product that has absolutely zero to start with.
The French do it beautifully as you’d expect. The Perrier commercial that showed water surging up from the bowels of the earth; more recently a girl walking through a summer day so hot that the cars are melting in the street.
Evian have created commercials that get remembered after just one viewing - in fact their “Roller Babies” are a top pick on YouTube. Locally Mt Franklin has featured children playing in water, while Hepburn Spa paints a historic picture of Captain Hepburn.
All very little to do with the reality of huge production lines filling millions of plastic bottles, often with filtered tap water.
There’s an illogical side too. The hatred for the plastic bottles - so much so that the town of Bundanoon in NSW has banned all bottled water. So has the University of Canberra and just recently the Victorian College of the Arts. No doubt more will follow, with the first school - Monte Sant' Angelo Mercy College in North Sydney - showing the way.
I’m afraid the logic of a bottle of water being sinful while a bottle of Coke is not, escapes me. The difference is a spoonful of sugar. But you see no protests against Mother or Red Bull, with much less savoury reputations.
The industry is taking this seriously. Just last month Coca Cola Amatil loudly announced that it is moving Mt Franklin water into new, eco-friendly bottles that use 35% less plastic and won the environmental award from the Australian Packaging Covenant. This is a joint body between governments and industry to reduce and recycle packaging in products.
Of course there is nothing to stop people from bringing along their own bottles and filling them from the tap. But for the fashion conscious this is as appealing as fish-flavoured ice cream.
ray@ebeatty.com
